Opinion

When we characterize Columbus as a hero, we forget the history of the indigenous people who lived on this land long before it was “discovered.” Columbus began the systematic murder and rape of native people and the theft of native land, all justified by the logic of white supremacy.

These businesses are neighborhood anchors and pillars, representing a rich legacy of Black-owned business and entrepreneurship that spans 180+ years in the Black community.

The disease of racism isn’t just a white policeman kneeling on a black man’s neck. It’s black and brown people breathing polluted air. It’s black folks in Boston spending 64 more hours stuck on the bus than white folks. It’s decades of housing policy that leave the average black family in Boston with $8 in wealth while the average white family has $247,500.

The core principle of our current housing system is protection of the private market, with 96.3% of the nation’s housing stock in private hands. Only 3.7% is made up of different forms of social housing ¾ public housing, nonprofit housing, cooperatives and community land trusts.

In light of the recent murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and the numerous murders of black people by a white supremacist system, the Asian Pacific Islander Civic Action Network of Massachusetts (APIs CAN!) stands firmly with the black communities of this country.

What needs to be made clear is that reopening does not mean back to normal, and normal is not what we should be striving for.

The one question on everyone’s lips was not whether Travis and Gregory McMichael would be charged with murder in the slaying of Ahmaud Arbery, but would they be convicted?

No amount of earthy, tough talk from Biden is going to crack that with them. So that brings it back to revving up blacks and middle-class, educated white women to march to the polls in big numbers.

As youth leaders with the Intergenerational Organizing Program at St. Stephen’s Youth Programs, we are concerned about recent news stories revealing that the Boston Public Schools (BPS) has shared student information with the Boston Police Department, which in turn shared this information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Count on Trump making another ritual declaration on the Martin Luther King holiday about how much he liked, admired, and thought Dr. King was such a great guy.

Trump spotted this tiny, and very dangerous, opening early on. He repeatedly bragged that there were a lot of blacks that liked and supported him. He drove that seemingly loopy notion home with well-placed photo-ops and meetings with a handful of high-profile black entertainers, athletes and preachers. He doubled down on this with the launch in 2019 of the group Black Voices for Trump.

The Boston Public Schools needs a new way of budgeting. Boston needs to guarantee a baseline quality of education at every one of its 127 schools with foundational school budgets, in addition to equity-based weighted student funding.