Conditional cash

Last night I attended the Newton MA School Committee final hearing and vote on Massachusetts ballot question 2. The committee voted to endorse “No on 2” (my position as well). Question 2 would vastly expand (without additional revenues) charter schools in Massachusetts.

Pretty interesting that the New York & California money only rolls in to promote charter schools in Massachusetts – supposedly because public schools are failing to educate kids in low-income districts – and never to replace the huge annual funding cuts in the budgets of those districts when revenues run low. It’s almost as if the big donors actually have an agenda more concerned with diverting public dollars to private operators and breaking up unions than with any substantive assistance to struggling districts.

5000-dollar-bill-madison-slider

Action works

I’ve worked for and volunteered for a lot of great candidates who have come up short — so it’s pretty fantastic to have a nearly clean sweep for once, as occurred this week.

I’m so proud of the work we did in a short span to fight for Newton’s future by electing an incredible new cohort of thoughtful activists to our Charter Commission and by re-electing a number of courageous incumbents who have taken stands in favor of varied and expanded housing opportunities in our city as it grows with the booming Boston region.

This election also really helped cure the residual burnout I had been feeling from some past elections and campaigns I’ve been involved with.

I also came away with a newfound resolve to combat the forces of apathy and malaise because I saw my efforts — stuffing envelopes to friends and parents of friends, knocking on hundreds of doors, etc. — directly translating into a successful campaign. I was always happy to head out there for all these candidates and talk to voters because I felt like every conversation was helping to build a new generation of democratic leadership and to bring the city into the future.

Here’s what I ask those people in the apathetic and cynical camp: Are you going to sit around telling everyone how nothing ever changes so there’s no point? Or are you going to stand up and see if you get enough people together to help change some things?

You and thousands of people like you can sit at home, separately, complaining and telling everyone who wants to try that they should give up too. Or you can get out there and help build the growing movement to turn things around. I know which I’d rather be doing.

Bill’s 2015 Endorsements for Newton MA

My endorsements for tomorrow in Newton MA. I have met all but two of these people this year, and I have actively been canvassing for 8 of them (indicated with a *).

Vote Yes on establishing a Charter Commission, then vote for these 9 (alphabetical):
Bryan Barash*
Jane O’Connor Frantz*
Howard Haywood
Rhanna Kidwell*
Josh Krintzman
Anne Larner
Brooke K. Lipsitt
Karen Manning
Chris Steele*

Aldermen-At-Large — all of these candidates support bringing the city responsibly and inclusively into the future.
Ward 2: Susan Albright* and Marcia Johnson*
Ward 3: Ted Hess-Mahan*
Ward 5: Deborah Crossley*
Ward 8: David Kalis and Rick Lipof

School Committee
Ward 5: Steve Siegel

What did Auchincloss mean by “Millennial Mecca” remark?

Editor’s note: This is more or less a purely local post about politics in Newton MA (where we record our weekly radio show), but it has broader implications for both eastern Mass and other parts of the country where a similar pattern is playing out.

Newton highlighted within Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Credit: Justin H. Petrosek - Wikipedia)

Newton highlighted within Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Credit: Justin H. Petrosek – Wikipedia)

At the Newton Ward 2 At-Large forum, citywide aldermanic candidate Jake Auchincloss said, some 44 minutes in:

“I don’t hear a lot of demand for us becoming a Millennial mecca. […] That’s not where the voters I spoke to chose to live. They chose to live in Newton, which is the Garden City and which has a special comparative advantage in Greater Boston of being bucolic, of having fabulous schools and safe streets, and that’s the priority.”

 
Maybe other voters won’t hear it the way I did, but: This is, without question, the most troubling (even disturbing, actually) thing I have yet heard from Jake over the course of this campaign.

It would be one thing to contrast Newton in general terms with other slightly more urban communities, some of which he cited by name. But it’s quite another to imply that those communities have bad schools or unsafe streets or no green spaces, and to further imply by specific word choice that this is all because ‘Millennials’ live there in large numbers. As if ‘Millennials’ are destroying the Greater Boston area like locusts and must be kept at bay from Newton.

Can you imagine the blowback if a candidate for citywide office said during a debate that Newton shouldn’t become a “mecca for the elderly” or a “mecca for baby boomers”? He would rightly finish in last place and never be heard from again.

But this discrimination is an easy political move because adult Millennials are not a major voting force in Newton right now for the simple reason that almost none of us can afford to live in Newton. No wonder he didn’t “hear a lot” from young people who have been priced out of their home city. They’re not here to be able to tell him what they want. Read more

Taking steps to repair Bay State’s role in Alaska Native history

Turning to indigenous peoples news relating to my hometown, Newton MA, this troubling story popped up on my radar last week…

July 1878: Skidegate Indian Village of the Haida tribe. Skidegate Inlet, British Columbia, Canada. (Library and Archives Canada)

July 1878: Skidegate Indian Village of the Haida tribe. Skidegate Inlet, British Columbia, Canada. (Library and Archives Canada)

Alaska Dispatch News – “Massachusetts college cancels sale of Alaska Native art”:

A Massachusetts theology college has abandoned plans to sell off art from 52 Native tribes, including Tlingit and Haida items, as the federal government investigates.

The Andover Newton Theological School could face penalties for quietly planning the sale of 80 Native art pieces this summer, possibly violating a federal law that would require some items to be returned to the tribes, reported KTOO-FM [Juneau AK].

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., has displayed the collection since the 1940s and alerted hundreds of tribal leaders to Andover Newton’s plans.
[…]
Andover Newton president Martin Copenhaver didn’t comment but forwarded KTOO-FM a letter that said the school “will proceed to repatriate artifacts if feasible and appropriate ways can be found to do so.”

 
The collection of Alaska Natives objects included many items of spiritual significance under traditional religions of the Alaska and Pacific Northwest coasts, which Christian missionaries seized in their efforts to force the Native populations of the Alaskan Panhandle and coastal British Columbia to convert (or just stay in line under White authority). One item was a decorated halibut hook, emblematic of the Native coastal fishing cultures.

The school now faces a formal investigation by the Federal government’s Interior Department, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 and could potentially face fines of close to $20,000 for violations from the attempted sale.

Massachusetts has long had complicated and destructive ties with Alaska Native communities because of the New Bedford-based global whaling industry, which often hunted whales industrially in Alaska’s Pacific and Arctic waters traditionally harvested (at a much lower impact) by Alaska Natives. Christian missionaries from the Bay State often followed their economic counterparts into other parts of the world.

While I wish Andover Newton had been more diligent and thoughtful, I’m glad the Peabody Essex Museum did its part to help stop this illegal sale and encourage the restoration of Alaska Native artifacts to the opposite coast, where they rightfully belong. The Museum has an excellent collection (well beyond these items) of Native American Art, past and present, from many different Native cultures of North America.

In 5th grade at Newton’s Angier School, after I had been lucky enough to be assigned the Haida peoples of the Pacific Northwest for a research project on Native heritage, I got to go on a field trip to the Peabody Essex Museum and see some distinctive Haida and Tlingit art in person — an experience that has stuck with me for all these years. The collection will remain strong and vibrant even after the Andover Newton items stolen from Alaska’s and British Columbia’s Tlingit and Haida people by missionaries are repatriated.

This is an important symbolic step in repairing the hurt and pain that some of our state’s citizens caused many years ago in that part of the world.

“Urbanization”

Like many U.S. communities large or small, there’s a debate afoot in Newton, MA about the merits of “development” and “growth,” as has occurred every decade without fail, probably since the earliest second ship landed in an American community after a first ship already had.

Below is an excerpt from one of a number of rather frustrating recent local commentaries against urbanization and densification of Newton, Massachusetts. I wanted to link to the long one published this week, but it wasn’t online yet — and this one will do for my purposes, as the specific people involved are less relevant to my analysis than the sentiments expressed:

Newton is the home we cherish. We value its character, history and scale. Newton residents are deeply invested in their community, both economically and emotionally. Whether they have been living here for decades or recently moved here, most residents chose Newton precisely for its suburban qualities, not because they hope to see it grow ever more urban.
[…]
All discussion of “smart growth,” “transit-oriented development,” and “right-sizing” is misdirected because Newton is already “right-sized.” Newton is not yet overcrowded, but risks becoming so.

[…]
In truth, Newton is a suburb, not a city, so imbued with the character of its 13 villages that it has little in common with a typical urban environment. Newton has benefited from transit-oriented development for more than a century, as businessmen who worked in Boston found that the railroad and later the trolley could bring them to work in Boston each morning in half an hour, then home again in the evening, allowing them to live with their families in an environment of clean air, tree-shaded streets and yards, and wide lawns. Remarkably, all these years later, we still enjoy the same advantages. And most residents would probably agree that neither biking, jogging, or walking is improved by denser development.

 
It takes a certain amount of self-absorption and myopia to genuinely believe that these suburban locales (which, I can verify after knocking on doors for campaigns in several states, all basically look identical) are somehow unique snowflakes, with incomparable community values, visual aesthetic, and appeal to home buyers. It takes an additional dash of naivete to genuinely believe that a community one is about to move into will remain unchanged forever.

A certain attitude

The attitude captured above — generally coming from any place’s “longtime residents,” who in Newton’s case lord that status over everyone despite almost universally having moved into the area half a century or more after my own family — is fairly typical of most communities like this. It boils down to “develop this far, and no further.”

It’s a view that says it was ok that everything changed hugely right up until my arrival, after which it must freeze in place and never, ever change again, even as the population grows and societies become more complex. It’s pulling the ladder up behind one’s self and slamming the door shut. I don’t think it’s as much NIMBYism as a reactionary fear of the unknown and fear of change. It’s gatekeeping via arbitrary construction limits to prevent new residences, thus obviating the need to become an actual gated community.

Sometimes I want to tell suburbanites complaining about “urbanization” and “pro-density” policies that the existence of their houses in the once-undivided miles of fields behind the house I grew up in is affecting my hay production for the local horse-drawn carriage industry. And the ice man is having trouble keeping up with the growing population’s ice box needs.
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April 28, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 82

AFD-logo-470
Description | Topics: Israel/Palestine peace talks collapse, Egypt’s military government, the Newton MA history curriculum debate and American Islamophobia, and then a discussion of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. People: Bill, Nate, Greg, and guest Daniel Fidler.

Talking Points:

– Is Israel actually serious about achieving peace? Was Kerry wrong to use the term “apartheid”?
– Is Egypt’s military really better than the Muslim Brotherhood? What does a history curriculum debate in Newton, Massachusetts tell us about America’s wider problem of anti-Muslim attitudes?
– Then: Daniel Fidler talks about how the second Captain America movie comments on current events.

Part 1 – Israel/Palestine Talks:
Part 1 – Israel/Palestine Talks – AFD 82
Part 2 – Egypt, Islam, Curriculum:
Part 2 – Egypt, Islam, Curriculum – AFD 82
Part 3 – Daniel Fidler on Captain America 2 [HUGE Spoiler Alert]:
Part 3 – Daniel Fidler on Captain America 2 – AFD 82

To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post. Additionally, there is a bonus segment this week, on Donald Sterling, in a separate post.

Related links

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