E-Mail This Article to a Friend Pell Mel Still going strong at 75, former Boston mayoral candidate Mel King reflects on a life of political activism BY TAMARA WIEDER

MEL KING IS keeping busy. Out of the spotlight, perhaps, but no less committed to the kinds of causes he’s built an activist life around: closing the racial achievement gap in the Boston Public Schools; securing jobs for people of color; giving a voice to the poverty-stricken. More than 20 years after his unsuccessful but groundbreaking campaign for mayor of Boston, the 75-year-old King is directing the South End’s Technology Center at Tent City, which provides community members free and low-cost access to computer-based information technology; working with the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts — a merging of the Massachusetts Green Party and the Rainbow Coalition Party, which King founded; and speaking at marches, rallies, and discussions on the issues closest to his heart.

Q: Are you surprised that no other person of color has made the kind of inroads in a mayoral campaign that you did in 1983 against Ray Flynn?

A: I don’t think so. I think one of the things that made a difference when I ran was, it was an open seat. I think that always creates the opportunity that running against an incumbent [doesn’t]. There hasn’t been an incumbent defeated here since I don’t remember when.

Q: I read a Boston Globe column that Adrian Walker wrote last year, and he said that your relationship — or lack thereof — with Mayor Menino may have kept you from "playing a more visible role in local issues." What do you think of that statement? And what is your relationship with Mayor Menino?

A: I don’t remember that article. Well, see, I think the first question is what kind of role do I want to play or am I playing, and whether a relationship with Menino is important to do that. Over the past few years we have tried to push him on the question of jobs, and whether folks of color get their share of jobs. And it’s not been that easy to get that to happen, even with Menino.

The question right now is on the schools. We don’t have any real voice, and any relationship [with the mayor] has to be one with the kind of integrity that deals with closing the achievement gap, which is the critical piece for me, since we don’t have an elected school board, which I think would be raising some different questions. So if you’re talking about playing a role, I’m not sure what Adrian would expect; all I want is the issues that impact this community to be dealt with, particularly since the mayor got a significant vote in the communities of color. What it means is, he takes that vote for granted, and doesn’t believe he has to deliver on the hard things, particularly with the schools. Right now, the folks in the community are interested in closing the achievement gap. What the mayor and some of the council members are interested in is bringing white people back into the system. Well, I think they don’t need an invitation to get back in; they live here, or if they don’t, they can easily move in. What is important is for them to recognize that if they were dealing with the students who are currently here, and their needs, that it would be a signal that the school system has a plan for educating everybody. But they don’t, and so having a relationship with someone who isn’t about those kinds of values doesn’t mean anything. I think that they don’t understand the incipient racism in a policy that ignores the children who are in front of you, and wants to bring and curry [favor with] white people. I think that’s a terrible basis for a relationship, with anybody.

Q: What are your thoughts on Governor Romney, and the direction he’s taking the state?

A: I think it’s unfair to talk just about Romney, because you have to talk about a Democratic-controlled legislature, which played a much greater role in putting the state into fiscal problems by giving money back to the wealthy. So what Romney’s doing is in part taking his cue from those folks.

Q: What do you think of the attempts by conservative groups like Black Ministerial Alliance to pressure black legislators not to support gay marriage?

A: I think they lost their way. I think they absolutely have forgotten the significance of putting into the Constitution discrimination. It’s interesting that there are legislators in the South who understand clearly in Georgia, for example, what it means to have lived under those discriminatory practices, and even those who disagree with gay and lesbian marriage are firmly opposed to any form of discriminatory practice in any Constitution. Yeah, I think they’ve lost their way on this issue.

Q: How do you get them to find their way back?

A: I don’t know. I think they have to ask themselves what they’re about. All I can do is forgive their lack of understanding, and their obvious homophobia.