With just days to go until the 2025 General Municipal Election, Boston’s District 7 is once again ready to pick a new City Councilor. Eleven candidates competed in September’s preliminary election to replace former Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson. Now, finalists Said Ahmed and Rev. Miniard Culpepper are looking to represent the historically Black and politically active district.
In this district, their first task may be to rebuild trust in a community facing more uncertainty than ever.
“We are dealing with even more upward pressure about housing, issues around violence, issues around the Boston public schools. And the housing prices have probably doubled from the time that I actually ran,” said Tito Jackson, who represented District 7 on the City Council from 2011 until 2018.
Economic issues within District 7, which extends from Roxbury through parts of Dorchester, the South End and Fenway, have been central flashpoints in candidate debates thus far. Affordable housing opportunities are increasingly rare in the community, areas such as “Mass. and Cass” often draw attention for their homelessness and crime rates, and encroachment from Northeastern University and private stadium developers puts public land at a premium.
“These issues around affordable housing are even more intense now,” says Jackson. “[One] of the things that we are also seeing is lower numbers of Black folk in the city, in aggregate. The numbers that we saw before — around 25%. We’re seeing those numbers drop down to 20%.”
Jackson won his seat on Boston’s City Council following the expulsion of predecessor Chuck Turner for accepting bribes — a crime for which he was sentenced to three years in prison. Although Fernandes Anderson resigned under similar circumstances, longtime District 7 activist Dorothea Jones sees her tenure as a success, in that it pulled “together many different people in all walks of life in all community organizations.”
Still, Jones believes District 7 leadership has more work to do in prioritizing its residents.
“They want to be able to continue to live in a community that they love, a community that they’ve grown up in, and a community that has in some ways turned its back on them for whatever reasons,” Jones said. “I think that there are a lot of issues that definitely need to be worked on. And hopefully, with the new city council coming in, they will lead and show some direction for all of us to follow and to work together on.”
For Christine Slaughter, associate professor at Boston University, the longstanding work of local activists like Jones who serve as “connective tissue” in the community has mobilized residents to advocate for important issues. However, because Boston is below the national average in terms of voter participation, Slaughter says advocacy is only one step in increasing democratic participation.
“This is an off-cycle year,” she said. “And while it is a competitive race, the top of the ticket is unopposed. So how do we increase participation when we see so much going on in national politics to where this race may not have a benefit, given that the focus is so much on what’s happening in Washington?”
Ultimately, Slaughter said this election will come down to the candidate with the “best and freshest ideas.” And in the wake of the Fernandes Anderson scandal, she’s shifting focus to what might happen after ballots are cast.
“Are we able to hold our elected officials accountable, especially in a progressive city like Boston?” says Slaughter. “[While] I look forward to who wins on November 4, I think I’m most concerned about how do they shepherd the district moving forward facing the new challenges that we’re facing?”
Guests
- Tito Jackson, former District 7 City Councilor, lifelong Roxbury resident, former Boston mayoral candidate, founder and CEO of the cannabis company APEX Noire.
- Christine Slaughter, assistant professor of political science at Boston University specializing in African-American politics
- Dorothea Jones, Roxbury-based lifelong activist who sits on District 7’s advisory board, member of Boston’s Task Force on Reparations, President of the Urban League Guild of Eastern Massachusetts
