JESSICA TANG says it only makes sense at this point based on the data and science. But that kind of logic isn’t always driving the COVID conversation, so the Boston Teachers Union president’s comments earlier this week in support of a vaccine mandate for teachers is big news in the fight to contain the pandemic. […]
Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas works with Bruce in overseeing CommonWealth Beacon coverage and editing the work of reporters. His own reporting has a particular focus on politics, education, and criminal justice reform.
Michael has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His story on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. His CommonWealth work has also won awards from Capitol Beat for state government coverage and from the New England Newspaper & Press Association for work in several areas.
Prior to coming to CommonWealth, for 15 years Michael wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Globe. Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In the late 1980s he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for a weekly news magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Posted inTransportation
Can we hold off a return to carmageddon?
IT’S LIKE WATCHING a highway pile-up in slow motion. That seems to be the appropriate car-centric metaphor conjured up by a trio of op-eds in today’s Boston Globe that say we are heading for big trouble if action isn’t taken to address ways that the coronavirus pandemic has upended commuting patterns and practices. “One thing […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
A call for mayoral candidates to address gun violence
A PROMINENT BLACK MINISTER who was part of the clergy-police partnership in the 1990s that helped stem gun violence in Boston is calling on the five mayoral candidates to offer more specifics on plans to address violence in the city’s neighborhoods. Rev. Eugene Rivers, a cofounder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition that worked to […]
Posted inPolitics, Race/Racism
Janey invokes slavery, birtherism in rejecting vax mandates
RULES RELATED TO the ever-changing pandemic, where the light at the end of the tunnel seemed to quickly shift to a picture of dark days ahead, can be hard to agree on. In rejecting the idea of requiring proof of vaccination to enter restaurants or other gathering spots, Boston Acting Mayor Kim Janey took the […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Lawsuit says DOC accused lawyers, inmates based faulty drug test
ARE LAWYERS ACTUALLY sending letters to inmates in Massachusetts prisons that are meant not so much to be read but smoked? It sounds like the plot to a zany dramedy, but a lawsuit filed this week claims that’s the implication of findings against two lawyers and two inmates who have been tripped up by a […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Report rips Boston police handling of Rose case
A CITY-COMMISSIONED REPORT into the case involving former Boston police officer Patrick Rose, who was charged with child sexual abuse in the mid 1990s but nonetheless remained on the force for more than two decades, slammed the Boston Police Department for lacking policies and procedures to respond adequately to the case and for failing to […]
Posted inPolitics
Janey hands out the goodies
COULD FREE BUS SERVICE along Blue Hill Avenue in 2021 do for Kim Janey what putting the brakes on city water rates did for Tom Menino in 1993? In 1993, then-Acting Mayor Menino declared a freeze on water rates in Boston. With the tab coming due for a massive court-ordered cleanup of Boston Harbor, water rates, […]
Posted inEconomy
The quiet fortitude of Bob Moses
POLITICIANS OF VARIOUS STRIPES have for years declared education to be the civil rights issues of our time. Bob Moses, perhaps uniquely, could make the case with the authenticity of someone who had been immersed in pivotal ways in both of those worlds. A central, if less publicly visible, figure in the civil rights struggles […]
Posted inHealth Care
‘Going in the wrong direction’
THROUGHOUT THE COVID-19 pandemic, two big data points have stood out as indicators of where things stand: The level of infections and sickness and the trendline showing where things are heading. Infections and hospitalizations may be way down from their peak, but there is plenty of reason for worry about the trajectory of the pandemic. […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Dorchester Youth Collaborative reopens — under new agency
AFTER SURVIVING BATTLES with both colon and prostate cancer in recent years, Emmett Folgert knows something about rebounding when things aren’t looking great. So he insisted it wasn’t time to write him off in March, when the Dorchester Youth Collaborative that he ran closed its doors after 40 years as a refuge for young people […]