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(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers.)
There’s been a lot of discussions about community participation and the newest buzz word “equity” in our city. We talk about how we’re building a community through processes that allows the public to be active participants in decision making.
Of course, Somerville has always been on the leading edge in instituting community participation. We’re a city full of activist, organizers, and we’re home to some of the most progressive people in the state if not the country. One of the earliest forms of community involvement in government has been our boards and commissions. We have over 35 standing boards, commissions, and authorities in the city and there are many more ad hoc committees formed.
Many of these committees can impact our neighborhoods, and our futures. The Planning Board has power to grant permits for construction, the Zoning Board of appeals can give special permit variances such as building higher than what zoning allows. Too often these processes create huge impact, but the question I keep asking are the people who will be most impacted by these changes serving on these boards?
In 2014 a report came out called “The Silent Crisis: Including Latinos and Why It Matters, Representation in Executive Positions, Boards, and Commissions in the City Governments of Boston, Chelsea, and Somerville”. It showed that out of a total of 232 board and commission seats within Somerville, only 4 seats are filled by Latinos. I was unable to find numbers of other people of color, but it is clear that lack of representation exists. My observation, the more power a committee is, the more likely it is to be filled white affluent mostly men. The same is true of our schools where a majority of the students are people of color and most of our students qualify for a free or reduced lunch. If we do see plenty of people of color on a commission it is more than likely those people of color work for the city, creating an AstroTurf effect on diversity.
Last year the owners of Assembly Row wanted to waiver from having to build the 20% affordable housing that is mandated through city law. Out of this came a deal where no public input was taken where the developer would build 6% and give 10 million dollars to the Affordable Trust Fund. I wonder what would have been the results if a person of color who is rent burdened was on the committee? I often ask the same questions over Union Square’s redevelopment and many other decisions that occurred without any real input from those most impacted.
We need to ensure that all voices are heard. Somerville talks about diversity, equity, and equality, yet our boards are not representatively diverse and their decisions do not always advance equity. It’s time the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen ensure all aspects of government reflect our city’s diversity. I propose that all commissions and boards should intentionally recruit diverse, representative candidate pools for consideration. A few tactics to achieve this goal could include:
- Announcing openings in both English newspapers and newspapers in other languages
- Creating a centralized location on the city website where all commission and board openings are posted
- Sharing openings with organizations and associations that work with and represent the many communities in Somerville
I urge the City Council to pause confirmations of appointments until a recruitment process is established that results in a more diverse candidate pool.
Ben Echevarria
Somerville
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What a wonderful hit piece full of half-truths and hyperbole.
Independent boards, much like a judiciary, are much more likely to be fair and repeatably even handed when not subject to the whims of special interests or passing political movements. That is why they are supposed to be independent.
The Aldermen passed the new affordable housing rates with a provision allowing FRIT to ask for a waiver. They then demonized the Planning Board for looking like they were going to allow the waiver that the Aldermen put in and the level of outcry lead to the deal you mention being implemented instead of FRIT just delivering on the original percentage. That happened due to the public input you say did not happen.
The FRIT vote happened after a lot of input from the citizens of this city. Repeated rounds of input. Should there have been another round of it after that particular deal was announced? Yes and that is now the mandatory rule going forward. So congratulations, the problem is already fixed.
SCC was part of the deal the whole way through and the math behind it and the money they got to offset the units at Assembly was an amount they were comfortable with being enough to provide at least an equivalent number of units. Their board showing up after the fact and riling people up about the deal was nothing more than fear mongering for their own political gain. If they were so unhappy with the deal they could have shut it down all by themselves. They didn’t did they? They took the money.
Everyone on a city board has to be a resident of the city, so they all have something at stake.
Most of the people I have seen on the boards are people who work for a living, few are anything even close to affluent and while mostly men, there are certainly a number of women on the boards.
The ethnic make up is an interesting question. Census says 70% of the city is white, 10% Asian, 10% Hispanic, and 6% African American. I am not sure if you are being obtuse or obfuscatory when you mention the make up of our schools, which by enrolment data is 45% Hispanic, 32% white, and 12% African American.
As for who is most impacted by the decisions of the boards, would you mean the poorest residents? While African Americans are at risk at the highest percentage by race, by population the largest group below the poverty line in Somerville are white at over 60%, followed by African American at about 13%, Asian at 12% and Hispanic at 9%.
One thing I cannot find is a breakdown of how long people on average reside in Somerville, but given that 2/3s of the city rents, I assume the turnover is high. Which brings up the question of finding people for boards when a large portion of the population either only just moved in or is about to move out. Which does not sound like a good way to get people who are familiar with the city and its ordinances.
Speaking of Ordinances. These boards can really only enforce the ordinances they are given by our elected officials (whatever titles are on the badges they were last given).
Want to see things get a lot more level and even and fair? Get them to pass the Zoning they have been sitting on for YEARS.
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/somerville-ma/
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/profiles/student.aspx?orgcode=02740505&orgtypecode=6
This.
People can make whatever excuses for it they want. But the math doesn’t lie. Somerville Boards and Commissions over 98% white. And this from a City Hall that’s constantly crowing about Somerville’s vaunted ‘diversity’ and inclusiveness. Gross inequity like this doesn’t just happen by chance or organically.
In Somerville, Black lives may matter enough to put on a PR-ready banner across the front of City Hall, but not enough to appoint to a City position. And to the thousands and thousands of Latino Somerville residents = Gracias, pero no gracias. Of all of the hypocrisy that we see around here, this fact – that nobody wants to talk about – may be the most shameful of all.
LULz.
I think you missed it. that was how pretty much the entire city council ran last time.
You need some new material.
Hey Data
Will be more than glad to help you understand some truths. Claiming how boards and commissions are independent when they are fully diverse and full of people with different experiences would be true.
The City Council actually told the planning board this was their decision and the planning board made the bad deal on their own. They voted and they approved.
If you actually read the piece you would see where I point out how the school district is a majority-minority district and still how white affluent men are mostly picked. Further, you also leave out how I pointed out the more powerful a board is the more male, white, and affluent it becomes. So not sure if your “data” actually makes your case of merely points out the issues.
And great based on your views, and perhaps your idea of affluence is different than mine doesn’t mean you’re right or accurate.
In the end, you make a lot of assumptions that you actually don’t know are true but you believe based on your experience. Regardless of what the rate of turnover in the city is it only strengthens my point on how they should actively be creating a recruitment process to ensure that all voices can be heard.
OK, things you are still misrepresenting.
The Planning Department made the deal, the Planning Board approved it. For someone who says I am just making assumptions, you do not seem to understand how any of this actually works. I was at 90% of the meetings for this and listened to all of the testimony and questions and answers provided.
If the Council was really that interested in making FRIT stick to the new number, created after the building plan was already approved, they had that power. They didn’t use it. They passed the buck. “The City Council actually told the planning board this was their decision” but the council could have made the decision themselves. Though then they would not have had all that beautiful grandstanding.
I would like you to explain further though how the ethnic make up of students enrolled in our public schools should be more of a measure for the make up of our boards than percentages of the population as a whole. That is the part I do not understand.
Anyone who truly cares about diversity and equity should be concerned about the rhetoric in this article. These committees have difficult jobs dealing with complex issues and the idea that appointing people based on race or ethnicity is enough to ensure good decision making is wrong. These decisions are important because they really do impact our neighborhoods and futures.
What is really dangerous is that this article implies the simplistic notion that there is an easy fix to concerns about equity and inclusion, when the reality is far more complex.
Boards and commissions are supposed to be filled by people who have professional expertise in the issues they are tasked with dealing with.
People of color have historically been proportionally underrepresented in the legal, financial and design professions, and this is likely reflected in the candidate pool for these boards. There is no simplistic quick fix for this, and pretending there is one is an excuse for not doing the hard work of addressing the systematic issues to help encourage and promote greater diversity in different professions. As this broader change takes place (and it is happening, in Somerville and elsewhere) it will also be reflected in these boards.
Those serving on a board or commission (and elected officials) should be judged on their service to the community; on their experience, the work they do and the decisions they make, not on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation. It is kind of unbelievable that this even needs to be restated in 2019. It is perfectly reasonable to hold those in appointed positions accountable for making decisions that advance equity, for listening, and for using their expertise act in the interest of the diverse community they represent. Evaluating this takes a lot more work than just looking at someone’s skin color and making generalizations, but should be the standard that all are held to.
Well that’s refreshing. NTB managed to point out the flaws in Ben’s argument using a level of nuance and common sense rarely seen in the discourse of my fellow liberals these days.
No matter – NTB is clearly not an ally for having disagreed. #NTBisaracist.
However, NTB conveniently disregards the data; 98%.
Over 200 appointed positions in Somerville; 98% white.
And in case you missed it, that was . . 98%.
Have we heard about 98% in any of the Mayors ‘Data Download’ columns? Or about 98% in any of his ‘Be Somerville’ columns? Go ahead and explain to us about the ‘nuance’ of 98% . .
The FRIT waiver has become my measuring stick of whether someone is a serious person. Note how the BOA/City Council hasn’t touched that waiver in the past two years. They want no part of that fight. It’s a lawsuit begging to be lost, and they wanted the Planning Board to be the one to have to defend a decision doomed to be overturned.
The whole thing was an exercise in posing. And seeking to stack the Planning Board with people stupid enough to take a proxy beating for the CC isn’t going to serve anyone well. I’m glad we don’t have a board that gets sued over frivolous decisions made for the sake of appearances.
Call me crazy, but I want people who are competent and fair on boards in Somerville. Ben Echevarria is a left wing Bernie Sanders supporter who wants quotas of minorities on boards. But of course, he doesn’t just come out and say it. Like everyone in My Revolution Somerville and other activists, they just want the government to wave a magic wand and give everyone 1/2 price apartments….it’s easier to do that than actually work very hard over many years to increase your income to able to afford to live here. I see all these young activists packing the meetings that are scheduled at 5:30 P.M. and a bunch of retied people. Those of us working long hours to pay the mortgage are not able to attend. Thus these meetings often give a skewed view of Somerville opinion.
If truly worried about the most at risk in the community, which is actually likely to do more for them?
Holding a new construction to a higher number of “affordable” units that are still out of reach of those at risk people, or SCC getting a big endowment to try to keep the actually affordable units in the neighborhoods, where the at risk live, as affordable?
Are qualified minorities making themselves available for these appointed positions and then being turned away? That would be a problem. If not, then not a problem.
And where did that 98% # come from? Any proof?
Ben, thank God we have you to be our identity-politics hall monitor. We’d be lost without you.
Somerville is hugely dependent on white professional expertise.
It’s built in at every level — in the makeup of our elected bodies, in the range of experience represented at OSPCD, in the makeup of our boards and commissions, and in the tenor of our political advocacy — and it has a persistent impact on the nature of our planning discussions.
The data on diverse leadership is well established, and the impacts are measurable — not only for communities of color, but for white communities who are adversely impacted by displacement and segregation. The measures that Ben suggests are very reasonable and should be the baseline for *all* recruiting efforts in the city. A color blind process that recruits primarily for credentials and professional expertise will push us further along the current path — a predominantly white city, designed and built for white people, with white priorities leading in every discussion.
Thanks, Katie. Spot on it as usual.
As per usual, there’s a lot of bullshit on this thread.
DatGruntled’s dig against renters — “How could they possibly be familiar with city ordinances? Turnover is just so high!” or NTB’s implication that because systemic racism exists, there are no qualified minority candidates (um, excuse me?) Moses, that bit about identity hall passes actually just a straight-up obnoxious and super racist thing to say.
Meanwhile this study exists. Anyone have any actual opinions on it?
https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=humanservices_faculty_pubs
It’s simply AMAZING to see white people picking nits about nonsense rather than looking at, and responding to, the issue being reasonably and well-presented by the author.
Before we comment on things we’re not schooled in beyond your own opinion (sadly, opinion is not the same as fact, no matter how much we believe what we’re saying), go LOOK. Read. Not just the Herald or your local Facebook group of other “yous.”
Stretch. Think. Ask and learn. THEN, all comments are worth reading and considering.
Until then, I’ll take the guy ACTUALLY WORKING AT THIS to inform my opinions.
Katie, I have rented and owned at various times in Somerville.
The city had a statistic that was brought up at some of the meetings I had been in That something like 50% of the residents had been here less than 2 years.
Which sounded unbelievable and I remember asking twice if the number was correct. I may be remembering it wrong, but it was a very high percentage had been here a very short time.
So, yes, when it comes to who serves on boards that are making decisions for the city that will impact it for years, I would rather those decisions come from people who have been here a while and are planning to be here when the results of those decisions are fully felt.
I have nothing against renters as compared to owners, I am just pointing out that the pool of people who are going to be in the city for even the period of an appointment is not as large as the population of the city would lead most to believe it is.
As for the study, I did read it. All minorities tend to be under represented. I did not see anything in it that was a surprise.
Marjie, Thank you for assuming how narrowly read I am. As for listening to Ben to inform your opinions, maybe I will start listening to him when he shows he understands the basic mechanics of city and is not just promoting his own personal agenda.
To be more specific, having more diverse boards would be a great thing.
What I do not see it doing is solving any of the problems enumerated in the article other than the lack of diversity itself.
The boards can only decide on matters that are with in the scope of the board and then only with in the ordinances as passed by our elected officials.
Attempts at legislating or political activism from inside a board will only result in lawsuits, which the city will lose.
Now, if Ben is trying to use this as a platform to run for higher office as Hispanics are under represented there, he should come out and say that.
If he just wants to see more inclusion in the boards, that is also fine.
But his claims about it changing or improving what the boards can vote on or how they can vote, with out incurring a financial hit to the city, show that he either does not understand how these boards work or that he is willfully lying about it. And that I do have a problem with.
Marjie, to start with you: the purpose and timing of Ben’s letter isn’t about what you think it is. He spends 6 paragraphs blowing political smoke to get to his actual purpose in his last sentence, and which is to try to influence the City Council Confirmation of Appointments Committee–JT, Ben, Will, Jesse, and Mary Jo–to deny the appointment of a white Clarendon Hill resident to the AHTF because she was critical of Ben’s behavior in the CH development fiasco. But, hopefully, these 5 City Councilors will recognize the independence of spirit in this young woman and duly confirm her appointment, and rather than falling for the underhand tactics of a specifically timed letter to an editor.
Ben, FRIT had nothing to do with who was, or was not, on any committee, and that decision had everything to do with 1 mayor. You know this. But if you’re going to blow smoke at issues, then why not say that Somerville has some of the most progressive people in the country? But who’s going to save us from them? Katie is quick to call Moses a racist to hide her own racism of non-white and white symbolism as if people were only skin colors and not actual individual people with real life stories. Major discrimination of many peoples occurred through history, but to treat anyone as simply a product of such discrimination misses the whole point of one unique person.
Katie, you get me wondering at times whether you didn’t spend too much time at Ivy League Columbia looking out of the window day dreaming about the illusion of a just society which the social history of the World hasn’t given us. Quota systems next week or next year ain’t going to fix what you want to fix. The answer is in your own culture with educational values, and acquiring knowledge to move forward. If anyone is going to be on a committee or board then hopefully they will have some skill sets to help inform their opinions and judgments.
Ben, your answer is with Will Mbah and Andre Green as examples. They got on the City Council and the School Committee because they applied themselves and ran for office. If you know people who have interest then encourage them to apply for a committee or run for a position. But don’t take pot shots at white folks because they did just this, as it’s not their fault they were born white. 98% isn’t getting to a smaller number of significance tomorrow, so work on 97% and keep going. But it’s one person at a time, because you know just as I know that getting folks onto committees or into elected office ain’t easy because too few people will do this, and Somerville has vacant committee and board seats for this reason.
NTB, Biff, and co: thanks for stressing common sense and reality as a way to social justice, and don’t mind Katie. This “Yay Somerville” sentiment of hers and she’s sitting there in Providence pining for a life she doesn’t have, just as she pines for other things that can’t be in 2019. We have Trump and Putin as icons of just how far this human race of ours didn’t progress in thousands of years. So, Katie, some realism on your part might help, and other than snapping about how Somerville is a white city full of white folks making white decisions about white topics from white perspectives, while they lead their white lives, have their white kids, and live in their white houses. Enough!
Will Mbah and Andre Green are people. I like talking to both of them. But the day I see either as black–which is messed up–then that’s the day I’m giving up and hanging up the spurs.
And to finish with Marjie: if you go up to Clarendon Hill and, as you say, “Ask and learn”, and find out why a bunch of ‘progressive’ folks threw away a decent compromise of 2 of 3 union jobs by pushing for 100%, which the developers–including SCC–hadn’t factored in. All it’s done is to push the project way back without resolution today, and so that those low income Clarendon residents–and many single moms with kids–still live in subpar conditions.
*Progressive ideology*? Or a union hijack? Kinda amusing how said unions have so many white guys in them that aren’t hurting for money in the way the CH residents are, and how some politicians are afraid of them.
“Nits and nonsense”, Marjie?
I read the study Ben attached, my opinion on it is that it is primarily written by the GBLN or at least written using data they provided, so I weigh it as heavily as I do anything coming from a special interest group pushing its own agenda. If anything, at least with in Somerville, it does not make his point as much as it would in Chelsea.
In fact, it points out that the Latino community is relatively small, has a higher average rate of college degrees and are much more likely to have an office job compared to Boston or Chelsea. So it would seem to be a less at risk community than in surrounding cities.
What is also pointed out is that for decades East Somerville was not being gentrified at the same rate as the rest of the city. With a new school and updates to Broadway as well as people wanting to be near Assembly on one side the Green Line on the other side that gentrification is probably going to happen at an even higher rate than happened elsewhere in the city and the majority of the Latino community lives in East Somerville.
So, a safe bet that the Latino population is going to drop in the next few years. Probably by a significant percentage. Ben is speaking up now because it reached what he sees as his community, again, a special interest pushing its own agenda.
Displacement as a city wide issue has been a problem and topic brought up at every city meeting I have been to for over a decade now, and really since the 80s with short breaks for recessions. It has not spared anyone, minority or not.
A full Zoning over haul might help, but not much short of new laws/ordinances that would probably not pass a vote or be approved by the state will really make a big difference to what will happen in East Somerville in the next few years.
Affordable housing quotas are not going to do a lot when two and three family homes flip owners.
I’d call you by your name, friend. But you’ll never post under it. Not hard to figure out, given the specificity of what you’ve pulled on me from unrelated Somerville Times comment threads and personal FB posts.
The point of the article, to go back to the topic at hand, is not simply that minorities are underrepresented. It’s that government functions better for everyone when they *are* represented, not least because active representation lends legitimacy to the decisions that are made.
Of 33 boards and commissions in the City of Somerville — that’s 232 open spots — a total of 4 Latinos were appointed in 2014. That’s not some radical leftist position that Karen Narefsky and I cooked up in a DSA meeting. It’s directly cited from Somerville’s own statistics and reports from agency heads. None of those appointments were to regulatory positions; all four were advisory only.
Given those astonishingly low numbers, do you really think that posting in non-English newspapers, posting all commission and board openings in a centralized spot to increase access, and sharing those postings with advocacy organizations is a bar that’s too high to clear?
Several commenters have said that Somerville’s appointed boards and commissions are 98% white. This is simply wrong and a lie by those repeating it.
Ben states in the article: “My observation, the more power a committee is, the more likely it is to be filled white affluent mostly men.” This is also untrue.
The most powerful committees allocate funding or make decisions on development. This includes the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, CPA committee, DRC, Planning Board, ZBA, and SRA. Of these nearly 60% of members are women including several women of color.
As a solution Ben calls for “Creating a centralized location on the city website where all commission and board openings are posted” This is already here:
https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/programs/be-somerville
It is difficult to imagine how this could be more prominent.
Ben calls for “Sharing openings with organizations and associations that work with and represent the many communities in Somerville”. This is already happening. The City sends out general emails to any resident that has signed up that include information on openings. As the director of a nonprofit organization whose mission it is to help connect immigrants to their city government it’s tough to believe that Ben does not receive these.
This disinformation is nothing but fear mongering. There is no conspiracy in City government to exclude minorities and women from appointed positions and implying this is a distraction from taking a hard look at the decisions these boards are actually making. Unfortunately the damage is already done since many probably already read this and formed an opinion.
In my opinion the constant dividing by race is not only damaging, but offensive. What percentage of board members are lifelong residents who know the city best? A small business owner? A parent working two jobs?Have ‘people of color’ applied for positions on boards and been turned away? If not, then this is more fake news. As was stated above, the average working person finds it nearly impossible to serve an unpaid position on a board which can require a lot of time that they simply don’t have. When my family came here from Ireland they received no special privileges, they didn’t have affirmative action, and they were discriminated against and ridiculed at every turn. So they worked hard, got educated, got jobs, ran for office, and eventually became a big part of this nation. Let’s stop telling people that they should be recognized for the color of their skin and not what they have to offer. It hurts them and everyone else. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Yes, Katie, we were friendly, what little we saw of each other. But this isn’t about who is who, even if you think it is. My words are words to be read to find some meaning; do you think all of your words are ‘gems’ because Katie said them? I don’t think you do. You have my email and we can talk if you want. Btw, I have never used FB with you or anyone else, so where in your imagination did that come from? Lies have been too prevalent with attacks upon me from the ORS/DSA committee groups, and we can certainly talk about that ORS ‘ban’ if you want too, because when a person is accused of physically threatening others[ plural] as a tactic to shut them up, then just which trolls did this Bernie revolution let out of the troll cave in Somerville? Katie, it would be nice if Karen actually came out into the open for once and said something in the open, instead of hiding–as many of you do–in the cave shadows throwing out subpar left ideology which has no part of any left ideology I ever liked. But you and Karen were quite the pair, and Karen probably had more influence in Union Sq that any other single person, though what that influence was has left many with a bad taste in their mouths. A Union United membership application that requests/demands that members don’t contradict each other in public just begs for questions about who sets the values they shouldn’t contradict, and, yes, for the record, that is Fascism, as an authoritarian right wing position pretending it’s left wing. This DSA positioning gets out of hand, because since when do you trolls have any actual democracy of socialism in there, and where it seems more about over-privileged white kids playing left politics because it’s hip to do so. Nothing changed here: it’s always been hip to be left, but the problem is to keep too much hip outa it so that a left is really a left, and where democracy can exist in the open.
The sad bit is when a millennial generation goes out to vote in force figuring that Bernie was the answer–compared to Trump who isn’t?– when all they did in Somerville elections[ BOA/ORS Steering/USNC Board etc] was to let about 20/40 people out of the troll cave who have more place in a local mental asylum, because with you lot paranoia and neurosis and who knows what kind of imaginations have run ragged, and you’re not even nice with it, and the nasty streak gets beyond belief sometimes. No, I don’t want the old crooks back; but when ‘progressive’ has little more meaning than some of your very marginal and iffy ideology then you all are not an answer. It was a hijack that certain union folks saw opportunity with, but that hasn’t gotten to the revolution about what *fair wage* actually means, any more than paying the high tech/bio tech kids lots of $$ because society defines them as ‘important’ now. And this happily transitions into your *minority* word, Katie.
Because what is a ‘minority’? I’m a minority. All the wealthy students that come to Greater Boston universities from India and China–some of whom settle in Somerville and start jobs here–are also minorities. So when you talk about representation of minorities–and then specify 4 Latinos–it’s not minorities that you’re talking about. Karen had the same problem when she advocated for people of color and women being given cheaper commercial space in the Union Sq development. A wealthy Indian resident–for example–compares how to a poor Latino resident? Skin color won’t say much when money and education are factors. The wealthy millennial group might be mostly white, but there many minority people in it from different countries.
So it’s economics, money, wealth, jobs v people of color that you want to talk about, and finding solutions to *development without displacement*. But then we get to your implicit racism again, because poorer folks are all colors, and many of them are white.
So what is it you actually want to talk about? Is it skin color or poverty or both? Or something else?
Varied skin colors doesn’t give “legitimacy to…decisions”. Everyone can mess up or not. It depends which individuals you get, and being a minority doesn’t guarantee anything. But you’re talking about discrimination based upon skin color based upon poverty, and this is a different conversation.
Katie, dear, while I agree with the sentiment of your final paragraph, wider communication isn’t enough. There’s a big difference between outreach and actually getting specific individuals to do things and to become involved. This is one lesson from that sad social experiment called the USNC, where almost nobody got involved, and where they had to push hard to even get 160 votes–or 1% of the voting area– in the last NC Board election of some weeks ago. But when non profit advocacy organizations push people of color for the sake of pushing people of color to keep those privileged white folks in these non profits happy, then that *disingenuous* word rears its head. There’s every reason to do some house cleaning in the non profits and on their boards, because little of this has to do with people of color when it’s more about he sanctimonious nature of certain white folks who work there, and some of who feel guilty about their own privilege when they go back to their nice white houses–which they own–at the end of the day. There’s that other ‘H’ word which isn’t ‘hijack’; it’s that word *hypocrisy*. And, no Katie, I didn’t call you a hypocrite, though some others are.
Solution? Same as always: people should sit down at a table and talk in a real way. And I–for one–have always been willing to do that. What’s telling though is how many of this ORS/DSA/USNC/CC group of those 20 to 40 people can’t do this.
Katie, come back to Somerville. You did good work at Parts and Crafts. If your heart is here then will Providence work out for you?