Friday, August 01, 2003  
Feedback
 Clubs TonightHot TixBand GuideMP3sBest Music PollGuide to SummerThe Best 
Music
Movies
Theater
Food & Drink
Books
Dance
Art
Comedy
Events
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
New This Week
News and Features

Art
Astrology
Books
Dance
Food & Drink
Movies
Music
Television
Theater

Archives
Letters

Classifieds
Personals
Adult
Stuff at Night
The Providence Phoenix
The Portland Phoenix
FNX Radio Network

   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Perception versus reality in District Four
Is Yancey as bad as everyone says? Is Ezedi as good? Of course not.
BY SUSAN RYAN-VOLLMAR


THERE IS A CERTAIN predictability to Boston City Council elections. Incumbents usually win. Challengers almost always disappoint. But every once in a while, a race comes along that defies these expectations. We’ve got one now in Dorchester and Mattapan, which make up District Four of the Boston City Council.

There are more issues packed into Egobudike Ezedi’s challenge of incumbent district councilor Charles Yancey than we saw in all the 2001 city elections combined: young versus old, New Boston versus Old Boston, identity politics, the potential involvement of a US congressman, the potential involvement of the mayor, the potential involvement of city-council president Michael Flaherty and District Councilors Maureen Feeney and Rob Consalvo. Best of all? There’s a buzz about the campaign. The Boston Globe, which covers city-council elections only sporadically, has already published three pieces on the race. The Dorchester Reporter is ramping up its coverage. Take a drive through the district and you’ll see campaign signs everywhere. "This is the race that everyone’s talking about," says Dorchester Reporter managing editor Bill Forry, "even people who don’t live in the district."

Although Yancey has been challenged in all but one of his 10 re-election campaigns, this one is different: Ezedi could win. The 30-year-old Baptist minister is a former aide to Congressman Michael Capuano. From 1999 until April of this year, when he took a leave of absence to campaign full-time, Ezedi worked as a district representative for Capuano in the communities of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. In other words, Ezedi has spent the last four years in Yancey’s back yard, attending community meetings, delivering constituent services, and making contacts with political activists.

On the surface, Yancey and Ezedi seem to have much in common: both are African-American men who grew up in Boston. But scratch below that and the differences become clear. Yancey can trace his family roots in Boston back 100 years; one of his grandmothers remarried later in life to a man whose father had been a member of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the only all-black regiment to fight in the Civil War. Ezedi is the US-born son of Nigerian immigrants. Yancey went to Boston public schools from kindergarten through high school. Ezedi attended public school as well, but in Needham, through the METCO program. Yancey’s political and social beliefs have been shaped by the secular struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. Ezedi’s stem from his work in the ministry.

The most relevant difference between the two, however, is how they regard the responsibilities of a Boston city councilor. Yancey is succinct on the topic: "The job of a city councilor is to make public policy for the City of Boston, and that’s serious business.... It’s not the job of the city councilor to fill potholes, it’s the mayor’s job." Ezedi says this: "The average voter may not be able to tell this, but the hub of the city council is to address basic constituent services — potholes being filled, street signs being replaced, abandoned cars being removed. These are all the things that increase the quality of life. The average person doesn’t want you to change the world, they just want their trash picked up when it’s supposed to be picked up."

In other words, we’ve got a real race on our hands.

CHARLES YANCEY is annoyed. He wants to know why the Boston Phoenix is suddenly interested in writing about his upcoming race against Ezedi. When, Yancey demands, has the Phoenix ever written about his city-council races?

I remind him that the Phoenix always covers city elections. We run articles on the races. We publish a voter’s guide before the election. And we make endorsements. Heck, we even told readers to vote for Yancey the last time around. He calms down a little, but he’s still peeved. He’s just greeted me in his City Hall office, and he hasn’t yet sat down. He wants to know if I’ve seen the Globe’s coverage of the race. I have. Thus far, the paper has published three stories about the District Four race, each of which has focused primarily on Ezedi. It’s a lot of ink for one race in general and one candidate in particular. And Yancey’s really annoyed about that.

"I’m not too pleased with the Globe," Yancey says, finally taking a seat. "For the record, I’m 54 years old, not 59. And I live in Dorchester, not Mattapan. But at least they fixed that mistake." Yancey’s referring to two pieces that ran on the front of the paper’s City & Region section, one in April and one in June. Both gave Yancey’s age as 59. Having five years tacked onto one’s age is bad enough, but it’s particularly vexing given that the race between Yancey and Ezedi is being framed, in part, as young versus old. Even worse, however, is that Yancey was identified in the June piece as living in Mattapan, not Dorchester, which is a little bit like saying South Boston councilor James Kelly — who, like Yancey, was first elected to the council in 1983 — is from the South End. (The Globe ran a correction.)

Beyond those mistakes, however, Yancey is more upset with the tone of all three articles. As he puts it: "The point I’m trying to make is that the Globe has a very transparent bias against the community that I represent in general and me in particular.... [Ezedi] doesn’t have a track record, why all the fuss on this race ... which they’ve ignored in the past? It’s almost like the Globe has become an extension of my opponent’s campaign."

Yancey may sound a little paranoid. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a point. The April 26 piece in particular is so flattering to Ezedi that the candidate has been handing out copies of the article when he goes door knocking in the district. All that said, however, maybe Yancey should be more worried than annoyed. Ezedi hasn’t just charmed Globe reporters. He’s caught the eye of City Councilors Maureen Feeney and Rob Consalvo, both of whom attended Ezedi’s official campaign-kickoff party last Saturday. He even has city-council president Michael Flaherty — who sent an aide from his office to the party — rooting for him.

Long-time watchers of Dorchester politics like Forry think Yancey is in the race of his life: "He hasn’t hustled in a long time."

EGOBUDIKE EZEDI (most people call him Ego) is wearing a beautiful dark suit with a vest and tie. No disrespect to Yancey or Ezedi’s old boss, Congressman Capuano, but Ezedi looks too fabulous, particularly with his boxy black eyeglasses, to be a politician. He is rocking ever so slightly back and forth, occasionally nodding his head. Nation of Islam minister Don Muhammad is addressing a crowd of about 200 that circle out from the podium at which Muhammad is standing. "There’s an African saying," Muhammad says. " ‘Old men for counsel, young men for war.’ We need people in city council who will go to war for our district." The crowd calls out its approval.

The occasion is Ezedi’s official campaign kickoff, which took place last Saturday at his Blue Hill Avenue headquarters. But the event feels more like a religious revival than a political rally. It begins with an invocation and ends with a benediction. It’s easy to understand why some community activists who see Ezedi as a man of much potential are nonetheless nervous about where, exactly, he stands on social issues. Is Ezedi, as Union of Minority Neighborhoods executive director Horace Small puts it, "part of that whole black-clergy social-conservative non-progressive school of new-generation leadership, which is more interested in fixing potholes than dealing with issues of fairness and justice?"

The campaign kickoff doesn’t allay any fears. Ezedi is introduced by Reverend John M. Borders III of the Morning Star Baptist Church, who, perhaps anticipating these concerns, says Ezedi is a "man of profound spirituality but not religious bigotry." When Ezedi finally speaks, he tells the crowd, "I would not have gotten here to this point without the help of God." It is a heartfelt and humble remark. Certainly one that’s difficult to imagine being delivered by any other Boston-born-and-bred politician. That said, it’s also hard to imagine a city-council candidate in a district that has long re-elected a politician with impeccable social-justice credentials doing something else that Ezedi does. When the candidate hits on the theme of district diversity and runs through a lengthy list of groups active in the community, conspicuously absent is any mention of Jews and gays.

"It was an oversight," Ezedi says three days later.

Ezedi, who during a previous interview had noted how much he values the sacrament of marriage and who, with his wife, Melissa, co-directs the Morning Star Baptist Church’s Marriage Enrichment Fellowship, is asked whether he supports gay people’s right to marry. "I support civil unions," he says. "I definitely support civil unions. I support equal rights. If you’re going to choose to live that lifestyle, then you ought to have the same rights when you’re talking about benefits." By way of further explanation, he adds: "It may sound corny, but it’s an issue of love. It doesn’t matter who you are. My cousin is in jail right now for committing a crime I don’t accept. I don’t approve of the fact that he knocked off a drugstore for OxyContin, but I still love him."

Is Ezedi comparing gay people with criminals? "Of course not!" he says. "What I’m saying is that … for me, it’s a matter of love." How that will play out if he becomes a city councilor is simple, he adds: "You cannot ignore a group of people that have a voice in your district or in the city, period. That, for me, is the highest form of discrimination. What I’m saying is that I am supportive of civil unions and I’m supportive of equal rights for gays and lesbians who do want to join together in that way. It’s a human-rights issue. Gay rights is a human-rights issue."

To be fair, it should be noted that Boston city councilors don’t exactly have a say in granting same-sex couples full marital equality. But the council has played a significant role in pushing the agenda of gay-and-lesbian equality forward. In the mid-1990s, under Boston Herald columnist and former city councilor Tom Keane’s leadership, the body pushed through a domestic-partnership ordinance that was eventually signed by the mayor.

It would also be fair to point out, as Capuano notes, that Ezedi worked "in one of the most diverse" areas of his congressional district and "I never heard a single complaint about him, and that’s not an exaggeration." If Ezedi holds conservative views rooted in religion, Capuano adds, "They never got in the way of his doing his job. And I never saw them, if you want the truth." Besides which, Capuano adds, making sure trash is picked up "is not a conservative or a liberal issue. There is no liberal or conservative way to do 99 percent of the work a city [councilor] does."

Finally, it would be misleading not to point out just how much the people who get to know Ezedi come to love him. Take Peter Sasso, an openly gay resident of Melville Park who attended Ezedi’s kickoff rally. "I’ve spoken with him before on these [gay] issues," Sasso says, and Ezedi’s heart and mind are in the right place.

And then there are the city councilors who showed up for the rally, though neither has made a formal endorsement in the race. Consalvo, who worked closely with Ezedi when Ezedi was a congressional aide, says, "He asked me to stand with him today and wish him well, and I was glad and proud to do it."

Adds Feeney, who also came to know Ezedi through his work for Capuano: "He’s just an awesome person. As people get to know him, they’re going to be so impressed with him."

There’s a lot in Ezedi’s background that’s impressive. He grew up in Codman Square, one of the more politically active corners of District Four. (Ezedi’s father bought the family’s house from former city councilor Larry DiCara — it’s interesting to note now that at one time the address, 311 Ashmont Street, was associated with primarily white Neponset, and now it’s considered part of primarily black Codman Square.) At Needham High School, where he was one of just 12 students of color out of a class of 250, he was voted class president. He holds a dual degree in psychology and sociology from Brandeis University (he did some of his undergraduate work at UMass Boston). He’s currently on a break from his studies in theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, located in Hamilton. He’s an associate minister at the Morning Star Baptist Church, where he works under Reverend Borders. And then there’s his work for Capuano, who says of the candidate: "I don’t think I know anybody who is more committed to helping their neighbors than Ego Ezedi."

But this isn’t what makes Ezedi so dangerous to Yancey. No, what makes Ezedi dangerous is the experience he’s had and the contacts he’s made as a congressional aide, coupled with his passion for the game. "I love this!" Ezedi exclaims as he makes his way down Tremont Street during a door-knocking excursion through Melville Park. "I truly love this!" And it certainly looks like he’s enjoying himself. He calls out to people he already knows, including one woman who’s sitting on a second-floor porch. "Just enjoying the sunshine?" he asks. She nods her head and then warns him she’s not coming down to answer her door, as her next-door neighbor just has, if he rings her bell. "You stay right where you’re at," Ego smiles. "I know where you’re at anyway!"

Around the district, Ezedi’s green-and-white campaign signs already rival Yancey’s in terms of volume and placement. For instance, there’s an Ezedi sign on Bob Casper’s front lawn, which is right around the corner from Yancey’s home. Casper is politically active in the sense that he votes in every election, including district-council races. But until Ezedi ramped up his campaign for city council, Casper had never volunteered for a candidate. Now he collects signatures and delivers campaign signs — whatever Ezedi’s campaign spokesman, Jack Kowalski (a former aide to Mayor Ray Flynn who’s re-entering politics via Ezedi’s campaign and who also happens to live across the street from Casper), asks him to do. So what made the difference? Ezedi attended this past June’s annual Codman Square House Tour, which Casper has helped organize since its inception seven years ago. "Ego came and greeted people at the door, saying, ‘Thank you for coming,’ which is more than what Charles has ever done," says Casper. "I called Charles up and told him [my support for Ego] was nothing personal. I like him as a person, but we need some new blood. I just don’t think Charles cares that much anymore."

 

page 1  page 2 

Issue Date: July 25 - August 1, 2003
Back to the News & Features table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend







about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | feedback | work for us

 © 2000 - 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group