Supporters of Somerville 5 Pressure Superintendent to Revoke Suspension

By Nicole R. McEwen

            Outside the office of Somerville Public Schools on Washington Street last Friday, a dozen protestors braved the 3-year record-breaking 97-degree heat and urged Superintendent Anthony Pierantozzi to reinstate the “Somerville 5” back into Somerville High School. 
The five African-American boys dubbed the “Somerville 5” are on trial for assaulting Medford police officers resulting from an April 20th incident.  All five have been suspended from school pending adjudication of the trial.  Two of the boys, Isaiah E. Anderson, 17, and Calvin Belfon Jr., 18, are being prosecuted as adults by the Middlesex County District Attorney.   

               Chanting slogans such as “Say No to Racism in Our Schools,” the picketers doled out flyers to passing pedestrians and pumped their poster boards high in the air, garnering a few honks from cars happening to zip by during the hour-long afternoon protest.
“Anybody accused of a crime should be innocent until proven guilty,” said Phoebe C. Eckfeldt, an organizer with the Committee to Defend the Somerville Five.  “This new superintendent needs to do the right thing and protect our youth.  These boys are a threat to no one and should be allowed back in school.”
                  Eckfeldt’s 18 year-old daughter, Azah P. Che, a recent graduate of Somerville High, coordinated a petition in May signed by 300 students demanding the boys’ reinstatement to full academic standing, but the effort was to no avail.  Che, who is Belfon’s girlfriend, said the five teens desperately want to attend classes in the fall.
               “Calvin needs to get back to school and finish out his senior year.  All of them have worked so hard in school, in both football and academics.  It’s what will take them to college,” Che said.
                 Belfon, who is captain of the school football team, has already received many recruitment letters and hopes to attend college in the South, according to Che.  She said
Belfon attended his first two years of high school in Boston but his family felt the public schools there were too violent and unpromising, so they rented and moved into an apartment in Somerville – while keeping their primary residence in Dorchester – in order for their son to attend Somerville High; a safe, higher-quality school which also boasted Division I status – a requisite for any serious college-bound athlete.      
                  “I was very surprised when I first heard about the charges.  The whole school – teachers, coaches, students – we were all shocked,” Che said.  “Calvin’s friendly, outgoing, spends lots of time with his family, and he’s just great with kids.  Plus his dad is a Boston police officer so it doesn’t make sense that he would attack a policeman.”
                  The boys who comprise the Somerville 5 have been publicly “embraced” by many parents of Somerville students and are attracting significant support from grassroots minority-rights groups.  In addition to the Committee to Defend the Somerville 5 – formed by a local chapter of the International Action Center, a national organization that seeks to challenge racist charges – a representative from the International Service Union joined the picket line, slowly marching with fellow supporters in a circle formation – a tactical maneuver brought about after the Somerville Police arrived and informed the group that picketers could not line the street in a stationary position and advised that they “keep in motion.” 
                   Regina Messac, organizer for the International Service Union and resident of Waltham, said she does not personally know the boys involved in the case, but has a special interest in the Somerville 5 stemming from her own experience with racial profiling six years ago.  As a Haitian-born Belgian black, Messac had grown up in a more racially-mixed European society and encountered, for the first time, the injurious results of racial stereotyping when she arrived to pick her two sons up from a community center in Waltham in 1999.
                   “My sons’ friends told me that the police had taken them into custody because they ‘took too long’ when they were asked to move.  I was so angry!  I went to the police station and found my boys shocked and afraid,” Messac said.
                     Messac said she reprimanded the Waltham police officers and they quickly apologized for their hasty actions.  “I told them I would be monitoring their actions, and I have ever since.”  Messac said.  “So I know police brutality and racial profiling does exist.”   
                     Bobby Traynhaw, a member of the International Action Center and a Boston Public Schools bus driver who has attended every event supporting the Somerville 5, agreed  the boys “have been railroaded” and feels the numerous charges of assault and battery will prove deleterious to their future.  Although Traynhaw does not have a personal relationship with the boys, he maintained that the boys are victims of racist oppression.
                     Traynhaw, who took part in Martin Luther King Jr.’s famed 1963 March on Washington when he was 21 years-old, said the boys’ widely-touted “impeccable” record shows them to be good, hardworking athletes and students, and therefore deserving of an education at Somerville High.
The Committee to Defend the Somerville 5 seeks to have the suspensions lifted this Friday when they are slated to meet with Superintendent Anthony Pierantozzi.