LIVE with MAYOR WU and the MORE THAN MUSIC panelists

Mayor Michelle Wu on FIFA, Public Safety, Boston’s Black Men and Boys, and Building a Stronger City

On Wednesday, August 5, Mayor Michelle Wu joined Java with Jimmy for a wide-ranging conversation about some of the biggest issues facing Boston—from the impact of the FIFA World Cup and public safety to violence prevention, the city’s work with Black men and boys, taxes, housing, and the role of arts and culture in building a stronger city.

Host Jimmy Hills opened the conversation by asking the mayor to describe FIFA in one word.

Her answer: “Possibility.”

FIFA showed Boston what’s possible

Looking back on the World Cup, Mayor Wu said Boston had spent months asking hard questions about whether the city could successfully host such a massive international event. Ultimately, she said, the tournament demonstrated what Boston can accomplish when it creates welcoming, safe, and vibrant public spaces.

“People felt they were welcome,” Wu said, pointing to Boston’s history, neighborhoods, and family-friendly atmosphere as part of what made the city stand out.

The benefits extended beyond downtown. The city surveyed small businesses throughout Boston following the tournament and found that every neighborhood represented in the survey experienced some level of boost.

Temporary changes to business and alcohol regulations also played a role. Businesses were allowed to stay open later, while social districts gave visitors more opportunities to enjoy Boston’s restaurants and bars outdoors.

Wu said those changes helped create a ripple effect: people stayed out longer, businesses saw more customers, and visitors had more opportunities to experience neighborhoods across the city.

For Wu, the lesson extends beyond FIFA.

“When we focus on creating spaces that are beautiful, safe, welcoming, exciting, and give cities the legal powers to support that, it goes a long way,” she said.

Public safety: Progress, but no complacency

The conversation then turned to violence in Boston.

Wu acknowledged that the city has seen an increase in shooting victims, even as the number of homicides remains lower year-to-date than the previous year and the five-year average.

She emphasized the importance of looking at public safety trends over a longer period rather than allowing any single month or year to define the picture.

At the same time, Wu was clear that lower homicide numbers are not a reason to ease up.

“It’s not okay that any families are ever grieving in Boston,” she said. “We’ve been making progress, but every time we take a step forward it can feel like there’s a lot more to be done.”

Hills pushed the conversation further, asking what it would take to break Boston’s cycle of violence rather than simply responding to individual incidents.

Wu pointed to a more comprehensive approach—one that recognizes violence as connected to broader issues including generational trauma, mental health, housing stability, employment, and quality of life.

“Violence isn’t kind of on its side off on its own,” Wu said. “It’s doing everything else that we need to do for people to be healthy and well and connected to their communities.”

She described the city’s approach as requiring focused accountability, new collaborations, and a person-by-person understanding of the challenges facing different families and neighborhoods.

A closer look at scooters and community safety

The conversation also touched on the growing presence of scooters in some violent incidents.

Wu stressed that the city does not want to overgeneralize, noting that many residents rely on scooters for work and food delivery. But she acknowledged an increase in the use of scooters to quickly leave scenes or in connection with altercations.

The city, she said, is working to confiscate illegal scooters and continue enforcement efforts.

For residents who feel unsafe in their neighborhoods, Wu pointed to another piece of the city’s public safety strategy: stronger connections between residents, police, and neighborhood-level data.

She highlighted the Boston Police Department’s community CompStat meetings, where residents can engage directly with police around local crime trends and discuss where resources and attention are needed.

“If you live in a neighborhood where you feel like there’s not enough resources, you want to be involved, you want to know what the trends are, please reach out to your neighborhood liaison,” Wu said.

Investing in Black men and boys

Hills also asked Wu about changes within the city’s Office of Black Male Advancement and concerns about whether changes to staffing could signal a shift in the city’s commitment to Black men and boys.

Wu explained that the office has grown substantially since its creation. What began as a single staff position eventually expanded to a nine-person office, reflecting a broader effort to build capacity across the city’s community-focused departments.

She said the recent changes are part of a larger effort to centralize certain administrative and policy functions across city government while maintaining subject-matter expertise.

Rather than having individual departments operate entirely separately, Wu said the goal is to bring specialists together and better coordinate work across issues that overlap—including housing, jobs, schools, public health, and public safety.

But Hills also raised the issue of perception, noting that the way organizational changes are experienced by residents can matter just as much as the official explanation.

Wu agreed.

“What is real and sort of the work or the facts can be different from the perception,” she said. “And at the end of the day, perception wins out in today’s world.”

She connected that idea to conversations she has had with young people about summer jobs, saying that even when the underlying facts differ from what people have heard, the perception that opportunities have disappeared can still have a real impact.

Taxes, housing, and the fight at the State House

The conversation also turned toward property taxes, housing affordability, and the relationship between Boston and the state legislature.

Wu defended the city’s previous tax proposal, arguing that if it had passed, Boston taxpayers could have saved more than $150 million over two years. She also highlighted the potential impact on individual neighborhoods.

She connected the issue to the city’s broader push for housing affordability, including a proposed fee on high-value real estate transactions that would generate additional resources for affordable housing.

Wu argued that Boston’s elected state legislators have an important role to play in advancing policies supported by the city and its residents.

“If we don’t have our Boston legislators fighting for Boston instead of delaying things, running away from problems, then we have no chance of getting our issues addressed,” she said.

For Wu, the broader question is about leadership and whether elected officials are willing to engage with difficult problems before they reach a crisis point.

“Real leadership is finding solutions and trying to address problems before it gets to a crisis point,” she said.

More Than Music: Arts and culture as community infrastructure

The conversation ended on a very different—but connected—note.

Wu was joined by local artists and entrepreneurs involved in More Than Music, a new seminar focused on helping Boston’s creative community build sustainable careers.

The panel brought together Brandon Matthews of KillerBoomBox and Showoff Marketing, musician and wellness entrepreneur Amandi Brown, and artist and music publishing executive GI, the curator of the seminar.

Wu described the arts and culture sector as something much larger than entertainment.

“We talk about our arts and culture, our creatives, our sector in Boston as being not just about arts and culture,” she said. “It’s our economy, it’s our community, it’s policy, it’s how we work through tough conversations as a community.”

That idea—of creativity as both an economic engine and a form of community infrastructure—became a natural extension of the conversation that came before it.

The panelists spoke about the importance of marketing, financial literacy, wellness, branding, and building a sustainable life beyond the stage. Amandi emphasized the importance of mind, body, and spiritual wellness, while Matthews spoke about the need to recognize the many creative professionals and businesses already building careers in Boston.

GI, meanwhile, described More Than Music as a response to something he wished he had when he was starting out: a space where artists could learn from people with experience in different parts of the industry.

For him, the central message is simple: “More than music, it’s a lifestyle.”

The goal is to help artists understand that building a sustainable creative career requires more than talent. It requires community, business knowledge, wellness, branding, financial literacy, and a willingness to think beyond a single creative discipline.

As Boston continues to navigate questions of public safety, economic opportunity, housing, and community connection, that broader vision matters.

Whether the conversation is about a World Cup match, a neighborhood safety meeting, a city policy, or a room full of artists and entrepreneurs, the same question keeps emerging: What does it take to build a Boston where people can thrive?

For Mayor Wu, the answer appears to be the same across all of those spaces—keep showing up, keep listening, keep building, and keep looking for what’s possible.