Calling Northeastern University to Account; Carolyn Crockett on Missing Bricks

Last evening, Alyson Perry and I joined the "Community Response" organized by the Fenway Community Development Corporation (see the sidebar under "Local Links" for its unfortunately out-of-date web site) to demonstrate resolve to Northeastern University that grabbing the now-shuttered St. Ann's Church would be publicly contested. About 50 people gathered on the side of St. Ann's Church (where I was once a happy parishioner) with signs and a couple of bull horns.

Speakers Carl Nagy-Koechlin (FCDC director), State Representative Byron Rushing, and City Councilor Chuck Turner, among others, called on Northeastern to respect the fact that the East Fens has been zoned for community housing, with a minimum of 25% affordability, and shamed the Archdiocese of Boston for selling to a high bidder instead of supporting the FCDC proposal to immediately build affordable housing.

Organizer Jaime Smith graciously allowed me to speak. I started by describing the headache I got from vibrating over the torturous bricks on Huntington Avenue, and then connected Northeastern's encroachment into the neighborhood with its overall push to gentrify the campus.

I said a neighborhood depends on housing, but is more than housing: people must be able to safely and comfortably access their own neighborhood; that Northeastern helped propose , then promoted and then bought into the brickification of Huntington Avenue (see its 1999 master plan. And look out, it is now working on another one).

The result is that the huge number of local disabled and elderly people are now being excluded from their own neighborhood. And this is not incidental, rather it is the essence of gentrification: add "value" in such a way that people perceived as "undesirable" do not live in and use the neighborhood anymore. In other words, no more poor people, no more people who don't "fit in" or "belong" on such a high falutin' campus, and on such a chic "Avenue of the Arts." Just young, fit, moneyed undergraduates, tourists, and administrators -- a sort of "ahtsy" Newberry Street. Northeastern joined with the other members of the Fenway Alliance, the BRA, and the city to "improve" Huntington Avenue. For juicy details, see here.

There were about 30 people who made it over to Northeastern president James Friedland's office, where Rushing and Turner received permission from security officials to slide a blown-up community letter under Friedland's door.

Which brings me to our guest entry of the day, from Carolyn Crockett. During the protest's two-block march down Huntington Avenue, I saw 2 holes where bricks once were. Can you imagine how dangerous these are for people who cannot see them? Broken ankles, broken noses, just waiting to happen. This is a problem special to brick, the only paving surface which people like to walk off with.

Carolyn, a longtime West Fens resident and disability rights and housing activist (and one of the earliest NAG members), wrote the following for the January AAB hearing regarding Huntington Avenue:

I'm writing this letter to protest the brick sidewalks on Huntington Ave. Just last fall my front wheelchair tire fell into a hole left by several missing bricks and I was left stranded on the sidewalk until some college students came by and lifted my powerchair out of the hole. Because I have minor visual impairments I was unable to see the missing bricks.

The result of your choice to use bricks is that I am forced to drive my wheelchair in the street.

Sincerely,

Carolyn Crockett