Sadly, Jimmy succumbed to cancer earlier this year, and when the special election for the seat was announced Susan threw her hat in the ring. She is quite the impressive lady- has a background in finance as a former research analyst on Wall Street, and a degree from the Harvard Kennedy school of government. Unlike her opponents for the seat, Susan is pro-choice, pro-equal marriage rights, and a strong backer of tenants rights.
I volunteered for Susan tonight to help get out the vote on this rainy evening, and one of the first things that struck me was that I knew almost everyone at her headquarters. Scads of Deval volunteers where there manning the phones, and even going door to door, and two of DP’s deputy field directors were running the show. The feel of the campaign was understandably similar, too; grassroots, fueled by citizen activism.
The election was too close to call until the very end, stuck in a three way tie between Susan, Menino aid Bill Linehan, and the son of the former mayor, Ed Flynn. Susan came in 37 votes ahead of Linehan, guaranteeing the two of them slots on the May 15th ballot. But this race is not over yet. It remains an uphill battle, as city council district 2 is made up of mainly South Boston, until recently not fertile ground for progressive candidates.
We’ll see where it goes from here…
If your interested, you can check out either of the two remaining candidates on the web at
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well done.
Can you supply more information on the anti-busing movement in the 80s.
The 80s were a busy time rallying against MBTA plans to replace fixed track routes with buses.
The poster is referring to the contentious debates over busing students and allowing citywide school choice in order to counter segregation in the City’s public school.
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Indeed, this happened in the 1970s (not the 1980s) but I’m sure the poster was referring to Kelly’s leading role in those efforts and not the light rail versus bus debates of the 80s and 90s.
You were referring to Forced Busing of students in Boston that began in 1974.
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This was a divisive program with no school choice perpetrated primarily on poor Boston students by people with no kids in these schools or stake in the communities.
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Young children were put on buses and moved to schools on the other side of the city like pawns in a chess game, in a quest to end “racial segregation”. This was about economic segregation in Boston whether black, white or brown. Poor vs. poor- period.
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The quality of the education in all of the schools (except exam schools) was abysmal.
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Had Judge WA Garrity had any gumption his orders would have involved the lily white suburbs. Bus between the local suburbs and Boston and folks view point would have been more progressive.
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Boston in the 1960- 1970’s was somewhat of a dark place, not a thriving metropolis of today.
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Unless you lived through it your perspective is clouded by the academics and writers with ulterior motives.
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I prefer not to argue over semantics when it’s not neccessary.
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Yes, busing was “forced” and the concept was “divisive.” But the facts are clear. Children were, in a sense, “used as pawns” to further the greater good of society and Boston’s education system. And, yes, the quality of most public schools (especially the “black” schools) was “abysmal.”
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However, the Boston School Committee (and many, many others) was openly and actively resisting both the principles laid out in Brown V. Board of Education and the state Racial Imbalance Act. The statistics tell a clear story of citywide public school segregation even worse than and certainly not helping to counter the self-imposed housing segregation in the neighborhoods. Without going in to all the details, the most telling (I find) is that in the ten years prior to the start of busing, only three black students had ever attended South Boston High.
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Morover, well before Garrity’s order, the state had begun the METCO program to bus students-of-color out to the “lily white suburbs”. Garrity had not authority to “force” bus Boston’s students in to other cities and towns. To have done so would have been to exceed the authority granted him by state law and would surely have been overturned on appeal.
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Bill Linehan is a lifetime Boston resident with strong ties to the District. A city employee for many years prior to working with Mayor Menino in the executive branch, Linehan is a progressive when it comes to workers’s issues. He supports the Living Wage, stronger enforcement of prevailing wages and Boston Residents Jobs policy on public construction projects.
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The political reality of this race is that Passoni barely won a crowded primary when the South Boston and Dorchester parts of the District were divided among 6 other candidates. That doesn’t bode well for her and it’s not about progressive vs conserative – its grassroots neighborhood politics and in the famous words of some real estate guy – “location, location, location”.
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Linehan works hard and win this race because of number not politics.
But if I read it correctly, you’re saying the mayor’s man will win the race and it will not be because of politics??