DARRYL MOSS BEAT THE BASTARDS!
I don’t know Darryl Moss that well. He wasn’t around during my most active time. But I had a chance to meet with him before he left town. It was after he was fired by Mayor Sarno and his pathetic honcho, Tom Ashe, who I once knew to be a good man. As he related the circumstances of his termination, Moss impressed me as being a strong Black man who would not compromise his integrity for a job. Which is why, of course, they fired him under false pretenses because he refused to be a sycophant. Not because he didn’t do his job or couldn’t do his job but simply and crudely put, because he refused to kiss the mayor’s and Tom Ashe’s asses, which put’s him at the top of my hero chart. He took the city and Sarno to court and won almost $800,000. Although you won’t hear much about it in the “mainstream media,” Darryl will remain for a long time in the minds and the social media comments of a lot of people, who appreciate his courage and dislike the mayor’s bully tactics, Black, Brown and enlightened White folks alike.

OLD SCHOOL RACISM PREVAILED
City Councilor Brian Santaniello is “old school,” which accounts for why he relied on an old, subliminally racist tactic to win re-election to the Springfield City Council. The resolution that he bragged about filing to “help strengthen our drug laws…” is a throwback to the times when our primary solution to the drug problems in the country was to indiscriminately fill up our prisons with Black and Brown minor drug offenders where they learn to become hardened criminals and eventually leave prison to terrorize our communities. Rational folks learned long ago that drug rehabilitation programs, mental health counseling, education and other intervention techniques served everybody much better than indiscriminate incarceration that was always racially slanted against minorities. Nobody opposes imprisoning hardened criminals who commit major drug crimes, as Santaniello well knows. But he cynically tapped into the ignorance and hysterical fears of well-meaning people to gain cheap votes. Eventually, his hypocrisy will catch up to him and voters will turn him out of office.

THE “WHITE BOYS” LOST
Springfield voters finally caught up to Peter Murphy and Christopher Collins, both of whom spent their entire careers on the Springfield School Committee approving everything that Mayor Domenic Sarno and his White predecessors wanted whether right or wrong, whether good or bad for students and their parents and the citizens and voters of the City of Springfield. And in the November 4th elections, they were both voted out in favor of Ayanna Crawford and Rosa Valentin, respectively. Ayanna Crawford trounced Murphy by a whopping 313 votes. (For some reason the vote tally for Wards 2B and 8B and B1 were not reported in the early returns.) and Rosa Valentin trounced Collins by 282 votes. And Mayor Sarno’s already declining dictatorial grip on the school committee appears to be permanently over! (It’s worth mentioning that Tim Allen, the White Ward 7 city councilor, who also regularly bowed to Mayor Sarno, was trounced by young White newcomer Gerry Martin by an almost 2-1 margin. And Martin’s first pre-official act was to commit his vote to Trayce Whitfield for Council President (see front page article). Martin is a good man and his own man and you can count on him to always vote his conscience. Which suggests, of course, that Sarno’s iron grip on the city council is also slipping, especially with Justin Hurst’s return to the council.)

NOTHING TO BE SAID ABOUT THIS RACE
Incumbent Malo Brown beat challenger Willie Naylor in the Ward 4 city council race by merely 30 votes. What’s to say about it? A more aggressive candidate probably would have beaten Malo Brown by a mile. Each won 4 precincts. Naylor won 4A, a past stronghold of Brown’s, by 31 votes and Brown won 4B by 27. Thus, Rebecca Johnson, the highest voting place in Ward 4, was a virtual draw! 4G, which was won by Brown (probably his home precinct) by 54 votes, was the only place a big distinction was made. All I can say about Naylor and his 31-vote loss is that he should have openly allied himself with Justin Hurst and Tracye Whitfield, both of whom dominated the Ward 4 vote. In not doing so, he made the same mistake that Johnny McKnight made when he lost to Bud Williams by a similarly small margin.

SPEAKING OF LAMAR COOK
I’m not one to defend the racial bias of our mainstream newspaper nor its kneejerk inclination to automatically protect the White status quo, but those deficiencies have little to do with the reporting on Lamar Cook’s arrest for the alleged crime of receiving many pounds of drugs, allegedly for distribution within the community. As a lawyer who knows nothing about Cook except that most people claim he is a “nice guy,” I assure you, from the reported evidence against him, he is facing a serious uphill battle. And if found guilty, he will spend many years behind bars, as anybody convicted of such a crime would, regardless of color. It’s powerful news as will be the subsequent trial. I suggest that, before we condemn the messengers, we let the legal process take its course and reserve our legitimate criticism of the mainstream media for real past and anticipated future abuses.

TALK ABOUT THROWING YOUR PATRON UNDER THE BUS!!
I doubt that anyone is surprised that Bud Williams threw Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey under the bus when he vociferously denied having recommended the recently indicted Lamar Cook for his state house job before Cook was recently indicted on felony cocaine charges for allegedly receiving many pounds of cocaine at his office in our local state house, presumably, for distribution in the greater Springfield area. Bud even claimed to not know Cook although, judging by social media postings by his shocked constituents, Bud not only knows Cook well but some claim that he has been known to boast about influencing Cook’s hiring as the Deputy Director of the governor’s local office. One might expect that the first thing a person of higher character would have done is step up in defense of the Governor who, like so many before her, relies on the recommendations of local politicians for local appointments. It’s the easiest, but sometimes not the best, approach, especially when a “trusted” ally like Bud Williams actually publicly denied being involved in Cook’s hiring while blaming the governor’s office for the “faulty” pre-employment vetting of Cook. I guess those in the know would say, “Just Bud being Bud,” but the Governor and her staff (whose real negligence is in not knowing what almost everybody else already knows about Bud) must be steaming.

“PETULANCE” AIN’T GOOD POLITICS
All I know about former Springfield School Committee member Joesiah Gonzalez is that as a school committee member, he stepped up to the plate when it came to voting our first Black female superintendent into the job against the wishes of a “marginally” racist Mayor Sarno and his two White lackies, both of whom, I’m pleased to say, were defeated in the November election. I personally had hoped Joesiah would defeat Maria Perez and win a seat on the Springfield City Council. The only thing I know about Perez is that she is an automatic vote for the mayor, whether he is right or wrong, and I felt the voters of Springfield deserved better. Unfortunately, Gonzalez became entangled in the controversial firing of Perez from her job at the New North Citizens Council. Point of View received and reviewed the two contradictory news releases from the Council board and the Council president, which I instantly realized constituted “a lawsuit waiting to happen.” And I wrote a “Bit” about it. Word subsequently came to me that Josiah went ballistic and somehow read a political motive into my journalistic observation that was based solidly in my legal history. (I served nine years as an administrative law judge for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and practiced employment and discrimination law for many years thereafter. I know a lawsuit when I see it and it has nothing to do with politics.) A simple call from Gonzalez to me would have been well received and I would have gladly offered him some advice on how to easily dampen the political damage from a simple mistake and I would have urged him to respond to our offer to every candidate to write a 250-word bio on what they planned to accomplish if they won. Josiah declined the offer, which was a mistake. It might have made the small difference between winning and losing. (Gonzalez lost to Perez by only 36 votes. He won six of the ten precincts in Ward One and lost a seventh by only one vote. But Perez garnered enough votes in the remaining three to win.) My advice to Josiah Gonzalez is to begin preparing immediately for the rematch and concentrate on the three precincts. And I would offer one more word of advice: “Petulance ain’t good politics.” ■