Gadflying

This is my one-hundredth Brookline TAB column: 38 under my initial Newcomer tagline beginning in 1999, four guest op-eds during a yearlong break, and 58 Gadflying pieces. Along the way I've flitted from recycling to redevelopment, Town Meeting to town parking, schools to snow removal. At times I've also touched on controversial broader issues town residents and organizations mobilize around, such as state and national school testing policy, war and peace, and the Middle East.

Regardless of subject, dissecting underlying assumptions and suggesting alternative perspectives of necessity lays bare the columnist's own assumptions for you to assess in return. So I thank you for your public and private responses, from the politely appreciative to the sneeringly hostile. They all remind me to try to be clear, direct, and honest, even when the result discomfits both reader and writer.

As I reflect on writing about the town I now call home, I'd particularly appreciate your feedback about one overall topic and two related ones.

The broad issue is the disjunction between Brookline's public self-image and a somewhat grittier reality. Right now official Brookline is preparing to celebrate the town's 300th birthday next year by trumpeting our openness and diversity. After endless discussion but few surprises, a new Comprehensive Plan will soon formalize town priorities for the next decade. But whether the issue is parking on public streets, preserving what's left of our village-like public space and views of the sky, or pretending we have meaningful affordable-housing programs, our self-congratulatory tone and formal planning procedures mask a smugger complacency. Sometimes most noticeable is the growing corporate influence, but sometimes it's the role, even here, of class, race, and other forms of privilege.

We've got ours and we like things as they are, I read between too many lines. Good liberals almost all, Brookliners who vote for higher taxes to help others get by have little expectation that those others will ever move here. Town decision making, in happy democratic theory open to everyone, remains the preserve of relatively few long-time residents who seem unconcerned, even relieved, that new arrivals and the historically unrepresented have little input. The clash between two visions -- Brookline as open and welcoming versus protective and self-absorbed -- deserves more attention, even beyond the corporate encroachment.

The first related subject is Brookline's crowning achievement: its public schools. As one of many parents who moved here for those very schools, I've discovered that even -- perhaps especially -- a system widely seen as among the best has trouble responding to, or even acknowledging, the full range of student and parent dissatisfactions. The School Committee, the School Department in Town Hall, and individual school administrators and teachers don't always greet with grateful appreciation parents concerned about MCAS policy or bullying and teasing, cafeteria food quality or inadequate individualized instruction, open-classroom distractions or inconsistent homework policy. Too often, they respond with a misplaced pro forma insistence that all is well or a shrug-of-the-shoulders acknowledgment that nothing will be done. Too often, their assumption that our schools work well for most students works against those with less ordinary needs.

A second widely acclaimed town institution also needs scrutiny. The Police Department's role in maintaining Brookline's upper-middle-class sensibilities has increasingly been on my mind since participating in last fall's Brookline Police Citizens Academy. After I wrote about officer discretion in parking and traffic enforcement, this month's state report that even Brookline police sometimes discriminate in traffic stops didn't surprise me. I would appreciate hearing about your own experiences. I'd also like to hear from attorneys about alleged police and prosecutorial abuse of defendants who often don't live in Brookline, from racial harassment to unjustified overcharges in criminal complaints to dishonest police testimony. I won't use names or other identifying details in describing what you tell me.

I like living in Brookline despite its faults. I know no place is perfect. But I still believe as I did when I began writing for the TAB some 70,000 words ago: it's better to uncover problems, and then try to fix them, than make believe they don't exist.

Note: this version may differ from the published version.

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