INTERVIEW: Minka vanBeuzekom for Cambridge City Council
Want to help get more women off the sidelines? Residents of Cambridge, MA can look no further than their very own municipal elections this November! Minka vanBeuzekom is vying for one of nine spots on the Cambridge City Council, and I had the opportunity to sit down with her to talk about her campaign.
VanBeuzekom enters the Cambridge municipal race with an unconventional background in public heath, epidemiology and biotech. Through in-depth knowledge of a wide range of public health issues including obesity, environmental health, and air quality (particularly, the epidemic of asthma in inner city young kids), she comes to the table with a breadth of experience that would be unique to offer to the Cambridge City Council. Having learned that governance is “not a spectator sport”, she was motivated to run by a “belief in the public good” and in seeing the importance of “address[ing] these [public health] issues from the legislative side.”
A resident of Cambridge for 30 years, Minka has been highly involved in the local community as a leader in the Area Four Neighborhood coalition and as a community activist, working on various projects like the Cambridge Rodent Task Force, citywide clean up and community gardening efforts. A huge advocate for public education, she put her two daughters through the Cambridge public school system and helped to establish the Cambridgeport school in the early 1990’s. The city’s current pursuit of an innovation agenda, which would create a separate upper school (6th, 7th and 8th grade) campus that would attempt to address achievement gaps, is something that Minka feels should be closely watched.
Minka cites the city’s fiscal health and financial resources as an important issue currently facing the city. “There is a lot of money in Cambridge that the city council oversees” she says. “And city councillors need to be more pro-active in using that money.” She sees enormous potential in the “incredible commercial base” brought about by Cambridge’s world-renowned universities as well as high tech and biotech industries.
On Women Running for Office
“Women want to be experienced, qualified and articulate before they take the plunge” says vanBeuzekom. A graduate of the all-female Wellesley College, where she “learned about and became aware of gender inequities”, even she was shocked at the low statistics of women in public office. “It’s something that we tend to not think about,” she says.
Minka credits Emerge Massachusetts, a political leadership training organization for Democratic women, for giving her the “concrete skills” to run a campaign and for providing her with an excellent “network of people who want to support women candidates.” For women, especially young women who are interested in politics, Minka encourages “taking small steps to volunteer on campaigns.” Even if the work involves seemingly insignificant tasks like voter math or holding up a sign, she believes that the experience and camaraderie of “working with likeminded people” would provide women with the confidence to become more involved.
If you’d like to get involved with Minka’s campaign, you can check out her website and contact her directly.
Municipal Elections in Cambridge, MA will take place on November 8th, 2011. For more information on polling locations, click here!
