LYNN ― Marven Hyppolite, the youngest candidate running for a city councilor at large this year, gathered a few dozen friends, supporters, and campaign volunteers at a relaxed backyard event on Friday evening, Oct. 1.
“He has the biggest heart of anyone I know and cares about the city so deeply,” said Rebecca Horsteine, 31, Hyppolite’s campaign manager and the host of the evening’s event at Empire Street. “He has a vision for the city and what it can be, a vision that includes everyone and the people who live here now.
The gathering featured a campfire with s’mores, string lights, tiki torches, and homemade apple cider. Almost everyone who stopped by was under 40 years old.
“He is very young but well equipped. [He] understands what people of color and his age are going through,” said Yonerky Santana, 32, a longtime Lynn advocate and activist. “There are a lot of us in our 30s that are not living the American dream. I think he understands that. He understands that times have changed and that the way we live right now is not healthy, the cost of living is extremely expensive, and we can’t play catch-up to our parents right now.”
Hyppolite, who is 29 years old, ran previously for the position of Ward 5 councilor three times.
“I decided to run for office to really make a difference in the lives of my family, my neighbors because so many of us are struggling. It feels like we are not being considered,” said Hyppolite, who couldn’t find a job right after college and saw his parents struggling with growing rent, bills and his sister’s health issues.
Hyppolite spent his early childhood in Haiti and moved to Lynn when he was eight, where he learned English at Connery Elementary; he graduated from Lynn Classical High School in 2010.
Hyppolite went on to study political science at the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, where he served as president of the university’s student government for one year. That job taught him how to manage staff, speak publicly, manage a budget of $300,000, and advocate on the state level for making school affordable, he said.
Hyppolite haș been working as a constituent services liaison for the sixth congressional district with the U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) for almost five years now. He has been answering people’s questions about the government and helping them resolve issues with federal agencies related to immigration, housing, social security, taxation and more.
Hyppolite said he learned how the government works at this job: where to get the resources, how to communicate with the public, and how to better serve and empower constituents.
“We don’t want people to be dependent. We want people to be independent and powerful so that they can make the changes that they want to see,” said Hyppolite.
Hyppolite started getting involved in Lynn politics about six years ago. He said he is concerned that 80 percent of the city doesn’t vote in local elections.
“You can literally win an election in this city and not knock on a single door if you are in with the people who do vote, and if you talk with them you can continue staying in power,” said Hyppolite. “We are a city of 100,000 plus; we are so close to Boston. The gentrification is happening at an alarming rate. We need people in office that reach out to people outside of their circle, people all over the city, and actually involve them in the decision-making process.”
To involve more Lynn residents and improve public services, Hyppolite wants every councilor to have staff and office hours.
He also proposes to use volunteer seniors and young people who represent the community to fill staff roles and answer constituents’ questions, visiting them at their door and speaking to them in their language, whether it is Spanish, French or Khmer. He said he has been pitching this idea for almost four years and has found supporters among elected officials, Mass Senior Action members, and young people.
Hyppolite said that the City Council should engage more people from the immigrant communities, especially the Hispanic community, and do outreach year round.
To provide access to good jobs, Hyppolite said, the city should negotiate community-benefits agreements with businesses coming into the city.
“If we’re going to give a tax break or an incentive, we should get something back,” said Hyppolite, giving such examples as seed money from developers to improve job-training programs or restorative justice work that needs to be done by marijuana dispensaries.
“It’s not that there’s a lack of jobs (in Lynn) ― the reality is that there just isn’t enough training. And I think if we shifted our focus to that we would see huge improvements in the quality of life in the city,” said Hyppolite.
Lynn needs another school, more school funding, and adequate pay for local teachers, Hyppolite said. He would also like to elevate students by providing more after school programs, mental-health resources, and social-emotional and life skills learning.
To fund all of that, the city needs to increase its tax base, said Hyppolite, by bringing in more businesses into the city but also making sure that residents can get better jobs to buy housing and invest into the education of their children.
“I was actually able to bring One Mighty Mill to Lynn,” said Hyppolite, of the coffee shop and pantry-goods retailer located on Exchange Street, which built its own stone flour mill in Lynn.
Hyppolite said he connected with the owner, gave him the tour of the downtown, and bolstered such competitive advantages of the city as diversity, hard-working people, and proximity to Boston. Since coming to the city, One Mighty Mill now exports its bagels to out-of-state buyers and supplies the Boston Public Schools.
Hyppolite said he supports unions because they have similar goals.
“We really need to take seriously the fact that we’re working-class city and that, if we can empower workers to get together to negotiate, that also makes it likely that people get better-paying jobs, better pay, and if people have better pay and better standard of living then the city improves,” said Hyppolite.
Hyppolite said he believes that “Lynn can truly be world-class.”
“The only way to do that is to actually involve the people in the decision-making process. And that’s what our campaign wants to do,” said Hyppolite.