Thread by @TracyNovick

chapter 6 is "A New Center"

it opens with George McGovern speaking to the Association of Technical Professionals at Bentley in April 1972, just before the Democratic primary

(he won in Massachusetts in the primary, which won't surprise those who know where this election ended up)

"McGovern's ideas for economic conversion combined with the foreign policy, economic, and quality of life agenda of many of the people who lived and worked along Route 128"

Hey, remember the 1972 election results?

Giving rise to the bumper stickers you could see for a bunch of my childhood: "Don't Blame Me: I'm From Massachusetts"

ANYway!

"The lopsided results cemented the view of both McGovern as the far Left candidate and the iconoclastic liberalism of Massachusetts, which obscured another important implication of the electoral returns.

"The 1972 election results also signaled the shift of the Democratic Party campaign toward a new center in the suburbs and among knowledge workers, not just in Massachusetts, but across the nation."

McGovern did better with white-collar than blue-collar voters

The campaign "offered a precursor to the Democratic Party's growing commitment to knowledge workers and economic policies that touted the government's stimulation of private sector high-tech industry."

"The Nixon administration's attempt to wind down the Vietnam War, coupled with stricter wage and price controls, severely shrank the number of contracts awarded to Massachusetts by the Department of Defense and NASA."

In 1970 alone, nearly ten thousand technical professionals lost their jobs; while this was only a small part of the overall loss of jobs,

"the image of the people whose expertise and skills had helped to build defense weapons systems, launch space discovery, and spearhead the dawn of the computer age

standing in the unemployment line served as particularly distressing symbols of the growing crisis and received a great deal of media attention."

"Sociologist Paula Leventman found among engineers that a 'veil of professionalism blunted awakening class consciousness' which prevented them from joining an organizing drive, even among those Route 128 employees who had lost their jobs."

and so in many cases they created self-help groups

"the focus of the discussion on the experiencees of white male professionals...impeded their ability to see shared experiences or potential coalitions across gender, class, race, or spatial lines"

...which influenced the next election..."The precarious state of the economy had left many engineers and scientists disillusioned and their political allegiances in flux, which proved particularly important with the impending presidential election."

"McGovern's qualified support for court-ordered busing posed a particular challenge to his campaign to win traditional Democrats in Massachusetts, especially in Boston's heavily white blue-collar wards.

"During the campaign stops McGovern placed the issue in economic terms, telling a group of working-class voters in Boston that Nixon and George Wallace concentrated on busing to make the public

"'forget about unemployment and inflation and crime and make us think that Public Enemy Number One is the old yellow school bus.'"

"McGovern also staged an event at the Dorchester home of Boston City Hall housekeeper Mary Houston. McGovern told the assembled reporters about how Houston spent 14 percent of her paycheck on the property taxes on taxes on the modest house, which he declared proved

"the need to 'break the bond between education and property taxes' through more education funding by the federal government."

I actually have this open in my tabs right now...edbuild.org/content/clean-…

on to the Democratic National Convention, which had a changed nominating process, due to the McGovern Commission coming out of the 1968 convention in Chicago

And so back to Mr. Grossman, who testified that the new system needed to account for "the shift in the Democratic nucleus from the white working-class in South Boston towards suburban middle-class residents in places like his hometown of Newton."

"The reform process represented the changing role of organized labor in the Democratic Party and the McGovern campaign."

And the "Massachusetts delegation symbolized both the Democratic Party's new composition and its new tensions."

"An informal discussion among the Massachusetts delegates on the convention floor unexpectedly escalated into open disagreement. Just before the balloting, several new politics activists threatened revolt.

"They only capitulated after John Kenneth Galbraith counseled nomination night in the front row of the convention hall was an inappropriate time and place for a fight."

...which I would submit is an amazing sentence...

and so to election night, and the above map...

"The fact that it was the first time in American history that such an electoral aberration had occurred did not embarrass most Massachusetts residents but solidified their sense of the state's exceptionalism."

HOWEVER

"The focus on the state's exceptionalism overlooked the key trends that actually made the election results in Massachusetts align with national patterns, especially the growing importance of suburbanites and knowledge workers as major foces within the Democratic Party."

some pointed to this as a blueprint for future races

"The challenge of sustaining such a permanent coalition indicated many of the broader forces in play during the election cycle."

The election "previewed the economic, social, and cultural troubles and divisions that would come to plague the state and nation throughout the decade."

Oh, Newtonians, do I have a chapter for you...

"'I have always thought of my community to be the bastion of suburban liberalism,' lamented a Newton resident in 1970. 'However, recent events over the Newton Community Development Foundation have show my assumptions to be mistaken.'"

"Reacting to the suburb's identity of liberal distinctiveness, the chair of the affordable housing initiative had confidently declared, 'If Newton can't do it, who on earth can?''

"Experts, politicians, and activists across the nation argued that exclusionary zoning and metropolitan fragmentation served as root causes of the related problems of urban poverty and school segregation,

"and that the suburbs represented the next frontier in the ongoing struggle to create social and racial equality."

"Other Route 128 residents, however, saw the projects and laws as a threat to property values, tax rates, school quality, and open space, which constituted the very reasons they had opted to move to Newton and its corollaries."

"Perhaps more than any other issue, the fights to create affordable housing illuminate the interlocking constraints that limited even committed suburban residents

"from challenging the forces of metropolitan fragmentation and changing entrenched economic, spatial, and racial structures."

Grassroots organizing to influence government "proved less effective at forcing other town meeting members to come to terms with the consequences of exclusionary zoning policies and other forms of privilege."

"The fights brought to the surface the continued strong presence of a 'silent majority' of conservative residents in strongholds of liberalism like Newton and emboldened them not to be so silent."

"ever more protective of the seemingly imperiled privileges of suburban residency"

let's just take a moment with that...

"In the winter of 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders codified into a government report what civil rights activists had been warning about for over twenty years.

"'To continue with our present policies is to make permanent the division in our country into two societies: one largely Negro and poor, located in central cities; the other, predominantly white and affluent located in the suburbs,'

"the Commission ominously declared in the Kerner Report.

"The majority of Americans and their elected officials would eventually ignore these powerful warnings."

The organizations that worked to create affordable housing soft-pedaled integration, however, some still saw it, and school improvement, as a benefit.

Saying that they anticipated a benefit to their children of their schools being much more varied, one couple said "'The METCO program has been a feeble step in that direction.'"

public hearings lasted until 1:45 and 3 am

...it failed.

Meanwhile in Concord, building apartments required a "two-thirds vote of the town meeting as well as local Board of Appeals approval and confirmation that the project was 'not injurious or detrimental to the area'" making this rather challenging.

"The issue of wetlands had served as a pivotal concern of the conservation movement in Concord and the surrounding communities since the 1950's."

and so, with failures in Concord and Newton, the fight shifted to the state legislature, and the Anti-Snob Zoning Act, as "Massachusetts had some of the most extensive fair housing laws in the nation, but the statutes had no oversight over local zoning ordinances."

...now known to us all as Chapter 40B

But hang, folks, because how it passes is a THING!

There was an initial effort "to solicit participation from the area's African American community."
It was felt both that the bill didn't go far enough plus there was a concern that this would turn support from work in the inner-cities.

So, they looked elsewhere for allies. And they found "unlikely, but crucial allies among a group of Boston's white urban state representatives.

"This unusual support from traditionally racially conservative Boston legislators derived less from their newfound sympathy for the cause and more because

"they recognized the bill as an opportunity to 'punish the do-gooder suburbanites' for their support of the Racial Imbalance Act four years earlier."

"Suburban politicians and their constituents had served as the primary supporters of the legislation aimed at reducing segregation in public schools despite (or more likely because of) the fact that it did not affect their districts."

(it was only Boston and Springfield's problem, after all)

But DAMN, Chapter 40B was payback for Boston school desegregation!
#mapoli

"Chapter 774 earned Massachusetts the status as the first state to pass legislation directly targeted at spatial discrimination"
BUT ALSO

"like the Racial Imbalance Act, the law had more symbolic than statutory power"

The law was signed in August of 1969.
Proving that she could be awful about other things, Louise Day Hicks "smugly noted in the winter of 1970, 'Not a single spade of dirt has been dug yet to implement the new law.'"

Linsky later said that the law was there to show the state was taking an interest in zoning usage, and many communities implemented their own programs

In May 1971, Lexington residents by a 2 to 1 vote overruled their town meeting's approval of a proposed 106 unit elderly housing complex.
"News of the vote quickly spread throughout Boston's metropolitan ring as observers tried to make sense of its meaning."

This also came a week after SCOTUS upheld CA's requirement that local voters approve all public housing projects...this was then a theme across the early 1970's.
In January 1973, Nixon imposed a "moratorium on the production of all new federally funded housing projects."

In March 1973, the MA SJC upheld Ch. 774, but essentially projects continued to get bogged down in state courts, and many of the groups creating them fell apart over the mid '70s.

"If the Kerner Report offered one bookend to the campaign to bring affordable housing to the Boston suburbs, the the publication by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights of 'Route 128: Boston's Road to Segregation' provided the other."

the report, released 1975, during Boston's federally mandated school desegregation, interpreted this crisis "as the direct result of the failure of suburban municipalities to take the warnings of the Kerner Commission seriously.

"Using statistical evidence and expert testimony, the report demonstrated that the residential segregation and discrimination in metropolitan Boston had intensified during the 1960's."

"The commissioners warned, 'Unless the state acts swiftly, forcefully and effectively, suburban residential patterns are likely to be firmly established in a manner which cannot be changed for generations.

"State officials and white suburban residents largely ignored the Civil Rights Commission's recommendations, and this dire prediction became a reality."

a *2005* poll showed "fear of lowered property values and increased educational costs serve[d] as the primary forces in fueling suburban homeowners' opposition to the construction of affordable housing in their communities."

And in chapter 8 we get to go *back* to METCO *during* the Boston desegregation...which we'll do another night! #stillreading

Return to METCO!

"Explorations of the dramatic events that surrounded the Boston busing crisis have often focused on the ways in which 'suburban liberals'

"like Judge Garrity, himself a Wellesley resident, passively stood by as working-class whites and blacks of the city endured the burden of school integration."

(finding per @mattdelmont, that I resent very much this being called a "busing crisis" #ItWasNeverAboutTheBuses)

residents of our 128 communities "were not as removed from the events and issues" as might be suggested, however.

As the Boston schools desegregated, more suburbs expressed interest in METCO but the state couldn't finance expansion, and in fact (early 70's, remember) asked towns to take on some of the financing themselves.
...this was not popular

Judge Garrity's decision found that Boston school authorities "knowingly carried out a systematic program of segregation affecting all the city's students, teachers, and school facilities and had intentionally brought about or maintained a dual school system."

"The 152-page decision, released June 21,1974, was at least five times the length of the rulings concerning desegregation in most other cities,

"which Garrity did purposefully to both prevent reversal on appeal and overwhelm the busing opposition through a preponderance of evidence."

Bostonians "especially those in opposition, also understood the order's meaning in terms of privilege, residency, and geography"

"The fact that the Morgan ruling exempted many of the state's leading officials because they lived in the suburbs or sent their children to private schools fueled a sense of victimization, which residents often framed in geographic terms."

"Enraged missive writers suggested modifications to the order, demanding that Garrity instead send students from Roxbury to Wellesley, or even more boldly 'Send Wellesley's Children to Roxbury Schools'"

(Garrity lived in Wellesley. BTW)

BUT guess where he was from?
#TheresAlwaysAWorcesterConnection (plus a @holy_cross grad!) nytimes.com/1999/09/18/us/…

(North High grad, and his father was a member of the Worcester School Committee)

(just THINK of the random ways in Worcester has influenced educational history!)

"Like many of his engineer and scientist neighbors, Garrity firmly believed in fairness, rationality, following the rules of procedure, and using expertise to solve social problems."

"Busing opponents found the METCO program another effective trope to point out the inequities of the court order and hypocrisy as well as the racial and economic exclusivity of suburban liberals."

In sum, the argument was that the suburbanites told Bostonians what to do from the comfort of their suburbs, which had a handful of Black kids bused into their schools during the day and back to Boston at night.

"During the period before and after Garrity's ruling, Boston Mayor Kevin White, Governor Sargent, and the future governor Dukakis separately proposed alternative plans to the compulsory integration of BPS that suggested substantial increases in METCO."

They called this "metropolitanization" and it was still all one-way busing.

BECAUSE, guess what decision was *also* handed down in 1974?

Milliken v. Bradley, in which the Supreme Court "ruled that suburban areas outside a city's district boundaries could not be required to join in an urban desegregation remedy."

And Garrity had read it.

As for itself, METCO said they'd be glad to help, but argued that the proposals "sought to turn the program into an 'escape hatch' and attempted to circumvent 'intra city desegregation.'"

"...several opinion polls revealed that suburban residents throughout metropolitan Boston supported racial integration

"as long as they did not have to use local tax dollars to pay for it, and the busing went in one direction and involves the placement of only a few minority students in each classroom."

And suburbanites saw (and said that they saw) METCO as a voluntary action to avoid later mandatory action.

"The suburbs should initiate positive voluntary action to aid in the problems of segregation before we face a court order later on." Winchester School Committee chair Stephen Parkhurst

And in the fall of 1974, the Education Commissioner Gregory Anrig even issued a veiled threat to the same end. Initially this proved successful and METCO expanded.

During 1974-75, however, there was a backlash.

"The groups' titles all included the words 'Citizens,' 'Responsible,' and 'Education,' although their acronyms had slight variations based on the names of the towns they represented, such as CRAB in Beverly, CRAM in Middleton, CREED in Randolph, and CREW in Winchester."

(This book is a FEAST of acronyms.)

Those opposed to METCO sought to distance themselves from the Boston opposition to integration, arguing that they opposed losing the "full freedom of choice in decisions about their children's education" as they saw it as a gateway to larger metropolitan integration.

It was also the early to mid-seventies, and that means the economy was doing badly; by 1974, unemployment was at 11.2%.

(double checks Google: "The state's April total unemployment rate is up 12.3 percentage points at 15.1 percent, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development announced Friday." from May 22, 2020)

"Further compounding the economic worries, local tax rates continued to rise rapidly even in towns that had taken aggressive measures to limit costs through density controls.

"The increases were particularly pronounced in places known for lavish public school expenditures."

"...inflation coupled with the growing costs of utilities and transportation kept expanding school budgets of many communities each year"

(sub in "health insurance" and...yep.)

The state didn't have enough money in the summer of 1975 to fully fund the reimbursements for METCO, so the state and communities had a back and forth; eventually they came up with 90%.

"Many supporters of metropolitan integration stressed that suburban residents used fiscal anxieties as cover for larger racial hostilities about two and even one way integration."

"William Herbert [of the MTA] noted that it exposed the fiscal contours of liberalism in the suburbs. 'In good times, it is easy to be liberal,' Herbert declared. "Prejudices are overcome to a certain extent, but when money is tight, people become frightened.'"

And so when, in 1976-77, there was not full funding for METCO reimbursement, Newton School Committee (under a new conservative majority, elected to "'cope with the problems of the City of Newton, not the problems of Boston'") voted to cut the METCO budget by the $82K it was short

As METCO said they'd not send students without full support, it effectively killed the program in Newton.

The battle continued into the summer (with the mayor calling a meeting a quorum of the Committee boycotted in early July), with the 350 Boston students who had mostly attended Newton schools for their full careers in the crossfire but largely unattended.

eventually, the state came through with a higher budget and the program stayed in Newton

"The funding fights of the 1970's ultimately enabled suburban communities to set the parameters of the program's limited operation, even after the national recession and state and local fiscal crises receded.

"Despite the fact that the program waiting list of Boston students hoping to get a seat in the program exponentially multiplied, METCO did not grow significantly beyond its size in 1976."

The white suburban homeowners "endorsed racial and social equality at an abstract level as long as it did not create any burden on their tax bills or their children's education, and could even potentially enhance it.

"Yet the notion that METCO and affirmative action's primary function was to enhance diversity and individual opportunity

"made fostering a sense of collective responsibility for, and the adoption of policies made to address, structural inequities in education ever more difficult to achieve."

And chapter 9 is feminism and the ERA (for another evening) #stillreading

Chapter 9: No One Home to Answer the Phone
(Feels again as though this may be timely!)

“In April 1975, as the struggle over mandatory desegregation continued to embroil the city of Boston, a coalition of women from the antibusing group ROAR

“... and antiabortion organization Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL) disrupted a rally in support of the state Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall.”
Opening sentence of the chapter #stillreading

Well, there you go. I had just been reflecting that we might be seeing coming clash on the role of white women during the pandemic (around schools).

“liberally minded residents in places like Lexington and Newton tended to support the elements of feminism, such as the ERA, that promotes abstract ideals of equality and opportunity, promised to enhance individual rights and quality of life,

“and did not burden tax rates, or demand sacrifice or redistribution.”

“The word choice thus joined the pantheon of terms that provided white suburban professionals a means to combine a commitment to abstract notions of equality and self-interest with more specific forms of class privilege.”

(Now apply that to education.)

And as has already been noted in other places, the feminism/suburban politics link made some things successful (the state ERA passed, for one), but it “hardened the middle-class orientation of second-wave feminism and elevated class-blind and consumerist ideas of choice.”

Those 1960’s efforts (of earlier chapters) ran on those suburban women who didn’t work (for pay. out of their homes.)...which ran into the Feminine Mystique + the economic downturn of the 1970’s, which in term impacted those efforts.

Thus not at home to answer the phone anymore

However, they did organize NOW chapters, and the Newton and Lexington chapters “developed a campaign to eradicate sex discrimination in public schools.”

(So if you were a student in those districts in the late ‘70’s and maybe early 80’s, and got *both* shop and home ec, thank the local NOW chapters.)

(Also, was this a thing? Because my husband got both in Worcester in the early 80’s)

“The rise of girls’ sports teams...marked of the largest and most tangible impacts of feminist activity on suburban communities in Boston and the nation”...but this doesn’t mention Title IX, which was signed into law in 1972.

The local neighborhood consciousness raising groups (because they were local) “made the participants ever more inclined to use the attitudes and needs of white middle-class educated women to stand-in for the experiences and goals of all women”

So back to this alliance from the opening, MCFL “believed that the ERA would both increase the accessibility of abortion and destroy traditional family norms”

The ROAR women get here as their “largely working-class, female base already felt victimized by high taxes, the weak economy, the poor education of their children, and the growning divorce rate.”

(Also there was, in earlier chapters, the sense that desegregation had been foisted on white Bostonians by white suburbanites who were not impacted.)

A March 1976 Boston Herald poll found that while more than 80% of women “strongly rejected the feminist label, roughly the same percent supported the ERA and many of the other goals of the feminist movement.”

And so while the ERA passed in November of 1976, “the campaign failed the instill permanent support for feminist issues and causes within the electorate”

And the fight over abortion narrowed to that rather than broadening to related issues.

“in large part a defensive response to the growing power of the pro-life movement, increasingly directed the movement’s demands towards keeping abortion legal, and away from such issues as regaining Medicaid funding or demanding other services from public hospitals.”

Chapter 10! #stillreading

WAIT A MINUTE!
The Massachusetts High Technology Council “has served as one of the driving forces in passing the ballot initiative Proposition 2 1/2”!!!

This explains SO MUCH of their testimony at the State House! #mapoli

And an itch in the back of my head had me look up Governor Baker in Wikipedia:
“After graduating, Baker served as corporate communications director for the Massachusetts High Technology Council”
It was his first job after graduate school, it appears.
THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH.

Ok, anyway, we’re centralizing high tech growth in Massachusetts politics in this chapter.

“The party’s concentration on high-tech growth, knowledge-based professionals, low taxes, and welfare reform also resulted in a set of policies that continued, and exacerbated, forms of economic and racial inequality throughout metropolitan Boston and the nation.”

Mike Dukakis was voted “most brilliant” by his Brookline High graduating class.

Also his campaign slogan was “Mike Dukakis Should Be Governor.”

And ugh. On to Prop 2 1/2.
I’m always a little vague on when it was passed—it was 1980 (I was seven).

So King beat Dukakis in the ‘78 primary, running on his support for such a plan.

Meanwhile, MHTC forms around the “high cost of doing business in Massachusetts”
“The MHTC’s core principles and agenda rested on the personal experiences of their founders supplemented by notions of supply-side economic theory”

“The MHTC’s purported people-oriented tax agenda demonstrated the increasing clout of corporate leaders to dictate a policy agenda in state politics on behalf of their employees.”

(You’re going to be shocked at how well that worked.)

“the majority [of 128 professionals interviewed in the late ‘70’s] were skeptical of solutions similar to [CA] Proposition 13 because they recognized

“that the maintenance of many municipal services, such as quality public schools, parks, and other amenities that made their suburbs desirable places to live, depend on taxes.”

(True! And not just of ‘desirable suburbs’!)

And so a measure goes on the 1980 ballot.

“Robert Coard, executive director of a Boston antipoverty agency, succinctly predicted, ‘Wealthy suburban communities will be minimally affected. Urban areas will be devestated.’”

Local officials from suburbs noted that they would *also* be in trouble.

The campaign was led by Barbara Anderson: “While many suburban women became politically active after reading Betty Friedan, Ayn Rand was the catalyst for Anderson’s awakening.”

And because nothing is new, they circumvented campaign laws to raise additional funds, because of course they did.
They claimed it was a grassroots effort, but later admitted that they never could have succeeded without MHTC.

“while the majority of Bay State voters endorsed the proposition, they remained confused as to exactly its purpose and consequences.”

Prop 2 1/2 passed 59 to 41% statewide. The suburbs with which the books concerns itself were split.

And:
Parents understood what this would mean.
“In the weeks immediately following the 1989 election, Boston-area private and parochial schools received a flood of inquiries and a record number of new applications”

“The Boston Globe called this pattern of departure ‘the single most chilling result’ of Proposition 2 1/2.”

“Few, if any, parents publicly voiced concern about the impact of their decision on other people’s children.”

“The implementation of Proposition 2 1/2 magnified the socioeconomic inequality embedded in the geography of Massachusetts.”

“The greatest impact fell on lower-middle-class, working-class, and low-income urban areas.”

After pushback, the Legislature added the override provision which “proved an easier device to invoke in smaller communities” thus “enhancing disparities”

Dukakis challenges King, wins the primary, wins in November, repairs his rupture with MHTC, Reagan comes and speaks to them in ‘83.

...and so, the Massachusetts miracle, which “produced an economically and geographically uneven distribution that privileged middle-class professionals and enhanced structural inequities.”

The jobs created “required high levels of expertise, experience, and training, and were nonunionized.”

The jobs in this and related sectors “made employment overly dependent on the boom-bust cycles of the postindustrial economy”

And we got the development along 495 (where land was cheaper), making it “a national symbol of exurban sprawl”

The section between 128 and 495 was 40% of the state’s growth in the 90’s...and the area remained about 93% white.

And I haven’t been tweeting all the welfare reform bits, and the upshot is that a lot of what comes later in the New Democrats continues the Dukakis themes, rather than breaks with them, including in several succeeding GOP governors.

And so, on to the Epilogue!
#stillreading

The more recent demographic changes of the 128 suburbs “lessen the pronounced whiteness...but not the pattern of economic exclusivity”

And map (p.283)

“In line with national demographic patterns, while the overall suburban minority population increased during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, in metropolitan Boston, so did the segregation of Blacks and Latinos from whites and Asians.”

From an education perspective, among the saddest of sentences: “In fact, in most suburban municipalities, METCO students continue to compromise the few Black or brown faces in the public schools.”

“In 2014, the program remained roughly the size it was at the time of the busing crisis, and support in suburban towns for the program remained predicated on the fact that its $20M yearly budget was still entirely state funded.”

(My note: it is also still one-way)

Good note here that Boston schools’ changes in busing for racial diversity in 2013 was partly a response to local aid cuts.

(Under a Democratic adminstration, mind you)

An outward demonstration of “a liberal political identity and commitment to socioeconomic equality...is not the main route to confront or solve structural inequity.”

of those moving into newly hip urban neighborhoods, Geismer writes:

“the language and ideals of individual rights, meritocracy, equality of opportunity, and diversity embedded in these political and purchasing decisions

“seems to have even further obscured the structural problems from the consciousness of many highly educated, liberal-leaning professionals.”

“It is...ever more important to focus not on the ways this constituency...are distinctive or exceptional. Rather, it is crucial to understand how their individualist and meritocratic outlook reflects the continuities and changes in liberalism,

“and has contributed to the problems of metropolitan segregation and inequity and the absence of public policies that address these issues.”

And that, dear Reader, is it. /fin

@threadreaderapp unroll please