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What if all of Dorchester went on strike?
By adamg on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 8:05am
Dignity begins and ends in Dorchester. Dorchesterites are proud for justifiable reasons. Often maligned and often overlooked as an afterthought, a swollen appendix easily excised, a blemish, a corral for Boston's citizens deserving the least consideration, Dorchester provides the muscle and the soul a world-class metropolis requires. It is a vital organ that buzzes a fugue of intertwined ambitions. Imagine if all Dorchesterites went on strike. Boston would shut down. Coffee would overflow unattended urns, hotel bedsheets wouldn't be changed, waste baskets wouldn't be emptied, bills wouldn't be paid on time and accounts receivable would languish unattended. Someone has to mind the store. The good people of Dorchester fill the roles they've been allotted and they do it with both vim and vigor. ...
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Comments
...welfare go uncollected.
...welfare go uncollected.
shootings go unshot....
shootings go unshot....
stupidity and stereotypes ...
never take a day off!
Dorchester Breakdown
Can someone break down (explain) Dorchester? I think I'm not the only one with misconceptions.
I understand that there are different parts to Dorchester, and that there are parts that are *not* combat zones.
If I were to go on only what I hear in the news about Dorchester, I would order in the National Guard to evacuate the survivors.
No offense to Dorchester residents intended. I'm sure they know the PR problem that Dorchester has, and hopefully they are willing to educate people like me.
Dorchester is about 1/4 of Boston
It's quite large, and therefore any generalization you might want to make about it is false. I suggest you wait until this cold spell ends and then simply wander around it, appreciating such places as the Strand Theatre (Uphams Corner), First Parish church (Meetinghouse Hill), Melville Park (swank residential area that looks like Newton), Lower Mills (recycled chocolate factory buildings), Pope John Paul II Park (former landfill and drive-in movie theatre, now a park along the Neponset River), the JFK Library, UMass-Boston, Savin Hill Park, etc. etc.
Thanks. Sounds like one
Thanks. Sounds like one can't generalize about Dorchester much more than one can generalize about Boston.
I've been walking through and around Savin Hill two or three times in the last couple years. I've probably seen some of those other places without knowing their names.
Are there one or more especially crime-heavy parts of Dorchester? If so, how did they get that way? And do those parts have names?
Not really
Random crimes (robberies, muggings, assaults by unknown persons, car thefts, etc.) are highest in downtown areas. College areas are also pretty high up there. If someone is trying to use statistics to avoid being a victim of crime, they'll want to stay out of areas where there are lots of shops and restaurants, lots of tourists, lots of people carrying money and expensive items, and a high percentage of people who didn't grow up in a neighborhood where they'd have learned how to fight off an attacker.
It's really unlikely that anyone walking around in Dorchester minding their own business is going to become a victim of crime. People looking to commit crimes are going to head to Newbury Street. Dorchester has higher rates of some types of crimes, mainly domestic violence and stuff related to drugs and gangs, but largely limited to people who know each other.
Which is not to say that this kind of crime isn't the community's problem, because all of us are responsible for ending these sorts of things in our city, but just to point out that when people say they don't go to certain neighborhoods "because I'll get shot," they're actually saying, "because there are numerous people of different racial and class backgrounds than mine there, and I don't know how to interact with them or feel comfortable around them, and I can't bother to learn."
When posts like this come up, I find it really surprising that people can live/work in Boston and not have seen most of Boston just having gone to visit people from work or to try a new restaurant or whatnot. It seems like it would be quite a feat to work/study/worship/socialize somewhere where you don't have people from all of Boston's neighborhoods (and several surrounding areas), and I wonder how people have managed to find places where they *don't* meet people from all over the area.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Why Ask
Probably we've all seen that sometimes, but I wouldn't say that's universal.
I ask whether there are especially high-crime parts, and why, because I want to understand.
High crime means the society *is not working* for a lot of people. We're supposed to make society work. Before we can make it work, we have to understand why it's not working.
Oh, I totally agree
I didn't mean to imply that's why I thought *you* were asking, but just that that type of thinking is a lot of what's behind the people who've never been to Dorchester (which is still so hard for me to wrap my head around).
A lot of crime in most any area has to do with marginalized populations and dominant populations' misunderstanding of them.
Ask any of your Caribbean friends if they've had the cops called because they were having loud and emotional debates during normal waking hours and someone assumed it was a fight, then the cops couldn't imagine why there'd be shouting if there weren't weapons or drugs involved, so they ripped the house apart looking for said weapons, then someone ends up being charged with yelling at a cop to stop going through their freakin stuff, or someone puts his hand on his wife's shoulder to ask her to take a breath and stop yelling at the cop who's destroying their home, so the cop charges him with assault.
Or ask anyone who's struggled with mental illness how many times they've been arrested for "loitering" when the rest of us are perfectly free to sit around anywhere we damn well please.
Marginalization tends to be a cyclical thing. If I get pulled over or get a call from ISD or DCF or my child's teacher or a tax collector, I know that these people are going to be of my own class background, probably my racial background, and have an education background and communication style that are similar to my own. I'm not going to have any trouble explaining to them that something was a simple mistake, and that I'm a competent person, and that there's nothing to be worried about. Not everyone has this same privilege.
Marginalized people definitely experience a lot more issues with officials when they likely did nothing wrong or did something barely wrong that someone of my race and class could likely BS my way out of. So then a person starts to feel like, hey, the system doesn't understand or listen to my group anyway, and the cops give me tickets all the time anyway because my group is caught up with the law all the time and they just assume we're guilty, so screw it, I'm going to drive an unregistered car, because they've already made up their minds that my people just cause trouble.
(Disclaimer: I use the police as an example here, mostly because we started out talking about crime, but I'm definitely not intending to say that the police or anyone else are deliberately discriminatory or that the police have a monopoly on not providing culturally sensitive services. People-in-power-screwing-marginalized-folks-over-without-intentionally-doing-so is something that happens all across the board, and my field certainly makes these same mistakes.)
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
A good explanation, and I
A good explanation, and I know that does go on in some places to some degree.
I suspect that there are factors to high crime that don't reasonably reduce to marginalization, but I should really understand more before I go trying to draw distinctions.
By the way, I personally wouldn't generalize too much about police behavior. I can't speak to Dorchester (BPD?), but I saw a lot of Cambridge PD (especially around diverse Area Four and Central Square) when I did news and had a scanner, and I didn't see the stereotypical biases.
Oh, I did just recall a
Oh, I did just recall a personal experience that seems related to one of your points.
Back in my late teens, on the West Coast, I used to work til very late at night and walk home for over half an hour on deserted streets, in an area of industrial/science parks, apartment complexes, and vacant lots. Now, I didn't have a lot of money, was renting a bedroom in an old woman's condo, and my coat was ratty and torn, but I was white, clean-cut, polite, and non-intimidating.
As I'd be walking home from work after midnight, tired, sometimes a police cruiser would slow and drive alongside me at walking pace. I had a vague understanding that they thought I was suspicious somehow, but I didn't know anything about how police worked. My only experience with the police was when Officer Friendly visited my school and we got those great coloring books. I think at first I was bewildered or alarmed, and then later annoyed. After I became annoyed by this happening repeatedly, a couple times I frowned or glared at them, which made them drive off.
Eventually, after this had happened maybe 4 times, I stopped and approached the cruiser. I did something like greet the officer, ask if there was a problem, and say I didn't know why police kept driving alongside me, but could he please tell everyone at the station that there's this kid who walks home from work late at night and he's not doing anything wrong. The officer asked me where I was working, my address, etc., and then drove on. I don't think I was ever bothered after that.
In hindsight, had I been glaring or approaching a cruiser while black or gangsta-posturing, or I hadn't been brought up to respect police, or I was in a high-crime neighborhood, or I didn't have a respectable-sounding story about what I was doing out at that hour -- with the wrong officer -- things might have gone badly for me.
eeka, what are you talking about?
I don't know what stats you are using but a kid with an iPhone or Sidekick walking through a neighborhood like Fields Corner, Grove Hall or somewhere near Green Street Station is much, much, much more likely to be robbed than a tourist Downtown is. And, another thing, Newbury Street is one of the safest spots in the entire city.
Green Street Station
I can say that there's nothing like approaching Green Street Station to catch one of the last trains out, hearing what sounds like multiple gunshots nearby when you're on the overpass, becoming even more aware that you have a conspicuous camera shoulder case with strap-on lens pouches, and waiting on a deserted platform for the train. :)
That JP neighborhood is pretty and interesting during the day, though, and there are residential streets just a couple blocks away that are pleasant even at night and when unfamiliar.
(I had a similar experience when leaving a friend's too late in Savin Hill, missing the last train and being locked out of the station, and then the cab taking an hour to arrive. I was concerned at first, since I'd heard it wasn't a very safe spot of town to be in, but I just minded my business, the occasional people walked past, and there was no actual threat.)
becoming even more aware
I have a habit of never walking around with conspicuous pieces of electronics hanging from my neck no matter where Im walking.
Do it!
A future where coffee flows like water?
I'M THERE, DUDE.
Really???
Really? Dorchester makes the city move? Without the downtown neighborhoods, this town would be broke and your kids wouldn't have schools to attend, police to keep them safe, garbage workers, firefighters, or running water and sewer.
Without downtown Boston,
Without downtown Boston, Dorchester would be... Brookline. That would be terrible.
While I think the writer of
While I think the writer of that piece was hopped up on something, after all what self respecting working class poor person is ok with being poor, he makes some valid points.
Places like Dorchester provide the man power for the infrastructure of the city to function. Its in communities like Dorchester and others all around Boston "we dont go to" where we keep our oil, sand, salt, power plants trucks, storage, retail workers etc all of whih is needed for the city to run. While it would be an inconvenience if Downtown and the financial centers closed for a day it would be devastating if communities like Dorchester, Everett, Lynn, Chelsea, Revere, and Quincy were all to close shop even for one day. The city would not be able to function, and things would come to an immediate halt. Granted if the downtown community was to shut down it would be devastating in the long term they have proven to be able to shut down for a few days in a row without much of a problem (holiday weekends.)
Alloted Roles?
I wonder what the guy who wrote this does for a living?
I have a feeling he's not one of those saintly workers fulfilling "the roles they've been alloted." (Alloted by whom?) This piece feels condescending to me, and if I was one of the people he's writing about I'd be insulted. Or maybe he's being sarcastic?
Oh, the Fishmongers!
Paging Barton Fink!
Coming from a working class
Coming from a working class neighberhood and still living in that general area (my parents being working class, me being more office based, I dont make a ton of money yet so Im not seeing the monetary difference lol) I can tell you that while some people in the upper levels of government and community development appreciate his type, many locals do not.
This is the type of person who comes into a community and says he is not gentrifying it, but would rather just be part of what is already there. This is otherwise known as the first wave, he makes it more palatable for other people to want to move into the area. They are the type that come in and say they like how things are, but they "just want to change one thing" or they offer cover for the owners of industrial properties by saying they "appreciate" the large cranes and fouls odors and the workings of a working industrial area they can see from their widow (nevermind that their condo is soundproof and the odor doesnt leak into their home like it would in a triple decker.)
Things Change
Or were all those triple-deckers built on paved roads with vinyl siding and hot water and boilers that run on gas and oil (instead of coal) and cable TV and cones to mark parking spaces in winter?
What I find interesting is the parochial idea that one can both avoid any vision or plan because you don't want any change, and yet wonder why you have to put up a constant fight against change. Somehow, actually steering change is seen as admitting that change will happen, and therefore fighting every single change, both appropriate and inappropriate, is possible and preferable.
Of course it is much easier to blame specific people or classes of people for change, for gentrification, for industrial blight, etc. Even though the net effect is reactive, divisive and ridiculous denial and favors exploitation of the chaos by politicians and "insiders". If you look at communities across the nation that are thriving, these are the communities that understand that change is not only inevitable, but that it can be steered in favorable ways that improve things for the people living there already.
Well thats very good until
Well thats very good until the people in that community can no longer afford to live there and become marginalized. Prime example is Davis Square in Somerville...
Like that woman on the bus in Somerville in the Late 80s?
First she lets loose a profanity laden screed against barnies and yuppies, then she pleasantly answers her friend's question about "how's ya ma doin in Florida"?
Again, so much easier to blame other people ... especially when your parents inherited a house and then sold it for the big bucks.
The examples you cite is a grade A number one PRIME EXAMPLE of what happens when a community gets reactive against change, rather than proactive in its own interests. Davis Square resisted every last little project piece by piece, which let monied development interests with connections take advantage of the rail line. Rather than planning ahead for community development for the community based on transit access, you get divide and conquer.
Community organizing and planning takes some democracy to happen - the local politican machines don't like that, and many of the locals themselves have been trained to fear being "out of their place" and taking on these kinds of roles.
Oh, but by reacting to any and all change without much vision, you can still blame other people for your woes: those bad people, those "outside" developers (who happened to come from your area too) rather than the people you elected or your parents for cashing out or yourself and your neighbors for not using participatory democracy to plan ahead and guide change.
My parents havent cashed out
My parents havent cashed out and most likely will not be cashing out anytime soon, neither have many of their friends and neighbors. That was an interesting assumption you made...
Since the 80's Ive noticed two different trends in the neighberhood that differed from the pre 80's era. The first trend is people buying property in order to rent it, otherwise known as the investors. In the past someone would buy a multifamily dwelling, live on one floor and rent the other floors to family or other local people. The investors buy the house and then rent out all the floors thereby removing the local owner out of the equation. The second trend tends to happen in the new condos where people move into these cramped condos, cause parking problems on the street, and decide that things need to change because they dont like how things are run. A subset of these types of people is the person who comes in and decides to champion the "locals" or worse the developer who comes in and says when they showed up the area was a dump, but they "improved it" and now all the natives are happy.
As for cashing out, while some people cashed out many others simply moved on as a part of life. Either they needed a bigger place, a bigger yard, or they were too old and moved to assisted living these people move out of all communities on a regular basis. Under normal conditions they are replaced by someone similar to them but 50 years younger. Currently they are replaced either by investors or yuppies neither is very appealing to the locals. Ideally many of these neighberhoods thrive off of generations of families, and are most welcoming to young families that want to stay for a while no matter their color or economic situation. The lifestyle of the investors and yuppies just doesnt really click with the community. The types of people the community would want in those homes the most are the ones who can no longer afford to live there and that has broken the cycle.
I dont see whats so wrong about wanting to keep the character of your community intact.
BTW I dont have any family members or friends who live in Florida...
Shady, You are Missing the Point
I don't either. HOWEVER you will NOT achieve that goal by reactive knee-jerk "no change never ever ever" as your "plan" for dealing with change! As we can see time and again, the Boston Area is a very rich set of case studies in how that DOES NOT WORK.
What works is when communities determine what changes they want and will benefit them, so long as those decisions are informed by an understanding of what is going on outside of them. What happens in Boston (and other entrenched places) is the failure to understand that change happens NO MATTER WHAT (oh, sorry, you were off stoking the coal boiler for your parents??? .. I'll continue). What is further misunderstood is that changes within a community can be directed to serve the best interests of the current community. These failures mean that, absent a community directed plan, people with means take full advantage of external and internal situations and direct change to their own ends. A community guided approach gives communities latitude to direct internal changes (like getting rid of toxic sites) and adapt to external changes in ways that benefit the current community.
You cannot insist that nothing changes inside an enclave, ignore changes outside, and see good outcomes for the current residents in the long term. This results in neighborhoods that are either isolated and deteriorating, or completely over run by those who exploit the situation. (see also End of Rent Control, and how well heeled Cambrige residents suddenly drove up the housing markets).
Make Change Work for YOU
So how do the current residents of a neighborhood make change work for them?
How do they learn how things work and what's going on?
How do they know who will be effective organizers and representatives?
Davis Square
Not sure what you mean by "Davis Square resisted every last little project piece by piece". Davis Square is physically largely unchanged from when the Red Line came in, and that was a conscious choice by the neighborhood and the city. Very little was torn down either for the Red Line or since then.
yeah Whalehead is a special snowflake
While I think the writer of that piece was hopped up on something,
Yep, check out the sidebar autobio and pics. To say he's impressed with himself would be an understatement- the man seems convinced he's the ultimate in hip.
Word.
Word.
The more people I meet...
...and the more perspectives I hear, the less I tend to make confident snap judgments of people.
OK, so ...
You don't like people who whine on their blogs and you don't like people who get too exuberant about their new neighborhoods. Anybody ele?
Normally I disagree with
Normally I disagree with Brett on issues, but I think he touched on a point. His championing of his new digs is directly connected to his championing of himself. Whalehead (or whatever he calls himself) wouldnt live in a shabby area so this can not be a shabby area. Whalehead would live in the best area he could find, so this must be the best their is out there. I understand pride and happiness in your new hometown, but it seems a bit melodramtic.
not understanding the hate here
Dorchester doesn't get enough respect, and it deserves some.
Somerville residents and government made a conscious effort to improve the image of their city over the past two decades, and it has worked. Why not the same for Dot?
Sounds to me like jumping to
Sounds to me like jumping to conclusions.
Subtleties and complexities don't carry over well in hunks of blog postings, as soon as we get at all away from the familiar.
For all I know, the name "Whalehead" might be a self-deprecating private joke, and maybe he's content whether or not everyone gets what he means, and maybe that hints at through what lens his writings should be interpreted.
His prose hasn't really been my cup of tea, but I still skim his posts when they're linked from UH, and I won't be surprised to see insight or useful info there.