Stalwarts Alice Wolf and Marjorie Decker have this to say for the Senator seeking re-election:
Dear Friends,
Please join us tomorrow sending Senator Pat Jehlen back as our State Senator. We have both worked with Senator Jehlen closely on issues impacting education, the elderly, transportation, environment, affordable housing, and public safety.
We have experienced Pat’s thoughtfulness and appreciate her longstanding commitment to people who need a voice and to all of us who need informed, experienced representation. She is also very smart.
Pat is a progressive leader who has proven to be effective and respected by her colleagues in the Legislature, advocates across the Commonwealth, and most importantly by her constituents. She now serves us in an important role in the Senate – Assistant Vice Chair of the Senate ways and Means Committee, setting finance policy and budgets within the Senate. We would not want to lose that representation. She is also the Chair of the Elder Affairs Committee which influences policy and budget for our seniors.
It is also not lost on either of us that the number of women serving in the Legislature has remained stagnant in the last two decades. Women make up just over 20% of the House and Senate. That is a lower percentage than in 1996 when Alice entered the House.
So vote for Pat Jehlen tomorrow (yes, Thursday) to keep strong, informed, progressive leadership representing us.
Sincerely,
Alice K. Wolf, Former State Representative
Marjorie C. Decker, State Representative
Words to the wise.
From Rep Jon Hecht’s email to his constituents yesterday:
Which current or former elected officials from Cambridge are supporting Cheung? I know he has the police unions, which, at least for me, is the worst kind of labor endorsement. None of his current city council colleagues have endorsed him, right?
Also, he’s attacked Jehlen for taking $200 twice from one guy who was a (poorly paid) lobbyist for Exxon. Sure, return them, but Cheung’s lame attempt to try and paint Jehlen as in the pocket of the oil and gas industry is laughable.
I really do not like this guy.
And they didn’t back him for Mayor last time either. I suspect the charter money is a big deal breaker for most of the Council which is genuinely against them, at least in Cambridge.
And the members of Cambridge law enforcement I live with are rooting for Pat
if they’d speak out.
alas.
He’s like a character created for some SNL-productions movie that goes straight to DVD where he plays the really annoying criminal who is yutz.
Over at the Medford, MA Politics Facebook group, he’s pretty reviled too.
I spent 5 hours hitting up a couple turfs in Medford doing the middle of the night election eve door hanging flyers to remind people to vote for Pat.
As someone who’s disabled, there’s not enough bullshit in the world that could even trick me into believing that Leland for fight for people like me as Pat would, and the head of the Commission for People with Disabilities in Medford also seems him as being careless about our concerns.
As obnoxious as what he’s done is (and that’s still an understatement), I was still hoping to collaborate work with him on municipal and other issues (assuming he stays just as a Councilor), but the fact that he’d lobby to get the endorsements of 4 police unions tells me quite a bit about what his priorities are. He can say he represents people of color and invoke the expression “Black Lives Matter” to feign that he cares, but reaching out to get the support of the police unions betrays all of his posturing.
I responded to one of this posts about his collected endorsements on his campaign page on Facebook. Naturally, he’s out to lunch about it.
Who does that? Who tries to get the endorsements of all the police unions other than someone who would respond to “Black Lives Matter” by chanting “All Lives Matter” or “White Lives Matter”?
It’s certainly no one I could imagine that would be working on strengthening police accountability, community oversight, and fighting the police to have access to complaint and internal discipline records.
Leland ignores requests for information about his meetings with the police unions.
…between seeking the support of police and proclaiming that black lives matter. The last thing we need to do is feed the narrative that law enforcement and the African-American community are irreconcilable enemies. A while back Jon Stewart did a great job pointing out how you can have the greatest respect for police AND simultaneously want to hold them to the highest standards.
In Arlington, the police brought donuts to a Black Lives Matter vigil.
In Somerville, the police threw a fit when the mayor posted a Black Lives Matter sign on city hall.
Context is everything.
That banner flew without protest for months. The police “threw a fit” when certain individuals decided to get some headlines.
The banner was raised in mid-August of 2015. It was discussed here at that time.
The police chief supported it then and now:
The implication of your comment is VERY different from what I think Somerville and our police department actually did. I think a specific union took a specific political action for its own reasons.
There’s the police chief in Somerville, and then there’s the union, which created a completely avoidable mess for everyone. Fortunately, at least, local BLM activists were able to use it as a teaching opportunity, for which I applaud them.
Do you have any idea what role the police unions play in regards to accountability and transparency of police departments?
Make sure their members are represented, get to tell their side, and don’t get railroaded. Like defense attorneys that is their job. They also, like other unions fight for pay, benefits, working conditions, etc. Yes, it may seem like circling the wagons at times, but again let’s not fall into the trap of you’re either with the police or with BLM, but can’t be both. I utterly and emphatically reject that dichotomy.
Unfortunately they fight for members that have killed, seriously injured, or otherwise violated the rights of members of the public. They are unique in that way. They also help coverup those things, too.
Policing does sometimes involve deadly force and sometimes it’s even justified. Anyone who actually covers up should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, but even those who use deadly force are entitled to the benefit of the doubt (as, it should be noted, all of us are in a system where the premise is innocent until proven guilty). If anyone is arguing that police should not be unionized I would strongly disagree with that.
I think they should have unions, sure. It just happens that those unions are often quite terrible. Police have a unique job, no doubt.
What it comes down to is that police union endorsements generally don’t impress me much and I’m very weary of candidates who might get just those union endorsements and not others.
Including at times when the police unions have succeeded to have officers reinstated who had been fired for misconduct.
What from I can see, you continue to
1) argue about something that you’re not really all that informed about (ALL the roles police unions serve), and
2) conflate police unions and the Black Lives Matter movement (both having expressed purposes that they fight for) with police officers and black people, respectively, which are groups of individuals
…it would be really nice if instead of complaining about how uninformed I supposedly am, you actually filled in the gaps and make the points you think I have missed. I’ll even start your next comment for you:
“Actually, Christopher, in addition to what the tasks noted above police unions also…”
There gets to be a point where you can’t feign obliviousness anymore.
“The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) gave the GOP presidential nominee its endorsement after he received support from more than two-thirds of the group’s national board […] The group has not endorsed a Democratic presidential nominee since Bill Clinton in 1996.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/296342-nations-largest-police-union-endorses-trump
I mean, sure I can say shame on them as I would to any group who would throw their weight behind a dangerous unqualified bigot. I am certainly not ignorant of or oblivious to the notion that one activity of unions is to endorse candidates who they believe share their values or policy preferences. I’m also aware that some unions, and it appears the FOP is one, have default partisan preferences. I’m not sure any of that is relevant to this thread.