A Somerville resident is on the brink of telling the incoming professional class "Enough, you can have it."   While I was door knocking near Capuano Elementary, I met a man whose father, a US Navy veteran, in the 1950s moved the family from a Portuguese controlled Island--Madeira if memory serves. He proudly owns the Dell bought in 1991 on savings  scratched together from $10-15 hour jobs all his life, and there with his wife raised two daughters. He is now a grandfather to twins and wants to be able to support them. But he complained of the taxes and fees, in short the ever increasing unaffordability of Somerville. He had taken care of veterans--like neighbor Russ MacCauley, who passed eight years ago, recalling years taking him to medical appointments. As someone who had lived right, who had invested in Somerville, the increasing costs of living in Somerville were pushing him to the brink of leaving. I submitted the following letter advocating a No vote for Water & ...

A reportback--  I am here in Chelmsford, MA to attend a bail hearing for a man detained by ICE 82 days ago--a week since the co-owner of small business filed my letter of support along with Senator Pat Jehlen's letter. Please donate www.ElectSpicer.com  I raised funds for signage and doorknockers $1800 from 15 donors last Friday. According to Senator Pat Jehlen, new law allows me to put your campaign support to pay for childcare so I can campaign. Thank you in advance! At Finance Committee of the Whole, I spoke up regarding the Mayor’s proposed budget that would cut the Racial and Social Justice Department funds by $200,000 and increase the Police Budget an additional $5-9 million. The Cambridge-Somerville 350.org node organized me, and I spoke to the need to provide environmental justice protections from pollution to impacted neighbors--crediting the pilot project of Ward 1 City Councilor Matt McLaughlin--which would bring air filtration units to homes already most likely to ...

  If the detention of students condemning genocide is not a station of the cross I don’t know what is. Thousands of us assembled in Somerville near Tufts University in solidarity with Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts graduate student, who we must remember aside many other detained by ICE including asylum seekers unable or intimidated to play the role of a prisoner of conscience. My family, residents of Somerville have typically experienced the corner of Tufts Triangle as a place to play soccer, afterwards walked around Powderhouse Square in some kind of exercise and play, but that evening, as a family living in the midst of tyranny,  we were engaged in a civic belonging, grateful for community . Many of us activated to the emergency protest had heard about the detention of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Kahlil whose wife Noor Abdulla, certainly comes today before our confessing hearts. Noor, which means “light” in Arabic, attests to the strength of the mourning women. In Luke’s Gosp...

    In Rosa Lee, Washington Post reporter Leon Dash follows the li ves of one family enduring intergenerational trauma and coping with extreme poverty . She sits dignified in a jacket photo, holding a military portrait of a son. “Rosa Lee—that name made me—Wait she’s black. She looks like my mom,” said an unhoused person taking refuge at the Somerville Housing Coalition Engagement Center. The supportive housing search person three times looped back to asking about his housing search, adjusting, acknowledging, offering help right there . He was waiting to hear a definite about the Y. It was just too much, a hundred dollars a day. “Oh, yeah, the hotel,” the Mets fan said . “How long is the wait in Somerville?” Two years. As indicated by the subtitle, Rosa Lee is a mother in urban America. I brought it with me to an appointment with Hannah who had facilitated a conversation in May with Tracy Kidder and Dr. Jim O’Connell of the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, the su...

  “We’re upset. We’re not sleeping well” said a woman at last night’s meeting in Davis Square ( GOVTV ). She held a list of 39 names of people who had waited in the hallway in overflow from a 200 capacity crowd hosted by Pastor Lee at the Somerville Community Baptist Church. "The problem isn't homelessness, it's a drug issue. It's people shooting up at 7 in the morning, and having sex on the bench at 8 am." "We've just had Multiple stabbings within weeks," said a 21 year resident who  had witnessed a seachange in the past year. --"How did it get to this point--why was their eye off the ball?" In the past seven weeks, 674 patrols were made in Davis Square area, a 286% increase of police activity in the same period last year. Arrests made after dispute between two known to each other, detained September 26. Then a death in Statue Park on September 30, "So far deemed non-suspicious," said Deputy James Donovan. Followed by another dis...