Ruthzee Louijeune

Ruthzee Louijeune
Louijeune in 2022
President of the Boston City Council
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 1, 2024
Preceded byEd Flynn
Member of the Boston City Council at-large
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 1, 2022
Preceded byAnnissa Essaibi George
Personal details
Born1987 (age 36–37)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
EducationColumbia University (BA)
Harvard University (JD, MPA)

Ruthzee Louijeune (born 1987) is an American politician and lawyer serving as president of the Boston City Council. She has been an at-large member of the Boston City Council since January 2022, and has served as the council's president since January 2024. She is the first Haitian-American to serve on the council.

Early life and education

[edit]

Louijeune is the daughter of immigrants to the United States from Haiti.[1]

She was raised in the Hyde Park and Mattapan neighborhoods of Boston.[2] She attended Charles H. Taylor Elementary School, and graduated from Boston Latin School in 2004. During high school, she interned in the office of State Representative Marie St. Fleur as part of the Ward Fellowship Program.[1]

Louijeune moved to New York City in order to attended Columbia University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2008.[2][3] After earning her undergraduate degree, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she attended Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School, earning a master's degree in public policy and a Juris Doctor in 2014.[2][1][3][4] At Harvard Law School, she was a student attorney at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.[5][6][7][8]

[edit]

Louijeune worked as an attorney for Perkins Coie.[9] Louijeune also served as senior counsel for Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign.[1] In 2021, Sean Philip Cotter of the Boston Herald described Louijeune as being a protégé of Warren.[10]

Loujuene founded Opening PLLC, a legal and advocacy firm.[11][12] The firm conducts consulting and works on affordable homeownership agreements in Boston.[1]

Louijeune has been involved as a volunteer with the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, representing low-income individuals in the housing court.[13][1][14][15] In her work with them, she has fought against eviction and to promote homeownership.[1] She has worked with them in their efforts to increase homeownership opprountities in Boston for first-generation home buyers.[15] She is considered to be a housing advocate.[15]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Loujeune volunteered with Guild Works to deliver food to food insecure and financially struggling residents of the Dorchester neighborhood.[12]

Boston City Council

[edit]

First term

[edit]
L–R: Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Louijeune at a 2022 Juneteenth event
Louijeune (left) with Governor Maura Healey during the 2023 South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade
Louijeune with Senator Ed Markey

Louijeune was elected to Boston City Council in November 2021. As a first-time candidate Louijeune had a strong showing in the 2021 election, finishing third in the at-large race behind incumbent council members Michael F. Flaherty and Julia Mejia.[16][17] She is the first Haitian-American to serve on the council.[16] Her election the city council was regarded as demonstrating their growing clout in the area's politics. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Greater Boston is home to the third-largest Haitian diaspora population in the United States.[18] She took office in January 2022.

In her first term, Louijeuene served as chair of the Civil Rights Committee[19] and vice-chair of the Housing and Community Development Committee[20]

In June 2022, the Boston City Council unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Louijeune and Councilors Tania Fernandes Anderson and Kendra Lara which apologized for the city's historical role in the Atlantic slave trade.[21]

In late 2022, Louijeune proposed an amendment to have the city regulate beekeeping.[22] In late 2022, Louijeune played a key role in the passage of a 20% pay increase for members of the Boston Council, which was vetoed by Mayor Michelle Wu. Wu supported an 11% increase, which had been the recommendation of Boston’s compensation advisory board, but opposed a 20% increase.[23]

Louijeune and her City Council colleague Kendra Lara authored a resolution that was passed by the Boston City Council in late 2022 which urged Mayor Michelle Wu to raise the affordable housing unit requirements for new residential developments from 13% to 20% and to lower the threshold for which the requirements apply from buildings with nine or more units to buildings with five or more. The resolution also urged Wu to transition from utilizing HUD-designated area median income and to instead determine base affordability based upon the average income of a neighborhood.[24]

In late 2022, Louijeune gave her support to the idea of permitting immigrants who have legal immigration status to cast votes in elections for city offices.[25] More than 28% of Boston's city population are immigrants with legal immigration status. Fifteen other cities in the United States had already adopted similar measures. In December 2023, Louijeune voted to give City Council approval to a home rule petition that, if signed by the mayor, approved by the state legislature, and signed by the governor, would have granted such voting rights in local elections.[26]

In April 2023, the council unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Louijeuene and Liz Breadon expressing support for an effort by residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham to form a trade union.[27]

After a judicial ruling required the city to adopt a new City Council district map to be used in the 2023 Boston City Council election, Ed Flynn, as president of the Boston City Council, tasked Louijeune with heading the process of drawing such a map in her capacity as the chair of the Civil Rights Committee. Flynn had assigned this task to Louijeune in order to avoid having Liz Breadon (as head of the Redistricting Committee) oversee it.[19] The adoption of a new map needed to be completed on an accelerated timeline in order to avoid a delay to the municipal elections. Over the course of two weeks weeks in which five lengthy hearings were held, a map was agreed upon by the Civil Rights Committee.[28] In late-May, the resulting map was adopted by the full council in a 10–2 vote[19] and signed into law by Mayor Wu.[29] Louijeune's leadership in resolving the contentious redistricting matter raised her profile in the city's politics and won her praise.[30] Emma Platoff of The Boston Globe called the passage of a new map, "a feat many feared would come too late if it happened at all," managing to adopt a new map in quick enough time to hold municipal elections on schedule.[28]

In August 2023, Boston Herald political columnist Joe Battenfeld characterized Louijeune as having quickly become a "rising star" on the city council. He wrote that she had become, "a fast-moving leader of the body in less than two years."[31] Other Boston political commentators had similarly called her a "rising star" on the council.[32]

Second term and council presidency

[edit]
Louijeune (right) walks alongside Mayor Wu and State Auditor Diana DiZoglio during the 2024 South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade
While attending the 2024 South Boston St. Patrick's Day Breakfast, Louijeune poses for a photograph with Governor Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll (both dressed in costumes for a Dunkin'-related skit) and Mayor Michelle Wu

Louijeune received the most votes in the at-large race of the 2023 Boston City Council election, being re-elected to a second term.[33] Two days after the election, Louijeune claimed that she believed she had secured enough support from fellow individuals elected to the incoming city council to be elected the council's next president.[34] On January 1, 2024, after the new council was sworn-in, it voted unanimously to elect her as its president.[35]

Bill Forry of the Dorchester Reporter observed of Louijeune’s path to being elected council president,

Louijeune didn’t just win the most votes [in the November 2022 at-large city council election,] she backed the right candidates in the election, made smart alliances with existing colleagues, lined up her votes, and locked them in publicly. She deftly and quickly filled the void, shutting down the dithering that critics often point to as a negative trait of city government. That skillset bodes well for keeping councillors focused on the stack of pressing matters that we elected them to attend to.[36]

Forry also noted that Louijeune's election as council president marked a notable moment for Boston’s Haitian diaspora community, and found it to be “poignant” that the vote coincided with Haitian Independence Day.[36]

Loujuene served as a delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention.[37] Several weeks before the convention, incumbent president Joe Biden (the party's presumptive presidential nominee) withdrew his his candidacy for re-election and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris to instead be the party's presidential nominee. Shortly after this, Loujuene indicated her support for Harris's presidential candidacy and intention to support her at the convention.[38] After Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump began spreading the Springfield pet-eating hoax (a false conspiracy theory about a Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Massachusetts) in September, Louijeune condemned Trump and participated in a protest decrying Trump's rhetoric.[39][40]

In 2024, Boston magazine called Louijeuene "Boston's brightest rising political star", and ranked her at #75 on its 2024 list of the "Most Influential Bostonians".[41][42]

Personal life

[edit]

Louijeune lives in Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood.[1][18] In addition to English, Louijeuene is fluent in French and Haitian Creole. She also has conversational fluency in Spanish.[12]

Electoral history

[edit]
2021 Boston City Council at-large election
Candidate Primary election[43] General election[44]
Votes % Votes %
Michael F. Flaherty (incumbent) 41,299 15.0 62,242 17.4
Julia Mejia (incumbent) 38,765 14.1 61,709 17.3
Ruthzee Louijeune 33,425 12.2 54,601 15.3
Erin Murphy 22,835 8.3 42,831 12.0
David Halbert 16,921 6.2 42,561 11.9
Carla Monteiro 18,844 6.9 39,648 11.1
Bridget Nee-Walsh 15,118 5.5 27,424 7.7
Althea Garrison 16,810 6.1 24,194 7.0
Kelly Bates 12,735 4.6  
Alexander Gray 11,263 4.1  
Jon Spillane 11,155 4.1  
Said Abdikarim 7,725 2.8  
Domingos DaRosa 7,139 2.6  
Donnie Palmer Jr. 6,823 2.5  
Roy Owens Sr. 5,223 1.9  
James Colimon 4,671 1.7  
Nick Vance 3,943 1.4  
Write-ins 845 0.3 1,350 0.4
Total 274,694 100 359,294 100
2023 Boston at-large City Council election[45]
Candidate Votes %
Ruthzee Louijeune (incumbent) 44,641 20.29
Erin Murphy (incumbent) 43,548 19.80
Julia Mejia (incumbent) 39,187 18.10
Henry Santana 34,151 15.53
Bridget Nee-Walsh 26,775 12.17
Shawn Nelson 10,512 4.78
Clifton A. Braithwaite 10,299 4.68
Catherine Vitale 8,560 3.89
Juwan Skeens write-in 113 0.05
all others 1,549 0.70
Total votes 219,965 100

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Kilgannon, Maddie (March 16, 2021). "Mattapan native Ruthzee Louijeune joins at-large council race". Dorchester Reporter. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c Shimano, Mihiro (September 7, 2021). "Ruthzee Louijeune". Boston.com. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  3. ^ a b "Ruthzee Louijeune". Ballotpedia. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  4. ^ "Ruthzee Louijeune". WGBH. 2021. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  5. ^ "Ruthzee Louijeune". WGBH. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  6. ^ "City Council Candidate Loved Campus and Harlem". Columbia College Today. June 22, 2021. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  7. ^ "Meet the Candidate". Ruthzee Louijeune for Boston City Council At-Large. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  8. ^ Zeder, Jeri (August 17, 2011). "Law on the Home Front". Harvard Law Today. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  9. ^ McDonald, Danny (August 23, 2021). "Ruthzee Louijeune releases TV ad, in rare move for a Boston city council candidate - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  10. ^ Cotter, Sean Philip (September 15, 2021). "Who advanced through the Boston City Council preliminary elections?". Boston Herald. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  11. ^ Norton, Michael P. (January 2, 2024). "'I believe in Boston': Ruthzee Louijeune elected new city council president". NBC Boston.
  12. ^ a b c "Ruthzee Louijeune Launches Campaign for Boston City Council At-Large". Beacon Hill Times. March 18, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2024.
  13. ^ Ta, Ha (March 24, 2021). "City council race: Ruthzee Louijeune running for at-large seat". The Scope. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  14. ^ Ratto, Isabella (October 14, 2021). "Built in Boston, City Council candidate Ruthzee Louijeune hopes to build better for the next generation". The Huntington News. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  15. ^ a b c Ta, Ha (March 24, 2021). "City council race: Ruthzee Louijeune running for at-large seat". The Scope. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  16. ^ a b "Ruthzee Louijeune secures at-large spot on council". The Bay State Banner. November 3, 2021. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  17. ^ "Louijeune wins solid 3rd-place finish; first Haitian American to join council". www.dotnews.com. The Dorchester Reporter. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  18. ^ a b Bleichfeld, Avery (January 10, 2024). "Ruthzee Louijeune: On top of her game". The Bay State Banner. Retrieved February 21, 2024.
  19. ^ a b c Miller, Yawu (May 31, 2023). "Redrawn Council Map Raises New Issues". Retrieved June 2, 2023.
  20. ^ Thompson, Isaiah (March 29, 2023). "Council Probes Lending Discrimination". Bay State Banner. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  21. ^ Grove, Rashad (June 20, 2022). "Boston City Council Apologizes for its Role in Slavery". Ebony. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
  22. ^ McCourt, Clara (October 4, 2022). "New proposal could regulate Boston beekeeping". www.boston.com. Retrieved November 3, 2022.
  23. ^ Wintersmith, Saraya (October 17, 2022). "Mayor vetoes Boston City Council's 20% pay hike". WGBH. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
  24. ^ Miller, Yawu (December 7, 2022). "Council calls on Wu to increase affordable unit requirements". The Bay State Banner. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
  25. ^ Zokovitch, Grace (December 12, 2022). "Immigrant Voting Proposal Comes Before City Council". Boston Herald. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
  26. ^ Cawley, Gayla (December 14, 2023). "Boston City Council Approves Voting Rights For Immigrants With 'Legal Status'". Boston Herald. Retrieved December 28, 2023.
  27. ^ Choe, Jina H.; Kettles, Cam E. (April 28, 2023). "Boston City Council Unanimously Votes to Support MGB Union Campaign". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  28. ^ a b Platoff, Emma (June 20, 2023). "Redistricting Drama Threw Boston City Council Into Chaos. Enter Ruthzee Louijeune". The Boston Globe.
  29. ^ "Mayor Michelle Wu signs off on new Boston electoral map". WBUR. May 27, 2023.
  30. ^ Cristantiello, Ross (January 5, 2024). "Meet New City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune". Boston.com. Retrieved February 21, 2024.
  31. ^ Battenfeld, Joe (August 19, 2023). "Ruthzee Louijeune Emerging As Top Contender For Bickering Boston City Council Presidency". Boston Herald. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  32. ^ "Boston's next mayoral race is two years off. Who are Mayor Wu's prospective challengers? --at 8:40". youtube.com. GHB News. Retrieved July 28, 2023.
  33. ^ "Louijeune and Murphy top at-large council ticket; Santana secures fourth slot". The Dorchester Reporter. November 8, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  34. ^ Danny, McDonald (November 9, 2023). "Louijeune says she has the support to become Boston City Council president". The Boston Globe. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  35. ^ Multiple sources:
  36. ^ a b Forry, Bill (January 10, 2024). "It's time to give Louijeune her due". Dorchester Reporter. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  37. ^ Garrity, Kelly (August 20, 2024). "Primary Poll Positioning". Politico. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  38. ^ Cooper, Kenneth J. (July 24, 2024). "Black Democratic Delegates from Mass. Endorse Harris". Bay State Banner. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  39. ^ Sacchetti, Sharman (September 29, 2024). "Boston's Ruthzee Louijeune reacts to 'blatant lies' about Haitians". WCVB. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  40. ^ Patkin, Abby (September 30, 2024). "Louijeune Joins Protesters to Decry Trump Villainizing Haitians for Political Gain". Boston.com.
  41. ^ Soroff, Jonathan (October 4, 2024). "This City Councilor Is Boston's Brightest Rising Political Star". Boston Magazine. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  42. ^ "The 150 Most Influential Bostonians in 2024". Boston Magazine. April 22, 2024. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  43. ^ "City of Boston Municipal Election -November 2, 2021 City Councilor At Large" (PDF). Boston.gov. Retrieved February 4, 2024.
  44. ^ Waller, John (November 2, 2021). "2021 Boston City Council election results". Boston.Com. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved November 5, 2021.
  45. ^ "City of Boston Municipal Election - November 7, 2023 City Councilor At Large" (PDF). www.cityofboston.gov. City of Boston. Retrieved February 4, 2024.
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