This week’s South End News editorial
editorial
Run, Susan, run!
Will Susan Passoni run for office again in the fall? Here?s hoping that she does. The South End candidate for the District 2 City Council seat left vacant by Jim Kelly?s death in January took 46 percent of the vote in Tuesday?s election. That?s up significantly from the 38 percent she won when she ran against Kelly two years ago. And it?s a lot more than anyone ever believed a South End-based candidate could win in this district.
The numbers hold promise for a run in the fall. Passoni won Chinatown and Bay Village on Tuesday with 322 votes to eventual winner Bill Linehan?s 296 votes. Passoni dramatically improved upon her April preliminary showing in these precincts when she pulled only 97 votes; Linehan, by contrast, only marginally improved upon his April showing of 246 votes.
The trouble spot, of course, is South Boston, where Linehan won 75 percent of the votes cast. That said, while it would be an uphill battle, Passoni stands a chance in a contest with higher voter turnout. Maura Hennigan, who?s weathered her share of political campaigns, described Tuesday?s election as the ?opening salvo for the next round.? The next round, of course, is the regularly scheduled fall election. ?For her to do so well in that environment [low turnout] ? bodes very well for her,? Hennigan said. ?I think [increased turnout] will increase her prospects.?
The ultimate question is whether or not Passoni has the stomach for another campaign. Passoni, notably, did not deliver a concession speech Tuesday night. She thanked her volunteers for their tireless work. Choking up, Passoni told the crowd at Brownstone?s on Dartmouth Street that she could not have accomplished anything approaching what she did on Tuesday without their help. Afterward, when asked if she would run again, the candidate simply said she would look at the numbers and take things ?one step at a time.?
While Passoni is going over the election returns, here?s something for the rest of us to contemplate: Running for office is no easy enterprise. It?s a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week marathon of door knocking, fundraising and glad-handing. Candidates like Passoni ? that is to say, candidates who are smart, passionate and eager to serve ? don?t come along every day. We were lucky to have had the opportunity to back such a candidate twice now. With luck, we?ll get another shot at sending her to office.
It would take a great deal of courage for Passoni to run again. Political campaigns are brutal undertakings. Of course, whether or not Passoni has courage isn?t a question: She took on Kelly when no one else would. She won 38 percent of the vote against a two-plus decade incumbent. After she lost against Kelly, she continued educating herself about the district. It showed on the campaign trail these past few months. The big issues were the same: crime, taxes and education ? but Passoni?s knowledge of them had deepened considerably.
What surely has to factor into Passoni?s decision is whether or not she believes the areas of the district outside South Boston ? in particular Chinatown, Bay Village and, most especially, the South End, will turn out for her. On Tuesday, only 2781 of the 18,174 registered voters in the South End bothered to cast a vote. That?s simply not good enough.
One of the mysteries of civic life are the complaints many residents have about their political representation as compared with the very little they actually do to change it. Make no mistake, Passoni would be a very big change from the status quo. She worked for 20 years as a financial analyst ? not the typical path most take to political office. She is not related to a local politician, nor does she work for one. She came to politics late in the game out of a very deep and real passion for her community.
Contrast that with Linehan, who ran for office because, well, I don?t know why. He?s worked in city government for about two decades. If you need a streetlamp fixed, he not only knows which department needs to be called, he probably knows the name of the guy who actually screws in the bulb. But, honestly, is that all it takes to satisfy voters in District 2?
To say it?s been disappointing to watch city employees and long-time community activists back Linehan out of a loyalty to either the Mayor, the status quo or both would be an understatement. Many of those who ran around with Linehan buttons on their lapels knew who the better candidate was. Yet they worked for Linehan?s campaign anyway. Because that?s how things are done in this city.
Susan Passoni is by no means the answer to all that ails District 2 or the city of Boston. But her candidacy represented change and offered hope. She can win in the fall ? should she choose to run again. But it will take a lot of hard work, passion and dedication. Passoni?s already delivered on those fronts. It?s time for everyone else to step it up.
“Many of those who ran around with Linehan buttons on their lapels knew who the better candidate was. Yet they worked for Linehan?s campaign anyway. Because that?s how things are done in this city.”
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Apparently if you didn’t support Passoni, you were just to dumb to understand the issues. All those Linehan voters are sheep. They couldn’t possibly have opinions, concerns, common bonds with Bill Linehan, they were just too damn dumb to understand what was good for them. . . .
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“Contrast that with Linehan, who ran for office because, well, I don?t know why.”
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That Linehan guy . . .I mean why would he run for office when he was so clearly the wrong candidate? Oh wait… he ran against Jim Kelly when that seat was first open, ran when Susan Passoni didn’t even live in Boston and long before she registered to vote here.
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Certainly that twenty years that Bill Linehan wasted working for the city, learning how to deliver services, raising a family and being active in community issues and even working for other campaigns, counts for so little compared to the private business experience in New York.
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Susan Passoni ran a creditable and strong campaign, she does have much to offer and I hope her civic passion extends beyond a drive for elective office. She would be a valuable voice in the city. She may run again and yes, that takes courage.
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But Bill Linehan’s run took courage too. If you can’t find reason to support Passoni that doesn’t involve trash-talking Linehan and the majority of voters in Distrct 2 that went to the polls on May 15th, that is a sad state of affairs.
Cutting and pasting a copyrighted editorial in its entirety goes beyond fair use.
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p>That said, I find the editorial’s assessment of Linehan’s supporters and the voters in Dictrict to be offensive.
Cutting and pasting a copyrighted editorial in its entirety goes beyond fair use.
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p>That said, I find the editorial’s assessment of Linehan’s supporters and the voters in Dictrict to be offensive.
…to reproduce an entire copyrighted work without the copyright owner’s permission.
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That’s why links exist. I presume this is on-line.
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My preferred method of operation is to post maybe a paragraph or two from the work to show the subject and a link. If anyone wants to read the entire work, he or she can follow the link.
It’s better to reproduce it in full so that we can be better educated about what the article said and discuss it better. Excerpting might skew the context and upset the owner. The owner wants this article to be read in full, or they would have only printed exceprts themselves. Reprinting anything for education or discussion is fair use. Excerpting from it doesn’t makes it fair use, it makes no difference how much of something one steals if one is stealing it to steal the value away from the owner, but that’s not happening here. All that matters is the impact on the copyright owner. In this case, the value is increased by reprinting it. While linking to it would possibly increase their ad revenues if any of us go there, some of us might go there anyway even without a link, and even if a whole article is here. To show unfair use, you’d have to show that this use caused their revenue to be harmed and the value of this work to be lessened. I think this use did precisely the opposite, it increased the value of the work by increasing the renown of both the article and the paper.
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Excerpting is fine if you want to use the orignal work to support your own thesis or make your own thesis more readable, but if you want to educate and discuss someone’s statement, its best to have the whole statement there.
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There is no right to force people to look at your website or ads just because you own the copyright of something else.
Limitation on (copyright) exclusive rights: Fair use
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(emphasis added)
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If the poster had produced portions–even substantial portions–of the editorial and made comments on them, it would have been fair use. Reproducing an entire copyrighted work without permission of the copyright owner without comment is not fair use.
You bolded it yourself: Reproduction “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”
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That was precisely the purpose of reproduction here, all of those things.
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Elsewhere on that website where you found that, it says that the portion of a work copied doesn’t matter.
Therefore:
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1. She might note that, in reference to the copyright issues, and;
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2. Provide a link and summary as suggested
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The dynamic duo of the Phoenix (Adam and David) tease their articles regularly over in the “Mass O’Politics Feed”. The South End News is one of the classiest neighborhood papers in Boston, but there is probably less frequency in the need to expose BMG readers to what are sometimes solely neighborhood-directed editorials. That said, I’m glad this one was made available for BMG folks to read, whether you agree with it or not.