I HAVE BEEN thinking about who votes for whom and why for a long time. I have been through plenty of campaigns and have sliced and diced numbers for decades. Notwithstanding the availability of far more information than we could have ever imagined decades ago, there is still no one simple answer as to who […]
Race/Racism
Posted inPolitics
House, Senate redistricting plan would increase minority voting clout
LEGISLATIVE LEADERS on Tuesday released proposed new maps for Massachusetts House and Senate districts, which would enhance the political clout of minority voters while also protecting almost all incumbents. “There is not a single place on the House map where you can draw a majority-minority district where we haven’t,” said Rep. Michael Moran, a […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Juvenile delinquency dropped during pandemic
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC’S disproportionate impact by race has been well-documented in areas including health outcomes, remote work, and education. Now, add one more disparity: juvenile justice. A report released Wednesday by Massachusetts’s Juvenile Justice Policy and Data Board found largely good news when it came to juvenile delinquency. During COVID, far fewer teenagers have been […]
Posted inPolitics
What went wrong for Framingham’s 1st mayor?
FOUR YEARS AGO, voters swept Yvonne Spicer into office as Framingham’s first mayor, heralding a new chapter for the community of 72,000, which had outgrown the town government structure that operated there for more than 300 years. Her inauguration was a celebratory moment of promise, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and US Rep. Katherine Clark holding […]
Posted inEducation
What’s so dangerous about critical thinking?
Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. – John Lewis ONE CANNOT HELP but be troubled by the events that have transpired across our country over the past few years. The high-profile instances of racism and racial […]
Posted inEducation
No place for hate
IN JANUARY, a few Northampton middle school students, perhaps emboldened, maybe bored, after nearly a year of remote learning, projected images of the Confederate flag as their computer screen backdrop during virtual classes. Perhaps it was a political statement, or maybe a poorly considered joke. Whatever the intent, it did not go unnoticed. The school’s […]
Posted inRace/Racism
Rooney’s summer hiatus made permanent
BACK IN JUNE, Emily Rooney announced that Beat the Press on GBH was going on hiatus for the summer – “a first for us but a welcome break,” she said. It turns out that was her farewell. GBH announced on Friday that the weekly show is being canceled after 22 years on the air. The […]
Posted inHealth Care
Meet the state’s only Black home birth midwife
A BLACK WOMAN is nearly twice as likely as a White woman in Massachusetts to die during pregnancy or after childbirth, according to a 2014 report by the Department of Public Health. Nationally, the maternal mortality rate is more than twice as high for Black women as for Whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
A call for mayoral candidates to address gun violence
A PROMINENT BLACK MINISTER who was part of the clergy-police partnership in the 1990s that helped stem gun violence in Boston is calling on the five mayoral candidates to offer more specifics on plans to address violence in the city’s neighborhoods. Rev. Eugene Rivers, a cofounder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition that worked to […]
Posted inPolitics, Race/Racism
Janey invokes slavery, birtherism in rejecting vax mandates
RULES RELATED TO the ever-changing pandemic, where the light at the end of the tunnel seemed to quickly shift to a picture of dark days ahead, can be hard to agree on. In rejecting the idea of requiring proof of vaccination to enter restaurants or other gathering spots, Boston Acting Mayor Kim Janey took the […]