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.”