Establishment press

In Roxbury, the much-hyped contrast between Chuck Turner and Tracy Litthcut may be all it seems, and less. Plus, students produce the first "green guide" to city elections.

by Ben Geman

The reults are in from Boston's preliminary city-council election, and Chuck Turner is way out in the lead in the District Seven race. In a field of a dozen candidates, he beat his nearest challenger by a two-to-one margin, and Roxbury moved closer to placing an activist with a history of grassroots (and at times confrontational) politics on the council -- and on a likely collision course with the mayor and his allies.

The second-place finisher, who will face Turner in the November final, is Tracy
Litthcut, the city's on-leave director of youth services. Litthcut, 37, has spent a decade working with at-risk youth, building a solid record of teen guidance and violence prevention. Accustomed to working from the inside to reach out, he's coming from a very different place than the 59-year-old Turner.

In a sleepy election season, the battle between Litthcut and Turner to replace outgoing councilor Gareth Saunders has emerged as a clear flash point. It's a meaningful choice to the neighborhood: grassroots activism versus establishment liberalism. The contrast is stark enough to have attracted the attention of the Boston Globe, which often steers clear of neighborhood politics but dedicated a Metro feature to the District Seven race on Tuesday.

And it's making things lively in the district, which also includes pieces of Dorchester, the South End, and the Fenway. Turnout in the election was higher than anticipated, and opinions run strong. Turner, a domestic-violence counselor, may have the lead right now, but Litthcut's background has won him some firm support.

"Tracy is a major reason why when you drive through the black community you do not see sneakers hanging from trees, you see leaves," says political consultant Boyce Slayman, past executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers. "Tracy is a guy who, working with Gang Peace and programs at the Urban League, is responsible for seeing more young black men take their kids to day care and to school."

Others agree. Shopping at the Tropical Foods market outside Dudley Square late Monday afternoon, Michael Terry, a building manager at the Orchard Park community center, says he's supporting Litthcut despite Turner's experience with a broader range of issues. It's the kids, he says. "He [Litthcut] is a people person and he sees eye to eye with the teens," notes Terry. "He would not have lasted this long at community centers if he was not in touch."

On the stump, Litthcut says that being a city councilor is first and foremost about "partnerships" -- forging links between City Hall, businesses, and neighborhood groups to marshal resources for the community. "There has always been a door of opportunity to get greater and greater resources," he says, "and I'm not sure we have had the appropriate leadership in place to do that. Right now, I think I am the key to opening that lock."

He cites an interesting role model: South Boston city councilor Jimmy Kelly, not always a popular name in Roxbury. "What Jimmy Kelly is for South Boston," he says, "I want to be for Roxbury. I want to be a pit bull for our district."

The results of the preliminary vote suggest that he might not get that chance. But Litthcut, who joined the race later than Turner, knocked the early front-runner, Julio Henriquez, into third place and out of the running. It's not out of the question that he'll turn it around.

Of course, he faces a formidable obstacle in the Turner camp, where a word you hear frequently is "independent" -- as in, Chuck is, Tracy isn't. The first point has been proven time and again over the past three decades. A Cincinnati-born Harvard graduate, Turner has a history of local activism dating back to the 1960s. He fought the proposed Inner Belt highway three decades ago, and he helped found the Boston Black United Front and the Center for Community Action, a training ground for progressive grassroots organizers of color. In his council campaign the bald, bespectacled Turner openly whacked Menino on school policy, and few doubt he'd hesitate to whack him again.

"We need that type of activism and that experience and that confrontational style," says Roxbury resident Robby Thomas. "Chuck's been on the battlefield for a while, and that's where my support is going to be."

Seated in his campaign office outside Dudley Square -- a bare-bones trailer parked on an empty overgrown lot -- Turner points out that his background includes much more than protests. "What people forget was that I was one of the chief architects of the organizing drive that led to the creation of the Boston jobs policy," he says, referring to an ordinance requiring construction firms to hire residents -- especially minorities and women -- to work on city projects. "That demonstrates that I have the ability to put together progressive legislation. We achieved a major victory through organizing and negotiating."

Turner vows to create a district office that would allow residents to meet with him and offer input. "My being there has no meaning unless the community . . . comes together to work and formulate plans," says Turner, who is not pro- or anti-Menino so much as he is pro-District Seven. "The issue," he says, "is the need for people in the community to put people in the seat that are not tied to forces outside this community."

But the outsider-versus-insider take may be exaggerated. "I don't think Chuck is that confrontational or Tracy is that much of an insider," says one Roxbury political observer. "There is a method to [Chuck's] madness, creating outside agitation and a groundswell, but using that to get people around the table to negotiate.

"I don't think Chuck is about `Let's burn down City Hall,' nor do I think Tracy says, `Let's protect City Hall at all costs,' " he adds. "They both use what's worked for them."

In their different ways, Litthcut and Turner are both about as hands-on as you can get. "These are people who know their way around Roxbury at all times of day or night, which is different from most of the people who were running in that race," says State Representative Byron Rushing (D-South End), a long-time advocate for the black community. "The other thing they have in common is that they are able to talk to everyone; there is no group or class or section of the community that they are not comfortable talking with, or vice versa."

Still, Litthcut's philosophy and City Hall ties breed a legitimate concern. If you state a desire to work with City Hall, then it's not too much of a stretch for people to think you'd be wary of criticizing the mayor too harshly. Litthcut bristles at that idea, however. "I was not a creation of Tom Menino," he says. "I was first hired by Mayor [Ray] Flynn, and because of my performance both mayors promoted me.

"Now," he adds, "I am just asking the community to promote me to the next level."

Whether the community takes him up on that request could be this election season's most interesting question.

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To the extent that city-council races turn on issues at all -- as opposed to money, name recognition, and pavement pounding -- housing, schools, public safety, and development get top billing, followed by quality-of-life issues such as trash pick-up and crackdowns on student parties. The environment rarely plays much of a role.

A new coalition of campus greens wants to change that. The Boston Area Student Environmental Coalition, made up of students from MIT, Wellesley, Emerson, and several other local schools, plans to piece together an environmental voters' guide to city-council races in Boston, Somerville, and perhaps Cambridge in time for the November 2 elections.

The coalition's members point out that development decisions -- what to build, where to build it, and what materials to use -- affect the urban environment substantially. So does green space, or lack thereof. And cities also need to look at environmental-justice issues, since pollution-causing facilities are often built in minority and low-income neighborhoods that lack the clout to beat them back.

"Hopefully this will help people recognize that [environmental] issues are local issues, and voting for certain candidates represents certain stances on those issues," says Donnan Steele, a graduate student in atmospheric chemistry at MIT. "I hope this will be enough to sway voters' choices."

It would certainly be a unique resource, though it's not yet clear whether the guide will include outright endorsements. The League of Conservation Voters publishes a report of federal elected officials' stances on environmental issues. And the Massachusetts Audubon Society assembles its own scorecard of state legislators' environmental records. But in city races, a lot is left up to the word of candidates and their handlers. And for voters, the effort required to research a candidate's record can be prohibitive.

Admittedly, city councils have a limited impact on state and national environmental policy. But they do influence development and can choose to promote -- or ignore -- environmental issues, such as the MBTA's foot-dragging in replacing the exhaust-generating diesel buses that replaced the old elevated orange line on Washington Street. Coalition member Sam Arey, an MIT environmental-engineering student and a member of the student coalition, would like to see local pols work more with area universities to shape urban environmental policy. "We are very interested in what people will do to foster green industry," he says. "We are living in a technological mecca. If there's a place with the brains and money and expertise to foster green industry, it's the Boston area."

In spite of their numbers, students traditionally haven't had much influence in city elections; campus activists are more likely to organize around violence in East Timor than, say, housing in East Boston. But environmental issues, typically of great concern to student activists, could be enough to get them interested in local politics.

The student coalition probably won't be able to turn out a very comprehensive guide by the time this year's elections roll around, since they didn't start working on it until the school year began. But if the group can withstand the usual campus turnover and get a structure into place, there could be a payoff down the line. "This is a guinea pig," says Arey. "Our organization is definitely excited to work with local politics. I see this as a chance to get our feet wet."

To help the Boston Area Student Environmental Coalition work on the guide or to inquire about its status, call Sam Arey at (617) 253-3897.

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