The Roxbury paradox

Why one of the city's most disenfranchised neighborhoods has one of its juiciest political races

by Ben Geman

It's not hard to see why Boston's District Seven needs a strong city councilor. The district, which includes all of Roxbury and parts of Dorchester, the Fenway, and the South End, is one of the city's poorest; the 1990 census showed Roxbury's median income lagging about $10,000 below the citywide average. Anyone who's experienced the traffic tie-ups in Lower Roxbury or breathed in the fumes from the old number 49 buses that still rumble down Washington Street, 12 years after the elevated Orange Line came down, can see there are real transportation needs as well.

Saunders makes the grade It's clear that Gareth Saunders is looking forward to taking some time off when his third term as the Seventh District's city councilor expires at the end of the year. "Just travel, see the world a little," he says of his immediate plans. "I'll go all over, go to Europe, the Caribbean, maybe California." After that, he's considering a number of new career paths, including business or divinity school, consulting on US-African trade, or working in corporate-government relations for a private firm. But before he does any of that, Saunders has a few things to say to whoever takes his seat. "One major thing is increasing the district's political power, and one way to do that is to increase the number of voters that participate," says Saunders, who declines to say which candidate he may support. "[And] he or she must also build up an infrastructure of support and must have accountability to that support." Here's another piece of advice from Saunders: don't kowtow to Mayor Menino or Jimmy Kelly. He never did, and that's one of his greatest accomplishments, he says: "I think my legacy would be that I was independent and in no one's pocket. I have always been able to speak for what I believe in, and I believe that made a difference." Not everyone saw that as an effective strategy. Sure, it was laudable that he positioned himself as a liberal alternative to the backward racial politics of Jimmy Kelly. But critics say the points he scored symbolically may have come at the expense of tangible results. "Has he been effective? If you mean, can you look at buildings he got built or public-infrastructure improvements or the number of people who got jobs -- if that's how you define success -- then the answer is no," says Boyce Slayman, a political strategist and former executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers. "Has he adequately represented the community in terms of raising the issues of affordable housing, economic development? I'd say yes." What was lost, adds Slayman, was the chance to benefit from reaching out to a mayor looking for allies in communities of color. Saunders, of course, sees things differently. He points, among other things, to the success he and other leaders had in getting Northeastern University and the Boston Redevelopment Authority to incorporate more affordable units for neighborhood residents into a plan for student housing in Lower Roxbury. At the same time, he wishes he'd done more to help district residents find work on city development projects. But when it comes to the way he played -- or didn't play -- council politics, he wouldn't change his approach. "I earnestly and honestly cared about the people I have served," he says. "I give myself a nice report card." The grade? "B-plus."

The latest challenge is the city's decision to abandon race as a criterion in public-school assignments, which has parents in this mostly minority district worried that an already unsatisfactory school system will leave their kids with even fewer choices.

But there are also encouraging signs emerging throughout District Seven -- successful businesses, strong civic groups, and promising development possibilities -- that require strong stewardship to flourish. But even good news brings risk -- in this case, of gentrification. In District Seven, as elsewhere in Boston, the hot housing market threatens to push long-time residents out and keep newcomers of modest means away.

What the district needs, in short, is an advocate. Someone who can operate inside City Hall and bring constituents' needs to bear on city policy -- whether through diplomacy, confrontation, or a blend of the two. Someone who can bring to these neighborhoods some of what South Boston gets from council president Jimmy Kelly, a politician so powerful that even Mayor Menino bends to his will at times.

Incumbent councilor Gareth Saunders, who after three terms is choosing not to run again, has not quite filled that role. Critics have charged that he has sacrificed effectiveness for principle in his thirst for challenging the council's conservative leaders, which include Kelly. Other forces have checked Saunders's influence even more, though. One of just two minority councilors, he's had nothing like Kelly's seniority, and he's been handicapped by abysmal voter turnout -- in the 1997 city election, about 20 percent of the district's voters made it to the polls, compared to 37 percent in the highest-turnout district.

Now, a dozen contenders are vying to replace Saunders in what could be the wildest race of a ho-hum election year. Where Saunders offered a singular vision -- that of a principled independent -- three of his most likely successors differ dramatically in both style and philosophy.

There's Julio Henriquez, a long-time activist who could become the city's first Latino councilor -- but who will have to answer questions about his ties to City Hall along the way. There's Chuck Turner, an old-school progressive organizer who would become the council's left flank, and who has already taken shots at Menino. And there's Tony Crayton, Saunders's predecessor, who, unlike Saunders, played an inside game -- and paid the price at the ballot box in 1993, when he went down to defeat amid charges that he'd lost touch with the voters.

For a district struggling to fulfill its promise, which vision should, and can, prevail?

The fighter

Chuck Turner's campaign literature tells you that he is BOLD, BALD, AND BRIGHT!!! And next to an icon of a lion, it says that he's a fighter. As recently as the early 1990s, he was arrested after demonstrating with his Greater Roxbury Workers Association, which fought to get Roxbury residents jobs on local construction sites.

The 59-year-old Turner, who now works as a domestic-violence counselor, has spent decades creating and working with progressive organizations -- not just the Workers Association but the Boston Black United Front; Operation STOP, which fought plans for the Inner Belt highway through Roxbury in the late '60s; and the Center for Community Action, a training ground for progressive organizers. Serving on the city council, he says, would be an extension of that work.

"My politics would be based on stimulating action at the community level," he says. "One of the responsibilities I'd see the office carrying would be to hold regular meetings with people in the community -- opportunities to explore what the issues are and organize people to come out to hearings and make their voices known. We could really create a process of blending our politics with our social and community life."

During a recent interview at the Silver Slipper restaurant, in Dudley Square, Turner gets so caught up in this vision that he ignores his lunch. "There is a real danger here," he says, stirring his iced tea with a straw. "People who have lived here and worked here and are serious about the community don't have the economic strength to compete."

Of the leading candidates, Turner is perhaps best poised to serve as a counterweight to Kelly. He's not afraid to take on Menino, either. "I think there has been an atmosphere that says we have a mayor who has been responsive, so let's not do things to make him angry -- and that's a self-
defeating process," Turner says.

The candidate's already come out swinging: one of the first steps his campaign took was writing an open letter to the mayor blasting the school committee's decision to eliminate race as a factor in the school-assignment plan. Elsewhere, Turner's agenda is a mix of the radical and the utilitarian. One modest goal would be to beef up enforcement of the Boston Jobs Ordinance (which he helped create), which requires construction companies to hire a certain number of city residents, women, and minorities for city projects. He'd also work to mandate domestic-violence sensitivity training for city, police, and Boston Housing Authority staff. On housing, he'd reach further, hoping to restore some form of rent control to help those hurt by the city's housing boom. Rent control may be his most quixotic battle. The very idea has been demonized on Beacon Hill since it was voted out in a statewide ballot question several years ago.

Turner's biggest claim to fame, however, may be his campaign manager: legendary South End activist Mel King is running Turner's campaign under the banner of the Rainbow Coalition, which King founded to support his celebrated but unsuccessful 1983 mayoral campaign.

The question is how much the district wants an activist in the King/Turner mold as its representative.

The also-runnings Turner, Crayton, and Henriquez may have been pegged as frontrunners in the free-for-all to replace outgoing District Seven councilor Gareth Saunders, but if you're prone to betting, you may want to skip this one. In a 12-person field, a few hundred votes could be enough to take a candidate into the finals. Though Crayton, Turner, and Henriquez may have the organization and/or name recognition to be obvious contenders, it's far too soon to count everyone else out. Roxbury businessman Roger Garvin, who's owned a Dudley Square hair salon and cosmetics supply house for decades, has been campaigning actively for months and may be a sleeper. At 55, Garvin says his years in business have given him the savvy to be effective in encouraging small businesses and attracting larger firms -- and, of course, jobs -- to the district. He'd also like to see other businesses adopt his practice of bringing students into the shop to learn. "By teaching students about real life, the business aspects and business opportunities, this is what will really stop the violence and the drugs," he says. "And, in the long run, they can make money." Also in contention are perennial candidates Roy Owens and Althea Garrison. Garrison comes to this race on the heels of her losing 1999 battle for the Fifth Suffolk state-rep seat in a special election, and her name recognition makes her a factor. And she has political experience -- on Beacon Hill. In 1992 she won a bizarre state-rep race when a technicality kept Fifth Suffolk incumbent Nelson Merced off the ballot, and she held the seat for one term. Elsewhere, candidate Tracy Litthcut may -- despite Henriquez's ties to Menino -- end up with City Hall support. The city's 37-year-old director of youth services and recreation says he wants to serve Roxbury from a different vantage point. "This is something I have felt in my heart for a number of years," he says, noting that attending funerals of city youth cut down by violence is part of what motivates him to try to take his youth-development and anti-violence skills to another post. Litthcut hopes for the mayor's blessing but says he doesn't represent an effort by the Menino machine to hand-pick the next councilor. "I have some people who work for the city working to help me," he says. "[But] people want to assume this is a City Hall type of push, and it is not at all." Litthcut isn't the only candidate familiar with City Hall. Kenneth Yarbrough, an aide to City Councilor Charles Yancey, is also making a run at the open seat. Other candidates -- long shots by most estimations -- include Scotland Willis, who recently launched a family-advocacy nonprofit called Boston Neighborhood Lifestyles; neighborhood activist Richard Masterson, who wants to address public-safety and transportation issues; teacher Hassan Ali Williams; and tenant activist Thelma Barros.

"Chuck's been good in the past and will be in the future," says one Roxbury-politics insider. "To the extent that there is a population out there that remembers the battles that Mel and Chuck have fought and want to recapture the glory and make it relevant to today's politics, he has a legitimate shot."

The player

"I was good at the politics of the City Council," says Tony Crayton, sitting on a bench in the shade of the Dudley Square bus station. "But I was a lousy politician. I spent too much time downtown.

"God will strike you down for pride and arrogance," he says, "and down I went."

That's the short version of the 50-year-old's brief stint on the Boston City Council. He was elected in 1991, and two years later he lost to Gareth Saunders by fewer than 100 votes.

A slightly longer version goes something like this: a promising up-and-comer, Crayton proved adept at wheeling and dealing, casting the decisive vote for Tom Menino (then a district councilor) in his quest for the council presidency that became his stepping stone to the mayor's office. In exchange, Menino made Crayton the chair of the influential ways-and-means committee.

But then Crayton alienated voters with his perceived reluctance to fight for a redistricting plan that would have added a third minority seat to the council -- and, as he admits, by spending more time in other councilors' offices than in Roxbury homes. That paved the way for the 1993 loss to Saunders, which was followed by a battle with alcohol and two more failed bids for the council.

"I suffered a severe depression," he says now. "I could not make sense of it. Yes, I boozed it up for a while, but I have long since gotten away from that.

"I had to get the bug out of my system. I was obsessed [with the loss]. It was not fair," he says. "I needed another chance, and that was the wrong reason for running."

Now, Crayton says he's again ready: trim and just slightly gray, he jokes about being ready to go after Roxbury's "enemies" as a new man: "I switched the wine for the blood, having been a Catholic."

Not that he's let go of the past entirely. He's still bitter about the allegations that he dropped the ball on redistricting. ("People just made the charge," he says. "No one bothered to ask me squat.") And a conversation with Crayton tends to loop back to his old days on the council, where he recalls his agility as an inside player, and to the city budget, which he says is the key to a councilor's power.

Crayton is still, to borrow from Al Gore, a "practical idealist," one who says getting what you want has as much to do with understanding what the other side wants as it does with being right.

"People are used to protest politics, thinking that effective leadership cusses out the mayor and the BRA when in fact those are the very people you have to work with," says Crayton, who is now a business consultant. "You will not get anywhere dogging the mayor, whining and crying racism all the time. Instead, get down to business."

Crayton, like his rivals for the seat, is focusing on schools, housing, and ensuring that the community benefits from development. He'd introduce legislation offering property-tax breaks in areas where development is driving up valuations, which he says would not only help homeowners but also give renters a break by giving landlords less incentive to raise rents.

He pledges, too, to focus on curriculum development in the district's schools. That's not something over which councilors are thought to have much control -- but Crayton reasons that because the city council controls the budget, everything is on the table. "When you hold the purse strings, everything is in your purview," he says. "All these issues are radically impacted by the budget process and by how the budget process works, knowing how to get the votes."

Not everyone thinks Crayton has what it takes. "I think Tony's time has come and gone," says one observer, adding that Crayton "was never able to articulate how that pragmatism would work for the benefit of the district as opposed to the benefit of himself." Another knock: that he has not kept up enough with the district to step back in.

But Crayton has anticipated that criticism. Arriving for a recent interview in Dudley Square, he announces a trip -- reporter in tow -- to the nearby Tropical Foods market, where store owner Ronn Garry materializes with praise for Crayton's help on a planned relocation and expansion into an abutting lot. "What's important to me is that Tony actively participates in meetings in the community and talks about community issues," says Garry. "More than any candidate I have seen since his term ended, Tony has been there, actively working."

Still, can he win? Crayton thinks so.

"I saw a crowded field," he says, "and because I like chess, I looked at it as a chess board, and saw a reasonable chance of pulling it off. As long as I address the issues of the past and present my vision for the future."

The builder

Julio Henriquez bumped into a couple of bike cops while he was out door-knocking last week, and the three made small talk about Gatorade. "We have to have cool drinks to keep us going when we ride these bikes," joked one officer. "Especially when we have to get off and chase someone." It was a pleasant exchange, and the two pedaled off. But make no mistake -- Henriquez, the man many see as the frontrunner in this race, is not all smiles when it comes to the Boston Police Department.

Henriquez, who lives in Dorchester, says he recently watched two plainclothes cops interrogate the relatives of his Hispanic neighbors -- for no other reason, he suspects, than their dark skin and out-of-state plates. "The cops had already made up their minds that something was wrong," he says. "It was a clear case of profiling."

Adding insult to injury, he says, is the absence of a civilian review board to which to take such a complaint in Boston. That's one of several things the 63-year-old would like to change about the city -- and he may get the chance. Henriquez, a community activist who coaches track at Roxbury's O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, was quick out of the blocks in this race: he began campaigning well before Saunders decided to quit. Also working in his favor is a solid support network assembled through years of work with groups such as the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), where he is a board member.

In vowing to challenge Saunders, Henriquez charged that the incumbent was out of touch with just such grassroots organizations. And it's that infrastructure he says he'd draw on to address pressing issues such as the district's affordable-housing needs. "You have to build coalitions," he says. "Know the power of coalitions." If Crayton would be an insider's insider, Henriquez would strive to be the glue binding the district's wealth of community organizations to City Hall.

"I don't think the city councilor can go out and dig foundations and lay them," he says, "but it's a city councilor's job to be the drum major that strikes up the band to make that happen."

Too close for comfort? The Bay State Banner's editorial page was not subtle. "One candidate who the voters should not support is Julio Henriquez," wrote the Banner, which serves the state's black community, on July 1. "He may be otherwise qualified, but with his wife in Mayor Menino's cabinet, there is a clear conflict of interest." The Banner's ringing anti-endorsement was one of the most pointed references yet to an issue that has followed Henriquez's campaign, which is well organized and strong enough that many consider him the frontrunner for the Seventh District seat. His wife is Sandra Henriquez, whom Tom Menino appointed in 1996 to head the troubled Boston Housing Authority. Now, the link has raised questions about the candidate's ability to remain independent of the mayor and deal fairly with the BHA. Is it a problem? To one potential colleague, the answer is a qualified no. "You just excuse yourself if there is an issue that raises a conflict," says Maura Hennigan, who represents Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, and whose father's tenure as register of probate overlapped with her council term in the early 1980s. "The issue of being married or being a family member [of a city official] should not penalize you. You are offering yourself as a public official. It's up to the constituents to make their judgment, to think, `Will this be a problem? Could he not exercise impartiality?' " Hennigan also points out that the housing authority is not under the council's direct jurisdiction, and it's true that councilors have no direct oversight of the BHA's budget or operations. Still, they do get involved in BHA affairs. In 1997, for example, the council held a hearing to address lead-paint removal at a South Boston housing development. Earlier this year, councilors passed a resolution asking the mayor to meet with workers at the Bromley-Heath development, a tenant-run complex taken over by the BHA. And constituent services -- the bread and butter of a city councilor's job -- of course involve residents of public housing. From the voters' perspective, though, those could be reasons to vote for someone with perceived ties to the Menino administration. When constituents who live in public housing have problems, there's no doubt Henriquez has the ear of the BHA head. And what's more, perhaps such a strong link to a high-level city official could help provide clout for his district. For his part, the candidate himself dismisses the issue as a distraction. "It seems like the only question anyone is interested in asking," Henriquez said recently in his Dudley Square campaign office. He says he would neither beg off a BHA issue nor be influenced by his wife's position. "My approach is to first hear my constituents, hear their concerns," he said. "It would be incumbent on me to do the same thing that other city councilors do for their districts -- call hearings, get the facts on the issues and air them out. "If I felt it was warranted, I would call the BHA to task on an issue," he adds. "I would have no difficulty."

Henriquez can claim a fair amount of credibility on housing issues, given that DSNI has created almost 300 units in Roxbury and Dorchester over the past dozen years. The irony, though, is that as he makes housing a top campaign priority, his marriage to Boston Housing Authority administrator Sandra Henriquez could be a campaign liability (see "Too Close for Comfort?", page 15). Some wonder whether he could be truly independent of Mayor Menino, or fairly approach BHA issues.

Henriquez, for his part, is noncommital. "I have a cordial relationship with Menino, no better or no worse since my wife was appointed by him," he says. "The only thing I hope to achieve is a working relationship. . . . He'll need my vote for things he wants, and I'll need him for things I want."

Still, Henriquez doesn't hesitate to use harsh words for the mayor. Menino, he charges, lacks follow-through, preferring to score press hits and then move on. His plan to create 2000 units of new housing by the year 2000, announced in January and now scaled back, is one example, Henriquez contends. "It's a nice number, matched to the year 2000, it sounds good, but they have no idea how to achieve it," he says. "As soon as reality sets in, they retreat."

Henriquez says that "reality," if he were councilor, would mean working with developers to bring jobs to the old South Bay incinerator site, working with residents to assure some community benefit when big stores such as Home Depot show up, and doing something about the waste-handling stations that pollute the Roxbury landscape. Above all, he says, he'd work to capitalize on the talent and ambition of the district's people. "A lot of people think that bringing wealth into a community means bringing rich people in," he says. "That's not how I look at it. I look at it as drawing investment into the community that creates wealth and enriches people by providing good jobs and providing people the opportunity to be
entrepreneurs."

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Henriquez's agenda is ambitious, but so are Crayton's and Turner's. And that's all to the good, say neighborhood leaders, who regard the district's future with a mix of hope and fear. For all Roxbury's problems, there's a lot of good news here. Crime is down. City officials, politicians, and residents are embarking on a master planning process that will guide land use and development in Roxbury. The booming economy and city policy have borne fruit for District Seven, with ambitious development planned in Lower Roxbury, many thriving businesses, and the planned movement of the Department of Public Health into Dudley Square.

Yet economic progress often comes with a price. "The low-income people are just getting moved out, and people with the bucks are coming in and pushing people further out and just taking over," says John Bowden, a 58-year-old resident of the Orchard Gardens housing development who has lived in Roxbury all his life. "There is still not enough [housing]. It's the same issue they're worried about in South Boston and the North End." And it's the issue he thinks Roxbury's next city councilor needs to tackle.

Accomplishing anything as a councilor, of course, will mean clearing plenty of obstacles -- perhaps the biggest of which, says Roxbury neighborhood activist Laura Younger, is the voter apathy that can weaken a politician's influence. But she's optimistic that apathy has started giving way to political muscle. The district is "the most diverse in the Commonwealth, and it's a proving ground for us to dramatically come together into the next century between races, ages, and incomes," she says. "Newcomers and people who have been here a long time -- we all have the opportunity to make progress."

"The city council can be a place to give residents a seat at the table and give them leverage," agrees Greg Watson, executive director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.

The number of candidates in this race "is a sign of an emerging political awareness on the part of folks in the area who for a long time were thought to be apolitical and apathetic," he adds. "With the success, and the fear that success has generated, there has been a political enlightenment. The fact that a number of people feel the importance of getting involved in this process is very encouraging."

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