ADAM GOMEZ WILL STAND OUT AND UP
I have known Adam Gomez both through my son, Springfield City Council President Justin Hurst and by way of his father, the well-known Gumersindo Gomez who has been a tireless and outspoken community leader and Vietnam veterans’ advocate for decades. As the saying goes, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I know that when Adam occupies the State Senate seat that he won so decisively in the September primaries, he will continue to carry on the legacy of activism that was passed down to him by his father and that he so excellently demonstrated as a Springfield City Councilor. The one thing I can assure you about Adam Gomez is that when he goes to Boston, he will not suddenly fall mute and automatically submit to the robotic control of the Boston powers-that-be and forget where he came from and who he represents as has happened to so many who have graduated from local to state politics while all but abandoning their own. It is not in Adam’s DNA and it is why he won against an opponent who we rarely heard from during his many years as our state senator. Let Adam’s astounding electoral success be a message to others who have made the trek from local to state politics that embracing Boston and ignoring your own is done at your own future peril.

KUDOS TO ORLANDO RAMOS
Kudos to Orlando Ramos who will certainly represent the 9th Hampden District well. Although we did not endorse him for reasons that had nothing to do with his qualifications for the state representative job, we know that he is capable and truly committed to serving the people of his district in Boston just as he did on the Springfield City Council and we endorse him in the November election against a candidate who will hardly slow him down.

UNEQUIVOCALLY, BUD L. WILLIAMS FOR STATE REP
Just maybe, if there was a demonstrably viable competitor running against State Representative Bud Williams in the 11th Hampden District in November, we might equivocate a bit over whether or not he deserves to enjoy an extension of his mostly silent, four-year, two-term stent in Boston. When Bud was first elected I told him he had an opportunity to be great and transformative at a time when the old politics was dying and the new politics of the future, led by young people could use his leadership. Well, Bud hasn’t been great and he hasn’t been transformative and he certainly hasn’t provided leadership to the young, up-and-coming politicians. Rather, he has been as obedient to Boston as are too many Western Mass politicians who go from local to state politics. And, if I said his near remoteness and uncharacteristic silence wasn’t anything but a disappointment, it would not be true. On the other hand, there is a certain degree of unfairness in holding the only Black state representative from Western Massachusetts to higher standards than those demonstrated by most Western Massachusetts state representatives, which is what makes it easier to endorse Bud L. Williams for re-election to State Representative for the 11th Hampden District. In case you didn’t know, Bud’s November opponent is Black Republican, Prince Golphin (whoever he is). All I know about Prince Golphin is that he is raising political funds on go-fund-me, which is hilarious and sad. It is pure folly to run such a casual campaign against a seasoned incumbent who, whether you agree with him or not, has earned his way under many years of fire…which is why we unequivocally endorse Bud L. Williams for State Representative for the 11th Hampden District. But you must understand – as Bud should – if a viable opponent emerges in the future, like Adam Gomez, who had the courage, foresight and experience to challenge seasoned incumbent Jim Welch, we at (Point of View) are prepared to “equivocate.”

A FEW LAST COMMENTS ON LOCAL PRIMARY ELECTIONS
We congratulate School Committeewoman Denise Hurst on a race well run for the 9th Hampden District State Representative seat. She ran a good race and would have served well in Boston but it was not her time. She ran against Orlando Ramos and both deserve credit for running a clean and un-rancorous race.

THE KENNEDY NAME
Joe Kennedy III should have won his primary Senate race against Ed Markey, who will now coast to retirement in his elaborate Maryland home while ignoring his constituents as much as ever. Let’s hope Kennedy learns from his loss and returns to politics as strong as ever without making some of the rookie mistakes that I suspect some of the young people around him caused. The one major suggestion I have for Joseph P. Kennedy III if he is planning a political revival: Don’t let your opponents trick you into running away from your name. It is an earned legacy that you should embrace and herald at the beginning of your next campaign and not at the end when it would make you appear desperate.

CONGRESSMAN RICHARD NEAL
It was a delight to see Chicopee Mayor Alex Morse challenge the entrenched incumbent Richie Neal with such enthusiasm and possibility. The business of incumbency is way overrated even though Neal has gained one of the most powerful positions in Congress as Chairman of Ways and Means. We mere mortals would have survived without him and Morse would have climbed his way up the ladder eventually. If nothing more, Morse has learned a painful lesson about how far some will go to protect the status quo and Neal has been made more sensitive to his political mortality. All is good.

SYMBOLISM IS SYMBOLISM Symbolism has its place but it’s still symbolism. Awhile ago I wrote of the recent marches against police misbehavior that they were symbolically valuable as symbols go but nonetheless symbols that could not replace the concrete actions that should follow. Altogether too often, folks who march go home fulfilled and ignore the subsequent need for substantive action such as voting. And I feel the same way about Mayor Sarno’s recent Springfield Day march highlighting Springfield’s first responders. Parading first responders around the city and intermingling them with folks on the street has great symbolic value but it is only symbolic. Don’t be fooled into thinking it is the substance we are looking for in the changes needed in the police and fire departments because it is not.

BLACK POLICE CHIEFS
Conservative media pundits are gloating over the fact that several Black police chiefs around the country have resigned. They point to the resignations as proof of the folly of Black Lives Matter’s demands for change in police behavior. But there are a few things they overlook. For instance, most police the Black chiefs oversee are White and products of a pre-existing culture that the Black police chiefs are expected to handle better than their White predecessors. It is a difficult expectation especially if those Black chiefs came up through the ranks of the very same culture. As Black Cambridge Police Commissioner Branville G. Bard Jr. (who was hired in 2017 from the outside after a national search) was quoted as saying in a Boston Sunday Globe article (September 13, 2020) about policing in America. He said that he was “part of a system built on oppression and, structurally, on racism. Not to acknowledge that means a failure to acknowledge the past. Folks are just going to resent your failure to acknowledge that.” And as the author of the article wisely noted, “The (Black) chiefs are lauded for trying to change the system, but also knocked as traitors by some of those in blue and in the communities they come from.”

BLACK POLICE CHIEF DILEMMA: SPRINGFIELD
As soon as I read that a Black Springfield police officer was promoted to Deputy Chief as a first among many Black officers, past and present, who should have been promoted but were passed over for White officers and never given a chance, I automatically suspected that the one who was promoted was a pawn. It was unfair; but when one realizes that he rose through the ranks and is, therefore, the product of a police culture that has been under scrutiny for decades for its discriminatory policies and practices, one must wonder if he was promoted because he was prepared to make necessary changes or because he would not make necessary changes. And to stoke the skepticism further, one can’t ignore the fact that Mayor Domenic Sarno has personally selected three White officers to lead the Springfield Police Department from the ranks of the department whose studied and well-documented limitation (among many) began with the fact that they rose through the ranks. And the racial turmoil enveloping the department, internally and externally, has been no less than it had been with all of the leaders before the three were appointed. So assume for a second that, when the current (from the ranks) female Commissioner steps down, the Black deputy, who also rose through the ranks, replaces her. The new Black deputy, by the way, is Rupert Daniel. I don’t doubt that he earned his way and I don’t mean to malign his name, but I think most would agree that, if by chance he ever becomes Springfield’s first Black police commissioner, he would have a hard way to go trying to make real change in a culture that produced him and his White comrades, just as Black police heads around the country are finding out, even some of those who have been hired from the outside.

SYMBOLS ARE SYMBOLS
The first question that should be asked of Mayor Domenic Sarno at his hastily called Saturday morning forum is, “How can you make honest change in the Springfield Police Department, Mayor Sarno, when you operate on the silly assumption that Black and Brown folks are stupid?!” We all think we already know exactly how you plan to use the results of the forum that you and the Police Commissioner scheduled for September 26th at 10:00. Folks have good reason to expect that you will use the forum, just as you have used similar events in the past, to justify what you planned to do even before the events were held and followed up with your use of the names of credible Black and Brown folks whether or not they had input into what you finally did. The pattern has become predictable except this time you have the venerable Judge Roderick Ireland to use. We suspect and trust that Judge Ireland is smart enough to know that a public forum is not the best way for him to maintain the level of objectivity and trust needed to obtain the important information he would need to offer you good advice, most of which would assuredly be of the type you have already been offered from many well-informed sources and repeatedly rejected.

BREONNA TAYLOR
I am certainly not a defender of police who have a documented history of using unnecessary force to maim or kill Black people with impunity. But, I must admit, having had a bit of exposure to the criminal justice system as a lawyer with the public defenders, I was all but certain that the police officers who entered Breonna Taylor’s apartment and shot her six times, while firing many more times, would probably not be indicted for homicide because their indictment under the law could not be supported by the facts even though the sum total of the evidence and circumstances supported a wrongful death finding under civil law, which is why the City of Louisville, Kentucky, settled with her family for $12 million. (Of course even a first year law student would know that a grand jury, depending upon how the evidence is presented to it, would “indict a ham sandwich;” but in this case, even a conviction at trial would not have been supported by the facts as the law applied to them.) It is unfortunate that folks have legitimately lost so much faith in our legal system and the behavior of the police and courts that the law, as applied to the facts surrounding the unfortunate killing of an innocent Black woman, no longer carries weight.

CORONAVIRUS VACCINE: Y’ALL FIRST!
I don’t mind saying that I will not be taking any coronavirus vaccine approved by Donald Trump or his minions before the election. And after the election I’ll only take one after a bunch of people have already taken it and then only after the scientific experts, beginning with Dr. Fauci have assured the public that the vaccine is safe and effective.

CORONAVIRUS IRONY
Isn’t it ironic that the Missouri Governor, who scoffed at wearing masks and social distancing, á la Trump, and his wife have both caught the coronavirus? (Poetic justice, maybe?) ■