Thread by @matt_cam

1/This thread on an obscure committee nominally responsible for directing a beloved #EastBoston park is this week's essential #bospoli reading. Meet me back here when you're done for a few more thoughts from someone who has been following this fiasco closely for the past 10 yrs

https://twitter.com/PodikoEastie/status/1526735352270143488

2/ For context, here's the finished portion of Piers Park. I live around the corner, walk past it every day, and visit as often as possible. It"s a treasure, one of New England's beautiful spaces. The angry racists you've just seen in those videos are tasked with managing it.

3/ Piers Park is an amazing place for working people of limited means to have parties, get married, shoot music videos, take family photos, and hear great music. Like my band, @hightiderocks! Here we are playing some Dead on Jerry Garcia's birthday

4/ Anyway, the reason all of this matters is that for reasons that would take 20 more tweets to explain this incredible public space is about to be more than doubled. It's going to be the best waterfront park in New England. It's huge, not just for us in Beastie but all of Boston

5/ The Piers Park Advisory Committee was set up by statute to give concerned residents a chance to manage the existing park and guide the planning of the rest.

But not residents of #EastBoston: residents of the entire Commonwealth. This committee has taken that joke way too far

6/ my friend @BrianGBoston started putting it in my ear more than a decade ago that this committee was not only useless, but openly racist and enforcing an outdated vision of this neighborhood w/no understanding of who actually lives here now and what they need from their parks

7/ I've attended at least 5 meetings of this committee, and it's all true. They were doing nothing, and doing it badly. I was once shouted at by nearly every sitting member of the board during a public Q+A, told to sit down just for asking if I could see a financial statement

8/ I personally visited the AG's office to check the committee's financial statements filings after that meeting.

There weren't any, for at least ten years.

This alone should have had them shut down tbh

9/ But what we're talking about here is much more important than paperwork. It's about a battle for the soul of a neighborhood in which power was held until recently a small group of 2nd-gen Americans who (quietly or otherwise) don't want Latinos in "their" immigrant neighborhood

10/ In "Common Ground," the single best read on the Boston busing crisis, J. Anthony Lukas points out that Eastie was the only place where the opposition to busing was openly racist. That is the climate the committee you see in that video grew up in

amazon.com/Common-Ground-…

11/ Eastie busing activist Pixie Palladino made a name for herself by screaming racial slurs at kids (also punching Ted Kennedy in the stomach) while training the next generation of Eastie leaders

Her memory is now honored with a bench in Piers Park, commissioned by you know who

12/ which brings us up to this clip: a former city councilor (+ former Palladino mentee) calling this committee out for resisting neighborhood demands that they diversify + start listening to actual residents and noisily resigning. Good on ya, Sal!

https://twitter.com/PodikoEastie/status/1526757072750186496?t=qmy9i0OG3GcBmFntTix-aw&s=19

13/ I'm really burning the lede here though! Here's the real story:

I admit that I gave up on trying to do anything about this neighborhood embarrassment years ago. But you know who didn't? A new generation of Easier leaders organized by @realgaraad who kept the heat on

14/ The board is still holding on to their power after this absurd coup, but given the neighborhood's open disgust for these out-of-towners and the massive response to @PodikoEastie's thread I can't think they can keep treating this as a do-nothing social club for much longer

Deeply embarrassed to tell you that for all of this time I have gotten the name wrong! It's the PROJECT Advisory Committee. I'm sure I knew that

(N.B. : the *organized* opposition to busing! It was super racist all over the city, and from what I"ve read Charlestown was much worse on the ground)

15/ 1 more important point: Piers Park was given to Eastie by @massport in mitigation for the wanton destruction of Wood Island Park and an adjacent neighborhood. We're high density. Parks matter.

I'll give the last word here to local saint Mary Ellen Welch (RIP)

#bospoli