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Trial Court offers to reinstate Arroyo, seeks control over hiring pg 19
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LOCAL ARTIST CAGEN LUSE EMBARKS ON LUNCHTIME COMIX PROJECT pg 14
City seeks restaurateur tenant for prime Dudley real estate pg 10
plus Boston Ballet adds three black dancers pg 14 Women’s Equity Project highlights black female composers pg 15 Thursday, August 24, 2017 • FREE • GREATER BOSTON’S URBAN NEWS SOURCE SINCE 1965 • CELEBRATING 50 YEARS
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Edwards vies for city council seat Housing official aims to represent the North End, East Boston, Charlestown By JULE PATTISON-GORDON
PHOTO: CHRIS LOVETT
Activists Monica Cannon-Grant (left) and Angelina Camacho (right) lead a march from Roxbury Crossing to the Boston Common to oppose white supremacist actions in Boston and Charlottesville, Virginia.
Tens of thousands pour into streets to decry hate Bostonians marched, rallied against white supremacy By JULE PATTISON-GORDON
Bostonians turned out by the tens of thousands to demonstrate and chant against white supremacy and racism. An estimated 15,000 people joined Saturday’s Fight Supremacy march, and the crowd swelled to about 40,000 as marchers converged with likeminded demonstrators at the Boston Common. The march and resistance rally responded both to the fatal white
supremacist rally in Charlottesville the weekend before and to a planned so-called “Free Speech” demonstration taking place on the Common on Saturday August 19. The Boston Free Speech rally organizers denied association with Charlottesville, but their event was criticized for including speakers with ties to conservative extremism. Boston counter-demonstrators made it clear that they intended to send a message against those who would promote racism, white supremacy, white
nationalism, neo-Nazism and similar ideologies. “You don’t get to stand in the city of Boston with your racism,” Monica Cannon-Grant of Violence in Boston, an organizer of the march, declared at the pre-march rally. “We must check white supremacy and confront it everywhere it rears its head,” said District 7 Councilor Tito Jackson, speaking to the Banner as the crowd gathered before the Fight Supremacy march.
See PROTEST, page 6
East Boston’s Lydia Edwards is hitting the streets as she campaigns for Boston City Council. Like most district candidates, she is laser-focused on door knocking and meeting residents face to face. “All the funds in the world don’t account for, don’t equal the handshake and the look in the eye of a candidate to a constituent. I stand firmly by door knocking,” Edwards said in a recent Banner phone interview. Edwards is one of three candidates competing to become District 1’s city councilor. She brings with her a background of advocacy in areas such as domestic and immigrant workers’ rights and support for residents facing housing crises. Now she looks to advocate for East Boston, Charlestown and the North End on the city council floor.
The candidate
Edwards is the current deputy director of the city’s Office of Housing Stability, where she is charged with advancing supports for Boston’s residents facing rental housing emergencies, such as evictions and landlord-tenant disputes. She will face off in the September 26 preliminary against East Boston’s Margaret Farmer, president of Jeffries Point Neighborhood Coalition for the past five years, as well as North End’s Stephen Passacantilli, the director of operations for the Boston Transportation
Department as well as a former aide to the current District 1 councilor, Sal LaMattina, and to Mayor Martin Walsh. Voters will select between the top two candidates in the November 7 election. Two earlier contenders withdrew candidacy in May: Michael Sinatra, who is LaMattina’s chief of staff; and Jack Kelly III, a policy advisor to City Councilor Bill Linehan. This is not Edwards’ first look at political office. In 2016, she made an impression with her campaign to represent East Boston, the North End, Revere and Beacon Hill in the state Senate. “She quickly made herself known by doing on-the-ground, old-fashioned campaigning,” said Mary Ellen Welch, a longtime East Boston community advocate. Although Edwards was unsuccessful — she placed fourth out of seven candidates in the Democratic primary — many in East Boston took notice. “Here’s a newcomer to the political scene and she showed so many people that she was good that she won East Boston,” Welch recounted. “She has a lot of talent, is extremely well-educated and stands strongly for a lot of good issues.” Previously, Edwards was a public interest lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services, and she has been an advocate for immigrant and domestic worker rights, including helping write Massachusetts’ Domestic
See EDWARDS, page 22
Project sparks neighborhood ire Locals object to density, lack of parking By YAWU MILLER
Members of the Kensington Investment Company’s 45 Townsend Street team displayed a 3-D rendering of their planned housing development at a meeting last week, and discussed its features: indoor and outdoor public spaces, an orchard on the premises, and the three large energy-efficient buildings they plan to construct on the site of the former Radius Hospital. Community members listening
to the presentation during a Boston Planning and Development Agency meeting last week questioned the impact the 311-unit project would have on their densely-packed residential neighborhood, with its paucity of parking spaces and congested intersections. Like many planned housing developments in Boston’s residential neighborhoods, 45 Townsend Street underscores the tensions facing the administration of Mayor Martin Walsh, which is presiding
over the largest construction boom in decades as it races toward its goal of 53,000 new housing units by 2030. Developers like Kensington are taking advantage of the city’s expedited permitting system and a strong demand for rental housing in Boston. Neighbors are facing tough battles as they seek to preserve the character of once-quiet residential streets threatened by multi-unit projects that they fear will forever alter the character of their street, further exacerbating parking and traffic woes.
BANNER PHOTO
See 45 TOWNSEND, page 21
Boston Planning and Development Agency Deputy Director Dana Whiteside lays out ground rules for community input.
2 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
Can we build a way out of the housing crisis? Walsh focuses on building enough units to soften demand, others call for new tactics By JULE PATTISON-GORDON
There’s little dispute that Boston faces a housing crisis with rents and housing prices beyond the reach of many of the city’s current residents. Mayor Martin Walsh has been pursuing a strategy of increasing housing production to meet growing need, while City Councilor Tito Jackson, who is challenging Walsh for the mayor’s office, says the city’s strategy falls short of meeting the growing demand for affordable options.
The problem
The problems are many: the city’s population is growing, pushing up rents and the cost of homes. Well-heeled professionals flock to the city, snapping up units. Longtime residents who cannot keep up with rising rents are pushed out. Students spill out into neighborhoods where they pay per head, driving up rents in Mission Hill, Allston and, increasingly, Roxbury. Luxury buildings proliferate in the city, sparking fears among some tenants as they see rents rise at a faster pace than wages. According to the city’s recently released Imagine Boston report, more than 21 percent of the city’s renters spend over half their income on housing. At any given time, roughly 40,000 residents are on the waitlist for Section 8 public housing, according to Imagine Boston. Moreover, citywide median housing costs rose by 36 percent between 2010 — the end of the Great Recession — and 2015, and by even more in some outer neighborhoods. Housing costs shot up 38 percent in Dorchester, 43 percent in Chinatown, 50 percent in Mattapan and 70 percent in Roxbury, states the report.
Building a way out
In 2014, Mayor Walsh’s administration highlighted the need to tackle rising housing costs and demand, with the release of its Housing a Changing City report, which stated plans to increase overall housing stock by 2030. To date, the administration’s main strategy remains constructing enough units — both affordable and market-rate — that demand slackens and prices dip.
Thus far, there are hints of success — in the Fenway, a 6 percent increase in housing stock between 2011 and 2016 was answered by a 0.4 percent decline in rents on older units. In the South End, rent increase slowed to 0.3 percent after housing stock was boosted by about 10 percent. Recent city numbers state that outside the downtown core, rents on pre-2011 housing stock declined by 5 percent between 2015 and 2016. In an August NorthEndWaterfront.com column, Walsh wrote that his administration facilitated completion of 13,000 units thus far, of which about 1,380 are affordable and 2,000 are restricted to prices attainable by middle-income households.
Initiatives and receptions
To underpin its build-our-wayout strategy, the Walsh administration inventoried public land and identified those viable for housing development. In many neighborhoods, the administration increased the amount of offsite affordable housing that private firms must create if they build on city-owned land or seek zoning exemptions, as well as increased the alternative requirement payout amounts, under its updates to the inclusionary development policy. Thus far, less than 1 percent of affordable units constructed by developers since that policy’s creation in 2000 have been in Roxbury, but with developers increasingly eyeing Roxbury, that could change. In a Banner phone interview, Tito Jackson asserted that, if elected, he would sharply increase affordable on-site unit count requirements and that Cambridge has successfully done so without deterring developers. Under another Walsh administration initiative, the density bonus pilot program, participating developers were encouraged to build additional affordable units in exchange for permission to build above height limits imposed by zoning. However, Karen Chen, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association, told the Banner in July that the city should be more cautious about handing out zoning exemptions, given that zoning rules are one of the most direct ways for communities to have a say in how
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PHOTO: MAYOR’S OFFICE PHOTO BY JEREMIAH ROBINSON
Mayor Martin Walsh offers remarks during the ground breaking for Olmsted Green on the site of the former Boston State Hospital. their neighborhood gets built and changed. Some developers seek to bring greater density — and thus greater housing supply — by using more land for units and less for parking. However, public response has been mixed. Some praise public transit-oriented development as environmental, healthier and necessary, given the limited ability of city streets to absorb more vehicles. Meanwhile, others say the city has not yet provided sufficient transit alternatives to make it feasible to sacrifice cars, thus ensuring clogged streets as residents in these low-parking developments and their visitors scramble for scarce parking spots. Joyce Stanley, executive director of Dudley Square Main Streets, told the Banner in May that while residents need a mix of transit options, businesses in the area remain reliant on customers arriving by car and suffer when they cannot park.
PLAN JP/Rox tensions
Not all efforts have been smooth sailing. This March, tensions soared over the Plan JP/Rox initiative, which created a vision guiding the next 15 years of development in the triangular area bounded by Jackson Square, Egleston Square and Forest Hills. The plan was approved over opposition from community activists
who protested for several days and alleged that the plan fails to include the depth and amount of affordable housing necessary to prevent displacement. In July, Walsh said the final affordability requirements — which were slammed by activists as being too mild — were so steep it was scaring off developers. Even if a developer would bid, none could move forward yet, as the zoning commission has yet to approve certain plan pieces.
What’s in ‘affordable’
Mayoral challenger Tito Jackson is among those who says that production has gone awry, with new luxury condo buildings purchased as financial speculation tools, not housing. In one example, buyers from Greece, Hong Kong and the Middle East have swooped in to claim dozens of condos in Millennium Partners’ tower. “It’s unsustainable to continue to build $2 million and $3 million condos all over the city of Boston that no one is actually occupying as owners,” Jackson said during a July JP Progressive forum. “In the Millennium Tower — only 20 percent of the units in that building are taking homestead, or are owner occupied. These buildings in many ways are not housing, they’re actually investment vehicles for uberrich people all over the world, and that is unacceptable.” Too much housing remains for the top-earners, he added in a recent Banner conversation. “The build-it-and-they-willcome mentality is flawed, shortsighted, and pours gasoline on the fire of gentrification,” Jackson told the Banner. “87 percent of housing in Boston is being built for the top 25 percent of earners.” Furthermore, he says, the flurry of recent development can push people out even when that
development is marked as “affordable.” Jackson is not alone in contesting that the city’s definition of affordable is beyond the actual means of residents in many neighborhoods. He asserts that about half of Bostonians make $35,000 or less, and that meanwhile, many of the city’s programs count a unit as affordable if it is available to those making about $103,000. He says the definitions of affordability should be tailored to Boston neighborhoods, instead of relying on federally-calculated figures. Walsh, however, told the Banner, “Luxury housing isn’t putting pressure on the market.” Walsh said that the city needs to continue to provide housing for newcomers in order to be competitive. He also told the Banner the city is exhausting all options. “We have been setting records in 2014, ‘15, ‘16 and we set one in 2017 for low-income housing starts. We are getting more permits out now than ever before as far as building housing. I don’t know how much more we can do,” Walsh said.
Rental support
During a WBUR interview, Jackson proposed offering citybacked housing vouchers, supplementing the federal-backed Section 8 vouchers. Local officials have expressed concerns that the Trump administration may slash federal housing funding. At the July 20 JP Progressives forum, Walsh said he doesn’t believe that rent control or subsidy will solve the housing crisis: “Our population is growing. If we to continue to grow as a city, we have to put more housing stock on the market,” Walsh said. “I think a subsidy or stabilization of rents is not the answer because the problem will still exist.”
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Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 3
Dream Development wins city’s Housing Innovation Competition By JULE PATTISON-GORDON
Dream Development won attention — and the right to develop a city-owned parcel — thanks to its innovative housing design. The newly-formed, black-owned development team beat out nearly a halfdozen competitors for the opportunity to build on 24 Westminster Avenue in Roxbury. One compelling feature that helped turn the tides in Dream Development’s favor is that the design plan is suited to accommodate changing family sizes, giving residents the ability to reconfigure their units as they have children, and reconfigure again once the children leave the nest or should older in-laws wish to move in. The team’s design is also easily shrinkable or scalable, allowing it to be replicated on parcels of varying sizes. A jury of community members, architects, contractors, city planners and other officials selected Dream Development as the winner of its first-ever Housing Innovation Competition, which is aimed at pioneering ways of reducing building costs to make more units of housing available to middle-income and elderly residents. The Dream Development team includes Gregory Minott of Dream Collaborative, a minority-owned architecture firm, as well as Saeed Coats of GPC Companies, Greg Janey of Janey Construction and Cheis Garrus, real estate development advisor. According to the
team’s project summary, they plan to engage minority- and women-owned businesses for more than 50 percent of the sub-contracting and to exceed Boston Resident Jobs Policy requirements. Having convened a team with a broad array of development expertise early in the planning and idea development process was an important asset, Minott said during a meeting between the development team, city officials, and the Banner.
Winning design
Competition managers challenged designers to present innovative housing models balancing comfortable living with affordable prices. Of particular interest was use of so-called compact units — smaller than standard units that allow more to be fit on a parcel. Dream Development beat out five other teams with a plan that was praised for suiting the needs of various generations of a family. Dream’s design contains 11 units, including three one-bedrooms, four two-bedrooms, three three-bedrooms and one studio. Ten units will be market-rate condos and one homeownership unit will be priced for those making up to 100 percent of Area Median Income. Eliza Williams, a member of the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association’s housing committee, said community members had several strong wants: allocated parking spaces, homeownership
options and no micro-apartments. The Dream Collaborative design was one of the few submitted that included parking, she said, with its provision of six spaces for the 11 unit site. The housing is all ownership, with units that are compact, but larger than micro to make the space comfortable, Minott said. Unit sizing ranges from about 500 square feet to about 1,000 square feet, he said. Parking spaces will be sold separately at $10,000 each, to reduce costs on residents not needing them, according to site plans. Developers expect to get city approvals and permitting finished by spring of 2018, after which they could begin construction that spring or summer, according to Minott. He anticipates a 10-month construction period. The total project cost is $2.55 million, with land comprising about $115,000 of that figure, state plans.
Multi-generational
The three-story design features two main housing segments. One segment includes two adjacent two-bedrooms above a one-bedroom or studio. The second model has a ground-floor single-bedroom or studio beneath a three-bedroom unit, with a common hallway connecting them. Minott said the team hopes the three-bedrooms and one-bedrooms will be purchased together. That combination allows an owner to retain the housing as their family changes size, potentially providing
BANNER PHOTO
Saeed Coates of GPC Companies (left), Gregory Minott of Dream Collaborative (second from right) and Greg Janey of Janey Construction (right) are members of Dream Development, the winning team. Eliza Williams of the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association (second from left) was a community representative member of competition’s jury. the one-bedroom to an in-law or aging parent. Owners also may build wealth by living in whichever unit better fits their family size, and renting out the other. The multi-generational aspect had strong community appeal, Williams said. “People love that idea,” she said. “You could have your parents there or your children there, and switch it out. It’s something that could stay in your family for a while.” Minott said he envisioned the setup providing an affordable entry to homeownership and serving as a revenue-generating rental should the purchaser grow their family enough to wish to move to a larger home.
Replicable
The design’s combination of two different housing model segments makes it easily replicable and adjustable to suit different parcels, Minott said. A developer could build a row of housing that alternates each segment type, extending as long as the site does, or
match them together in different combinations as desired. “The design is like a necklace in the way the units are arranged. For a deep lot or a shallow lot, you just take away or add beads,” he said. Among the aspects that make such a design financially feasible are the efficient use of space, such as shared walls between units, which can be done without sacrificing privacy, Minott said. Janey and Minott said it also helped to have collaborators from all aspects of the construction and design cycle together at the drawing board to think through costs of each stage. Max Sterns of the city’s Housing Innovation Lab said the competition is one piece of a larger effort to create a vision and policy around using compact housing. While other city-owned sites were included in the housing competition, no developer was selected because city officials said they did not receive enough responses to offer the community sufficient options.
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4 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
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Established 1965
White nationalism: an economic dead-end On July 4, 1776, 56 delegates to the Continental Congress assembled and signed the Declaration of Independence that separated the colonial states from England. They thereby consented to the decree that makes America an “exceptional” nation — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Nonetheless, 41 of the 56 delegates owned slaves and intended to continue to do so. One wonders what similar economic advantage white supremacists gain from their racial hostility. The Founding Fathers could certainly see the benefit of being independent and free of subjugation by the British. Having had their fill of the taxes imposed by King George III, after the war of liberation the delegates to the Continental Congress reconvened in 1787 to establish a constitution requiring democratic elections and establishing three independent branches of government — legislative, judiciary and executive. That constitution was ratified in 1788 and it still exists today, along with its amendments. While most Americans are committed today to democracy, one citizen one vote, that was not always the case. The Founding Fathers had no intention of giving everyone the vote. Only white men who were substantial property owners had the franchise. Slaves did not get the right to vote until the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, two years after the 14th Amendment gave them the right of citizenship. Women could not vote until the 19th Amendment in 1920. Even though blacks had the right to vote since 1870, there was no way that the states of the former Confederacy would allow
it and lose political control. At the time of the Civil War, slaves constituted 55 percent of the total population of Mississippi and 57 percent of South Carolina. The battle for voting rights continued until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and efforts to end subtle restrictions continue. A brief review of the nation’s racial oppression provides some understanding of what American white supremacy organizations fear they will lose. Undoubtedly one of the concerns of the white supremacists is that they believe they own America, but the U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2044, only 27 years away, the majority population of the country will not be white. When the nation was established, the Founding Fathers had at risk the free labor provided by slaves. When they could not secure that economic advantage they were willing to initiate the Civil War. Today’s neo-segregationists have no benefit to secure of equivalent value to free labor, but the so-called “white privilege” that they have long enjoyed is at risk. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in employment, education and places of public accommodation. The stagnation of wages over the past decades, even with a rising cost of living, has made working-class whites feel like they are losing ground. The advancement of some blacks in these challenging times has irritated some whites about the prospect of their financial decline in the race for success. Victory for whites was supposed to be assured by white privilege. The spirit of America rests in the credo of the Declaration of Independence. The white nationalists reject that standard. Americans who abide by the vision of national unity must be prepared to oppose those who bring nothing more than their racial and religious hate and hostility.
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OPINION
Trump notwithstanding, how we took Lee down
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Is America becoming more racist?
By EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON In June 2015, a friend casually asked me whether or not I knew about the elementary school named after Robert E. Lee. I said I knew that there were lots of schools in the South named after the famed Confederate general, and that there were moves from time to time in some of the school districts on the part of black parents and activists to have the Lee name exorcised from a school. No, he said, he wasn’t talking about some school named Lee in the South, but one in Long Beach, California, literally a few miles from my house. I laughed, and said, “That’s an impossibility. Surely, you’re joking!” Long Beach, a bedroom city that abuts Los Angeles, is one of the most ethnically-diverse cities in the country, with a sizable African American population. That includes many African Americans in the Long Beach schools. However, after a quick check I found that a school named Robert E. Lee in Long Beach was no joke. After talking with other residents, including relatives, who lived in Long Beach, they confirmed that the Lee Elementary School was well-established and wellknown to them and nearly everyone else in Long Beach. I immediately contacted school officials and members of the Long Beach school board with a quick primer on Lee, his monumental role in waging war to preserve slavery and the fact that, as a secessionist general, he was anything but a patriot. He was a traitor to and betrayer of the Constitution. Over the next week, as the word spread about the fight to get Lee’s name taken off the school, other civil rights leaders endorsed the campaign and bombarded the board with letters, emails and calls. Eventually, the swiftly-moving campaign targeted Long Beach’s mayor and other city officials. Though they demurred and claimed that the decision was totally in the hands of the Long Beach school board, they sensed there would be political fallout from the negative publicity, should the board do nothing. We then held two major press conferences in front of the school board’s office, complete with a damning white paper about Lee, slavery, secession and treason. We again publicly demanded that the board remove Lee’s name. By then the campaign had attracted a lot of media and public traction. Dozens of parents of current and former students weighed in. Some opposed the name change out of traditional loyalty or nostalgia. But the overwhelming majority not only backed the change, they came up with alternative names, almost all of whom were Black or Hispanic political, business, civic or activist leaders in Long Beach. At a packed board meeting in which speaker after speaker took the public comment mic and railed against the Lee name, the board got the message and unanimously voted to remove it from the school. It was renamed after a noted Latina civic leader, Olivia Nieto Herrera. The fight I initiated to dump the Lee on the school smashed a popular misconception that Confederate monuments are solely an antiquated, primordial, part tribute, part racially-defiant, product of the South. The monuments are everywhere throughout the Northern and Western states — on roads, highways, parks, in front of public buildings, city squares and, of course, schools. The Long Beach fight exposed yet another myth: that they were all erected decades ago. They were not. Many were erected in the 1950s and 1960s in the South’s massive nose thumb at the civil rights movement and integration. In a backhanded way, Trump got that when he put the White House and by extension the federal government’s stamp of unofficial approval on the tributes to secession, treason and slavery by calling the monuments “beautiful.” This is not a reach for him to preserve a dusty, moldy, long-dead, bygone past, but a living, breathing, politically-defiant present. The Lee and Confederate monument defenders offer enduring political shelf value to Trump. Many of them cheered lustily for him at rallies during and after his campaign, and marched to the polls to help put him in the White House. He owes a deep political debt to them, and he’ll need them again in 2018 and 2020. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case in Long Beach when our fight brought Lee’s moniker on the elementary school down. The message we sent then, and how we sent it, is even more important now. We took Lee down, and Trump notwithstanding, it can and should be done in every nook and cranny of the nation where Lee and the other Confederates adorn public places. Their presence is a daily reminder that treason, secession and slavery still stain the nation with shame.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.
No. I think America has always been racist. Especially on the political and economic levels. Politicians work for white men, not for communities like ours. We’re fighting it, but we’ve got a long way to go.
Tyler Jean Louis
No. I believe we’ve always been living in a racist society, but more people’s eyes are open to what’s going on around us.
Kyla S. Scott
The racism has always been there. There’s discrimination in housing, employment and other areas. Things haven’t changed much.
Norman Billingslea
Student Roxbury
Dialysis Technician Roslindale
I think it’s the same as it’s been, but because Trump is president, people feel more comfortable now.
Yes, with all the white protesters in Charlottesville.
I don’t think so. It’s always been racist. The president we have now has influenced more people to show their true colors.
Bria Riddick
Dayanna Starling
Nicholas Twohads
Hostess Dorchester
Mother Roxbury
Youth Organizer Dorchester
Student Dorchester
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ROSALIN ACOSTA Rosalin Acosta was recently appointed secretary of Labor and Workforce Development by the administration of Governor Charlie Baker. Acosta is a financial and banking service professional with over 30 years of experience in Greater Boston financial institutions, most recently as senior vice president and managing director for enterprise wealth management at Enterprise Bank in Lowell, where she oversaw the operations of the bank’s wealth management and brokerage divisions since 2013. Acosta has also worked in senior executive roles at TD Bank and Sovereign Bank (now Santander). Acosta serves in many community and civic capacities, including as a board member of The Boston Foundation, a board overseer at Boston Children’s Hospital since 2009, where she was a founding member of Milagros Para Ninos, and a 14-year member of the Boston Chapter of the Association of Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA). Acosta is a director and planning member of the Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board and was appointed a Northern Essex Community College trustee by Governor Baker in 2016. Acosta has been named one of Boston’s Most Influential Women by the Women of Harvard Club in 2014, where she serves on the Leadership Committee, and El Planeta’s Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics in Massachusetts for three consecutive years. Born in Cuba,
Acosta earned a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University in Connecticut where she was a member of the women’s varsity ice hockey team. She is the proud mother of five children and an avid traveler, runner and cyclist.
6 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
PHOTO: CHRIS LOVETT
The Fight Supremacy march was organized as a response to the events of Charlottesville and to a so-called Free Speech rally being held in Boston, whose original list of speakers drew criticism for including those with ties to white nationalism.
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Fight Supremacy marchers used chants and signs to decry any who would promote racism, white supremacy, white nationalism, neo-Nazism and similar mentalities.
protest
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One Free Speech rally speaker is known for founding an organization described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “alt-right” — that is, adhering to a mix of racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and populism. Another Free Speech speaker, later said to have been un-invited by organizers, is credited with drafting a white nationalist manifesto and had headlined the supremacist rally at Charlottesville. Some of Saturday’s Fight Supremacy counter-demonstrators arrived straight to the Boston Common, while others began the day outside Roxbury’s Madison Park High School and marched to meet them. Gatherers overflowed the plaza outside the high school and spilled across the full width of Malcolm X Boulevard and down the street as far as the eye could see. A speaker also told the crowd that the Charlottesville supremacist rally could be intended as blueprint for other supremacists to follow and in response, “Boston is going to get a blueprint for what resistance looks like here and around the world.” Other speakers, such as Khury Peterson-Smith of the International Socialist Organization, said Trump’s White House had emboldened white supremacists and that Boston had to stand to oppose hatred and ensure no racists ever felt welcome here.
PHOTO: CHRIS LOVETT
A protestor holds an “Antifacist Action” sign. Groups identifying as antifacist, or “antifa,” recently have drawn media attention for willingness to physically oppose white supremacists. The Fight Supremacy protest was organized by Violence in Boston, Angie Camacho, the Black Lives Matter Network and several local chapters and the Movement for Black Lives, according to the event’s Facebook page.
The marchers
Marchers chanted for valuing the lives of black and brown people, and speakers also called to protect immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Jews and other groups. The event drew attendees from surrounding towns and from out of state, such as Carolyn Betensky, who came from Providence, Rhode Island, to stand and be counted. “I want the anti-racists, anti-white supremacist crowd to be
overwhelmingly larger than the so-called Free Speech white nationalist crowd,” Betensky, who is white, told the Banner. “I couldn’t not be here.” Patricia Durham, a black Roxbury resident, told the Banner she came to “let everyone know that racism is not what needs to be on Earth.” Casimir Dreonette, who is black and a father of two, came from Quincy, MA, to show his humanity to those who espouse racism and to try to understand them, he said. “I needed to be here to spread love, show the other side we’re all one and ask them, simply, ‘What have I done to make you hate me?’ ” he told the Banner. “I want to see
See PROTEST, page 7
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Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 7
(above) Many protestors’ signs referenced the fatal events in Charlottesville the week before. “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” is the last Facebook post written by Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville while protesting the white supremacist rally. (below) Residents of Boston, as well as nearby towns and states, joined Saturday’s Fight Supremacy march. Organizers estimate the march drew 15,000 people.
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Demonstrators readying to march to the Boston Common gathered outside Roxbury’s Madison Park High School where they overflowed the plaza and filled Malcolm X Boulevard.
protest
continued from page 6 what’s hurting them enough to hate me.” Alan Pedersen, who is white, came from Somerville. He said it was important to ensure supremacists’ messages do not go un-countered and to show supremacists that they will be opposed. “We have to show we’re not afraid,” Pedersen said. Several of the march’s speakers also countered myths of white exceptionalism, underscoring that whites did not make America alone, but rather used land seized from Native Americans and the labor of enslaved black and brown people. Several said that dismantling supremacy means targeting both overt and systemic forms of racism. The march’s Facebook page, as well as several speakers, state that this work includes ending what they say is the underfunding of public schools as well as housing policies they said displace longtime residents by filling neighborhoods with units that are unaffordable to those currently living there. One of Saturday’s speakers from Black Lives Matter also called out unwillingness to name hatred for what it is. President Trump has drawn fire for blaming equally the white nationalist who drove a car into civilians in Charlottesville — killing one woman and injuring
35 people— and the counter-demonstrators who arrived to oppose their messages for the violence that took place. The BLM speaker appeared to refer to these comments, stating, “When we said that black lives have inherent value, they called us a hate group. When there are white supremacists, they call them anything but.”
On the Common
While the marchers proceeded through the streets calling chants such as “Hey hey ho ho, white supremacy has got to go,” a few dozen attendees of the Free Speech rally gathered at Parkman Bandstand. Those attendees came together behind a broad, police-enforced buffer zone stretching between them and the counter-demonstrator crowd, which dwarfed the Free Speech rally by several orders of magnitude. Given the 35 to 40 yard buffer of empty space and the size of the counter-demonstration, by many accounts those attending the Free Speech rally were able to speak, but not to be heard beyond their group. Free Speech rally members left 45 minutes into their planned two-hour event, and by the time the front of the march arrived, the Free Speech rally had de-assembled and attendees were being escorted out in paddy wagons flanked by police in riot gear. Reflecting on the day, Angie
Camacho, one of the organizers, told the Banner she hopes the counter-demonstration turnout encourages people to take action in face of injustice, knowing they will be supported. “For those who feel threatened that if they stand up they’ll be alone, what we accomplished was a show of solidarity that hopefully would inspire people to get involved in their local community to stand up for inequality, because they will not be alone if they do so,” Camacho said.
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8 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
A new generation of white supremacists emerges in Charlottesville By A.C. THOMPSON, PROPUBLICA
The white supremacist forces arrayed in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend — the largest gathering of its sort in at least a generation — represented a new incarnation of the white supremacy movement. Old-guard groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and the Nazi skinheads, which had long stood at the center of racist politics in America, were largely absent. Instead, the ranks of the young men who drove to Charlottesville with clubs, shields, pepper spray and guns included
many college-educated people who have left the political mainstream in favor of extremist ideologies over the past few years. A large number have adopted a very clean cut, frat-boyish look designed to appeal to the average white guy in a way that KKK robes or skinhead regalia never could. Interviews show that at least some of these leaders have spent time in the U.S. armed forces. Many belong to new organizations like Vanguard America, Identity Evropa, the Traditionalist Workers Party and True Cascadia, which have seen their numbers expand dramatically in the past year. Most of these
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groups view themselves as part of a broader “alt-right” movement that represents the extreme edge of right-wing politics in the U.S. These organizations exhibited unprecedented organization and tactical savvy. Hundreds of racist activists converged on a park on Friday night, striding through the darkness in groups of five to 20 people. A handful of leaders with headsets and handheld radios gave orders as a pickup truck full of torches pulled up nearby. Within minutes, their numbers had swelled well into the hundreds. They quickly and efficiently formed a lengthy procession and began marching, torches alight, through the campus of the University of Virginia. Despite intense interest from the media, police and local anti-racists, the white supremacists kept the location of their intimidating nighttime march secret until the last moment. The next day, the far-right forces — likely numbering between 1,000 and 1,500 — marched to Emancipation Park. Once again, they arrived in small blocs under military-style command. The racist groups were at least as organized and disciplined as the police, who appeared to have no clear plan for what to do when the violence escalated. The racist groups stood their ground at the park and were not dislodged for many hours. For many of them, this will be seen as victory. “Every rally we’re going to be more organized, we’re going to have more people, and it’s going to be harder and harder for them to shut us down,” said a spokesman for Vanguard America, a fascist group, who gave his name as “Thomas.” “White people are pretty good at getting organized.” And though police arrested James Fields Jr., a 20-year-old Ohio man, for allegedly driving a Dodge Charger into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing
“
We’re winning. We’re targeting the youth and making a movement that appeals to the youth.” — Eli Mosley
32-year-old Heather Heyer and wounding many others, the white supremacists generally avoided arrests. They also outmaneuvered their anti-racist opponents. On Saturday, a multifaith group met at the historic First Baptist Church for a sunrise prayer ceremony featuring academic Cornel West and pastor Traci Blackmon. The anti-racists, many of them clergy members, walked quietly to Emancipation Park, where they were vastly outnumbered by the white supremacists. Later, a band of more aggressive counter-protesters showed up at the park, chanting “Appalachia coming at ya. Nazi punks we’re gonna smash ya!” These militant “antifa,” or antifascists, were also repelled by the white supremacists. Given the scale of the protests, the far-right groups suffered few injuries. That was particularly notable given the fact that multiple people near the protests were armed. Throughout the weekend, right-wing and left-wing militias equipped with assault rifles, pistols and body armor patrolled the streets of Charlottesville. (Virginia is an “open carry” state, so gun owners are legally allowed to tote around firearms.) Many of the armed men viewed their role as maintaining a modicum of order. A “Three Percenter” militia out of New York state posted itself near Emancipation Park with the intention of keeping anti-racists from disrupting the rally. The group says it disapproves of racism but is dedicated to defending the free speech rights of all. Blocks away, Redneck Revolt,
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a leftist militia from North Carolina, watched over the perimeter of a park where anti-racists had gathered, committed to preventing violent attacks by the white supremacist groups. The presence of heavily armed citizens may have played a role in the decision of authorities to largely stay out of the violent skirmishes between the white supremacists and their opponents. Those who actually marched included many new to the right-wing cause. The victory of Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election has energized a whole wave of young people who were previously apathetic or apolitical, rally organizer Eli Mosley told ProPublica. The president has served as “megaphone” for far-right ideas, he said. Mosley and his comrades are seeking to draw in as many of these newly politicized young people as possible. “We’re winning,” he said. “We’re targeting the youth and making a movement that appeals to the youth.” Some of those who’ve gravitated to the extreme right milieu are former liberals — like Mosley’s fellow rally organizer Jason Kessler — and supporters of Bernie Sanders. Many are ex-Libertarians. “I was a Libertarian,” said Mosley, as white supremacists chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” in the background. “I looked around and noticed that most Libertarians were white men. I decided that the left was winning with identity politics, so I wanted to play identity politics too. I’m fascinated by leftist tactics, I read Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King … This is our ’60s movement.”
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Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 9
Boston Public School teachers rally to support DACA ON THE WEB
By KAREN MORALES
It has been five years since President Obama signed an executive order protecting those who were brought into this country as a minor from deportation. Under the DACA policy, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, undocumented youth have been able to thrive in the U.S. by legally applying for work permits and attending college. On this anniversary, however, Boston Public Schools educators fear the outcome of DACA, which has been threatened by the Trump administration. They are apprehensive for the futures of some of their students, many of whom are among the best and the brightest in their schools. Led by Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, 10 state attorneys general have challenged the constitutionality of the immigration policy. According to a letter addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the state of Texas is planning to sue the federal government if they do not repeal Obama’s 2012 executive order by Sept. 5. “We are heading into a showdown where we might see hundreds of thousands of young people lose their status right in front of us,” said Liza Ryan, organizing director for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. “They are our friends, neighbors and possibly some of your students, and we need our federal government to know that we will
For more about DACA, visit: www.uscis.gov/ tools/reports-studies/immigration-forms-data/ data-set-form-i-821d-deferred-action-childhoodarrivals For more about the student scholarship fund, visit: www.miracoalition.org/getin-
volved/722-unafraid-scholarship
PHOTO: KAREN MORALES
BPS teachers rally in support of immigrant students at the Bruce Bolling Municipal Building. not stand for this,” she said. Since 2012, almost 800,000 people have registered under DACA, according to data released by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This week, educators from the Boston Teachers Union gathered outside Roxbury’s Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building to demonstrate their support for the continuation of DACA and raise awareness to the community. “Educators are witnessing this issue firsthand,” said Ryan during the demonstration. “In the days after the election, they saw huge spikes of absentees, students in classrooms anxious and unfocused, and students faking illnesses because they’re afraid their parents won’t be home when they get back from school.” Some teachers want to be the
public and vocal allies for their undocumented students — or “Unafraid Educators,” as the BTU subgroup calls itself. “It’s imperative that we are outspoken about injustices facing immigrants, but also it’s important for our immigrant community to know that we stand with them and support them,” said Farah Assiraj, Director of Organizing for Boston Teachers Union and Unafraid Educator. “They are welcome in our schools and they enrich our lives and experiences daily with diversity in cultures, languages and global citizenry,” she said. As someone who was an undocumented student herself, Assiraj personally identifies with immigrants’ rights. “[I] graduated high school hopeless and in fear, [but] it gave me hope to see the progress
we made under DACA act,” she said. “We want to sustain the progress made and continue to educate students who through no fault of their own are being deported for overstay of visas or other means of entry at a young age.” “Give them a chance to succeed and they one day will achieve their dreams as doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, construction workers, designers, artists,” said Assiraj. Another fellow-Unafraid Educator, Eleni Saridis, is a proud BPS alumna and current teacher at Urban Science Academy. “Ever since I was a bilingual student in the Greek bilingual program in BPS, I’ve always had a love for helping others learn,” she said. “And now I teach the population I was once a part of,” said Saridis. “I was once an ELL, trying to
assimilate to this country.” She continues, “These young people who are just like me, they deserve to be here. They do everything everyone else does in this country.” “Some of my students are undocumented, yet their parents have been here 10 or more years, paying taxes, having occupations as janitors, as cleaning ladies, in hospitals, in university dorms,” said Saridis. Next action steps include asking Governor Baker to take a stance in support of undocumented students, said Ryan. Assiraj said that members of the community can stay informed of the latest policy changes by joining MIRA’s listserv for up-to-date emails. Anyone can donate to the student scholarship fund organized by Boston Teachers Union, Unafraid Educators and MIRA. The scholarship was created by a group of teachers to help students from Boston Public Schools who’ve been accepted to college but aren’t eligible for federal financial aid. Applications for this year are now closed but people are still welcome to donate for next year’s scholarship recipients.
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10 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
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PHOTOS: SANDRA LARSON
John Barros, the city of Boston’s chief of economic development, and BPS Chief of Staff Rob Consalvo in the vacant 7,800-square-foot space at the front of the Bolling Building. With a new request for proposals, the city hopes to find a viable restaurant tenant for the site.
Finding the right restaurant
City seeks restaurateur tenant for prime Dudley real estate By SANDRA LARSON
The city of Boston once again is seeking a full-service restaurant tenant for the large vacant space at the front of the Bruce C. Bolling Building in the heart of Dudley Square. The window-lined site at the iconic “point” of the former Ferdinand’s furniture store has sat empty since the $115-million city-developed building opened in 2015, serving as the headquarters for the Boston Public Schools. Finding the right restaurateur-tenant for the prominent location is critical to an enlivened Dudley Square, say experts and community stakeholders. Its twoyear vacancy underscores the challenges in bringing new economic vitality to a square that has served as a commercial hub for a largely low-income neighborhood. The Bolling Building’s street-facing retail spaces were intended to inject commerce and evening social activity into the area around Dudley Station, which in the past was a bustling retail center and now sees some 35,000 transit users daily. All five smaller ground-floor commercial sites were filled in 2015, by Gallery Eye Care, Final Touch boutique and three casual eateries — Dudley Dough, Dudley Cafe and Tasty Burger — but no viable proposals emerged for the prime front space, which had been designed to accommodate the community’s desire for a local sitdown dining option.
ON THE WEB City of Boston RFP announcement:
http://bit.ly/2ijC90S “The big challenge was the capital and experience required to build out the space fully,” said John Barros, the city’s economic development chief, during a recent press tour of the 7,800-squarefoot space. Restaurateurs who responded to the initial request for proposals (RFP) in 2013 estimated the upfront costs would be $700,000 to $1.8 million, depending on the proposed kitchen size and other factors, he said. Now, the city is trying again. A new RFP was released this month with a deadline of Sept. 27, and Barros believes someone will step up with a proposal that can succeed. With the municipal building now up and running — along with other large mixed-use developments taking shape in its vicinity and the entry of new restaurants such as Suya Joint — opening a restaurant in this flagship space is viewed as less risky. “That’s why we haven’t divided it up,” Barros said. “Some people have suggested alternative uses, but ... we really want to give the full-service restaurant [idea] a full chance.”
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Documented community desire
Throughout the lengthy series of public meetings convened
See BOLLING BUILDING, page 11
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Outside the window-lined ground-floor space, a wide sidewalk area could accommodate outdoor seating. The city and community have long sought uses for the space that would enliven Dudley Square beyond daytime business hours.
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Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 11
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Bolling Building continued from page 10
during the municipal building’s design and construction phases, residents repeatedly voiced the need for a local restaurant with sitdown table service. “There has to be a mechanism to bring the community together. We have to implement a full-scale restaurant,” Dudley Vision Advisory Task Force member Donovan Walker told the Banner at the spring 2012 groundbreaking for the new building, summing up the community’s oft-stated desire. “We have 60,000 people in Roxbury with no central place to sit down and eat.” The city commissioned a survey in 2012 to gauge what Dudley area residents, employees and commuters wanted to see added to the neighborhood mix. A sit-down restaurant and live music lounge topped the list, along with other uses that would encourage social gathering and remain open in the evening, such as a coffee shop, bakery and bowling alley. The survey also revealed that residents routinely spent their dining dollars outside the neighborhood at full-service restaurants such as Friday’s, Olive Garden, Applebee’s and Legal Seafood, suggesting that if an appealing alternative opened in the heart of Dudley Square, some of that money could be kept within the neighborhood. With these things in mind, city officials made sure the building’s design included a large commercial space. At the site last week, Barros and BPS Chief of Staff Rob Consalvo pointed out ventilation ducts and electrical panels that were built in to make it restaurant-ready. As an added attraction, the wide sidewalk could hold outdoor tables, they noted.
PHOTOS: SANDRA LARSON
(left) Dudley Dough and Gallery Eye Care are two of the businesses occupying the Bolling Building’s smaller storefronts. Customer foot traffic in Dudley Square still lags outside weekday business hours. (right) John Barros shows the vacant 7,800-square-foot space at the front of the Bolling Building and discusses the city’s and the community’s desire to see a full-service restaurant there. and to people outside the neighborhood, it would create sustainable business activity that would radiate well beyond the restaurant itself,” he told the Banner. Grossman’s organization, headquartered in Dudley Square near the Bolling Building, studies what makes urban economies and businesses thrive. While ICIC has not analyzed Dudley specifically, Grossman sees potential here for the type of business cluster shown to catalyze economic development. “It’s all about the ecosystem,” he said. “Food clusters are destinations that bring traffic and energy, excitement, profits and — not surprisingly — a growth in good-paying jobs. When a restaurant is created and they hire people, overwhelmingly it’s people from the neighborhood.”
A tricky balance
Local stakeholders expressed a mix of optimism and concerns about the prospects for a restaurant filling to the Bolling Building vacancy. Fred Fairfield, a longtime local contractor and developer who has served on the Dudley Square Main Streets board and the Dudley Vision Advisory Task Force, suggested that while he would like to see a jazz club in the space — especially one that served lunch and displayed local art — an alternative could be a food court like that of South Shore Plaza, which includes sit-down options. “I always thought to get the space activated, we could put in a food court with many different restaurateurs there that could survive with each other,” he said. “It would be great for people working in and around Dudley and it could help [smaller] restaurants stay in the area.” Among the nearby developments in the works are the Melnea Hotel and Residences under construction at Washington Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard and the proposed Rio Grande development that could bring a 25-story tower with hundreds of apartments and condominiums, many of them market-rate, a stone’s throw from the Bolling Building. Fairfield believes nearby residential development will give a healthy boost to local business prospects. “This is what we need in and around Dudley — housing, to
bring people in and keep people in. The more housing we have the more people will shop and eat in Dudley,” he said.
Continuing challenges
Fairfield, who grew up in Roxbury and is a past president of the Dudley Square Merchants’ Association, did not mince words regarding some of the square’s obstacles for businesses, even with the shiny new Bolling Building in its center. “We have to clean up the area,” he said. “There are still a lot of vagrants, a lot of drugs and drinking, trouble I thought would be cleared up a lot quicker. Until that happens, it’s going to be difficult to draw in the high-quality restaurants and bistros. Luther Pinckney is the manager of Dudley Dough, the pizza-focused offshoot of the nonprofit Haley House. If a successful restaurant does open in the front space, it could help adjacent businesses like Dudley Dough by bringing more people to the area, he said. While he sees the influx of some 500 BPS workers as helpful to nearby businesses, customer traffic drops sharply on evenings and weekends. “On Saturdays we don’t cover expenses unless we have a major function,” he said. At the same time, he questioned whether large restaurant and nightclub uses are truly suitable for the site. “Is it really the best place for a live music venue?” he asked, noting that the building offers no
parking, and the available space lies directly below the room where evening School Committee meetings are held. “Roxbury needs a jazz spot,” he said, “[but] whether it needs to be in the Bolling Building, I don’t know.”
Leaving the community in
Pinckney suggested that other good uses for the site might be a theater, function space or a place for residents to access city services. Regardless of who leases the last vacant space, he said Dudley Dough will continue its efforts to draw the existing local community into the Bolling Building, holding events from political candidate forums to immigrant rights workshops to family game nights. “We need to know that people near and far feel comfortable coming into this lovely building in the heart of Roxbury,” he said. Pinckney serves on the Project Review Committee for the proposed Rio Grande project. He sees that, if built, it could pour some welcome disposable income into the area; on the other hand, existing residents could be left out of the resulting growth. “I know I sound like I’m part of the ‘no, no, no’ crowd,” Pinckney said. “I just want and hope that people in the community speak up and let the city know what they want to see there. Gentrification is coming — but it needs to be managed in a way so that existing residents can benefit.”
The right restaurant in this key location could serve as a welcoming “agora” of sorts, said Steve Grossman, CEO of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, referring to the ancient Greek word for a center of athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life. “I have absolutely no doubt that if the city can recruit a restaurant that appeals to the neighborhood
Despite the benefits, luring a “destination” restaurant that brings in dollars from outside but also serves as a community-friendly spot for locals can be a tough balancing act. For instance, community members hope to see local entrepreneurs, rather than a large chain, occupying this highly-visible location — but given the high buildout and rent costs, there’s a good chance that only a well-moneyed, established entity could take on the risk. The nearby South End neighborhood is often cited as a successful restaurant district but also as a prime example of over-gentrification and displacement.
Biz Bits
LOCAL BUSINESS & ONLINE DIRECTORY
Building an ecosystem
continued from page 10 Currently Facebook has data centers in Oregon, North Carolina and Iowa. Centers in Fort Worth, Texas, and Los Lunas, New Mexico are currently under construction and there are also plans for a center in Papillon, Nebraska. Facebook hit the 2 billion monthly users mark in June.
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The Greater Boston Morehouse College Alumni Association ‘The House on the Vineyard’ weekend The Greater Boston Morehouse College Alumni Association (GBMCAA) hosted its first “The House on the Vineyard” weekend of fun and fundraising from Aug 10 – 12 in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. GBMCAA President Wilton DeVonn Baker conceived of the weekend to raise money for scholarships during the College’s 150th anniversary year, which included a golf tournament, a beach party, and the Legacy of Light fundraiser. The fundraiser was held at the home of Secretary Louis Sullivan, Morehouse class of 1954 and secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush. The event paid tribute to internationally-renowned legal theorist, Professor Charles J. Ogletree. Morehouse College luminaries such as Otis Moss, Jr., Otis Moss, III and Spike Lee joined in the celebration. The GBMCAA worked with 2 Boston-based businesswomen - Sheena Collier of The Collier Connection and Shana Bryant of Shana Bryant Consulting - to execute their vision.
(right) Filmmaker and President, 40 Acres & A Mule and Morehouse alumnus, Shelton “Spike” Lee ’79. (below left) Former mayor of Atlanta and ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young and Ben Ivey, Morehouse alumnus. (below right)Alumni Derek Watkins, Secretary Louis Sullivan ‘54, and George “Chip” Greenidge ‘92 singing the Morehouse hymn.
PHOTOS: VANIA J. ARROYO PHOTOGRAPHY
(left) GBMCAA’s president holds up their 2016 - 2017 alumni chapter of the year award with past GBMCAA presidents Jermaine Kidd ’03, Hassan Williams ’95, Ryan Willingham ’07 and Michael Bryant ’87, Region IX VP of Morehouse College Alumni Association. (below) GBMCAA President, Wilton DeVonn Baker ‘91, Professor Charles J. Ogletree, and Interim President of Morehouse College, Harold L. Martin, Jr. ‘02 (below left) Professor Charles J. Ogletree and his wife, Pam Ogletree, with event planners Sheena Collier & Shana Bryant
Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 13
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PHOTOS: PAUL DAVEY/CACHELLE JOHNSON
Dudley dinner event serves up community and delicious summer fare to over 400 guests On Saturday, August 12, as feelings of fear, unease, anger and concern ripped across the country following the White Supremacy gathering and the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, a group of people in Roxbury gathered for an annual community event with a different goal: to enjoy a meal with friends, family, and other community members from different walks of life. Over 400 people were in attendance from all over the city, coming together to enjoy a “pay-what-youcan” feast at Haley House’s Fifth Annual Outdoor “Community Tables” Dinner, held in the parking lot of the bakery cafe. Much of the produce was sourced from and donated by local farms, including Haley House’s
AKA Sorority — Psi Omega Chapter on the pINKWELL The Psi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. hosted its 3rd annual Beach Party at the pINKWELL in Oak Bluffs. Over 800 sorority members and their families came out to support the beach party with a purpose to give back to the residents of Martha’s Vineyard. Sorority members purchased $500 worth of school supplies delivering 40 backpacks to the local Oak Bluffs students to be coordinated through the parks and recreation department. The sorority is raising funds for Care pAKAges for HBCU students that will be delivered right before midterms. Donations are still being accepted. For more information, visit: http://www.akaboston.org/hbcubeach-party-care-package-init (clockwise from top left) Beach Party Committee members Alisa Drayton, Elizabeth Donald, Town of Oak Bluffs Officer Noah, Psi Omega Chapter President Chenita Daughtry and pINKWELL Party Chairman Kathy Lucas; Daughtry and Lucas; Psi Omega, AKA Beach Party at The pINKWELL; Psi Omega members with backpacks.
own Thornton Urban Farm in Highland Park (Roxbury). The event began with music from the JP Honk Band and a dance performance by Afrobeats Dance Boston. Fulani Haynes, host of Haley House’s Saturday evening Community Tables dinner every week at Haley House Bakery Cafe, kept the crowd entertained, along with DJ Shamara Rhodes. Children enjoyed face-painting and other family friendly activities. Strangers became friends as everyone ate, danced, and laughed. The evening culminated in line dancing and delicious Toscanini’s ice cream. Haley House Chefs Ricardo Monroy, Michael Cooley, and Trevor Brannigan prepared the meal with the help of many wonderful volunteers.
14 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
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DANCING UP THE LADDER
Q&A
Artist makes comics with ‘racially ambiguous’ theme By S. LEE
Three talented black dancers join the Boston Ballet
Tyson Clark PHOTO: ROSALIE O’CONNOR
By CELINA COLBY
The Boston Ballet’s newly-announced 2017-18 company roster represents 15 different nationalities, including three new African American dancers, Daniel Durrett, Chyrstyn Fentroy and Tyson Clark. The increasingly diverse company continues to make strides in shaping a new, more inclusive, ballet. “It’s wonderful to be working with the Boston Ballet as a black dancer,” Fentroy says. “The company should look like the community watching it.” A Los Angeles native, Fentroy joins the Boston Ballet with roots in her mother’s instruction and a résumé boasting the Dance Theatre of Harlem. In 2015 she was featured on the cover of the “25 to Watch” issue of Dance Magazine and in 2016 she received the Princess Grace Honoraria Award in Dance. Fentroy was raised by her white mother and taught that her skin color was an asset, because she would stand out in talent and color against the other dancers. It was only when she joined the Dance Theatre of Harlem that she began to notice the politics of race in the industry. “That’s when I became aware of how important it is to be an African American dancer, and how it could change someone’s life to see someone like me on stage.” Daniel Durrett began dancing at the age of three in
his native city of Cincinnati, Ohio. He soon was spotted by the Cincinnati Ballet’s Artistic Director Victoria Morgan and awarded a scholarship to the Cincinnati Ballet Otto M. Budig Academy. For Durrett, race was a motivating factor. “I slowly began to realize that I had to keep working and keep pushing because there weren’t a lot of African American dancers out there,” he says. Tyson Clark is a Somerville native joining Boston Ballet II, the ballet’s second company. After training — with the Mary Flynn Dance Studio in Somerville and the Gold School with Project Moves Dance Company in Brockton — he began training with the Boston Ballet. He also received the Princess Grace Foundation Dance Scholarship Award in 2016. Artistic Director Chair Mikko Nissinen has expressed a love of promoting from within when able, and after a lot of hard work, Clark has danced his way to the company stage. With one of the most diverse companies in recent years, the Boston Ballet is poised for a memorable season, and the new dancers say they are looking forward to an exciting and challenging year. Fentroy encourages young black dancers to keep the faith. “If you really love what you’re doing, just keep going,” she says. “There will be hard days, but it’s worth it. Keep going.”
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PHOTO: RACHEL NEVILLE
(above) Chyrstyn Fentroy (below) Daniel Durrett
“
I slowly began to realize that I had to keep working and keep pushing because there weren’t a lot of African American dancers out there.” — Daniel Durrett
Cagen Luse is a local graphic designer and artist who recently embarked on a new project called “LunchTime ComiX,” a four-panel comic strip. The effort provides a window into his own everyday struggles as a “racially-ambiguous artist,” father, foodie, sci-fi nerd and husband in today’s world.
You have been an artist of many media for more than 20 years – using your art to express your appreciation for urban culture. What inspired you to start LunchTime Comix? Cagen Luse: I have always loved comics. Since I was a child I have been an avid comic reader and even made a few of my own. I was doing a lot of art but I missed drawing, which has always been my first love. So I challenged myself to see if I could produce a four panel strip for a workweek on my lunch break, hence the name “LunchTime ComiX”. I was successful, so shared them with my network on Facebook. I received such a positive response, I decided to continue and, now, more than a year later, I have created over 126 episodes and am still growing.
What’s the next steps for your comic strip? What are the options for distribution? Does today’s technology make it easier to get your product out there? CL: I plan on attending some comic cons in the area and getting the word out there as much as I can. I would love to have LunchTime ComiX in a traditional media but I will continue to push it online and through social media. It is great to have the option to just create and share with readers directly.
See COMIX, page 17
PHOTO: JAIME LAGDAMEO
ON THE WEB Follow the Ballet’s upcoming performances by visiting: www.bostonballet.org PHOTO: COURTESY CAGEN LUSE
Cagen Luse
Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 15
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Women’s Equity Project highlights black female composers By CELINA COLBY
On August 16, Adrienne Baker, Seychelle Dunn-Corbin, Gina Razon and Christina Spurling took the stage at Hibernian Hall to celebrate black female composers. The “Women’s Equity Project,” supported by MassNOW, was testament both to the rich history of diverse female music-makers and the contemporary female musicians who carry on the legacy. Organized by Boston-based chamber group The NorthStar Duo and community organizer Zahra Ohldin, the evening featured seven musical pieces and an interactive panel discussion about the gender pay gap and feminist advocacy. They were funded in part by the Feminism in Action Grant awarded by the National Organization for Women. In their research, Ohldin and Baker found that, according to the League of American Orchestras, 4 percent of their musicians were black or Latino in 2015. They built the set list around lesser-known female artists. The one exception to this criterion was the opening number, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson, the famed author, songwriter and civil rights activist. The performers and entire audience sang the stirring anthem in unison. “Afro-American Suite,”
PHOTOS: CELINA COLBY
Flautist Adrienne Baker (left) Alto saxophonist Seychelle Dunn-Corbin (right). composed by Undine Moore Smith and performed by Spurling, Baker and Dunn-Corbin, was one of the strongest performances of the night, reaching a true harmony among instruments and artists. The piece flowed back and forth, from solemn and reverential to triumphant. The four movements are based on traditional Negro spirituals but Smith supplied them with a contemporary lens. Like the fight for equality, there are ups and downs, but unity in purpose is essential. Undine Moore Smith wrote more than 100 compositions in her lifetime. Her composing
career began at Fisk University in 1924 where she studied piano with Alice M. Grass. She later taught piano, organ and music theory at Virginia State College where she co-founded the Black Music Center. The performers surprised the audience with two off-the-program selections by contemporary jazz pianist Valerie Capers. Though written for solo piano, they were adapted for piano and flute for this performance. “Bossa Brasilia” mixed traditional rhythms with a Latin flare while “Billie’s Song” had a softer, slower charm. Capers has been blind for
most of her life and was the first blind graduate of the Julliard School. The event shed light on an important dimension of the fight for equality, which is racial and ethnic equality in the arts. Particularly within traditional concert and orchestra settings, these groups often
are pushed aside. The “Women’s Equity Project” reminded the audience of the many important challenges that lie ahead.
ON THE WEB For more information about the “Women’s Equity Project,” visit: www.massnow.org
bt Half Page AD Bay State Banner 17.qxp_Layout 1 8/14/17 12:37 PM Page 1
16 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
BERKLEE BEANTOWN JAZZ FESTIVAL September 30, 2017
Free outdoor festival berklee.edu/beantownjazz
Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 17
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FILM REVIEW
Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds grudgingly join forces in comedy ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ ON THE WEB
By KAM WILLIAMS
PHOTO: COURTESY CAGEN LUSE
The cover of LunchTimeComix “Racially Ambiguous Guidebook.”
comix
continued from page 14 Are there any comic book creators that inspired you? CL: There are tons! Aaron McGruder (creator of “Boondocks”) is probably the biggest influence. He was a young guy who started out doing a comic strip that was not afraid to tell the truth and turned into a cultural icon. A few others are Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), Keith Knight (“The KChronicles”), Jim Davis (“Garfield”), John Jennings (“Black Kirby”), Tak Toyoshima (“Secret Asian Man”), Rob Stull (professional inker for Marvel & DC) and Barrington Edwards (“A Come Up”).
In your “Racially Ambiguous Guidebook,” you’re dealing with issues you probably faced in your own life with humor. When did you begin to see the humor in these issues? CL: When I was a teenager and young adult, these issues really bothered me. I felt like I did not belong anywhere. I was too black to connect with white people, and too white to connect with black people. Then, in my late twenties, I began to realize that I did not have to be defined by anyone else.
ON THE WEB For more information, visit:
www.facebook.com/lunchtimecomix or www.patreon.com/LunchTimeComix I could define myself, and it did not have to be one thing or the other. That’s where the “Racially Ambiguous” label came from. I felt like no one had really explored the racially-ambiguous experience and that I could maybe help someone get through it quicker than I did. I find humor to be a great way to confront serious issues in a less confrontational way.
How has that helped you? CL: It has been helpful in understanding my own experience. I feel like sharing my experiences makes them less painful. If the comics can help someone else feel less isolated, then I consider it a success.
Are people in Boston really as rude as you make them out to be in your “This is Boston” book? CL: As with most of LunchTime ComiX, the “This is Boston” book is semi-autobiographical. My character is more brave than I am but the rudeness is real. That being said, I am as guilty as anyone at being a M@$$hole. Especially behind the wheel!
COMING TO HALEY HOUSE BAKERY CAFÉ: Thu Aug 24 - The Rap Slam, 6:30pm at HHBC Fri Aug 25 - The House Slam, 6:30pm at HHBC Thu Sep 7 - Fulani Haynes’ Jazz Collaborative presents Jazz By Any Means Necessary, 7pm Fri Sep 8 - The House Slam, 6:30pm at HHBC Sun Sep 10 - Boston Agricultural Exposition, 11am at HHBC Haley House Bakery Cafe - 12 Dade Street - Roxbury 617-445-0900 - www.haleyhouse.org/bakery-cafe
World-class bodyguard Michael Bryce’s (Ryan Reynolds) services were in great demand when a Japanese tycoon (Tsuwayuki Saotome) was executed on his watch. That botched operation ruined not only his professional reputation but his romantic relationship with Interpol agent Amelia (Elodie Yung). In fact, his career took such a hit that a couple of years later we find him homeless and reduced to chauffeuring clients around in a beat-up jalopy for a fraction of his former fee. A shot at redemption and at winning back the object of his affection arrives when Amelia surreptitiously approaches him for help protecting Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson). He’s the key prosecution witness in the trial underway at the International Court of Justice of Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), an Eastern European dictator accused of committing genocide. Amelia has determined that there’s a mole inside of Interpol who has compromised Kincaid’s safety. So, the only hope of getting him to court alive is by hiring someone outside the organization. Trouble is Darius is no altar
To see a trailer for “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” visit: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=F4Afusxc2SM
PHOTO: COURTESY SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT
The poster for the film “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” boy, but a vicious hit man who has murdered hundreds of people. Despite being disgusted by the assassin’s grisly resume, Michael grudgingly agrees to escort him from a British prison to The Hague where he’s scheduled to testify in less than 24 hours. In return for his cooperation with authorities, Darius bargained for the release of his wife Sonia (Salma Hayek) who is herself sitting behind bars for slitting a guy’s throat in a gruesome bar fight. That is the point of departure
of “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” an unlikely-buddies comedy directed by Aussie Patrick Hill (The Expendables 3). Superficially, the film unfolds like a high-octane, action adventure where a pair of protagonists prove to be impervious to harm from bullets, explosives, pyrotechnics or boat and car crashes . The production works primarily because of the palpable screen chemistry generated by veteran thespians Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds. However, it does help immeasurably that each of these indestructible characters has been somewhat humanized by their vulnerability to a fetching love interest. But the guys mostly exchange lighthearted barbs while having a close brush with death every other minute or so as they negotiate their way through a never-ending gauntlet of bloodthirsty goons. An eye-popping, stunt flick chock full of implausible fight and chase scenes orchestrated in accordance with the laws of cartoon physics.
18 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
FOOD
CHECK OUT NUTRITION AND HEALTH NEWS ONLINE: BAYSTATEBANNER.COM/NEWS/HEALTH FLASH IN THE PAN
INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR
Farmers markets speak the worldwide language of food By ARI LEVAUX, MORE CONTENT NOW
I learned about the mercado al aire libre in high school Spanish, and the phrase — which means “open air market,” or literally, “market of the free air” — turned up again in college. Mercado al aire libre is a great teaching tool, in that it clues you in to four dynamic words. In South America, where I spent a year tooling around, I finally had to stop asking where it was. Nobody on the street seemed familiar with the concept. Indeed it was self-evident. Obviously the market is open-air. Virtually every community in the world has a market, and many towns and cities have multiple market options. If somebody is familiar with a market in their hometown, they speak it, and can operate in a market as a buyer or even as a seller without speaking a lick of the local tongue. As long as the customer has money and the vendor has product, and there are enough fingers to communicate numbers — or ideally a calculator to pass back and forth like an ancient writing tablet — the market poses no language barrier. So it’s no wonder that farmers markets, as we call them here, are often a welcoming type of place to new arrivals. What better way to become acquainted with one’s new home ground, and the plants that grow there? This is especially true for immigrants who come from farmy places, who quickly adapt to local growing conditions and become vendors. My town is
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TIP OF THE WEEK Fun ways to use frozen fruit Nutritious, versatile and often cheaper than the fresh alternatives, frozen fruit is a freezer must-have. Check out these unique uses: Punch: Add frozen fruit to your favorite lemonade or sangria. Dips and spreads: Combine thawed frozen fruit and part-skim ricotta in a food processor. Puree until blended. Vinaigrette: Add thawed frozen fruit into your favorite vinaigrette and puree in a blender; strain if desired.
EASY RECIPE Seedless watermelons are the taste of summer
This Hmong Squash Leaves recipe uses young leaves so they are tender and small and can be left whole. PHOTO: ARI LEVAUX
home to a large population of Russian-speaking Eastern European immigrants, and Hmong, a Southeast Asian tribe from the hills and mountains of Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, China, Thailand and Vietnam. The Russians have figured out how to grow their cucumbers, dill and horseradish, while the babushkas bring amazing quantities of potatoes. The Hmong, meanwhile, are keen observers of what grows and sells well here, bringing an assortment more in line with what you would expect from a small diversified vegetable farm. They have also taken to the local hills and mountains, especially the elders, who bring impressive quantities of huge, beautiful huckleberries and morels to sell at market. As they’ve adapted, they’ve employed some tricks from home, like the eating of young squash leaves. Check out the recipe at right.
HMONG SQUASH LEAVES n 1 or 2 pieces of bacon, cut crosswise into 1-inch chunks (alternatively, cooking oil of your choice) n 2 or 3 squash (or zucchini or pumpkin) leaves, on the young side, so they are tender and small and can be left whole. Trim out the stems. Note: Recipe can be made without leaves. n Garden veggies (I use homegrown peas, basil, tomatoes, garlic, Hmong-grown baby carrots and onion. I considered using market zucchini, but my dish felt busy enough.) n Soy sauce n Fish sauce or oyster sauce n Lime juice or rice vinegar Cook the bacon in a pan on low-ish. When it starts to give up the grease, add the squash leaves and help them lay flat in the pan in the grease. Monitor both leaves and bacon, turning when necessary and steering them into a light crisp. Remove each leaf and bacon slice when ready. Add the carrots, sliced, to the grease, and the sliced onion, turning up the heat as necessary for a steady, mellow cooking. Add tomatoes in chunks, ginger if you have it, and garlic, along with a squirt of fish or oyster sauce. Finally, add the peas, basil and soy sauce, and stir-fry for just a second. Add back the bacon and squash leaves, add pinches of black pepper and garlic powder, and a dash of lime juice or rice vinegar, and stir around one more time. Serve with hot sauce and rice.
Email flash@flashinthepan.net.
Look online for
NUTRITION & HEALTH NEWS at www. baystate banner.com/ news/ health A publication of The Bay State Banner
SUDOKU ANSWERS FROM PG 19
Many consumers don’t realize how much time and effort go into growing just a single seedless watermelon. Jack Wallace, a farmer in Texas, uses the Syngenta AgriEdge Excelsior program to demonstrate his sustainable practices and show the world how hard work can lead to the sweetest reward — like the perfect fruit for making the Watermelon and Lime Pops below. Watermelon and Lime Pops n 3 cups seedless watermelon n ¹⁄³ cup lime juice n 1 teaspoon sugar n 2 limes (optional) Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor. Blend until liquid. Pour mixture into molds. Freeze overnight.
FAIR FOOD Avoid overeating at the fair Notorious opportunities for overindulgence and deep-fried goodness, fair food doesn’t have to equate to upset stomachs and blown diets. With these tips from the Michigan State University Extension, you can enjoy the day while still making good choices: n Eat before you arrive so you aren’t tempted to graze. n Visit in the morning rather than later in the day when you’re more likely to overeat. n Walk the fairgrounds before ordering anything.You’ll be able to narrow down your choices without feeling like you missed any of the options. — Brandpoint
FOOD MYTHS Does microwaving food zap the nutrients? Because a microwave uses radio waves to agitate the water molecules to heat food, it is often thought that microwaving your food causes more nutrition loss than other heating methods. No matter the heating method (microwaving, grilling or using the oven), food’s nutrition loss is related to the heat and the amount of time food is cooked. — More Content Now
Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 19
Trial Court offers to reinstate Arroyo, seeks control over hiring
“
By YAWU MILLER
Suffolk County Register of Probate Felix D. Arroyo can return to the Registry in October, Massachusetts Trial Court officials said last week, if he agrees to let them supervise the process of hiring deputy administrators. The Trial Court has limited hiring for these management-level jobs to current employees. While the Court will allow Arroyo to participate in the hiring process, the positions will be filled before Arroyo returns to office. Arroyo’s spokesman, Patrick Keaney, called the Trial Court’s move “heavy-handed” and said it would limit Arroyo’s attempts to bring diversity to an office many say has been plagued with racist and discriminatory behavior. “Their desire to limit applicants for a key position only to insiders is consistent with the cronyism that Register Arroyo had to confront during his tenure,” Keaney wrote in a message emailed to supporters. “Not only are these jobs already posted, but they will be closed before Register Arroyo returns to his duly elected position. Furthermore, it will necessarily limit the number of women and people of color who can apply, because of the Trial Court’s well-documented lack of diversity.” Arroyo, who was elected Register of Probate in the November 2014 election, was suspended with pay in February by thenTrial Court Administrator Harry Spence. Spence alleged that Arroyo mismanaged the Register’s office, citing problems including a backlog
Prayer service
Register Arroyo will remain steadfast in his desire to root out institutional racism and cronyism at the Registry of Probate ...” — Patrick Keaney
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FELIX D. ARROYO
Felix D. Arroyo of paperwork, long lines and unprocessed checks. Arroyo and his lawyer, however, have said that he inherited a troubled department and that long-term employees sabotaged his efforts to improve it. Two trial court employees who spoke to the Banner in April corroborated Arroyo’s accusation, stating, for instance, that some employees appeared to intentionally hide checks and remove paperwork from the office before it was processed. An attorney and several staff who in July spoke to the Banner on the condition of anonymity said the Probate Court has long been plagued by case backlogs, as well as discriminatory behavior toward the largely immigrant population that uses the court. The Trial Court hired a former judge to conduct an independent review of the office under Arroyo’s administration. While that report is said to be completed, the Trial Court has not yet made its findings public. More recently, the Banner
FUN&GAMES SUDOKU: SEE ANSWERS ON PAGE 18
reported the Department of Justice launched an investigation into allegations of discrimination in Registrar of Probate office. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice in June released results of an investigation that alleged a “toxic racially-charged hostile environment that fosters identity-based harassment.” The report also found that few people of color are employed in Trial Court workforce. Since 2012, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has received 72 complaints against the Trial Court. Arroyo has not yet said whether he will return to his office under the conditions outlined by the Trial Court. “Register Arroyo will remain steadfast in his desire to root out institutional racism and cronyism at the Registry of Probate,” Keaney said in his email message. “He is looking forward to cooperating fully in the Department of Justice’s civil rights investigation into racism and harassment at the Trial Court.”
PHOTO: MAYOR’S OFFICE PHOTO BY ISABEL LEON
Elected officials and clergy join together in a prayer service on Boston City Hall Plaza prior to the Free Speech Rally held last Saturday.
20 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 21
45 Townsend continued from page 1
For 45 Townsend Street, Kensington is proposing 220 units of parking for 311 housing units, a mix some neighbors say will make it much more difficult to park their cars. “There is no parking as it is, and Radius has been abandoned for a while,” said Nefertiti Lawrence, who lives next to the planned development and sits on a BPDA-appointed project review committee. Lawrence also questioned Kensington’s plan to site a café and a public space in the planned development, which is not zoned for commercial use. “The café is in the middle of a residential street,” she said. “Where are people going to park when they’re visiting?” “I don’t see people driving to it,” said Charlotte Lewis, vice president of Kensington Investment Company. “I see people walking to it.” An outburst of objections from the more than 40 community residents in the meeting room at the Central Boston Elder Services building in Dudley Square interrupted Lewis’ explanation. “I think the trend is showing that people are not using their cars to go to work or to visit friends,” Lewis added after the audience outburst. While audience members voiced concerns about the density and mass of the development and the shadows it would cast on the surrounding neighborhood, their views on parking dominated the meeting. That should have come as no surprise to the development team. Abutters have raised parking issues in a series of meetings
with the development team over the past months. The Kensington team had originally proposed just 180 parking units. “We’ve gotten it up to 220 now, so we’re still trying to figure it out,” Lewis said. Impact Advisory Panel member Jed Hresko, who lives on the next block of Townsend Street, questioned whether the density proposed in the 45 Townsend Street development is allowable under zoning laws and asked why the team had decided on 105 units. Lewis cited high construction costs on the steeply sloped site and its proximity to the Jackson Square Orange Line stop, which she implied put the project on par with other transit-oriented developments. “We’re just a 15-minute walk away from Jackson Square,” she said. Lewis referred to recently-approved or constructed apartment buildings, including 105 South Huntington Street. But audience members pointed out that those projects were all in close proximity to MBTA rapid transit lines. The 105 South Huntington building is across the street from the Heath Street terminus of the Green Line E branch. Other questions and comments from the audience were similarly critical. “This is outrageous,” one audience member said. “This is gentrification on steroids. It’s so disrespectful.” “Why are you coming to Roxbury?” asked Sarah-Ann Shaw. “Aren’t there other places with land where you could construct this monstrosity?” “We see this as a wonderful
BANNER PHOTO
(above) Charlotte Lewis makes a point during a community meeting on Kensington Investment Company’s 45 Townsend Street project. (right) An architect’s rendering of the new building. place to live,” Lewis responded. “It’s right near Dudley.” “It’s not near Dudley,” Shaw interjected. “It’s on the bus,” Lewis responded. “Clearly there’s disagreement here,” BPDA Deputy Director Dana Whiteside said, diplomatically. Longtime Dennison Street resident Jean McGuire said the area already has enough dense housing, with the Academy Homes developments abutting the Radius site. “We don’t need any more Academy I and Academy IIs,” she said. “We don’t need any more tall buildings. This is our city. We don’t
PHOTO: COURTESY OF STUDIO G ARCHITECTS/RENDERED BY GO LOGIC
need any more high rises.” Last week’s community meeting was the second in a series mandated by the Article 80 process, which requires that large
development projects be subject to community review. While there is no set number of meetings, Whiteside said more would be scheduled in coming weeks.
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22 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER 22 • Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER
“
Edwards
All the funds in the world don’t account for, don’t equal the handshake and the look in the eye of a candidate to a constituent. I stand firmly by door knocking. ... I won’t dismiss any people as ‘they don’t vote.’ That goes against my moral fiber.”
continued from page 1 Workers’ Bill of Rights. Over the years she has garnered recognition, including being named a 2017 “Game Changer” by the Boston Globe and receiving 2015 Bostonian of the Year honorable mention. Now after a year tackling housing issues in City Hall, she is back on the campaign trail.
The seat
District 1 comprises the North End — Boston’s Little Italy— as well as Charlestown and East Boston. Charlestown is primarily white and East Boston’s population is more than half Hispanic, according to Statistical Atlas. East Boston has traditionally been an Italian-American stronghold, and voters from that community have long dominated the politics there. Across the different neighborhoods, Edwards says one issue unites them all — assuring that development fits the community’s needs and is not done at the expense of current residents. East Boston often wrestles with its proximity to the expanding Logan airport and now faces rising development pressures. The North End struggles for enforcement of zoning ordinances to protect the neighborhood character and the waterfront. Charlestown faces many development pressures in part due to the arriving Everett casino, the One Charlestown project and the North Washington Street Bridge, she said. “All those are concerning to the neighborhood and the preservation of community and how you can pressure us out or protect us.” Edwards said in a Banner phone interview. “We are a city of neighborhoods. That’s what makes Boston distinct.”
The issues
Should she be elected, Edwards says she plans to fight to protect
2 pages classifieds
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE EDWARDS CAMPAIGN
Lydia Edwards, a former lawyer and the city’s deputy director of the Office of Housing Stability, is now running for Boston City Council. She competes against two other candidates to represent East Boston, the North End and Charlestown. community character during times of development. Her campaign website also lists as priorities the promotion of more homeownership opportunities, with proposed tactics including incentives for homeowners to sell at below-market rates, and supports for land trusts, cooperative ownership methods and rent-toown programs. Other issues listed include a resident parking pass pilot program as well as more cyclist-friendly infrastructure; providing residents more participatory budgeting opportunities; and increasing school art, vocational education and afterschool programs. Along with Edwards’ package of local concerns, her prior work on broad-ranging issues also has attracted attention. Welch said she was drawn to Edwards’ advocacy on issues that may not always
BANNER CLASSIFIEDS
8.8” jump seem politically risk-free — such as standing up to developers to demand affordable housing — and her tackling of issues that extend beyond neighborhood’s borders, such as opposition to human trafficking and promotion of domestic workers’ rights. Such advocacy would reflect well on constituents’ characters, Welch said. “I think Lydia would be a person who would gain additional respect for the community,” Welch said. Among the groups who have endorsed Edwards are Planned Parenthood, the Boston Teachers Union, SEIU Local 88, 32BJ SEIU and Sen. Joe Boncore, who she ran against in 2016.
The campaign
To get the word out, Edwards says she is going door to door,
performing phone calls, holding meet and greets and seeking to make a personal connection. At times her team helps residents register to vote. While endorsements help raise awareness, being on the ground is topmost, Edwards says. She is determined to take the time to reach everyone she can, which can mean she and volunteers often return to visit the same areas for additional conversations and make themselves available for constituents to call with questions. “I won’t dismiss any people as ‘they don’t vote,’” Edwards said. “That goes against my moral fiber.” About 100 volunteers have turned out each weekend since April, as well as volunteers during the week to door knock. Her volunteers include speakers of different languages and printed
material is provided in Spanish, Chinese and English. Edwards herself learned Spanish and Portuguese while doing organizing work with immigrants. Edwards’ recent Senate seat bid raised her visibility in East Boston and the North End. Now she’s focusing more effort and energy on reaching out to Charlestown, which was not part of that campaign, to introduce herself and her issue areas. While the previous race was a special election, this council campaign allows Edwards the normal time frame. That means a lot more conversations, a lot more coffees with residents, a lot more opportunities to meet people individually and to answer more questions, she said. T he greatest challenge? Summer. During this season, it is difficult to compete for people’s attention, and those who are following politics have their eyes on DC, Edwards said. In general, there is a need to get across how strongly the city council can impact residents’ daily lives.
LEGAL
LEGAL
LEGAL
Commonwealth of Massachusetts The Trial Court Probate and Family Court Department
INFORMAL PROBATE PUBLICATION NOTICE
Newbury and Wilmington. A draft of Consortium’s CAPER will be forwarded to each member community at their respective City or Town Hall, and will be forwarded to a number of nonprofit organizations. A copy of both draft CAPERS will also be available at the Community Development & Planning Department of the City of Peabody, City Hall, 24 Lowell Street, Peabody during normal business hours, and on the City’s website at www.peabody-ma. gov.
SUFFOLK Division
Docket No. SU17P1439EA
Citation on Petition for Formal Adjudication Estate of Lorene Johnson Date of Death: 03/04/2016 To all interested persons: A Petition for Formal Appointment of Personal Representative has been filed by Jeneen Rainford of Randolph, MA requesting that the Court enter a formal Decree and Order and for such other relief as requested in the Petition. The Petitioner requests that Jeneen Rainford of Randolph, MA be appointed as Personal Representative(s) of said estate to serve on the bond in an unsupervised administration. IMPORTANT NOTICE You have the right to obtain a copy of the Petition from the Petitioner or at the Court. You have a right to object to this proceeding. To do so, you or your attorney must file a written appearance and objection at this Court before 10:00 a.m. on the return day of 08/25/2017. This is NOT a hearing date, but a deadline by which you must file a written appearance and objection if you object to this proceeding. If you fail to file a timely written appearance and objection followed by an Affidavit of Objections within thirty (30) days of the return day, action may be taken without further notice to you. UNSUPERVISED ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE MASSACHUSETTS UNIFORM PROBATE CODE (MUPC) A Personal Representative appointed under the MUPC in an unsupervised administration is not required to file an inventory or annual accounts with the Court. Persons interested in the estate are entitled to notice regarding the administration directly from the Personal Representative and may petition the Court in any matter relating to the estate, including distribution of assets and expenses of administration. WITNESS, HON. Joan P. Armstrong, First Justice of this Court. Date: July 14, 2017 Terri Klug Cafazzo Register of Probate Commonwealth of Massachusetts The Trial Court Probate and Family Court SUFFOLK Division
— Lydia Edwards
Docket No. SU17P1612EA Estate of EILEEN P. QUINN Date of Death May 8, 2017
To all persons interested in the above captioned estate, by Petition of Petitioner Richard F. Quinn of No. Easton, MA a will has been admitted to informal probate. Richard F. Quinn of No. Easton, MA has been informally appointed as the Personal Representative of the estate to serve without surety on the bond. The estate is being administered under informal procedure by the Personal Representative under the Massachusetts Uniform Probate Code without supervision by the Court. Inventory and accounts are not required to be filed with the Court, but interested parties are entitled to notice regarding the administration from the Personal Representative and can petition the Court in any matter relating to the estate, including distribution of assets and expenses of administration. Interested parties are entitled to petition the Court to institute formal proceedings and to obtain orders terminating or restricting the powers of Personal Representatives appointed under informal procedure. A copy of the Petition and Will, if any, can be obtained from the Petitioner. INVITATION TO BID The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is seeking bids for the following: BID NO.
DESCRIPTION
DATE
TIME
OP-360
RFQ/P Prescription Eyewear Authority Wide
09/15/17
11:00 a.m.
**To obtain the bid documents MWRADocumentDistribution@mwra.com.
please
request
to:
Notice of Public Comment Period and Public Meeting The City of Peabody and the North Shore HOME Consortium, an organization comprised of thirty cities and towns in the Merrimack Valley and the North Shore, are seeking public comment on their respective Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Reports (CAPERs) for the 2016 Program Year. These written documents are intended to 1.) Report on the use of HOME funds for the development of affordable housing in this region over the past year, and 2.) Report on the use of CDBG funds in the City of Peabody over the past year, to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and to the general public. The City of Peabody and the Consortium will make these documents available to the general public and will encourage comments from all interested parties. The member communities of the Consortium include: Amesbury, Andover, Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown, Gloucester, Hamilton, Haverhill, Ipswich, Lynnfield, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Marblehead, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, Newburyport, North Andover, North Reading, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley, Salem, Salisbury, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wenham, West
The public comment period will begin on Tuesday, August 29th, 2017and will end on Thursday, September 28th, 2017. All interested parties, representatives from the Consortium’s member communities, and nonprofit providers whose clients are impacted by the need for affordable housing are urged to review these documents and to respond with comments. A Public Meeting will also be held on Thursday, September 14th, 2017 in the Community Development Conference Room, Peabody City Hall, 24 Lowell Street, Peabody at 5:00 p.m. to provide the public with an opportunity to offer comment. Written comments are also encouraged, and may be addressed, on or before September 29th, to: The Department of Community Development City Hall, 24 Lowell Street Peabody, Massachusetts 01960 FAX (978) 538-5987 e-mail addresses: lisa.greene@peabody-ma.gov or stacey.bernson@peabody-ma.gov
REAL ESTATE SILSBEE TOWER APARTMENTS Subsidized Housing For The Elderly, Handicapped & Disabled. Silsbee Tower’s YOUNG DISABLED Waitlist Closing indefinitely. Effective as of August 31, 2017 at close of business day. 67 SILSBEE STREET, LYNN, MA 01901 Please call with any questions (781) 593-6515
Thursday, August 24, 2017 • BAY STATE BANNER • 23
BANNER CLASSIFIEDS REAL ESTATE
Aspen Apartments BILLERICA, MA
1BRs @ $1,159*, 2BRs @ $1,378* No Utilities included except water and sewer *Rents subject to change with the HUD’s release of the 2018 Area Median Incomes Aspen Apartments is a community that will be eight elevator buildings with 384 units and includes amenities such as a professionally landscaped common area with resort-style pool,. The clubhouse includes a kitchen, fitness center, cinema with stadium seating, gaming activities, and televisions. The first 52 affordable units will be ready in early 2018.
REAL ESTATE GRANITE PLACE QUINCY
W/W carpeting, no wax K/B flooring, A/C, CCTV, Cable, E-Call system, Security, Public transportation, new banks, stores, restaurants, food market/pharmacy.
Apartments are leased on an open occupancy basis.
For Applications and Details on the Lottery or for reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities, call 617.782.6900 or go to www.s-e-b.com/lottery. For TTY Services dial 711. Free translation available.
Apt. Size
Rent
1-bedroom
$1,448
2-bed, 2-bath
$1,608
Income Limit by household size:
1 persons
2
3
4
80% AMI (Area Median Income)
$54,750
$62,550
$70,350
$78,150
To apply for the lottery, visit http://metrowestcd.org/housing-services/information-for-renters/units-for-rent/ complete an application, and submit by Friday Oct. 6th, 2017 by 5:00 p.m.
Income Limit/Person: One person: $34,500 Two persons: $39,400
Applications also available at Sphere Luxury Apartments, 640 Boston Ave, Medford, M-F 9-1.30 Info Session: Weds. 9/13, 7-8 pm, Medford Fire Dept. Community Room, 0 Medford St. Lottery Drawing: (need not be present): Mon. 10/16, 11 am, same location. For other questions or to receive an application via email or postal mail, please leave a voicemail at 617-923-3505 x 8. TYY users please call 711 ● FREE TRANSLATION ASSISTANCE IS AVAILABLE
Granite Place does not discriminate on the basis of handicapped status in the admission or access to, or treatment or employment in, its federally assisted programs and activities.
ADVERTISE
HELP WANTED
(617) 261- 4600 x 7799
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST URBAN MINISTRY
YOUR CLASSIFIEDS
HELP WANTED
Applications and Info Packets also available in the Billerica Public Library (15 Concord Road). Hours: M-Th 9-9, F-Sa 9-5, Su 1-5
HELP WANTED
Job Fair
PROJECT HOPE FOLLOW US ON
TWITTER @baystatebanner
AND
ADULT EDUCATION ADVOCATE The Education Advocate is responsible for the intake, orientation and case management of students in the Adult Education Department.
Qualifications include: • experience in case management, academic advising or related social services • experience working with diverse populations • fluency in Spanish, Haitian or Cape Verdean Creole preferred
BAY STATE BANNER FANPAGE
pcomfrey@prohope.org.
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Send resume and cover letter to
Tenant Selector/MRVP Rep. The Braintree Housing Authority is seeking a qualified individual for the full-time position of Tenant Selector - Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program Representative. This position entails processing housing applications, maintaining state-aided wait lists, leasing units, recording rent payments, and administering the MRVP Program. Position requires ability to multi-task and work independently. Knowledge of state-aided housing regulations helpful. Experience working with people of various socio-economic backgrounds. Starting Salary is $41,000. Excellent benefits. Please submit a cover letter and copy of your resume to Braintree Housing Authority Attn: Executive Director 25 Roosevelt Street, Braintree MA 02184 or lmurphy@braho.org. EOE/Affirmative Action Employer
Free training Computer training for office jobs: Hospitals, Banks, Insurance, Colleges, Government, Businesses, and More
START YOUR NEW CAREER AT YMCA TRAINING, INC.
Job Search Assistance Provided Free YMCA membership while in training
Call today to schedule an Information Session: 617-542-1800 Funding and enrollment based on eligibility
Rent subject to annual change. Tenants pay gas heat/hot water & electric heat/cooking, estimated $116/mo. for 1-br. units, $151/mo for the 2-br. unit. Water/Sewer & 1 pkg space incl. in rent.
Units available via lottery; income limits apply:
Eligibility Requirements: Elderly Disabled
A Public Information Session will be held at 6 pm on September 11th, 2017 at Billerica Public Library (15 Concord Road).
The Lottery will be held on Nov 13th, 2017 at 6 PM in same location as the info session above.
One 2-bedroom & three 1-bedroom apts. available in the brand-new Sphere building at 640 Boston Ave., Medford. Direct access to the Orange line, Red Line, Green Line.
APPLICANTS ONE/TWO BEDROOMS
Call Alice Monday-Friday 9 A.M. - 3 P.M. 617-847-1818
Completed Applications may be mailed, faxed, emailed, or delivered in person. Completed Applications and Required Income Documentation must be received by 2:00 PM on October 20th, 2017.
Affordable Apartments in the Heart of Ball Square!
RESIDENCE FOR ELDERLY
The first 52 affordable units will be rented to households with annual incomes not exceeding 80% of Area Median Income (AMI) adjusted for family size as determined by HUD. The 80% AMI Income Limits are as follows: $47,600 (1 person), $54,400 (2 people), $61,200 (3 people), $68,000 (4 people) *Income Limits are subject to change upon HUD publication of 2018 AMI
REAL ESTATE
We are hosting a job fair on August 29th from 1-3 pm in room 210 of the Education Center, 100 Walnut Street in Newton. We are looking for: - FT & PT Aides - Behavior Therapists - Long-term Substitutes
- Daily PT Substitutes - Lunch Attendant
Come meet with our hiring principals at the Education Center, 100 Walnut Street in Newton. Connect with us on Facebook & Linkedin
JOB DESCRIPTION
OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR Position Summary: The Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry (UUUM) is seeking candidates for the full-time position Office Administrator, which includes receptionist duties. The UUUM is one of the oldest social justice organizations in the country, with an extensive volunteer program and the support of an alliance of approximately 50 Unitarian Universalist congregations in Greater Boston. Currently we provide after-school, weekend and summer programming for youth, a domestic violence shelter, a job readiness program, and cultural and educational events. Visit our website at www.uuum.org for more information. Key elements of the role include: • Managing building rental and use by UUUM programs, neighbors, community groups and partnerships organizations. Working closely with finance office to ensure rental invoices are tracked. • Tracking maintenance calendar such as elevator and sprinkler system inspections, while working closely with the facilities manager. Working with facilities vendors. • Welcoming visitors to the building, including participants in our youth program. • Complete new hire paperwork and maintain files. • Maintaining supplies and common areas. Reports to: Executive Director & Senior Minister
Ad #: 23501-1 Publication: Bay State Banner Dates: 8/29/17 Section: HW Education Worcester State University is a public institution of higher learning set on Cost: $232 Internet ($150)is not 58 acres in the residential west side of+Worcester, MA. Worcester onlySize: a great place to work, butSize: also a city with vibrant 2 col x 3” diversity.
Campus Police Officers The campus police officer will patrol the campus via foot or cruiser, securing and checking buildings/grounds and adjacent areas, and enforcing state laws as well asdepartmental rules and regulations of the institution. Preferred Qualifications: Associates Degree in Criminal Justice and a part time academy; OR graduates from SSPO or equivalent police academy.
Campus Police Lieutenant The Campus Police Lieutenant serves as the primary supervisor for various divisions within the university police department, holding the functional title of Lieutenant. The CPOIII is responsible for oversight, training initiatives, scheduling, administrative tasks, and patrolling as needed. Qualifications: Supervisory experience in a governmental police force or in law enforcement work. Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice or Related Field and completion of a full basic police academy preferred . Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. All applicants apply online at: worcester.interviewexchange.com
Specific Responsibilities: • Accept requests for space on our campus, and ensure paperwork for rental/use is complete. Arrange for staffing for setting up, clean up and lock up of building for outside and internal events. • Manage building calendar • Maintaining all contracts with renters of facilities, work with finance to ensure these are current. • Track service dates for all key building equipment and contact vendors, including scheduling visits. • Maintain telephone system, including recording outgoing messages. • Welcome all visitors, including provided tours of the space. Answering questions about our work and history, directing to desired room/program. • Warmly welcome youth arriving for youth program. • Data entry, including entering information into donor database as requested. Assisting in the production and mailing of newsletters, fundraising appeals, and other publications • Supervise volunteers assisting with office support/reception roles. • Mail distribution • Ordering office supplies and other items as requested by senior staff. Job Requirements: • Identification with the mission and vision of the UU Urban Ministry. • Strong attention to detail, highly organized, self-motivated. • Excellent time management skills • Skilled with computer use, data entry, email. • Basic bookkeeping understanding for billing purposes • Ability to work both independently and as an integrated team member • Warm and friendly, welcoming presence. • Ability to juggle multiple tasks and perform under pressure. • Bachelor’s Degree preferred. Schedule: 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday Competitive Salary and Benefits. To apply, please send your resume and cover letter by September 8, 2017 to Rev. Mary Margaret Earl, Executive Director & Senior Minister at mmearl@uuum.org
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