Taiwanese-American Michelle Wu (吳弭) on Tuesday made history after winning the mayoral race in Boston, becoming the city’s first woman and Asian American elected to the post.
The 36-year-old daughter of Taiwanese immigrants won nearly 64 percent of the vote in her race against fellow Boston City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George.
“On this day, Boston elected your mom because from every corner of our city Boston has spoken,” Wu said in her election night speech. “We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone.”
Photo: AP
Wu, a progressive Democrat, ran on policies such as affordable housing, police reform, closing the racial wealth gap and a city-level Green New Deal.
Wu was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. She later moved to Boston to study at Harvard University and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012.
That same year, Wu worked on US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s first campaign for the US Senate after having been a student of Warren’s in law school.
Wu, who in 2013 became the first Asian-American woman elected to the Boston City Council, served three terms on the council.
From 2016 to 2018, she served as council president, the first minority person to hold the role.
In past interviews with US media, Wu has shared the struggles she faced in her early 20s taking care of her mother, who has a severe mental illness, and raising her two younger sisters.
On her campaign Web site, Wu says that her family’s struggles showed her how much government matters and propelled her into law school, activism and, later, a political career.
“She basically helped raised her two sisters and took care of her mother by herself, so I really commend her for her tenacity,” said Wilson Lee, a fifth-generation Chinese American and Boston resident. “She really represents the aspiration, the hope, for all immigrants.”
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
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