New era of diversity dawns in offices of at-large city councilors
Yawu Miller
Back in April, at-large City Councilor Stephen Murphy was looking
for a new chief of staff.
“I was looking for someone qualified to run an office,”
he says. “I reached out to all communities.”
His pick, Latifa Ziyad, was like no other chief of staff he had
ever hired before. Nor was she like any other chief of staff in
the office of any white city councilor.
It’s 2005 and diversity, it seems, has finally arrived in
the offices of the city council. And the once all-white bastion
of political power is welcoming it.
“The city has obviously changed,” Murphy says. “I
believe Latifa brings an area of expertise I can lean on. She brings
an intimacy with one of the areas I represent.”
While Murphy and other councilors point to the newly-discovered
diversity of Boston, which five years ago officially became a majority-minority
city, others point to one event in the most recent at-large election:
Felix Arroyo’s second-place victory.
“It was not an incentive to diversify,” says long-time
political activist Louis Elisa. “It was a shot across the
bow.”
When Arroyo clinched the second-highest number of votes in the November
2003 election — coming within 2,700 votes of Council President
Michael Flaherty — he upset the established order of Boston
politics, beating back three Irish Americans, two of whom were political
legacies.
When he came into office earlier that year, filling a vacancy left
by Francis “Mickey” Roache, pundits had labeled him
a one-term wonder, predicting a rout by Patricia White, daughter
of former Mayor Kevin White. Arroyo’s win — drawing
on support from communities of color and white progressives —
ran counter to the prevailing political wisdom which all but wrote
off the political power those groups wielded.
When Arroyo set up his office, his hires ran counter to those of
the majority of the councilors. His staff consisted of a Puerto
Rican woman, an African American woman, a Venezuelan woman and a
white man.
“I wanted to have a diverse office,” he said. “I
wanted people who are sensitive to the communities they live in.
They know the leaders and stakeholders in their communities as well
as the organizations.”
For years the offices of the city’s councilors resembled the
circa 1970s racial make-up of the neighborhoods they represented
with the majority white councilors hiring all-white staff and black
councilors hiring mostly blacks.
Even at-large councilors who are elected by a city-wide vote had
all-white staffs, reflecting the general practice of ignoring people
of color and the traditionally low-voting neighborhoods they lived
in.
All that changed after November 4, 2003.
Flaherty, who this year added to his staff the sons of former Zoning
Board of Appeal chairman Joseph Feaster and Boston Housing Authority
Director Sandra Henriquez, says he and his fellow councilors have
been working away at diversifying the council offices, pointing
out recent hires of African Americans on the council’s central
staff.
“I understand the importance of diversity, both in the city’s
workforce and on my own staff,” he said. “Since I’ve
been elected to office, I’ve enjoyed support from African
Americans, Latinos and Asians.”
Horace Small, executive director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods,
says he doesn’t doubt Flaherty and Murphy’s intentions.
“There is a growing recognition that this city is growing
blacker and browner by day,” he said. “Ultimately, Flaherty
wants to be mayor some day,” he said. “He’s got
to have a staff that reflects the city of Boston.”
Whatever the motivation, the new diversity will be good for the
city, according to Arroyo.
“It helps people feel that they can approach a councilor’s
office,” he said. “They can connect with people from
the communities that they are from.”
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