Politics

Lewiston and Bates; Muhammad and Brenna

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Our daughter graduated from Bates College last month, 50 years after Lewiston, Maine had its moment in the national spotlight as the location of the second heavyweight title fight between Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali. Graduation was a special time marked by ceremony, plenty of emotion, and good old-fashioned parent pride. Brenna was recognized by Bates for being particularly involved in the Lewiston community during her four years there. She involved herself through the Harward Center and helped to coordinate Project StoryBoost, a volunteer led program that had Bates students reading to early elementary aged kids in the Lewiston public schools.

These days in Lewiston some of those kids are young Somalis named Muhammad. In 1965, that would have been unimaginable. Then local news accounts of the Ali-Liston fight used the name Cassius Clay to describe the fighter that had recently converted to the Nation of Islam. Lewiston, and much of white America, could not accept the change.

In 2001, the first Somali immigrants arrived in Lewiston after escaping a dangerous environment in their homeland. Soon many other Somalis followed. Before long, it became a full-blown crisis with the then-mayor issuing a call for the Somalis to stop coming. Bates College and many others took the lead on welcoming the city’s newest residents in the face of growing hostility. Just fourteen years later, real progress has been made. Somalis have opened businesses along Lisbon Street, work in increasingly visible jobs in the hospitality industry, and have steadily increased their participation in the civic life of this formerly predominately white working class city.

Much more remains to be done. Somali children enter an underresourced school system still ill-equipped to accommodate their needs. Until fairly recently, it was impossible to find a children’s book in the Lewiston area that featured a Muslim character or pictured a woman wearing a hijab. Thanks to Bates professor Krista Aronson and children’s book creator Annie Sibley-O’Brien, the Bates College Picture Book Project now features hundreds of books published in the United States since 2002 with characters of color.

Some whites in Lewiston still are suspicious of the Somalis. Cultural divides abound.

But Lewiston has changed a lot since 1965 and changed for the better. Baxter Brewing and a LL Bean call center now call Lewiston home. The city rejected a gambling referendum In 2011 that would have brought a casino to the Bates Mill complex. Instead, Bates College is free to ponder what an investment in downtown Lewiston might look like for the school. Dorm. Offices. Museum. Community space.

It’s challenging for a small liberal arts college with just 1,700 students to make a significant economic impact in its local community. Bates has done a good job in the last decade of building strong ties to Lewiston and to the Somali population. Now is the time for Bates to take the next step and invest in downtown Lewiston, home to many Somalis. Such a commitment would signal a lasting partnership between an elite institution and its working class host.

Good neighbors

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What makes a good neighbor? Someone you can rely on in a pinch? Someone that will keep an eye on your house while you’re away? The type of person you would invite over for a beer and a barbeque?

What about a neighbor who will support an affordable housing “monstrosity” when others in the immediate vicinity of said development are opposed? Certainly, he can’t be a good neighbor.

That was me tonight. Tonight was hard. It was tough. It is always tough to be the lone voice in a public hearing. But when a dozen of your fellow townspeople are pouring their hearts out to the Board of Appeals about how this particular 90 unit mixed income development will destroy their quality of life, it is especially difficult.

They are wrong, of course. Well, not wrong on all fronts but their predictions of doom will not come to pass should this development get built. Studies and 40 years of experience with Chapter 40B in Massachusetts prove that predictions from critics (almost always abutters) never come to pass. There are almost always less children in the public schools than opponents claim. Traffic somehow manages to flow despite dire forecasts of gridlock and accidents. Trees grow, wetlands survive, and people adapt.

It won’t be the same, of course, but hardly anything ever is the same. And change can often mean positive change. It looks like the hospice on Randolph Avenue in Milton not far from the proposed 40B is a positive change. St. Elizabeth’s old rectory was a deteriorating eyesore that did nothing for the town or the property value of its neighbors. Goodness knows we all will welcome the change when and if the Hendries site is ever redeveloped.

But it is tougher when turkeys and deer occupy the woods surrounding the proposed site. It is harder to find the positive change. But 23 affordable apartments renting from $1,100 to $1,600 to households of modest means is a positive change in Milton. Moving the needle on the state’s Subsidized Housing Inventory from 4.9% to 5.8% with just one development is a positive change. Moving ever closer to joining towns like Canton, Dedham, Cohasset, Lexington, and Concord that have reached 10% on the state’s SHI is a positive change.

Tonight was hard. Some of the arguments made by opponents were over the top. “We will all have blood on our hands” if this development is approved, said one neighbor suggesting that people will die in traffic accidents due to the development. Route 28 is indeed a dangerous stretch of road and people do die in traffic accidents on that road each year. But implying that public officials (state and local) will have blood on their hands if this development is approved is demagoguery at its worst.

Police won’t enforce local traffic laws in the vicinity of the proposed development because “a source inside the department” tells Jonathan Hall (of WHDH-TV and a neighbor to the proposed 40B) that Milton backed off because of a Globe spotlight series on the racial imbalance of traffic stops in town several years ago. He went on to say that a disproportionate number of Blacks were being stopped “on their way to Blue Hill Ave.” Interesting sourcing on this story for someone who makes his living reporting the news. Also interesting given that both my wife and I have been deterred from violating the traffic laws by the presence of the same police department on the streets Mr. Hall claims that they don’t visit.

All of the criticisms weren’t over the top. Many expressed concern about fire truck access, school bus access, and pedestrian access to bus stops. Very legitimate concerns that the developer either has or will need to address. Addressing the housing affordability crisis in greater Boston happens on the ground in a seeming endless number of hearings like what happened tonight in Milton. Progress is slow and it is hard.

Go Irish!

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For my entire life, a 20+ point win for the Irish meant one thing. Notre Dame football had beat up on Navy, Pitt, Purdue or, every once in awhile, USC. Go Irish.

Today, media outlets are reporting that voters in Ireland overwhelmingly passed – by a 24 point margin – a referendum to legalize same-sex marriage. Go Irish, indeed. Ireland. Catholic Ireland.

It has been amazing to watch this latest civil rights movement. Public opinion has shifted so rapidly on the issue that even many gay marriage advocates can hardly believe it. And now, heavily Catholic Ireland has voted 62%-38% in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage over the objections of Catholic bishops but with the votes of millions of church-goers.

“I think this is a moment that rebrands Ireland to a lot of folks around the world as a country not stuck in tradition but that has an inclusive tradition,” said Ty Cobb, the international director of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Rebranding. Come to Ireland not just for the pubs and beauty and golf but because we are inclusive and concerned about equal rights for all. Run with that, Irish Tourist Board.

While Irish voters were preparing to go to the polls, my daughter and I took in after all the terrible things I do, a new play at the Huntington Theater by A. Rey Pamatmat. The play is beautifully written and acted and well worth seeing. It portrays how difficult it still is to grow up gay in America in 2015.

There is a line in the play that perhaps offers the most hope for progress. The Filipina shop owner discloses that it was her Catholic priest that tells her to just love her gay son. Don’t ignore it. Don’t try to change him. Don’t torture him. Just love him.

Activists and judges have led the way on gay marriage. But now millennials are convincing their parents and barriers are falling across the globe. Parishioners in Ireland have voted. Pope Francis is setting a new tone.  Is it impossible to imagine a gay marriage in a Catholic church in the future?