Fractures seen in mayor's relationship with Black community

James Hills appeared to struggle to formulate a question for Mayor Michelle Wu, who appeared on his Feb. 6 “Java with Jimmy” segment streamed on social media platforms — a forum where she has in the past faced a reliably convivial atmosphere.

Hills wanted to know how the mayor would respond to the anger in the Black community from the preceding two weeks — the de-designation of a team of developers chosen by community members to redevelop Parcel P3, the last-minute maneuvering that unraveled Brian Worrell’s bid for the City Council presidency that was widely seen as engineered by the mayor, the abrupt resignation of Segun Idowu, the city’s chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion.

Wu’s response to Hill’s barrage of questions speaks to the fractures now showing in her relationship with Boston’s Black community.

“So, what I’m saying is that there is a larger context that puts Boston in a place where we always have to be the example,” she said. “And that can feel, like, sometimes there’s a tension between wanting to actually just move forward and do things that have been needed for a very long time and making sure that every single community and every single person who has the stake in it, and also the historic connection to it, is part of the process.”

The tension Wu alludes to between process — the inclusion of community members in decision-making over major questions of land use — and “wanting to actually just move forward” has come to the fore as her administration has announced with no warning major decisions affecting the city’s Black community.

Her sudden announcement that the O’Bryant School would move to the West Roxbury High School drew immediate blowback that forced her administration to withdraw the proposal, albeit with Wu’s assurance that there would be no other path forward for the O’Bryant — the most heavily Black and Latino of the city’s three exam schools — to secure needed renovations to its current building.

Then in 2024 Wu’s selection of the Boston Unity Soccer Partners (BUSP) to lease and renovate White Stadium in a $325 million deal telegraphed to the city’s Black community a break in the city’s standard operating procedure for major development projects. Rather than coming to the community to determine what should be developed on the land, her administration engaged in months of communications with the investors behind BUSP, crafted a request for proposals tailored to their needs, then held a series of community meetings after the team was the sole bidder in the deal.

While the White Stadium deal signaled a departure from best practices, in the case of Parcel P3, the city’s violation was against an actual written and signed agreement between city and state officials and representatives of the Black community that mandated community control over the land disposition process from start to finish (The agreement is on p. 101 of the master plan document. Governor and mayor’s signatures are on p. 117).

The land was designated for housing and economic development. The Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee picked a development team in which Black people had a 50% equity stake in the project.

Public affairs specialist Reggie Stewart says Wu’s decision fits into a longstanding pattern of “racist governance,” citing the land clearance that happened in the Lower Roxbury Neighborhood where Parcel P3 now sits.

“I can’t say what’s in the mayor’s heart, but this is the impact,” he said. “It’s a continuation of that same dispossession of Black people, and that’s why everybody’s so upset.”

Pockets of the city’s Black community chafed at Wu’s earlier one-sided decisions. But the P3 announcement signaled what could be a wider schism with members of the community and Black elected officials.

At a Feb. 6 announcement during which Wu outlined progress on the White Stadium rebuild — and revealed that the city is now on the hook for $135 million for the construction project — the number of Black elected officials missing from the announcement was telling. State Sen. Liz Miranda, Rep. Chris Worrell, and councilors Brian Worrell and Miniard Culpepper, all of whom represent the predominantly Black neighborhoods surrounding Franklin Park, declined to attend.

The following Monday, at a community meeting on Parcel P3 held at the 12th Baptist Church, many of those same elected officials were present. The anger in sanctuary was palpable.

MIT professor Karilyn Crockett and former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson recounted the history of community struggle against the Boston Redevelopment Authority and state officials that led to the city’s agreement that the community would have decision-making authority over what’s developed on the parcel.

Former District 7 City Councilor Tito Jackson urged the community to push back on what many characterized as a land grab by the Wu administration.

“If we give ground here, we lose power of all of the parcels and all of the give-back that is actually supposed to happen in our communities,” he said.

Veteran community activist Sadiki Kambon, who has never been known as an exemplar of self-restraint, was more pointed in his criticism of Wu.

“There’s too much civility in this room,” Kambon said. “She’s anti-Black. Mayor Wu is an angry Menino with a smile.”

The comparison with the late Mayor Thomas Menino, whose 20 years in the mayor’s office was at times marked by pointed clashes with Black elected officials, is not happenstance. Wu has cited him as an influence. But while Menino’s ham-fisted moves to dispose of public land without community process sparked angry and vociferous reactions from Black elected officials, under the Wu administration, Black electeds have remained mostly silent.

Wu’s relationship with elected officials of color has never been particularly close. During her first campaign for an at-large seat on the Council, she endorsed incumbent South Boston City Councilor Bill Linehan over longtime Chinese community activist Suzanne Lee, then once elected backed Linehan’s bid for the Council presidency over that of then at-large Councilor Ayanna Pressley.

But until this year, Wu’s relationship with most elected officials of color has been cordial. Nearly all of them backed Wu’s bid for reelection in which she ran against philanthropist Josh Kraft. The absence of so many Black officials during the mayors Feb. 6 White Stadium announcement underscored the growing fissure.

Hills, on whose internet-based talk show Wu appeared on Feb. 6, said the mayor’s relationship with the Black community is strained, but not irreparably harmed.

“We’re at a yellow light, looking both ways and recalibrating our GPS,” he said in an interview with The Flipside.