Ignoring The Needs Of People Of Color Is Cruel: Brookline Letter

BROOKLINE, MA — The following open letter to Brookline was sent to the Select Board July 17 and submitted to Patch as a letter to the community by Emy Takinami, who is a founding member of Brookline for Racial Justice and Equity. The 17 others who signed it area also members of the group.

Dear Brookline,

If you did not see the last two weeks of the Select Board meeting, you missed a new low point for Brookline. Those in attendance witnessed one of the poorest displays of civic leadership we have ever seen. Brookline claims to hold values like fairness and equity, but nothing could be further from the truth. No member of the Select Board, other than Dr. Raul Fernandez, seems able to address the complex issues required to run a Town. Brookline for Racial Justice and Equity (BRJE) and its allies will not accept such poor leadership and systemic racism. Ignoring the needs of People of Color and those living in poverty is cruel.

The Select Board was supposed to discuss the tenets of reimagining policing and protecting the poor. Instead of delving into these very real issues, the other members of the Select Board abdicated their responsibility. They offered delays instead of action. They promoted continuing lower educational outcomes, declining mental health, and poor housing. Brookline’s Black and Brown people are being disproportionately stopped and arrested compared to white people. People of Color in Brookline are over policed, including young children.

Many of our leaders have no idea what reimagining policing might mean for Brookline’s People of Color. They fail to promote a strategic vision for the Town. They broke their promise to the members of Town Meeting to immediately organize a task force and provide recommendations by September. Now they speak of recommendations within a year.

Isn’t stalling just another opportunity to undermine democratically endorsed progressive policies in Brookline?

We fear that a majority of the Select Board will ignore any findings and recommendations from the task force and that the task force itself is simply another way for Brookline to look good without being good. In the meantime, injustice will continue with a chair of the Select Board describing citizens as “vigilante squads.”

We should be investing in community-based services that are better suited to address actual community needs like mental health, affordable housing, and education.

Why wouldn’t the Select Board want a police force who understands community needs and can work with us in an unbiased way? Why wouldn’t the Select Board want this vision? The State’s leaders are seeing policing in a new light and acting more urgently to pass legislation to reimagine public safety. The task force proposed by Dr. Fernandez can rethink the role of the police.

Finally, we believe that people willing to advocate for re-imagining policing are targeted as outliers, naive, impractical, or simply unwilling to work with other Town leaders. We have observed how the Select Board ganged up on Dr. Fernandez because of his progressive leadership. This is unacceptable.

This disrespect quashes debate and silences attendees. If the Select Board comes for him, what will they do to us? Who will be willing to step forward to serve on a board or commission, run for office, work for the town, or for that matter, choose to live here in a town where they will be disrespected and humiliated?

BRJE will continue to lead the fight to promote justice and equity for everyone despite these inappropriate and offensive tactics. We are determined to help create a new Brookline that can arise from the civil unrest spreading across town.

The reforms we seek are not novel, and they are not extreme. They will fit Brookline, not Minneapolis. They will serve to heal some of the longstanding harms our most vulnerable residents have suffered for centuries. Brookline, we must dismantle systemic racism and create a new vision in 2020.

Deborah Brown
Abigail Erdmann
Donna Healey
Eric Hyett
Yvette Johnson
Joan Lancourt
David Lemmel
Tom Levenson
Maya Norton
Abigail Ortiz
Annika Sarin
Luciana Schachnik
Katha Seidman
Kristan Singleton
Lisa Stahl
Karen Shashoua
Colin Stokes
Emy Takinami

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