1979 – White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. More anniversaries.
Mission Hill residents address concerns to university officials
by Jenna Duncan, Huntington News Staff – 5/21/10
About 50 Mission Hill residents attended Northeastern’s Community Conversation at the Mission Church Thursday evening. The heated audience made it clear that until the university follows through with its master plan to build two more dorms, it would not approve an extension.
These messages were relayed to Larry Brophy, associate director of government relations, Bob Gittens, vice president for public affairs, Mike Armini, vice president for external affairs and Jack McCarthy, senior vice president of administration and finance. The four men representing Northeastern had prepared a presentation, but they didn’t get far before they were interrupted by the audience.
Members of the community, including Massachusetts State Representative Jeffrey Sanchez and City Council President Mike Ross, insisted the university has not followed through on plans such as the construction of Building K or taken action on community demands and promises for the past three years.
“The commitment was that you weren’t going to look at academic, research or office space until you had at least [built] those three dorms, and that was the commitment,” said Patricia Flaherty, a resident who has lived in Mission Hill for 27 years. “Until you meet your priorities from the last negotiation, we don’t want to talk about new needs that the institution has.”
Report critical of colleges’ risk-taking
By Beth Healy – Globe Staff / May 21, 2010
Large endowments like those at Harvard University and Dartmouth College took on too much risk and helped fuel Wall Street’s meltdown, according to a new report, which charges that such schools threatened their financial stability by abandoning their historic mission to preserve assets.
The heavy risk-taking that yielded billions of dollars in profits while markets were going up failed during the financial collapse of 2008 and 2009, according to the report, issued yesterday by the Center for Social Philanthropy in Boston.
“By embracing the high-risk model, you end up embracing volatility,’’ said the report’s author, Joshua Humphreys, a Harvard history lecturer. The earlier investment gains, he said are “an illusion if then, on the downside, the volatility requires such gross austerity measures.’’
Harvard University, whose endowment plunged 27 percent to $26 billion in the school year that ended last June, fired workers, froze pay, and cut budgets — and issued new debt — to deal with its sudden drop in cash flow from the endowment. It also shelved an ambitious plan to expand the campus into Allston.
Humphreys’s study, partially financed by the Service Employees International Union, also examined the endowments of Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gov. Patrick to meet with Muslim-American community
By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff – May 21, 2010
Governor Deval Patrick is planning to attend an event this weekend in Boston with hundreds of members of the Muslim-American community, who are hoping to learn his position on issues that concern them, organizers said.
The event, which is expected to draw 1,000 people, is slated for 4 p.m. Saturday at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Boston’s Roxbury section.
Bilal Kaleem, executive director of the Muslim American Society of Boston, said his group organized the event in partnership with the Islamic Council of New England and 25 other Muslim institutions and mosques.
The event comes at the end of a three-month-long civic engagement campaign, Kaleem said. After more than 15 community meetings surveying more than 500 Muslims, activists said they found that the community’s concerns included the treatment of Muslims by law enforcement, a lack of awareness of Muslim culture in schools, and a desire to be recognized as a legitimate constituency.
Boston announces plans for bike lanes on Mass. Ave.
By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff – May 21, 2010
Boston and state officials have announced plans to install bike lanes on Massachusetts Avenue, a key downtown artery, from Boston Medical Center to Symphony Hall.
The five-foot-wide lanes will be added as part of an $18 million reconstruction of the avenue, the mayor’s office said The project will be 80 percent federally-funded and 20 percent state-funded. Plans call for it to be completed by fall 2011.
“This is a big win for Boston’s biking community,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in a statement. “Massachusetts Avenue is one of the busiest and most heavily traveled streets in our city and this project provides an opportunity to accommodate all modes of transportation without compromising safety.”
The new bike lanes were announced at the Boston Bike Festival, the final event of the first statewide bike week.
Looking for new guide to the Roxbury they love – Nonprofit historical agency seeks new leader, funding
By Meghan E. Irons – Globe Staff / May 21, 2010
Marcia Butman is leaving the house she built, the one with open doors to suburban families who had not otherwise set foot in a place like Roxbury.
Her “house’’ is Discover Roxbury, an organization that for 15 years has hosted excursions to Roxbury’s art galleries, hidden orchards, and historic landmarks in an effort to build community pride and break down race and class stereotypes.
Butman is stepping down, leaving a pall of concern that the bridges the organization built in the last decade and a half could crumble. “We are worried that when she leaves this will just die,’’ said board member Rodney Singleton.
Since its founding, Discover Roxbury has been changing the way people from across the state view Roxbury and even how Roxbury views itself. Its trolley, bike, and foot tours have opened a window into Dudley Square, Highland Park, and Blue Hill Avenue.
And those who tour the sites by trolley, van, or bike come back to dine, shop, and boost Roxbury’s cultural night life. The group helped to create the Roxbury Cultural Network and is working with Roxbury experts to compile a comprehensive history of the neighborhood.
Shaw’s strikers borrow from history – March inspired by farm actions in ’60s
By Katie Johnston Chase – Globe Staff / May 21, 2010
When striking Shaw’s warehouse workers embark on a five-day march this weekend to draw renewed attention to their nearly three-month fight against the supermarket company, they will also be evoking the civil rights and farm workers’ marches of the 1960s.
“It’s interesting that the leaders are turning to the history of social movements to find tactics that will attract public attention,’’ said James Green, a labor historian at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “Historically, of course, this was very common and often very effective.’’
Marches like this don’t take place very often anymore, but drastic action is necessary to get the public’s attention, organizers said. The 300 warehouse workers walked off the job on March 7, largely over rising health care costs, and the union has been holding pickets at about 16 local Shaw’s stores ever since.
“You can’t win a strike these days, generally speaking, just walking around on a picket line,’’ said Russ Davis, executive director of Jobs With Justice, which helped plan the march.
The march will go a long way to dramatize the work stoppage, he said: “Frankly, 12 weeks into a strike, what’s the news? They’re still on strike.’’
‘Kiss’ a celebration of life, love
By Louise Kennedy
Globe Staff / May 21, 2010
Craig Lucas’s “Prelude to a Kiss,’’ now at the Huntington Theatre Company, is a fable as well as a play. And because so many plays invite us to contemplate the passage of time, it’s not surprising that the moral should be: Life is precious and time is short. Don’t waste either one.
A moral, you see, does not have to be news. But to move us, it must be enacted with delicacy and precision. And that this production does, both in Lucas’s writing and in Peter DuBois’s carefully attuned but exuberant staging. Lucas urges us to celebrate life and love; DuBois shows us how it’s done.
The story is a simple one, and you may already know it — the play premiered in 1988, became a film, and was revived on Broadway in 2007. (Lucas revised the script slightly for that revival; the changes, which the Huntington incorporates, update some minor details and thereby leave the essential fairy-tale timelessness intact.) Peter and Rita meet, fall in love, and quickly decide to marry. On their wedding day, an old man kisses the bride — and somehow their souls change places. Talk about “for better, for worse.’’
Complications ensue, of course — no play without complications — but it’s the simplicity of this central moment that gives the play its fabulistic quality. And DuBois, with help particularly from sound designer David Remedios, imbues the kiss with the magic it needs to have if we’re to accept the transformation that follows.
