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July 28, 2004 The parties, plazas, yachts and influentials gathered in Boston this week make for a noteworthy Convention. The media shows off the glam and glitter of Bill Clinton walking around Harvard Yard and Ted Kennedy walking around near Zero Church Street. It is, in short, an amazing, expensive, upper-crust extravaganza. It is the unseen side of the Convention that puts in sharp relief just what the swarm of Democrats are missing, and what others can see so clear: the rampant poverty and homelessness in Cambridge, near where the Indiana Delegation is housed, is utterly stunning. The Boston Police, as well as Mayor Menino, have done their best to make these untouchables also unseeables. The Hotel@MIT, as it is called, caters to the Indiana Democratic Party staff, as well as to several other important Convention and otherwise affluent individuals. It is housed on the grounds of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and showcases clean, beautiful sidewalks, precision-places trees, and petite hole-in-the-wall cafés. It is when one steps out onto Massachusetts Ave. that the extent that poverty has wracked the outskirts of Boston becomes apparent. The policy of the Boston Police seems to be to keep the homeless as invisible as possible; this means giving them bag lunches daily, at least on Massachusetts Ave., and prodding them to walk whenever they drop down in one place. If they are walking, the reasoning apparently goes, they will stand out less. For the most part, this is true, as for the first two days Cambridge seems to have a poverty rate of zero. It is strange to see that this area, with Harvard just up the road and MIT the opposite direction, can showcase such amazing poverty. Bail bond offices, pawn brokers, liquor stores and gun shops litter the dirty, trash-lined roads and sidewalks leading up to Harvard Yard, where increased police presence has made the homeless presence completely vanish. Some of them seem mentally disabled, confused, almost happy to be spoken to, even by a police officer telling them they have loitered in one place for long enough and must start moving again. So off they go, bag lunches in hand, sometimes humming a song, waving at the men and women from all over the nation as they come out from the various Harvard-area restaurants. Everyone notices this, but no one says a word. They just look at each other, pick up their pace, and tuck their Convention passes deeper into their jacket pockets. I thought about this while attending a United Auto Workers party at the Hotel@MIT. It was just one of many that I had slated for the day, with more yet to come and another day at the Fleet Center to hear Ron Reagan and Howard Dean espouse their views of what the Democratic Party should be. Reagan will speak of stem cells, Dean of health care, but no one will bother to address the derelicts just outside the security perimeter. Perhaps Mayor Menino, in his quest to clean up Boston for the nation’s Democratic Convention, did a little too much in making the bad parts disappear. The homeless do not exist for the week, even though they sleep on the benches, sit in shopping carts, beg for money and offer to shake your hand in exchange for a dollar. They bump into you on the road and apologize, try to sell you post cards and newspapers, and are finally pushed on by the Boston Police. No one seems to notice. ------------ About the author: Max Burns lives in Indianapolis and interns with the Indiana Democratic Party. Visit The Rabid Demoncrat or read the fantasy-fiction novel "Alcardia". He is currently a senior at Lawrence North High School and is active in political clubs and associations. Max thinks it's time to hatch a real environmental policy and plant George W. Bush back in Crawford. Email: MBurns_NS@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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