Dorchester Councilor Frank Baker today declared full on religious war against Councilor Liz Breadon (Allston/Brighton), who is in charge of drawing up a city-council district map.
Baker, who insists that any new map honor the Catholic parish lines in his home neighborhood, spewed some 1970s rhetoric on Breadon, a native of Northern Ireland, saying a priest buddy of his told him this morning that "all the clergy" are outraged at the new map that Breadon's redistricting committee came up with:
They're all talking about this process right here, they're viewing this exercise as an all-out assault on Catholic life in Boston and it's not lost on them that the person leading the charge on this is a Protestant from Fermanagh.
Council President Ed Flynn then called a recess to try to dampen tempers, which had been flaring for much of the afternoon as councilors approached a potential vote on changing the maps for the city's nine council districts, based on the 2020 federal census.
Baker's outburst came after the council voted 9-4 to reject a proposal by Councilor Erin Murphy, also of Dorchester, but an at-large councilor, to delay any vote. Only the four Irish-Catholic members of the council - Murphy, Baker, Flynn and Flaherty - voted for the delay.
It also came after a Suffolk Superior Court judge rejected a request from a South Boston man for an injunction to keep the council from voting on the map today.
@universalhub Thought UHub readers would appreciate this; just totally normal, sane stuff getting said by City Councillors about redistricting pic.twitter.com/HUJ4B6KlL8
— Pete Cannon (@coffeewithcats) November 2, 2022
After a recess, Council President Ed Flynn said Baker had violated council rules and offered him a chance to apologize, which, in a manner of speaking, he did.
That was unlike me. I apologize [to Breadon and the council]. . A good Catholic boy like myself shouldn't do that or be like that. ...I shouldn't use language like that.
But he just couldn't leave it alone and continued that "Catholic neighborhoods" in his district are "under attack."
"This is an insult, it is an absolute disgrace," Breadon responded.
Breadon started by acknowledging, yes, she was born Protestant in Northern Ireland. But, she continued, she was disgusted by the horrible discrimination Catholics faced in every facet of their lives, even before the Troubles started, when she was 10. And, she said, she was a lesbian in a culture that hated that.
"I came to Boston, this city on a hill," she said. "I married a nice Irish Catholic girl called Mary McCarthy. A grand woman she is, too. "
And when Flynn knocked Councilor Arroyo off as head of the redistricting committee, she said, she stepped up because she saw Black people in Boston facing the same sort of discrimination she saw against Catholics back in Northern Ireland.
"I've committed my adult life to try to fix the wrongs in the world," she said. "It is an insult to me to have a colleague on this City Council insinuate that I am discriminating against Catholics."
Councilors, she said, have work to do and have to pass a redistricting plan that is fair and equitable. "I am just trying to do my job."
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Comments
People change, sometimes for the worse
By Daan
Wed, 11/02/2022 - 8:43pm
I knew Frank as a neighbor years before he ran for City Council. At that time I would have voted for him. Now I could not.
This playing of a religion card greatly disappoints me.
Frank, unless Liz is
By Rob
Wed, 11/02/2022 - 8:57pm
Frank, unless Liz is redrawing districts to have parishes surrounded by Orange Order marching routes next July, cram it!
Link please?
By anon (not verified)
Wed, 11/02/2022 - 10:03pm
I can't seem to find the map that was approved. I was sure that I would be able to find it here. Did I miss it somewhere?
TIA
New map
By adamg
Wed, 11/02/2022 - 10:24pm
Copy of the Oct. 31 redistricting committee report - has a map on the very last page (note: there might be a couple of precinct changes on what was approved today). It's a 13.3M PDF, if you're on a mobile connection.
all religion OUT
By W.C. Plains (not verified)
Wed, 11/02/2022 - 10:17pm
The comments by Baker are nonsense. Also, get rid of the invocations at the beginning of the meetings. Separation!
The histrionics were bad, but
By Waquiot
Wed, 11/02/2022 - 10:53pm
I shouldn't even write but, as the real issue was just kept under the surface.
This is a gerrymander, pure and simple. The majority on the council decided to screw over Baker by taking residents who actually like him and moving them over to another district, in order to dilute the voting power of that block. Their race and religion are irrelevant, though the comparison to how the nationalist votes were split to aid the unionist ascendancy in Northern Ireland is an interesting one.
So, if you like this new map, you'd probably also love all those gerrymandered congressional seats down south. Hey, North Carolina made it harder for Democrats to get more members elected, but they also helped African American Democrats retain their seats. Same difference, really.
That's an interesting argument, but
By fungwah
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 7:48am
If it's not one Frank Baker is capable of making, it sounds like he probably shouldn't be a city councilor.
a constant theme with your style of debate
By berkleealum
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 8:33am
You went off on SwrrlyGirl elsewhere for what you thought was oversimplifying the issue, yet here you are explaining to the rest of us how simple it is.
How would you have done it any different, then?
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 11:12am
And why?
The reality is that boundaries had to move in ways consistent with secular laws, census data, and rules of district continuity.
How would you have done any different? Bear in mind that Boston is a majority minority city now.
Oh, I have ideas
By Waquiot
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 5:37pm
First, I don't think that the whole "District 4 has too many minorities" claim is valid. If a map was created wherein more black people were put into the district, that would be very problematic. And given that Boston had no problem electing a black woman to represent East Boston, the North End, and Charlestown, I'm fairly sure that racially balancing districts should not be the highest priority. That said, if Worrell wanted more white folks, he could have just as easily have expanded to the west into Roslindale. This would have caused shifting wherein D5 gets precincts from D6, D6 gets precincts from D7, and D7 gets precincts from D4.
District 3 need more people, and District 4 needs less. That's the basic problem. The easiest thing to do would be to send some D4 precincts to D3, but Flynn doesn't want Southie split up. I mean, he could probably lose the Seaport, since they are a different constituency than Southie proper, but that's no adjacent to D3. D3 could expand on it's southern end, snaking up River Street, but even I see how that would be diluting the Mattapan vote. D3 could expand on it's northern end, as has ended up happening, but without losing the southern end of the district, the shift would not have been so dramatic.
As I note, this is basically a way to screw Baker, which many people here would like, but it's less than democratic, as I am assuming that those people in Adams Village and Neponset were not consulted about the changes. Besides, they tried this with Flynn a decade ago and he's still around. I think that those who drafted the plan with Sullivan should hope that no one was recording their meetings and that no one decides to subpoena their work and non-work e-mails and texts to see how the deliberations about this really went.
As for parish boundaries, interestingly, I agree with you. They mean nothing as far political boundaries go, but they mean a lot to those who care about them, which has nothing to do with politics.
What decade is Frank Baker
By Don't Panic
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 12:40am
What decade is Frank Baker living in? Boston, especially Catholic Boston has changed quiet a bit since the 1970s.
So what?
By Kaz
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 11:05am
Why should we care what the kiddy diddlers think about the districting maps?
You know what outrages me? That his priest buddy is a part of "all the clergy" that knowingly hid child molesters among their ranks and moved them around whenever they got caught.
Let's compare outrages.
Two things I love about this post.
By Tim Mc.
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 12:23pm
1. Breadon's "sick of your shit" face in the photo.
2. The people putting their faces in their hands as Baker speaks.
Quite the photo
By Hardy Har Har
Thu, 11/03/2022 - 5:01pm
That's how she looked when kids from St. Columbkille's rang her doorbell on Halloween.
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