Jackson vows fight for little guy against corporate fatcats and City Hall distractions

Tito Jackson today formally launched his campaign for mayor of Boston, promising a campaign against gentrifiers, rich companies seeking taxpayer handouts and a City Hall that seems stuck on bread-and-circus catastrophes like the Olympics and the IndyCar races.

At his campaign announcement outside Dudley Square's Haley House Cafe, the District 7 city councilor vowed to fight for extra money for education, to target tax breaks at small and entpreneurial companies that he said are the true engine of the Boston economy and to oppose any future tax handouts to large companies such as GE, whom he said should already be more than happy to move to the greatest city in America, or a future "that is not just for some of us, but for all of us."

Jackson vowed to be a mayor who "spends as much time uptown as in downtown," and who has "the backbone" to fight proposals like the Olympics, and who will insist local construction jobs go to Boston residents, "who don't have New Hampshire license plates."

Jackson, 41, the son of a 13-year-old who had him after she was raped and gave him up for adoption, said he grew up with his adoptive parents in a Grove Hall where neighbors looked out for each other and helped each other out. He said one neighbor gave him his first job - working on the man's ice-cream truck, even though, Jackson joked, he probably ate more ice cream than he sold.

But today, that Boston is "at a crossroads," he said, noting one study that showed Boston had the highest level of income inequality of any major American city. "The middle class stands in the balance. ... From Roxbury to West Roxbury, from South Boston to East Boston, from Dorchester to the North End, in both Chinatown and Charlestown, the struggle is real."

"Across the city, gentrification has become a neighborhood norm, said. "We seem to be judging our success by the number of million-dollar condos, skyscrapers, and publicly funded helipads that are being built, rather than the mobility of our families and the percentage of them that are managing to escape poverty."

Jackson, a councilor since 2011, said a city that brought in $115 million more in tax revenue from new development last year should not be choking schools and forcing seventh and eighth-graders to ride an unreliable MBTA rather than providing yellow buses for them. It should be funding world-class schools - and helping out small businesses, long-time residents being priced out of their homes and men and women getting out of prison who need to find a place to live and work. "They are not looking for a handout, they are looking for a hand up."

Jackson, who actively worked to elect Marty Walsh four years ago, said he grew disappointed in the mayor over his handling of such things as Boston 2024, IndyCar and pushing for a $276-million incentive for GE that includes tax breaks, a promise to restore the Northern Avenue Bridge and construction of a public helipad. "That is not the Boston I grew up in." Boston, he said, is already world class and should stop pursuing unreleastic, expensive projects as if it weren't.

Although Jackson sidestepped a question on whether he would try to rip up the overall GE package as mayor, he vowed to fight construction of a publicly funded helipad - if GE wants a helipad badly enough, it can build one on its own, he said.

He said the "Boston is a great city," one that attracts companies without such large incentives: "I believe we overshot that bid," he said. "This is a company that should want to come to Boston because of the talent we have," and because of the area's colleges. He said that the GE deal could ultimately wind up doing nothing for Boston because the city already has a short of the types of high-tech workers the company needs, so it might just end up hiring away workers from other local companies, rather than creating new opportunities for residents who don't have such skills. And a city where he said shootings are on the increase should be devoting more attention to public safety and health than the needs of a giant corporation.

Jackson returned a couple times to education. He was critical of the mayor's decision to use just $18 million in extra development revenue to plug a $40-million hole in the BPS budget, saying it forced larger special-needs classes and prevented even Boston Latin School from offering eighth-grade science classes. He praised the more than 3,000 students he said walked out of class last year to protest cuts. "They stood up and they said enough is enough."

During his speech, Jackson cited everybody and everyone from the Bible, Frederick Douglass and the Boston city seal, whose motto reads, in Latin, "God be with us as he was with our fathers." He said he'd add "mothers" to that - and that he would also work to end a continuing gender gap in area wages.