KISSING THE BLUE BACKSIDE: Yoon hopes to pry Menino away |
First-term Boston city councilor Sam Yoon recently injected a double dose of confrontation and controversy into council proceedings when he helped stage-manage a demonstration by teenagers protesting Mayor Tom Menino’s $2.14 billion budget. Yoon hoped to add $5.1 million for additional youth programs and summer jobs. Not surprisingly, the effort failed when the council, by a vote of nine to four, approved Menino’s budget. Still, we think Yoon’s efforts were well worth the smoke they generated.For the second year in a row, Boston’s poor, working-class, and largely minority neighborhoods are ablaze with gunfire: shootings occur at an average rate of more than one per day, and the two-year murder toll sits at 144, the highest in ten years. And, if it’s possible to make this shocking news even more depressingly unacceptable, police successfully solve less than a third of all homicides.
The protesting kids, who brandished placards proclaiming YOUR $$$ OR OUR LIVES and warning DON’T WAIT TILL WE’RE DEAD, were not being dramatic. They were speaking the truth. And if the truth hurts, these days the truth is brutal — and deadly. Young people — and many of their elders, who survived violent neighborhoods in youth — face a greater likelihood of being wounded or killed by gunfire than at any other time in recent years. It’s about time people got pissed off.
Truth be told, in the budget just passed, the city increased the number of summer jobs available for young people by 478. And business and nonprofits have increased the number of summer positions they provide by 1000, bringing that total up to 5800. Responsible leaders know the situation is dire. The Republicans’ anti-poor, anti-working-class policies administered by President George W. Bush, in Washington, and Governor Mitt Romney, on Beacon Hill, are making a bad situation even more intolerable. That, however, is little comfort to the kids who, along with their parents, fear the incessant gunfire.
Those who were angered by Yoon’s protesters have to understand that this is no time for business as usual. They need to examine their consciences. They may be working hard, but are they doing enough?
Yoon’s demonstration was symbolic, but it was also symptomatic. The problems Boston faces go far beyond summer jobs for needy youth. And we’re not sure that Yoon and the rest of the council — not to mention Menino — are ready to face those facts.
City finances are strained, as the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a good-government, nonpartisan watchdog group, has repeatedly warned. Yet Boston must reinvent the way it delivers services and administers itself. Sad to say, we doubt that city officials have the guts to exercise the fiscal restraint that ongoing contract talks with unionized employees require. We hope we’re wrong. But Menino, a crafty and skilled backroom operator, is essentially a cautious man. There is little evidence to suggest that he’s willing to risk restructuring City Hall so he can do more with ever-tighter resources.
Nowhere is that deadly inertia more obvious than in his dealings with the police department, which is essentially held captive by its irresponsible and insensitive union.
In opposing adequate civilian review of police operations and actions, Menino kisses the blue backside of the union and citizens suffer.
