On Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 7PM, author Jim Vrabel will be at the Brookine Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., to discuss his new book A People’s History of the New Boston, a collection of accounts of the most influential and passionate grassroots protests that helped shape the new Boston into the city it is today. I emailed with Vrabel to get some insights into Boston’s history of ordinary citizen activism and where we stand now.
Brookline Hub: You are a longtime Boston community activist. What stories from your book were you able to tell from the vantage point of personal experience versus stories that you wrote based on your research and interviews?
Jim Vrabel: My experience as an activist, a journalist, and in city government informed nearly all the stories in the book.
BH: The most infamous protest in your book involved mandatory school busing. The decision to use what seemed like an arbitrary percentage to determine which schools had a racial imbalance (schools whose total enrollment was less than 50% minorities) led to the decision that busing was the only answer. Considering how controversial and disruptive busing was, why do you think no one in charge saw fit to change the tactic to improve the quality of every neighborhood school rather than relying on an unpopular and convoluted busing solution?
JV: As Dan Richardson recalled in the book, “Some of us said that the percentage shouldn’t matter, that it should be more about the resources, the quality of the teachers, and the quality of education taking place in the schools. But it was easier to make the numbers argument than the educational argument or the social argument.” As I then write, “As things turned out, no argument could have persuaded the [Boston] School Committee,” which at the time was more interested in perpetuating itself politically than improving the schools educationally.
BH: Why do you think that people are less politically engaged today then they were in the 1960s and 70s? Today there are still race and class divisions in the city, Boston public school attendance is down, and rents are high. It seems to me this city could do with a little more grassroots social activism! Is it that people today have become complacent or just don’t want to get involved?
JV: As Renée Loth said in the book, “There was a turning of society away from external activism and toward paying attention to the inner self, to the ‘I, me, and mine.’” As former governor Michael Dukakis said, “Public officials just know how to involve others, and they are better listeners.” As former mayor Ray Flynn said, “In a way, we took too much power out of the neighborhoods by bringing all these idealistic people into City Hall. It should have been a case of new people getting involved, seeing that this is how you get power, and taking their turn to get involved in their neighborhoods. But for some reason, that didn’t really happen.” As I then write, the biggest reason that people are less politically engaged in Boston today is that it has become a city of the well off and the poor and the working class and lower middle class who were responsible for so much of the activism of the 1960s and 1970s don’t live here anymore. Also, as Renée Loth pointed out, “Kids coming out of college could do movement work and still support themselves. They surely can’t do that now.”
BH: What did you think about the Occupy Movement in Boston in 2011? Was it reminiscent of the kind of spontaneous protests that you describe in your book or was it more like Woodstock ’99—a toothless simulacrum of a real movement? Why do you think Occupy Boston ultimately failed to produce any concrete results?
JV: I think those involved in the Occupy Movement lacked the confidence (some might call it arrogance or naiveté) that — if they just kept at it for a while longer — they could actually change things that so many people had back in the 60s and 70s.
BH: At the end of A People’s History of the New Boston you interview some of the key figures in the social protests of the 60s and 70s and ask them to look back on that time of their lives. Some are proud of their achievements while some have regrets. I pose the same question to you—what was your takeaway from your own years of activism? Any regrets?
JV: Proud to have helped to make my neighborhood and city a better place. No regrets on the activism front, but — with the book — I wish I could have talked with more of the activists from back then while they were still with us.
BH: Do you have any advice for young people who wish to start their own grassroots activist group?
JV: Understand that it is very hard work, but take satisfaction while doing it that no work is more important.
BH: What do you have planned for the Brookline Booksmith event?
JV: As with all of the People’s History events, some of the activists profiled in the book will also be speaking.
—By Jennifer Campaniolo
