Workers of the city, unite!

A couple of radicals find their way onto staid Boston's city-council ballot. Plus, party time in the race to replace Tom Keane, and the Red Sox face their foes.

by Ben Geman

The front-page photo in the July 27 Boston Herald, which showed North End city councilor Paul Scapicchio chasing a pesky flock of pigeons from a park, illustrates one view of the Boston City Council's function: if it keeps bird droppings off the public's benches, it's doing okay.

At-large candidate Andrea Morell's vision is rather more sweeping, if her campaign schedule is any indication. Catching up with the would-be councilor last weekend meant finding her at the Puerto Rican festival in Franklin Park. "I support Puerto Rican independence and the removal of the US naval base at Vieques," she says, "which is a big demand in Puerto Rico since a Puerto Rican was killed by stray fire from naval practice.

"And," she adds, "I support the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners from US jails."

If that sounds like a party line, well, it is. Though city-council races are technically nonpartisan, Morell is running under the banner of the Socialist Workers Party, organizing her effort out of the radical Pathfinder bookshop in Codman Square (one of several Pathfinder shops that the party runs). The 60-year-old Dorchester resident, who works as an assistant conductor on the commuter rail and is active in the United Transportation Union, won four percent of the vote when she ran on the SWP ticket in the Eighth Congressional District race last fall. Her political activism dates back to the civil-rights movement; her SWP membership, to Vietnam.

Morell is likely to win even fewer votes than she did in the congressional race, but she believes the campaign will be worthwhile if it gets her views into the public arena -- a common philosophy among small radical groups fielding long-long-shot candidates.

Morell isn't alone on the leftmost edge of the ballot. Daniel Kontoff, a ubiquitous Boston-Cambridge-Somerville activist who failed to submit enough valid signatures for a run two years ago, has squeaked through this time as an at-large candidate. Even if you don't know his name, you may know his alias: as Dan the Bagel Man, he dispensed bagels, radical literature, and news of upcoming protests outside the Park Street -- and later the Back Bay -- train station for several years, until the mid 1990s. These days, he's a common sight at local protests, concerts, and Food Not Bombs events. He's also been known to collar train passengers and interrogate them about the issues that concern him.

Of the two, Morell is more doctrinaire and less flashy. "I'm partisan to the working class," she says. "It's a [campaign] in the interests of the working class and a discussion among working people about the problems we face and what the source is. We say the source is capitalism."

The key to dealing with Boston's housing crisis and other problems of the late '90s, she believes, "is working people getting into politics, not just as individuals, but getting into politics 365 days a year, with picket signs, protests, strike solidarity; and being in a position to put together our own people's party, a labor party." Though this broad agenda is commendable, it seems a bit quixotic, given that she's running for a body with such limited clout. But, Morell says, "We can't understand the problems we face as residents of, say, Boston without starting from a broader view."

Kontoff is a lot looser, eschewing Morell's old-left discipline for a calls-'em-as-he-sees-'em approach. Asked to apply a label to his political philosophy, he says he's for people and democracy. The problem, he says, is that the government too often favors Wall Street's interests over the people's. "Boston's mayor and the city council work for the [richest] two percent," he says. But this not-so-unusual economic analysis is peppered with wackier statements. He wears his hair long, he explains, as a statement about the unfair suspicion with which long-haired men are viewed; people associate the look with serial killers, he says, even though most killers have short hair.

As councilor, Kontoff says, he'd push the city to divert resources from the Police Department into human services. The 39-year-old would also work to make the city greener -- more green space, more recycling, more pressure on companies not to pollute. And he'd like to see some relief from outrageous housing costs. "The city is here for the people," he said. "The majority are not rich. They are the poor, the struggling who cannot afford the rents. We need to get back into a rent-control mentality of rent you can afford. We have a lot of couch surfers."

He may be eccentric, but you don't have to be a socialist to know that's true.

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City-council races may be nonpartisan in theory, but the campaign to replace Councilor Tom Keane in District Eight, which includes the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the Fenway, and Mission Hill, could end up looking a lot like a clash between parties.

That's because Suzanne Iannella, the front-runner, is that rare thing in local politics: a Republican. And one of her strongest opponents, Alana Murphy, has been active in Democratic Party politics for years. If both make it through the preliminary, Murphy could turn the party issue to her advantage.

Iannella, a Back Bay real-estate broker who ran a near-miss campaign for an at-large seat in 1997, belongs to something of a local dynasty: her brother and her late father both served on the council (the room the council meets in is even called the Iannella Chamber). Murphy doesn't have that name recognition, but her service on the state Democratic Committee, ward committees, and the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus gives her plenty of credibility in political-activist circles. The former Fenway resident also once served as president of the Fenway Community Development Corporation and has worked with other local groups. "She reflects more of the community than Suzanne potentially does," argues Mimi Turchinetz, a party activist and friend of Murphy. "The thing about Alana is that she has a history. She has been around a long, long time."

Murphy is not the only candidate in the race who could give Iannella problems -- Beacon Hill's Mike Ross has also been active in Democratic circles, and he can count on some help from City Hall, where he was once an aide. But at 27, Ross doesn't have Murphy's roots or experience.

Of course, overcoming voters' familiarity with the Iannella name will be hard for anyone. All the same, points out UMass Boston pollster Lou DiNatale, "It's still a big problem being a big 'R' in a 'D' city.

"There's no real base for Republicans in Boston," he says.

Murphy, for her part, acknowledges that "the difference is in experience and vision, and part of that experience certainly comes from my Democratic Party activism." She sees her pledge to focus on affordable housing and public education as an extension of Democratic philosophy.

But Iannella, a state Republican Committee member and chair of the state's alcoholic-beverages control commission, argues that the race will turn not on party politics, but on issues such as rats, trash, and parking. Party affiliation is irrelevant, she says: "It's about solutions to the issues."

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Neither the Red Sox nor their critics got away with much on Wednesday, July 28, at the Boston Architectural Center, where the team held its first open meeting for Fenway residents on its plans for a new ballpark. The team scored some points with its preview but remained coy as ever about its financial goals, while opponents' commentary was mixed with so much hyperbole and gratuitous venom that the meeting had to be considered a draw.

Critics (including the Phoenix, which opposes the Sox' plan and would be displaced by the new park) have faulted the team for being a poor neighbor, and the idea of using taxpayers' dollars to help fund a $545 million park rubs plenty of people the wrong way. Fenway activist Jon Ball, who stood outside the BAC with an open briefcase and a sign that read MAKE YOUR CORPORATE WELFARE DONATIONS HERE, believes it's an outrage even to consider it until every schoolchild in Boston has a decent place to play baseball. "Maybe then I would think about tax dollars for corporate luxury boxes so fat cats can watch millionaires play," he said.

Still, even some skeptics "remain willing to be persuaded," as Fenway Community Development Corporation board member Steve Wolf put it. CDC president Lisa Soli doesn't reject the idea of a new park in the Fenway, for example, even though she objects that the proposed location would interfere with the group's desire for small-scale mixed-use development along Boylston Street.

Red Sox architect Alex Krieger, however, promised that the area around the new park would flourish thanks to infrastructure improvements and better transportation management. "Imagine a Boylston Street with no parking lots or very few, with wider sidewalks and trees planted along it," he said.

That kind of talk seemed to persuade some neighbors. "This park is aging, as I am, and I hope to live to see the opening of the new park," said Elizabeth Dooley, who has lived in the area for 43 years, to loud applause. "I hope the new park is not met with anger."

Too late for that. "We will work together to stop this thing," said Fenway resident Mike Jasko. "You are not going to get away with it."

When the militant Fenway Action Coalition's Peter Catalano took to the microphone to question Red Sox community-relations director Maureen Bleday about the team's plans for transportation and parking, he became so aggressive that he was booed down. "You don't know your ass from your elbow," said Catalano. "You are bullshitting."

Classy. But some of the bad blood may stem from the team's own disingenuousness. To hear the Red Sox tell it, they're a benevolent civic group that just happens to field a baseball team. Talk of their real motives -- they want to add new corporate luxury boxes and presumably boost the team's value -- was not on the meeting's agenda. It's defensible for the Sox to want to line their own pockets and benefit the Fenway as well. Why won't they come right out and say that's what they're after?

Until they do, skepticism is unlikely to abate. "We have a housing crisis, a school crisis, an open-space crisis," said landscape architect Shirley Kressel, a Back Bay resident. "I am not sure that we have a baseball crisis."

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.