Tommy Vitolo Interviews 4th District Congressional Candidate- Jake Auchincloss [16:00-21:01]

It starts with two words, fewer guns. The evidence on this is absolutely overwhelming from a public health perspective, frankly, from an insurance perspective, from an education perspective. When you have fewer guns, there is fewer gun crime. Now, I was a Marine Special Operations Officer. I slept a training patrol with an AR-15, for four and a half years. No civilian needs to own a weapon of war. No civilian needs a high-capacity magazine. You've got to ban those weapons. We've also got to implement universal background checks, red flag laws, taking guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, mandating liability insurance. These are common-sense gun safety proposals that have the broad support of the American people. And more importantly that we know more to reduce gun violence in schools and elsewhere. Now, Democrats, I think, have not put together an effective enough coalition to talk about this message. I mentioned that these are popular proposals. If you poll Americans on universal background checks, the vast majority support it. Why can't we get this policy passed? We can't get this policy passed because we're getting to send the wrong messageers to talk about this. We need to put together a coalition of veterans, of students, of leaders in the Black and Brown community, and of public health professionals to talk about gun safety in a way that is holistic and comprehensive. And in the Massachusetts fourth, which has a strong mom's demand action network, which has a strong march for our lives network, where advocates in Boston and elsewhere have been talking about gun safety for 60 years. I can help quarterback that coalition and be a really effective lead messenger for gun safety for the Democrats. Thank you. We've got a little bit of extra time. So I want to hit another issue or two. Jake, I know you're very thoughtful about transportation. And of course, the transportation needs in a place like Brookline and Newton is quite different than Fall River, which is I'm sure quite different than the town's halfway between. And I think transportation is one of those things where we think about our experience as the default experience. And if folks would just solve it for us, everybody would be would be would be in great shape. And probably that's not the case. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about the federal role in getting us to and from where we want to go sooner, safer, lower cost, and maybe even less polluting. I've worked in transportation in the 5th sector, I've worked in transportation in the public sector. This is an issue that I'm passionate about and really which which I launched my campaign on and I encourage people who are interested to go to my website, jbramay.com, it can be my transportation plan. I want to pull out a couple of issues. First, transportation and a green new deal are inextricably lit. 40% of the carbon emissions that drive climate change and Massachusetts come from the transportation sector. So if we're talking about a green new deal and we're not talking about transportation then we're really missing the point and we're missing an opportunity. We need to reinvent transportation in Massachusetts, we need a new eyes and power plan, but not for highways for public transportation, all electric, free, regional rail, connected bus rapid transit, better infrastructure for cycling and walking. These are things that we know work. So these like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Seoul, Seattle, London, even New York, I've implemented facets of this and it has success. We're the scientific capital of the world. We are trained to do peer review and yet we look around and we can't see that we should adopt best practices from elsewhere. It's frankly a black political, well it's political failure. I put forward very actionable on the ground proposals for how we can coordinate federal, state and local policy folders to put in all electric regional rail and bus rapid transit. I know how to get this done because I've seen it at the local level and I've prepared for the national level. The final point I'll make is that if we're not talking about transportation, we also can't really be talking about racial and economic justice. The air quality concerns, the commute times, the lack of opportunity and access to jobs are deeply embedded in a transportation infrastructure that was built post-World War II around white flight and exclusionary zoning. And until we really grapple with that, we're not going to fully redress those problems. You brought up the Green New Deal and I'm glad you did. We know that transportation is roughly a third of carbon pollution emissions nationally at the very least. Another third is electric generation and the final third is heating our buildings and the water in our buildings. Give us some of your vision there. You mentioned the Green New Deal. If you want to get into a few details or few specifics and perhaps as they relate to our district, love to hear them. Well, and Tommy, you're somebody I'd want to work with on this because you know a ton about energy. I know you and I have talked about nuclear power. We've talked about fossil fuel infrastructure. You're someone I think of as a mentor on this issue and