JYNAI MCDONALD: IS ON THE JOB
In the March issue of Point of View, I wrote a front page article on Ward 4 city council candidate Jynai McDonald that included her plans to revive the dormant tennis court on Acorn Street which is so overgrown with brush that it can no longer be seen. Apparently she decided not to wait until she wins the election. Jynai has already petitioned the Community Preservation Act Commission for funding to redevelop the court, which has been approved pending a Park Commission vote (which may have already happened by the time you read this) and has made substantial progress toward obtaining all other necessary approvals including consulting with the Bay Area Neighborhood Council whose President, Gwendolyn Smith, has written a letter of approval as have many other community and political leaders including a letter of support from our new State Senator Adam Gomez as well as a letter of support from the Springfield Park Department. What Jynai is doing that is most impressive is she came up with a creative idea for improving the Ward 4 community, attended a training workshop for how to access the necessary funds, applied for the funds after researching what the approximate costs will be, and she continues well on her way to a community improvement that is long overdue. And all of this is before she even got elected. Imagine what she will accomplish with the power of incumbency as the Ward 4 city councilor. We need more of her and less of those who believe in leadership by deception, perception and illusion. (Word is that current Ward 4 City Councilor Malo Brown, who had absolutely nothing to do with the tennis court project, is claiming credit for it.)

THE “BUD SQUAD” HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AND THE FARCE HAS BEGUN
Speaking of leadership by deception, perception and illusion…The “Bud Squad” is profound – as profound, that is, as the Keystone Cops or the haphazard team of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello (Abbott and Costello as we called them back in the day). Or maybe they could best be described as “The gang that couldn’t shoot straight.” I call it the “Bud Squad” because State Representative Bud Williams is the presumptive leader of a group that includes his nephew and his protégé and employee, incumbent Ward 4 City Councilor Malo Brown, whose inalterable and still unwinding inclination toward political irrelevancy is hard to ignore. Bud and I have often argued over the meaning of leadership. He believes that deception, perception and illusion make for good leadership. I have always believed the opposite. Nothing illustrates the “Bud Squad” approach more than the elaborate scheme surrounding the Saturday, March 27th press conference on gun violence held on the corner of Dartmouth Street in Mason Square that was designed to show Mayor Sarno that the “Bud Squad” is all-powerful in the Black community. The event was presumably intended to send a message to Mayor Sarno that they were his “boys.” But everything that could go wrong went wrong, beginning with the effort to keep the event secret from other Black city councilors, including Tracye Whitfield who has been the most active city council advocate against gun violence and its root causes. Needless to say, the event dissolved into such chaos that the mayor, accompanied by the police commissioner, left in a huff while Bud Williams arrived late, as he usually does, expecting to receive accolades only to find out that his effort to grab headlines he hadn’t earned was botched by his own “Squad.”

BOSTON’S FIRST BLACK AND FIRST FEMALE MAYOR SWORN IN
With Irish mayor Marty Walsh’s confirmation as President Joe Biden’s Labor Secretary, Boston City Council’s Black female president, Kim Janey, automatically became Boston’s first non-Irish, non-Italian, non-male Black and woman mayor. What a breath of fresh air.

“DIVERSITY ON THE RISE IN US BLACK POPULATION”
Such was the headline in a recent Boston Globe article (March 25, 2021) in which the author pointed out that the number of people self-identifying themselves as Black in the recent census is rising. The author wrote: “More than 46 million people in the United States self-identified as Black in 2019, representing a 29 percent increase from 2000 and making up 14 percent of the country’s population, newly analyzed data show. Of those millions, a growing share identify as multi-racial, Hispanic and immigrants….” Significantly, she also wrote: “Boston, while not home to a significant share of the nation’s Black population overall, has the third-highest Black Hispanic population among metro areas, after New York City and Miami.” It is information that should not come as a surprise to anyone with knowledge of the history of the African slave trade in which Africans were shipped to the Caribbean and all over South America including to Argentina, Brazil and even Mexico and more and more Hispanics are embracing their Blackness to the horror of some White Americans who would prefer, for political reasons, to keep Black and Hispanics divided as though they don’t share a common heritage. It’s good to know that both Black and Hispanics, especially from the younger generation, are catching onto that trick.

HERE WE GO AGAIN Both Congressional Democrats and Republicans have embraced the very questionable idea of reviving “earmarks.” Earmarks, as you may already know are funds that are allocated to individual members of Congress for specific projects in their districts. As reported in The Wall Street Journal (March 18, 2021): “The House stopped using earmarks in 2011, after the GOP won the majority. Reports of fraud and abuse, along with high-profile corruption scandals, had made earmarks politically toxic. Both parties in both chambers backed away from them. Congress imposed a moratorium on the practice and then-President Barack Obama pledged to veto any bills containing earmarks….Democrats, now in control of the White House and Congress, revived the practice in the House this year and are considering bringing it back in the Senate as well. That left the Republicans with the decision of whether to also embrace earmarks.” I suppose I shouldn’t be so cynical but my question is, “What has changed to make earmarks any more acceptable than they were when they were eliminated in 2011?” Expect more scandals.

SPRINGFIELD CAN DO BETTER
It would be nice if Mayor Domenic Sarno was more open about the city’s failure to award more of its contracts to residents of Springfield. Admitting and illuminating a problem are the first steps in solving it. It shouldn’t take the efforts of City Council Audit Committee Chairman Justin Hurst to highlight the problem and to extract the information needed from the Mayor’s staff to encourage the city to do what is right for its residents, who could use the jobs and income that those contracts would bring to them, and to gain the economic benefits they would bring to the city. Something isn’t right and Councilor Hurst should continue to press his inquiries.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH SO MANY WHITE POLITICIANS IN AMERICA?
Are White politicians in America losing their minds! It’s not just Georgia! It’s not just the South! It’s not just “red” states or rightwing politicos! It’s all over the damn country! White politicians are attempting to roll back the clock on the 1965 Voter Rights Act that gave Black people freedom to vote and prevented attempts by White politicians to interfere with that freedom. Now up to 43 states in a country of 50 are attempting to curtail those hard won rights. Are they crazy! Do they really believe we’ll stand for that! We won’t. It’s only a matter of what it will take to prevent it. Once tasted, freedom is a hard thing to give up, especially in a Democracy where the vote is so fundamental. Just you watch and see.

GUN SALES IN AMERICA ARE GOING THROUGH THE ROOF
More buyers are women and minorities. “Forty percent of 2020’s buyers were women and the biggest increase of any demographic category was among African Americans, who bought guns at a rate of 58% greater than in 2019,” says the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which tracks the data.” (The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2021) Well, well!

THE TRUTH ABOUT MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN (MAGA)
“And let us be clear: The MAGA phenomenon was never about economic dislocation. In 2018, a study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “white, Christian and male voters…turned to Mr. Trump because they felt their status was at risk.” (Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post as reprinted in The Republican, March 8, 2021) ■