Pressure to compromise derails Black candidate's mayoralty bid in Boston

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...the Rev. Ellis-Hagler's campaign has iled to live up to its initial promise. He has failed to launch an independent political challenge to the Democratic Party or to directly base his campaign on the struggles of the Black community. The Rev. Graylan Ellis Hagler BOSTON-When the Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler, of the Church of the United Community, declared his candidacy for mayor this spring, there was an immediate reaction throughout the city.

Because of his clear stands for Black community action and his articulate and far-reaching criticism of injustice, EllisHagler awakened the hope that a Black candidate had emerged who would take on the Democratic Party machine and mobilize the community.

In a statement for his first public meeting, Ellis-Hagler wrote, "It is time for a strong Black voice to challenge a system that only represents whites."

The reaction from the ruling-class politicians was also strong. One witness reported that when a reporter asked Democratic incumbent Mayor Raymond Flynn for a response, "he went nuts. Flynn's campaign team was reportedly meeting every day to discuss their strategy to foil Ellis-Hagler's challenge. It looked as though crisis-ridden Massachusetts had finally found a way past politics as usual.

Five months later, however, the Rev. Ellis-Hagler's campaign has failed to live up to its initial promise. He has failed to launch an independent political challenge to the Democratic Party or to directly base his campaign on the struggles of the Black community.

Instead, he has followed down the well-worn path of Rainbow Democrats, such as former mayoral candidate Mel King, a path that provides no answers for the hard-pressed Boston Black community.

The Rev. Ellis-Hagler is well known in Boston as a fiery orator and an uncompromising spokesman of the Black community.

In 1983, he played a major role as inspirer and organizer of mass picketing for striking Greyhound workers. He has taken a strong stand against apartheid and U.S. intervention in Central America. He was outspoken against the Gulf War, and has fought against the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

He is best known in Boston, however, for his courageous stand against the stop-and-frisk policies of the Flynn administration. Last year, when Carol Stuart's husband murdered her and tried to pin it on an unidentified Black man, the Flynn administration helped whip up 6 SOCIALIST ACTION a racist hysteria. Young Black men were routinely forced to submit to strip searches on the streets of Boston.

As the national media played up the Black-male-murders-a-white-middle-classwoman sensation, Ellis-Hagler was virtually alone among political leaders in standing up to the police and defending the rights of the Black community.

Flynn's Democratic machine Ellis-Hagler's history of independent action and support for community struggles gave hope that his campaign might be a break from Democratic Party politics. The Democratic Party in Boston is the political organizer for big business interests. As in Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago, it is the only viable party in the city.

Incumbent Mayor Flynn pretends to be the "neighborhood" mayor who knits together the varied neighborhoods in Boston into a coherent community. In reality, he presides over an entrenched system of corruption and white job-trusting.

From the ruling-class point of view, Flynn has "excellent credentials" for this post. He rose to prominence as a racist anti-busing advocate as State Representative from South Boston. He was a voting city counsellor from South Boston, for example, at a Boston city council meeting in 1979 that voted funds for para-military training for vigilantes of the racist South Boston Marshalls.

While a liberal on some social issues, he also is a vocal opponent of women's right to abortion. John O'Bryant, Black President of the Boston School Committee, recently compared Flynn to George Wallace, the staunch racist who later wore a "new South" mask.

Depression and repression

Massachusetts has crash-landed into the recession. The high-tech boom has gone bust, and unemployment is chroniOCTOBER 1991 David Schervish cally high. Construction unemployment is at 40 percent. It is the worst recession for any state in 30 years.

For Boston's Black communities of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, there is a depression. Over 30 percent of Roxbury's population is below the poverty line. The average Black family spends 50 percent of its income on rent; only 20 percent own their own homes.

Investigators, including a task force associated with Local 26 of the Hotel Workers' Union (HERE), have uncovered a huge banking scam that robs mainly minority families of their homes by means of exorbitant second mortgages. Major Boston banks have made this standard practice.

The high-school dropout rate is now 40 percent for Black students. Homelessness is on the rise. Gang activity and drugs have become endemic. The largely minority and working class city of Chelsea, just north of Boston, showed the future for minority communities when it became the first city in the country since the 1930s to declare bankruptcy.

To keep a lid on the resistance of the Black community, the police are a constant presence. Over the summer, police outrages were a common occurrence. On June 5, Nathaniel Lackland was shot in the back of the head by a police officer. Witnesses disputed the police claim that it was a "justifiable homicide" and that the victim was brandishing a knife. On July 12, 16-year-old Christopher Rogers was shot down by a police officer, who claimed his gun discharged "accidentally." The officer has a record of involvement in incidents of police violence.

Both killings were given short shrift by the police department and its commissioner, Francis Roache, a Flynn crony. On top of these killings, a review of police handling of the Stuart murder case revealed that police had threatened and physically abused witnesses in order to frame a Black suspect. Yet no criminal charges will be filed against the police, who are supposed to review their own misconduct.

The Black community has mobilized to call for Commissioner Roach's resignation. Prominent leaders called for a civilian review board of the police, viewing this as a step toward community control. In truth, however, civilian review boards have historically been used to whitewash police misconduct. In addition, they have had no decisive control and are not based on the Black community.

This call for a civilian review board was part of Ellis-Hagler' s initial platform. However, until it became a proposal that was taken up by other Black leaders, he downplayed this demand in favor of the even more moderate proposal of sensitivity training for Police Academy cadets. He proposed assigning the cadets "to schools, youth centers, and as street workers on a fulltime basis for 18 months to develop relationships with the community and its youth."

The deteriorating conditions of Boston's Black communities call for a determined political response. As the economic pie shrinks, Blacks and other minorities are the first to have their seat at the table taken away. Repression is intensifying to enforce this exclusion. Even to defend the existing living conditions of the Black community, it will be necessary to mobilize the community and to use the organized power of all working people.

Surrounded by Rainbow

Meanwhile, there is an explosive mood in the Black community. This is reflected in the attention given to Malcolm X and his message of "no sellout." Political leadership in the Black community that was willing to tap this sentiment and launch a movement based on community struggles, beholden to no one else, could have a tremendous impact.

The Rev. Ellis-Hagler's campaign for mayor had the potential to galvanize this discontent. Hopes were raised when the candidate brought into his campaign important community workers like Shakur Ali and Chuck Turner. While fighting for jobs for Black youth, they had never hesitated to defy the authorities, the police, the mayor, or court injunctions.

But now, Ellis-Hagler has sought the advice of Rainbow Democrats to manage his campaign. Prominent Black Democrats, such as Mel King and Juanita Wade, were brought in to play key advisory or technical roles. Veterans of Mel King's 1983 mayoral campaign have consciously molded Ellis-Hagler's campaign on King's. The 1983 King campaign, which had caught fire on the grass-roots level, was turned into an effort to expand the Democratic Party beyond the old white patronage system.

Rainbow Democrats moved toward the Rev. Ellis-Hagler when their other possible candidate, Diana Lam, had her campaign explode on the launching pad. Within two days of announcing her candidacy, Lam was exposed as a landlord who had engaged in dubious practices.

Under the influence of "progressive" Rainbow campaign organizers, EllisHagler shifted. His campaign was consciously molded into à non-confrontational bid for "unity," rather than a campaign to expose Flynn and other political forces as enemies of the Black community and of working people.

Therefore, Black community struggles necessarily have taken a back seat in the campaign. There have been no large rallies to draw people into the campaign and no focus on the ongoing struggles of the community.

The fight for affirmative action To advance, struggles in the Black community must mobilize against the institutions of capitalist power, includ(continued on next page)

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Bush) in the Black community. There is a social basis for his rise.

Since the victory of the civil rights movement in the 1960s that overturned legal segregation, a sizable and influential Black middle class has emerged the white middle class socially and noliticallv than with the average Rlack