A dead black man, peaceful protests, and then riots.
The “could it happen here?” syndrome has gripped Boston again with the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Gray’s death in police custody has stoked some of the most violent rioting the country has seen since the 1960s.
Boston.com posed the “could it happen here” question and came up with answers that mostly pointed to yes: Boston police may be better listeners and be better prepared than their Baltimore counterparts, but all it takes is one mishandled incident to set unrest in motion.
With a new round of Boston protests on tap, it is useful to remember that once protests begin, it’s anybody’s guess as to how protesters will conduct themselves and how police will respond.
In Baltimore, the early scenes of non-violent protests have gone up in smoke. Police arrested Gray on April 12. Peaceful protests began on April 18 and continued for five days before they became violent and culminated in large scale rioting on Monday.
Boston has mulled the “what might happen here” scenario before. Last year, after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of the Ferguson, Missouri, police, Carlton Williams of the Massachusetts American Civil Liberties Union, told WGBH that Boston was not immune to future upheaval.
“We get calls regularly by people saying, ‘Look, I was stopped for no reason, I was stopped because the police said I was weaving, I was stopped because I was walking down the street and the police said I fit a description,'” Williams said. The root causes of the Brown shooting and others like it run deep, he said, pointing to “the culture and the history of the United States – and that is a difficult and unresolved history of racial oppression.”
That history points to a distinct difference in the outcome of encounters between police and black men that have ugly roots in American history. Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson noted that police shootings of black men have become the 21st century equivalent of lynchings.
So to ask the “could it happen here?” question displays a bit of hubris. Boston’s poor neighborhoods continue to suffer from disparities in education and employment. Citizen oversight of the police department remains problematic. The Hub may sport a new Boston face, but the tensions of the old Boston simmer just beneath the surface. True political and economic power continues to elude African Americans, leading Boston magazine to ask — 12 years after CommonWealth posed the exact same question: “Black Power: Why doesn’t Boston have more of it?” The seeds of unrest have been planted for decades. That makes Boston just as American as Baltimore.
–GABRIELLE GURLEY
BEACON HILL
A superior court judge ruled that the state improperly denied licenses for marijuana dispensaries to a company once headed by former congressman Bill Delahunt. (Boston Globe)
A Boston Herald editorial questions proposed budget provisions that use tourism dollars for things like culvert repairs in the town of Southwick, saying there are 73 such budget amendments. The House budget includes $400,000 for Nicholson Stadium in Methuen. (Eagle-Tribune)
Avi Green tries to explain the rules fight in the Legislature. (WBUR)
Emily Norton of the Massachusetts Sierra Club says Gov. Charlie Baker’s regulatory review is a dangerous path to follow. (CommonWealth)
OLYMPICS
Roxbury residents are not enthralled by the prospects of Boston 2024. (Boston Herald) In a juxtaposition that seems to underscore the alternate universes in which the Olympics discussion is playing out, Shirley Leung pens a pleading paen to Red Sox honcho Larry Lucchino to come work his sports business magic on Boston 2024, while Michael Levenson details the vexing brass tacks of raising an Olympic Stadium on land now hosting an enormous MBTA maintenance facility. (Boston Globe)
MARATHON BOMBING TRIAL
Defense lawyers continue to focus on the theme of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the domineering older brother who led Dzhokhar Tsarnaev astray. (Boston Globe)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Brockton City Council rejected a proposal to form a study committee to review the city’s charter, which hasn’t been updated in nearly a half century. (The Enterprise)
A disabled Quincy veteran who won his claim last year that the city bypassed him for a position on the police department in favor of politically connected candidates claims he was once again snubbed despite being atop the Civil Service list. (Patriot Ledger)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
President Obama condemned both the riots in Baltimore as well as what he termed the “slow rolling crisis” of police use of deadly force especially in confrontations with minorities. (New York Times) “Having Black Cops and Black Mayors Doesn’t End Police Brutality,” The New Republic headlines an essay by Stacia Brown. Meanwhile, the unrest in Baltimore has prompted Major League Baseball to announce this afternoon’s game between the Orioles and the Chicago White Sox will be played in an empty stadium, the first time in history the public has been barred from watching a professional baseball game. (ESPN)
The US Supreme Court takes up gay marriage (Boston Globe) and the New Yorker offers its own brand of coverage with a story entitled “Justice Scalia’s Shameful Joke.”
Ted Celeste of the National Institute for Civil Discourse describes the organization’s Next Generation program, which attempts to improve the climate of debate in state legislatures. The group has already held a number of working sessions in several states, including Massachusetts. (Governing)
ELECTIONS
It looks like a real socialist — not like the fake one currently in the White House — will be running for the Democratic nomination for president as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will announce his intention to enter the fray on Thursday. (New York Times)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The three development teams vying to build a South Boston Waterfront hotel have all added partners from racial minority groups in an effort to boost their chances. (Boston Globe)
A Boston developer is proposing a large apartment complex on prime land near North Station that would be entirely below-market-priced rental units. (Boston Globe)
The $10 billion business known as the National Football League is giving up its nonprofit status. (Chronicle of Philanthropy)
Anheuser-Busch removed one of the slogans from the labels of Bud Light bottles after an onslaught of social media criticism from women, a population that the beer giant is trying to court. The offending slogan said, “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.” (New York Times)
AT&T fires its president for sending what is being described as a racist text. (Time)
State tax officials have seized and closed down a popular downtown Quincy restaurant, often frequented by nearby court employees and lawyers, for nonpayment of meals taxes. (Patriot Ledger)
EDUCATION
The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education votes to put the Holyoke school system under state receivership. (State House News Service) CommonWealth’s spring issue features an in-depth look at state school takeovers, including consideration of Holyoke.
At a Fitchburg forum, the state board also gets an earful on the PARCC test. (Telegram & Gazette)
A former Springfield school principal will try to right Boston’s long-troubled Madison Park Vocational Technical High School. (Boston Globe)
A study by a conservative think tank says closing low-performing schools benefits students in the long run despite the initial disruption. (U.S. News & World Report)
HEALTH CARE
More than 1,000 people died of opioid-related overdoses last year in Massachusetts, a number that is 33 percent higher than in 2012 and 3.3 percent higher than in 2013. (WBUR)
TRANSPORTATION
The Boston Herald reports that the Carmen’s Union representing T workers, which has been set back on its heels by reports of rampant absenteeism in the recent special commission report on the MBTA, is in arbitration with the transit agency over an order issued 20 months ago that sought to rein in the use of sick and leave time on days adjacent to holidays, including Christmas and July 4.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
State officials say the combination of human error and a software glitch caused the problems plaguing some Breathalyzers now. (Eagle-Tribune)
A 16-year-old boy riding a bicycle was shot in front of a Mattapan church yesterday at 6 pm. (Boston Herald)
MEDIA
The Boston Globe sends pizzas and praise to the Baltimore Sun newsroom. (Poynter)
Citizen oversight of the Boston police has little to do with the underlying problem. The behavior of the police is generally determined by training and what is expected of them. The reliance of any liberal democratic nation state — in this case, the good old USA — on the actual use of physical violence to enforce its policies whether domestic or foreign, is likely to provoke retaliatory behaviors. If the policies are directed toward a class (lower-lower) or caste (color), or another nation-state, it does not stop at the borders. People living in Boston will respond to what happens to people in other American cities, just as people who are immigrants have loved ones in Yemen who harbor no ill will to the USA. Does one have to get biblical to repeat the aphorism “They who live by the sword, shall die by the sword.” Violence begets violence. Especially when children are taught that safety comes at the end of a policeman’s gun. (They are taught this in practice in the Cambridge Public Schools) While at home I teach my children to beware of armed policeman, because I am forced to. If I arrested and handcuffed, I would probably loose my balance, fall, and suffer mortal injury. Are Cambridge police instructed in this danger. Do we all run greater risks in allowing them their judgement. Or do we run greater risks when they fail to follow approved procedures, even when the procedures were not designed for people who pick up floating cans of food on a flood (looting?). The numbers of police suicides after the New Orleans flood should be studied, Stop blaming the police, and start looking at the government that they are employed to protect from the citizenry.