Monthly Archives: October 2019

A LOCAL VOTING PRIMER FOR WORKING PEOPLE

*Courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Photo by Shannon McGee.*

Democracy is for everybody, not just the rich. So get to the polls!

Local elections are far more important than Mass voters seem to think, given the historically low turnouts for most of them in recent decades. Especially during off-year contests like this year’s. So, for starters, I just want to encourage everyone who is reading this in a municipality that is holding elections to get out and vote on November 5. Particularly working people—who are the focus of this epistle.

Because politics in a democracy is not supposed to be solely the province of millionaires and billionaires. It’s supposed to be for all of us. However, if working people don’t use our franchise to vote for candidates who will fight on our behalf, then democracy itself is in danger.

Not sure if you’re a working person? Well, if you’re an adult and you don’t own a big business or a huge amount of voting stock, then you are probably a working person. If you’re unemployed, but need to find another job to survive, then you are probably a working person. If you consider yourself poor, working class, or middle class, then you are probably a working person. And if politicians don’t snap to attention when you drop them a line, then you are almost certainly a working person.

I understand that working people are busy by default and that many of us are already focused on the 2020 presidential election—which is as high stakes as it gets in the American political system. But much of what happens in our daily lives is determined in no small part by municipal governments. Important decisions about housing, commercial development, transportation, K-12 education, local taxes, public health, and our lived environment are made every day by Bay State mayors, city councilors, selectpeople, town meetings, and school committees.

Failing to cast your ballot in local elections ensures that lots of important decisions that affect your life get made by politicians you had no hand in choosing. Pols who all too often end up doing the bidding of rich and powerful interests. Rather than fighting for justice for working people in an era when it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to make ends meet.

Changing that situation not only requires that more working people vote in local elections, but also that we actually take the time to inform ourselves about different candidates running for local offices. The problem is that many of the few people who cast votes in local elections don’t really pay attention to who they’re voting for. They go by which college degrees candidates hold. Or which neighborhood they grew up in. Or who their friends tell them to vote for. Or worse still, they vote for the candidates who have held their offices the longest.

None of these are inappropriate reasons to back a politician—taken together with an even cursory understanding of that candidate’s political views and closely held beliefs. The problem is that most voters don’t have that understanding when they go to the voting booth. As trustworthy candidate information can be thin on the ground.

Traditionally, working people turned to local news media to learn more about all the municipal candidates—and read debates between their supporters—as well as synopses of campaign debates. But with local news outlets in decline, and regional and national news organizations having little time to cover local politics, it can be hard to find enough good journalism to be able to make a truly informed decision. Even in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, the main cities that my DigBoston colleagues and I cover.

So, I’d like to offer a few suggestions for how working people can become informed local voters. Ideas which, as luck would have it, also hold true in larger elections.

1) Read candidate questionnaires

Most cities and towns have at least a few civic and political organizations that put together lists of questions on key issues that they ask all the candidates in all the local races. Find them and read them over—trying your best to get your hands on questionnaires organized both by groups you like and groups don’t like. To ensure that you get candidates’ answers to broad array of questions. This alone will give you an excellent idea of which politicians are interested in standing up for working people’s interests.

2) Find out who each candidate takes money from

It’s important to know how campaigns are financed. If your locale has at least one functioning news outlet, you may find articles by professional journalists that cover this ground. But failing that, Commonwealth voters can go to the Mass Office of Campaign and Political Finance website at ocpf.us and see who donates money to the campaigns of every candidate you’re considering voting for—and which candidates have the most money. Pay special attention to big donors who happen to run or own large corporations and banks. Because that will usually correlate to the candidates toiling on behalf of the local establishment, and against the interests of working people. Which is why it’s often good to support candidates who focus on raising lots of small donations from lots of regular folks. If their politics seem solid.

3) Ignore attack ads

Advertising by candidates, if done with a light touch, can be helpful and informative for voters. Unfortunately, many campaign ads are just rank propaganda—and filled with questionable assertions about the opponents of the candidates who buy them. So they are best ignored. Instead, as above, search out information about candidates’ actual positions. Preferably by buttonholing them at public events and asking them for their positions on key issues.

4) Attend candidate forums and debates

The events may be called candidate forums or debates, but whatever they’re called working people should always try to attend at least one for every significant local race. They are the best places to hear candidates’ ideas from their own mouths—plus watch how they engage with other candidates’ ideas and handle themselves under duress. A candidate that can’t take a bit of sparring with an opponent will probably not be the best person to represent working people’s interests.

5) Find the accessible candidates

Any candidate running for local office—especially one who purports to represent the interests of working people—should be easy for any constituent to contact on short notice. As the election approaches, try emailing or calling the campaign offices of candidates you like and ask to speak to them about any question you have about their policy proposals. They should get back to you quickly. If they do, it’s likely they will continue to be easy to reach once in office. For those candidates already in office, you can contact them with a constituent services request. Or contact their campaign office as with other candidates. Same drill. If they get back to you—a typical working person—quickly then they probably aren’t just catering to corporate supporters.

6) Vote for your interests, not the interests of the rich and powerful

The preamble of the constitution of the storied militant labor union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began with the following statement: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” There was much truth in the sentiment then, and there is much truth in it now. So when you, a working person, go to the polls, keep that statement in mind. Don’t vote for candidates who work in the interest of the real estate industry. Don’t vote for candidates who say they are pro-housing when they are really pro-commercial development. Don’t vote for candidates who say they are for “smart growth” when they are really for “letting real estate developers do whatever they want wherever they want” in the interest of fatter profits. Don’t vote for candidates who feign concern about global warming, then support policies that increase the number of cars on the road. Don’t vote for candidates who say “no new taxes”—when what they mean is “no new taxes on the rich.” Et cetera, et cetera.

Vote for candidates who talk about shifting the tax burden back on the rich and corporations. Get enough of those candidates into office to control local governments, and start doing just that. Raise property and commercial taxes. Increase the pathetically small payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) that nominally nonprofit private colleges like Harvard, MIT, and Tufts University currently pay cities like Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Then use the funds to bankroll an expansion of social programs that benefit working families. At the local level this would include—for example—building more social housing (a European term connoting public housing better than most American public housing), making public schools around the Commonwealth as good in poor towns are they are in rich ones, building more public health clinics, and rebuilding streets to favor public transportation, bikes, and pedestrians over cars.

But none of this can happen without working people getting more involved in our political process at the local level. So go forth, put some real effort into learning about the candidates for local office, and then get to the polls. Every time there’s a local election. Onward…

Apparent Horizon—recipient of 2018 and 2019 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Political Column Awards—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s executive director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

https://twitter.com/citylife_clvu/status/1187081585998389254 …

Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
https://twitter.com/citylife_clvu/status/1187081585998389254 …

DigBoston's @jasonpramas calls for Mass #renters to rise up… please share widely MARCHING SEASON: JOIN THE RALLY FOR RENT CONTROL:Mass State House, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm https://buff.ly/2W5GpB2 #housing #justice #rentcontrol #protest #Boston #Massachusetts #politics #mapoli

DigBoston’s @jasonpramas calls for Mass #renters to rise up… please share widely MARCHING SEASON: JOIN THE RALLY FOR RENT CONTROL:Mass State House, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm https://buff.ly/2W5GpB2 #housing #justice #rentcontrol #protest #Boston #Massachusetts #politics #mapoli

Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
DigBoston’s @jasonpramas calls for Mass #renters to rise up… please share widely MARCHING SEASON: JOIN THE RALLY FOR RENT CONTROL:Mass State House, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm https://buff.ly/2W5GpB2 #housing #justice #rentcontrol #protest #Boston #Massachusetts #politics #mapoli

MARCHING SEASON: JOIN THE RALLY FOR RENT CONTROL

Throwback screenshot via WBZ from the '90s. When TV reporters like Liz Walker still covered housing justice. — *Throwback screenshot via WBZ from the ’90s. When TV reporters like Liz Walker still covered housing justice.*

Mass State House, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm

Twenty-five years after the real estate industry destroyed rent control in Massachusetts, marching season is upon us. A call to arms has been raised by tenant organizations across the land and real estate interests are being pushed back for the first time in decades. So, it’s past time that renters around the Bay State join the fight for housing justice in great numbers.

As we do, we will be in good company. In New York, according to the New York Times, a new Democratic majority in the state legislature recently expanded existing rent control protections that “would allow cities and towns statewide to fashion their own regulations, which are meant to keep apartments affordable by limiting rent increases.” And would also “make the changes permanent—a major victory for tenant activists who have had to lobby Albany every few years when the old laws expired.”

In California, the Times reports that its lawmakers approved a bill in September that “limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation and offers new barriers to eviction.” Following Oregon, which “became the first [state] to pass statewide rent control, limiting increases to 7 percent annually plus inflation.”

And on the presidential campaign trail, Bernie Sanders is calling for a national rent control standard.

Now political support is growing for a bill (H.3924, the Tenant Protection Act) introduced by State Reps. Mike Connolly and Nika Elugardo and aimed at effectively reversing the real estate industry-funded referendum of 1994—Question 9—that banned rent control statewide. Providing “municipalities with the authority to implement rent-stabilizing regulations, just cause eviction protections, stronger condominium conversion and foreclosure protections, anti-displacement zones, and options to help tenants manage the upfront costs of leasing an apartment,” according to a post on Connolly’s blog.

This in a period when Democrats are starting to see renters as an important voting bloc in the upcoming 2020 presidential election, and real estate industry propaganda about the virtues of ever-skyrocketing rents are sounding increasingly hollow to tens of millions of beleaguered renters nationwide. Many of whom are hemmed in economically—stuck in unstable, low-paying contingent jobs without benefits, slammed by credit card debt accrued in a desperate attempt to make ends meet, and terribly burdened with student loan debt. Seemingly as punishment for attempting to better themselves with the advanced education society has traditionally said is the path to a better life. While being only one significant accident or illness away from crushing debt for health care—including debt for dental care that is rarely properly covered by public or private health plans.

So, many candidates for local office in Bay State cities that had rent control between 1970 and 1994 are going on record in support of its reinstitution this year. Including a majority of at-large city council candidates in Boston—in a hotly contested race. A majority of city council candidates in Cambridge… notably democratic socialist Ben Simon, whose family lost rent control and got evicted when he was a child, according to the Cambridge Day. Both mayoral candidates and a majority of sitting city councilors in Somerville (which had rent control until 1979, when it was eliminated by fiat of the old Board of Aldermen).

But, in a sign of the times, they are being joined by politicians in municipalities that never had rent control… most recently Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera—who is talking publicly about the need to stabilize rents and has just appointed a rent control task force in his city. Even as legislators from across the Commonwealth have signed onto Connolly’s and Elugardo’s bill.

None of this groundswell is powerful enough to push such a bill—and several other renter-friendly housing bills Connolly, Elugardo, and their allies have filed—to passage while real estate industry friendly pols like House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Gov. Charlie Baker run state government. But the mere fact of the suite of pro-tenant housing bills reaching their first committees as the zeitgeist waxes populist marks the start of what looks to be one of the toughest political battles in recent memory hereabouts.

The perspicacious pair of legislators clearly know this and have worked with tenant-friendly organizations and select local politicians to call a Rally for Rent Control and Tenant Protections, next Tuesday, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm at the Massachusetts State House. As of this writing, the action is co-sponsored by City Life/Vida Urbana, Chinese Progressive Association, Lynn United for Change, Mass Coalition for the Homeless, Boston Democratic Socialists of America, Socialist Alternative, Cambridge Residents Alliance, A Better Cambridge, Our Revolution Cambridge, Right to the City—Boston, Our Revolution Somerville, and Progressive Massachusetts. Elected officials confirmed to attend include Brookline Select Board Member Raul Fernandez (representing a town that also had rent control until 1994); Cambridge City Councilor Quinton Zondervan; Chelsea City Council President Damali Vidot; Somerville City Councilors Matt McLaughlin, JT Scott, and Ben Ewen-Campen; and Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone.

Yes, it’s just one rally. The first of many, to be sure. And naturally, any bill calling for rent control faces a steep uphill slog through a still-hostile legislature. But every tenant who knows that the rent is “too damn high”—to quote a famously zany New York political candidate who won eternal fame thanks to a Saturday Night Live sketch based on his timely slogan—needs to go to this rally. And bring all your friends. If you do, this can be the start of the [M]ass movement that will change everything.

I will be there. Earlier this year, I wrote about how I lost my rent-controlled apartment after Question 9 passed by a thin margin in 1994—and how that loss made my life, and the lives of thousands of fellow working people who also got screwed by the real estate industry across in Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge, much more difficult economically and politically over the years that followed than they would have otherwise been.

A quarter century later, I am still struggling with stratospherically high rent that burns through about 50% of my income monthly.

Even though I get a better deal as an older long-term tenant than younger people in my building get. In the same Cambridge neighborhood where I once paid under 20% of my income for rent. And even though I co-own a metro newspaper.

I’m supposed to have finally made it to the middle class—my six-figure higher education debt and other very standard debt taken as given in this era of runaway capitalism. But I haven’t. I have no savings. My marriage to a person with a somewhat better job doesn’t save me and doesn’t make it any more possible for the two of us to buy even a small condo anywhere near where either of us work. Nor can we afford extra rent for a less miniature apartment.

So I’m going to the Rally for Rent Control and Tenant Protections. And I’m telling all my friends—including all of you, my reading audience—to join me there.

It won’t be an easy fight. But it’s marching season. And as I fought against the destruction of rent control a quarter century back, I’m damned well going to join with renters all over the state to force its reinstatement—together with a host of new housing reforms—this time. And we’re going to win. Because we have to win. More homelessness, economic insecurity, and deepening human misery is simply not an option. Not if this nation is going to remain a democracy.

DigBoston's @jasonpramas on a response to the crisis of local arts institutions being thrown out on the street by greedy landlords CAMBRIDGE ARTISTS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST DISPLACEMENT: Reflections on a grassroots political movement in formation https://buff.ly/2Bea15Q #bosarts

DigBoston’s @jasonpramas on a response to the crisis of local arts institutions being thrown out on the street by greedy landlords CAMBRIDGE ARTISTS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST DISPLACEMENT: Reflections on a grassroots political movement in formation https://buff.ly/2Bea15Q #bosarts

Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
DigBoston’s @jasonpramas on a response to the crisis of local arts institutions being thrown out on the street by greedy landlords CAMBRIDGE ARTISTS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST DISPLACEMENT: Reflections on a grassroots political movement in formation https://buff.ly/2Bea15Q #bosarts

CAMBRIDGE ARTISTS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST DISPLACEMENT

Emergency artists meeting at Green Street Studios in Cambridge, MA. Photo by Jason Pramas. — Photo by Jason Pramas

Reflections on a new grassroots political movement in formation

Another Cambridge arts institution is being pushed out of its longtime home by a greedy landlord. And once again, local artists are mobilizing to “discuss and organize for meaningful political action to support the arts” in that city—as the Facebook event page of Monday’s Emergency Organizing Meeting: Cambridge Arts and 2019 Elections put it.

Green Street Studios may soon be no more. According to the Cambridge Day, “The dance space announced its closing Oct. 2, naming Oct. 27 as its last day in operation after Peter Givertzman, president of the Oriental Furniture shop and owner of the building as of April, nearly tripled the organization’s rent, according to the studio’s board.

“It joins such recent closings in Central Square—a state designated cultural district—as the Out of the Blue art gallery and Mobius performance art space and the EMF music community and its New Alliance Gallery. Cambridge has also seen the departure of the Deborah Mason School of Dance, Comedy Studio and Bridge Repertory theater company in recent years.”

Over 50 people showed up to the meeting at the soon-to-be-shuttered dance studio. Former Cambridge City Councilor Nadeem Mazen ran the hour-and-a-half presentation and provided the diverse crowd in attendance with perhaps the finest and most succinct explanation of how politics works in the City of Squares that I have ever seen. He was joined by Nate Fillmore of Cambridge Bike Safety—who related lessons from his organization’s successful campaign for more bike lanes—and democratic socialist city council candidate Ben Simon of the Cambridge Artist Coalition… who was slated to review the failed fight to save the EMF building, but mainly focused on the uphill battle artists face when trying to push back against capitalist landlords and real estate developers. Points that were well-received by the clearly distressed attendees, and echoed by city council candidate Nicola Williams from the audience.

All in all as good a start as any incipient grassroots political movement could ask for. But now the hard work must begin. With the 2019 Cambridge City Council election just three weeks away, the artists have little time to affect the composition of that body in ways that will improve their chances of winning funding for the new public arts spaces that could ease the financial pressure on the area’s remaining independent arts organizations.

So, as Mazen indicated, they’re going to have to launch a well-organized campaign to lobby the city’s byzantine political apparatus to get the desired result—whether they have a friendly council and city manager or not. Without getting mollified or marginalized along the way.

Given that, as a longtime community and labor activist, I thought I should offer the new formation some relevant reflections. And as an artist. Specifically a visual artist, if not a very active one (what with the whole being a journalist and running a weekly newspaper thing). Moreover as a principal in a short-lived effort (2014-2015) to effectively restart the Boston Visual Artists Union of the 1970s in broader form with a membership organization called Mass Creative Workers. I wouldn’t go so far as to call my meditations here anything so grand as advice—considering that the activist artists group that I helped organize fizzled out shortly after its launch—but I hope it is received in the spirit it is intended nonetheless. As food for thought.

First point: If organizing any group of humans into any kind of political formation can rightly be likened to the sisyphean task of “herding cats,” organizing artists is more like herding a far-ranging group of particularly ornery and single-minded mountain lions. An activity, therefore, not for the faint of heart. While I think that increasingly tough political economic circumstances are going to force artists to work together in their own collective interest more and more, it’s going to be tough going no matter what shape a new organization takes. So activist artists should try extra hard to be kind to each other as they undertake any such endeavor. It will make a difference.

Second point: Activist arts organizations often assume that they provide some intrinsic value to the community they work in (saying things like “the arts benefit everyone!”). But other community members may not see it that way. Which can lead to trouble in any political campaign when hoped for community support doesn’t materialize. And the political establishment—seeing no air beneath the arts movement’s proverbial wings—then feels it is free to ignore artists’ entreaties. A good way to forestall such an outcome is for activist artists to make sure that their first order of business is really doing stuff to directly help local neighborhoods and other communities of interest in tangible ways. Be it a nice public arts effort with neighborhood kids, or simple acts of human solidarity like pitching in en masse at a holiday food drive. Then when push comes to political shove, community members will be much more likely to turn out in support of local artists. Because they’ll agree that artists really do provide value to their community.

Third point: Strongly related to the previous point, activist arts organizations have to take great care not to fight for gains just for themselves. This issue came up right at the end of Monday’s meeting. If winning more public arts spaces is an important goal for the new group—and I agree that it is—the fight for those spaces should be linked to ongoing fights that benefit all working people in Cambridge. Not just artists. The logical struggle to undertake in this case being the battle to get the city to leverage its own funds plus state and federal money to build desperately needed social housing. When such new publicly funded housing complexes are finally built, they would be excellent places to site new community arts centers. Because the people that will be among the most likely to use them will be living right there. And because the number of people that need decent government-run housing are legion. Yet the number of artists are relatively small. Though many artists are also people that need proper housing. So linking the smaller movement to the larger one makes all kinds of sense. Understanding that coalitions between people with divergent interests can be tricky, and that I wouldn’t suggest activist artists build such coalitions willy-nilly with any random political activist campaign that happens to be around.

That’s enough from me for now. Fellow Cambridge artists should know that I am watching this new campaign with interest going forward. And allow me to reiterate my brief statement at the meeting indicating that my colleagues and I at DigBoston are very interested in publishing opinion articles from artists working to win city funding for public arts spaces in the so-called People’s Republic—and for the arts in general. Since we believe that the best representatives of social movements are always the people who bring them into being—keeping them going against the odds, in the face of often-stiff resistance. Good luck to all.

Apparent Horizon—recipient of 2018 and 2019 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Political Column Awards—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s executive director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. He holds an MFA in Visual Arts. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.