Mayor Tom Menino set a high standard as to what it means to be an “urban mechanic”.
He understood that you earn the trust of your people. You build it over time. You develop infrastructure and relationships with the people of your city, and you show people that you’re staying for the fight. And when the city works well, you gain the trust of the people.
This week on Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, we reflect on the passing of Tom Menino. We hear from five who chronicled his 20-year tenure and worked with the mayor to integrate the city and connect him with communities of color.
Former 2013 mayoral candidate CharlotteGolarRichie worked closely with Menino for nearly half of the years he was in office. She said she was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives a year after Menino’s election in 1993, and that city services were critical to the district that she represented.
“He was much bigger than being a mayor just focused on city services. He did have a vision around things like civil rights,” Golar Richie said. “Rewind the tapes back to when he was elected. We might have forgotten this, but he appointed the first African American woman chief of staff at the time. That was big. And he said, 'I’m focused on Roxbury and Dorchester-- in fact we’re going to put together a task force to focus on the Blue Hill Ave. corridor,' and that was big.”
As the former president of the Boston Architectural College, Ted Landsmark said the mayor was planning oriented in the way that one could actually see outcomes to what he was working on.
“He was not bombastic. He was not about making promises that he wasn’t able to deliver on, and yet he did some radical things,” said Landsmark. “When he called on other people to help effectuate some of the policies that he was going to put in place, we always knew that we had his backing to be creative, and innovative, and to push for real outcomes.”
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ken Cooper covered Menino for The Boston Globe and profiled him in his recent book, Portraits of Purpose. Cooper said whereas former Boston mayor Ray Flynn made change in respect to racial relations in the city, Menino made racial harmony the norm.
“I loved when there would be an eruption of racial conflict of the bad old kind, he’d call it nonsense. 'This is not what we do in my city,' and I think it’s a great credit to him,” Cooper said. “It makes social relations in the city much better, but it has other implications. It makes the business climate for investment much better, it makes it easier for businesses to recruit talent- and not just talent of color.” (12:44)
Though one man, even a talented mayor like Menino, could not change everything, Cooper said. People of color still lack a proportional share of political power in the city, and they still do not have adequate access to the best jobs in this town.
“To me that’s his lasting legacy; it’s not a building that you can point to, but a building of social relations in the city,” he said.
As the director of the Access Strategies Fund, and a candidate for city office herself Kelly Bates worked with the mayor on outreach to communities of color. Menino knew how to transform relationships by being comfortable wherever he was and he was so authentic, she said.
Early in his tenure as mayor, Menino created the Office of New Bostonians, which welcomed new immigrants to Boston and looked at ways to utilize their talents and skills, understanding that it would contribute to the economy and make for a vibrant, diverse city. At the time, immigration was considered the “third rail” of politics, Bates said.
“I think what we did was working closely with communities of color to integrate them into the power base in the city, and he welcomed that,” she said. “He wanted to see young people and people of color ascend to positions of leadership. He understood that he needed their perspectives and valued that.
Former Boston City Councilor Felix D. Arroyo said at his core, Menino believed in the people of the city and he believe in the development of different neighborhoods
”He wanted to make sure that everybody had an opportunity, that’s why he was so strong on development, and education,“ he said. ”He did a Hell of a lot of the city of Boston.“
Listen to the full conversation on Under the Radar above.
