Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia addresses attacks about drug use, body-shaming

Politics

“This is what white supremacists do. They convey to lies and hope that you will imagine them,” she said.

Boston Metropolis Councilor-at-Significant Julia Mejia addressed accusations that she is addicted to medicine and assaults from her looks in a YouTube online video Monday.

In the movie, entitled ‘Women of color in elected office are constantly less than attack,” Mejia says persons on social media have been attributing alterations in her physical appearance to drug use, but the improvements are truly linked to her ongoing overall health problems.

The 52-12 months-old councilor begins by referencing feedback that accuse her of getting a cocaine addict and position out “bags beneath her eyes that weren’t there” ahead of she grew to become a city councilor.

“Folks on Twitter are employing this system to overall body-shame me. To make it seem to be as however my overall health challenges are similar to the use of drugs,” she states. “For these who are wondering if I am applying prescription drugs, the response is completely not.”

Mejia goes on to explain that in 2018, the yr ahead of she was initially elected to Boston Metropolis Council, she underwent gastric bypass medical procedures to deal with her diabetic issues and large blood strain.

“I lost nearly 50 {2c3a8711102f73ee058d83c6a8025dc7f37722aad075054eaafcf582b93871a0} of my body, but I reclaimed my health,” she says.

Mejia continues, expressing that getting these types of remarks is “par for the course” of getting an elected formal, so she isn’t producing the movie for herself.

As a substitute, she suggests, she miracles how people today who are battling with material abuse disorders, or some others who are viewing spectacular changes in their physique due to gastric bypass surgical procedure, really feel about the way their bodies are commented on.

Mejia, Boston’s 1st afro-Latina town councilor, has arrive to be identified as a staunch progressive unafraid of prospective controversy, proposing initiatives this sort of as having rid of the City’s gang databases and learning how the Metropolis could institute reparations for systemic racism.

“I really do not even smoke pot. But but this is what white supremacists do. They convey to lies and hope that you will feel them,” she suggests in the video clip.

Mejia closes by expressing she hopes that the procedure she’s received is exclusively due to racism and her status as an elected formal, and wouldn’t occur to folks really having difficulties with habit.

“For all those who are enduring issues of dependancy, it is my hope that people today will be sort and compassionate. I hope that if I was certainly struggling with an addiction, that persons would not assault me for it,” she suggests.

View the comprehensive video clip below: