The death and life of American cities

By Carter Wilkie 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space and Economic Change in an American Metropolis By Barry Bluestone and Mary Huff Stevenson Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2000, 461 pages Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival By Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio Westview Press, Boulder, 2000, 285 pages OVER THE PAST half-century, America grew into(...)

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Playing their cards rightmdashAn unlikely return to the White House for Bay State Republicans

By Michael Crowley 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

WASHINGTON–The ouster of the last Republican presidential administration in 1992 brought an end to the special influence a small group of Massachusetts Republicans enjoyed within the inner sanctums of the White House. That influence dated back to 1979, when a handful of ambitious young Bay State politicos placed their bets on a long-shot presidential candidate(...)

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Bocce alone

By Neal Dolan 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

In the North End, community grows by itself–but for how long? Five years ago, when I first told my Cambridge friends I was moving to Boston’s North End, they said I would be disappointed. My Italian grandmother notwithstanding, I wouldn’t find the sense of community and civic life I was looking for, they said, because(...)

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Wellfleet discovers that good help is hard to find

By Andrew Nelson 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

WELLFLEET–The tourists may leave each fall, but Wellfleet’s 3,100 year-round residents lend character to a town already rich with shops, restaurants, and spectacular seaside vistas. This Lower Cape community brings together artists, shellfishermen, retirees, and Yankee traditionalists. Yet some say the town’s very diversity has contributed to its difficulties finding the right person to run(...)

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Robert Moses on the new civil rights crusade

By Carol Gerwin 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

Robert Moses became a legend of the Civil Rights Movement dodging bullets and taking beatings as he organized voter registration drives in Mississippi. Today, he is battling ignorance of a different kind, teaching African-American children across the country how to do–and understand–mathematics. And he considers himself no less a civil rights crusader now than he(...)

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In Athol school committee follies reveal community division

By Mary Carey 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

ATHOL–Cable-access television broadcasts of town meetings, board of selectmen sessions, and other municipal gatherings usually attract few viewers, even when they are repeated endlessly at all hours of the day and night. But on occasion, the performance of municipal duties takes a riveting turn, presenting to citizen-viewers high drama, if not low comedy. North of(...)

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Employers look for skills but act on stereotypes

By Philip Moss and Chris Tilly 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

Massachusetts is basking in the economic glow of a record low unemployment rate, which dipped to just over 2 percent last fall. But not all parts of the state share this good fortune. As of October, the cities of Lawrence and New Bedford reported unemployment rates more than double the statewide average. Levels of joblessness(...)

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Counterpoints

By Richard C. Lord 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

The modern American worker, the most productive and prosperous in history, lives in an increasingly transient society where extended family support networks are stretched thin or are nonexistent, where there are fewer “stay-at-home” parents, and where many single-parent families have to both make ends meet and care for young children. All of these broad societal(...)

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Argument

By Kathleen Casavant and Linda Johnson 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

Working families in Massachusetts need and deserve the protection of a fair, paid family and medical leave policy that covers all workers. At some point in our lives, all of us will be confronted with a serious personal or family medical emergency. And everyone agrees that newborns and newly adopted children need time to get(...)

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Senate President Birmingham shows off his erudition online

By Millicent Lawton 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

Almost two months before the DOE’s online conference, Senate President Thomas Birmingham launched the State Senate E-vents by personally engaging in a 32-minute chat with students at Everett High School. It was the first in what’s billed as a series of online discussions about public policy between senators and schoolchildren. The September 26 exchange, an(...)

Winter 2001