WGBH Journal; Arts On The Line

[FITZGERALD]: Good evening and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Greg Fitzgerald. And tonight the Boston Housing Authority gets bad marks from tenants and tenants' groups and probably from a state judge when they place it under receivership. ?Brighton? High gets its own bad report card from parents and students. Jamaica Plain residents rally to rebuild a church. ?Three Lines? remembers Governor Saltonstall and we remember today that it is a little known holiday. All this on tonight's Journal, right after a look at some local news. The U.S. Coast Guard at Chatham Massachusetts reports two 600-foot oil tankers collided off the foggy Massachusetts coast at 5:25 this evening. A spokesperson for the Coast Guard says the accident occurred 25 miles east-southeast of Chatham. The captain of the tanker Regal Sword reportedly has told the Coast Guard he is taking on water really bad so he has ordered his crew to evacuate the ship. A spokesperson says there is no report of any injuries and no report of damage to the second vessel, the Exxon Chester. A spokesman for the Boston Coast Guard office added its information is, quoting here, "very sketchy. We don't have the flags, amount, or quantity. Both are

oil tankers and both are 600-footers." The Coast Guard spokesperson in Boston did say the Regal Sword stern is awash right now. The collision reportedly ripped open a one hundred and fifty foot gash in the hull of the Regal Sword, but no oil was reported leaking from either vessel. Seaman Gary Terrell at the Coast Guard station in Chatham told UPI, quoting, "We don't know who collided with who at this point, but the captain of the Regal Sword says he's taking on water really bad. He said his stern and engine are under water. They're putting the boats over the side right now. Terrell added a 40-foot motor lifeboat has been, uh, a 40-foot motor lifeboat has been dispatched from the Chatham to the collision scene to pick up the stranded crew members. Massachusetts pro-choice groups kicked off a new abortion rights lobbying campaign today, mailing off 8000 postcards to Congress with a message, "I'm pro-choice and I vote." The campaign, which involves pro-choice groups nationwide, is aimed at the 1980 elections of U.S. senators and representatives, and it's being timed to coincide with the debate on this year's anti-abortion Hyde Amendment,

expected to come up in the House this week. Organizers say the proposed amendment is more restrictive than last year's, allowing Medicaid-paid abortions only when a woman's life is in danger. About 75 nurses, counselors, and hospital aides rallied today for the noontime press conference call to publicize the new campaign. According to Jean Weinberg of the pro-choice group MORAL, they were to support abortion as a matter of health. [WEINBERG]: Health workers, specifically nurses, are thought upon as being conservative, apolitical, and in fact they are the ones who, if we lose this fight, once a- abortion becomes illegal, they are the ones who are gonna have to deal with the results. [FITZGERALD]: A power failure which apparently began in Boston spread to parts of Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island today, leaving at least 200,000 people without electricity for hours in today's 90 degree heat. The New England Power Pool appealed to residential users in the three states to curtail the use of high voltage appliances such as air conditioners and fans. Most New England customers had their power return by 4:30. The cause of the outage was an

extremely heavy and unanticipated demand, according to the Power Pool. The head of a gasoline retailers association today accused the major oil companies of intentionally withholding gasoline in an attempt to force decontrol of all oil prices. Frank Perotti of the Massachusetts Gasoline Retailers Association said that allocations are not 10 percent off as energy officials are claiming but 25 percent off according to his figures. Perotti called for the nationalization of the oil companies, at least temporarily. The Gasoline Association president also predicted that the situation will ease in August. He says the oil companies will then tell consumers there is no heating oil. That's the news. [ROBERT MCCABE]: Many of the apartments are uh broken into, have been vandalized, uh plaster

plaster broken out and all- all the plumbing destroyed, copper- copper wire and copper tubes pulled out and sold for- sold for junk. People don't want to live in that kind of a neighborhood. [FITZGERALD]: The comments are those of Robert McKay, executive director of Citizens Housing and Planning Association of metropolitan Boston. The association is a tenant's advocacy and planning group that has been in existence since the 60s and has been a major force in shaping public housing policy. In Boston, a city that has the fourth largest public housing program in the country, tenants are facing the greatest crisis in recent history. The Boston Housing Authority may soon be placed under receivership by Judge Paul Garrity. No other major housing authority in the nation has ever been placed under general receivership, and both tenants and public policy planners are afraid of what lies ahead for public housing in Boston. Since 1977 the BHA has been under a reform plan worked out in a decree issued by the judge and negotiated by the BHA and its tenants. The plan called for a three year program to modernize, improve maintenance and security, repair

and fill vacant apartments and reduce vandalism and racial segregation. A court appointed master has observed the BHA progress since then, and if the master, Robert Whittlesey, is to be believed, the BHA has failed. Both Whittlesey and tenants seem to agree. More than 4000 BHA units are now vacant, many of them beyond reasonable repair. Tenants blame the BHA appointees named by Mayor White. They feel White's appointees have lacked expertise in housing, and Court Master Whittlesey agrees. He wrote to Judge Garrity five months ago that unless the BHA got strong leadership, tenants will not be able to obtain decent housing. Robert McKay, whose voice we heard earlier, said recently, quoting now, "There is no housing authority in the country as bad as Boston's." Last week he told me why. [MCKAY]: Boston has had a series of administrative and political catastrophes over the last six or seven years which have, which have hampered its ability to even meet the minimum needs of the people who

live there, much less try and fill the units that are, that are vacant, vandalised. The authority gets so far behind that it's not able to work at the, to work at the fix-up jobs that have to be done. It, uh, the authority now is- is having difficulty even keeping up with the maintenance on the projects which are in- which are in better condition. The authority is just overwhelmed with- with the size of the work that has to be done in the projects that are in poor shape. There is, it would only be through heroic efforts by- by maybe twice the staff that the Authority now has that it can overcome its- its present condition. It's very- it's very clear now that- that- that the authority is facing its most difficult crisis because if we- if it loses the confidence of its tenants then there is no reason for the Authority itself to exist in this city and that is a terrible tragedy.

[FITZGERALD]: Do you see the problem serious enough or do you see the solution there offered by the possibility of receivership which Judge Garrity may impose? [MCKAY]: There just, there just seems to be no way that the authority is going to be able to pull itself up by the bootstraps without some major changes being made within the administrative, legal and and, and the economic support which is provided to the authority. Receivership has certainly been one very strong bit of medicine for the authority. There are other ways for this to be, to be handled. We have had so little experience, we have never had a large housing authority such as the size of Boston ever go into receivership. When the judge makes his decision we're going to then have to face a lengthy challenge in case the judge says that he wants receivership. There is going to be a challenge to the court's

ruling which will take, which could take anywhere from three to nine months to resolve. So whether we go into receivership or not, the actual fact of receivership is still a considerable time away, and so that so many people like ourselves are discouraged by this terrible, this terrible delay, and that while this delay goes on and while all these problems have been, have been argued out in the court the conditions in the projects continue to get worse and worse, and that as I said the losers are the tenants. [FITZGERALD]: Judge Paul Garrity is expected to make a decision on receivership within two to three weeks. And as McKay pointed out the appeals process expected from the city could drag out the effect of the decision for several months, and although BHA tenants themselves are pushing for receivership, tenants and city planners have little idea what such an unprecedented move will mean for public housing in Boston.

Last week CDAG One, the community district advisory group responsible for public schools in Mission Hill, the Fenway, and Brighton, released a report which was highly critical of the District High School. The report was prepared from critiques by 25 monitors, among them parents and students who toured through Brighton High to assess the quality of education students were receiving. Monitors found major faults with various aspects of Brighton High. They cited problems with the physical facility, criticism of the atmosphere in which students are supposed to learn, and lack of minority administrators and faculty in a school whose student body is two thirds minority. Reporter Henrietta Davis tells us more about the school in this report. [DRISCOLL]: One of the students said, quote, "It's a disgrace to call this dungeon a school of learning. It's a place for

adults to go and abuse kids. A place for kids to abuse themselves by dope, liquor and violence." That's a very condemning statement about a high school. [DAVIS]: That's a comment from one of the report cards that students filled out on Brighton High School which Peter Driscoll, coordinator of CDAG One, is quoting. I talked with him about how the monitors of Brighton High arrived at their conclusions. [DRISCOLL]: After reviewing the reports by 25 different monitors, our general conclusions were that Brighton High is a school which is suffering from some neglect, um, which is most easily seen in the physical facilities, and suffering from some lack of leadership. There doesn't seem to be clear accountability for students or teachers or administrators and no clear commitment to excellence which we think is necessary for the high school to begin striving for the kind of quality which provides good education for all kids inside the high school. [DAVIS]: What are some of the specific things that you found? [DRISCOLL]: Some of the specific things, there is a lot of concern, for example, about the facilities inside Brighton High. They're old, they're dirty, they need some repairs. There are a number of conditions which are hazardous. There's

a fair amount of graffiti which is obscene and a, a fair amount of it racially oriented which should be removed immediately. The building inside is pretty depressing. It almost looks as if the history of Brighton High stopped about nineteen twenty-eight. And it doesn't provide a sense of stimulation or excitement or anything current for the present student population there. And I think that the lack of leadership comes when monitors fairly consistently are able to find groups of students sleeping in class. And this was perfectly accepted behavior. In some cases found teachers sleeping in class and this seemed to be acceptable behavior. You know, teachers who are not teaching very actively, sometimes reading the paper or reading magazines. And you get the sense that there's no minimum accountability, that there's no minimum level of acceptable performance which all members of the Brighton High community have to adhere to. [DAVIS]: CDAG One's Monitoring Report was stimulated by criticism over the past years of Brighton High School by parents, students and former students. Also test scores in math at Brighton

High are low compared to city averages. And last fall 80 students from Brighton High who took S.A.T. tests, presumably because they were interested in going on to college, averaged scores that were remarkably only in the two hundreds. Miriam Clasby is the coordinator of the court-ordered pairing between Boston University and Brighton High. She analyzed the S.A.T. scores and believes that there may be an unexplained reason for them. Clasby is also working with a teacher planning group at Brighton High so that the high school can use non cost resources at Boston University to enrich their curriculum. In the past, BU programmes at Brighton have not been integrated into the mainstream of the high school. [CLASBY]: There is no way in which our university programs can have any long-term effect if they stay activities that are simply on the side, that are not actually built right into the operation of the school, and that's why this teachers' planning group is so important in terms of my sense of the future, that it must be the people who are there day by day who who-

You support carry on and make a program actually work this spring for teachers and more than 50 students went on an overnight trip to BU's Sargent camp. The court-ordered collaboration between BU and Brighton High has existed for four years. I asked Miriam Clasby if this was the first time Brighton High faculty took advantage of BU resources. [CLASBY]: Yes, it's the first time in in recent years. At the very beginning, I think, we were under the court order, there was a trip to Sargent Camp at that time but it was- and the teachers did go there, and so it was a repeat of something that had been done before. I think this time there was a special- and at the demand of the teachers, it was designed as a learning experience, and therefore it's- it now has something that I can think of spin-off effects afterwards in terms of thinking about activities back at the high school which can capture both some of the relationship-building, some of the interaction across race and across classes in the- among the students and

the teachers, so it's again more of an ongoing act, it's now more as a beginning step, an ongoing activity, than just simply a single exercise of students. CDAGOne is also asking that faculty and administrators of Brighton High get involved in a planning process and start this summer to address some of their concerns with conditions at Brighton High School. Unfortunately, administrative personnel at Brighton High were unable to comment on CDAG One's monitoring report as this GBH Journal report was being prepared. I'm Henrietta Davis for GBH Journal. [FITZGERALD]: Be sure to tune in tonight at 10:00 on GBH radio as Options in Education looks at colleges part two. Categorize us as Bostonians or citizens of the Commonwealth or Americans

but our homes where our friends reside. The place where our trash gets picked up where we get to know the corner market where the dogs get to know us. That's our neighborhood the place where we live. Each neighborhood has a unique flavor its special idiosyncrasies a certain charm. David Freud Reckitt been visiting the neighborhoods around Boston tonight he resumes his series of Sound Portraits with a visit to Jamaica Plain where residents are rallying to rebuild a favorite neighborhood spot. The people of Jamaica Plain have turned tragedy into triumph. Back in 1975 when arson claimed the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain members of the community representing all denominations started raising money to repair a half million dollars worth of damage. One of the results is a popular new social institution. The church is homey front lawn where a majestic maple tree offers shade to the summer weary. On Saturday afternoons over the last two years parishioners have been holding a bake sale. Pastries bring in over

$100 each week and it has begun to add up. One of the faithful is Virginia Long. [Long] Particularly the senior citizens like to come up here and sit and just talk. We'll soon have coffee ready and a lot of people like a cup of coffee. It has meant a lot to them because it brings them together. We have people from as far down as Hyde Square come up here and south, way down that way. They come because they know that we're here every Saturday and they like getting together and they meet, you make new friends and they enjoy that. And it has brought the church closer together to the church people. [Reporter] What do you mean? [Long] Well you know you go to church on Sunday and listen to the sermon and that's it. But here you get out here and help work on this and you become become more friendly with the with your parishioners. Other than this good morning on Sunday morning 9:00 a.m. you know them and talk with them and work with them which

makes it interesting. [Reporter] All ready. [Long] Oh this is our Pastor, the Reverend Hawkins. [Reporter] Virginia was telling me this has become sort of a focal point for the community. People gather here. [Hawkins] Well yes it has. Each summer, last summer and this coming summer, we have right where we're standing is a large maple tree in the very center of our church lawn. [Reporter] It really in this very hot humid weather completely cools us off. Believe it or not in the month of July last year my daughter with a thermometer actually found that it was 14 degrees cooler under the maple tree than it was out in the sun on the church lawn. And so last summer and we planned this summer to have what is called the maple tree gathering where Monday through Friday from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. every afternoon senior citizens and anyone else who would like to are free to drop in on the church lawn and have a time of refreshments and fellowship together and singing together. And last year we had anywhere between, on every day Monday through Friday for anywhere between 10 and 50 senior

citizens from the community here meeting on the church lawn. [Reporter] Who are you? [McDonald] Frances McDonald. [Reporter] And could you describe the array of baked goods you have here today? [McDonald] Well we have all kinds of cakes pies, muffins, breads, baked macaroni and cheese, baked beans, different kinds of rolls, role for fancy work. [Reporter] Who creates all of these? [McDonald] Oh, different women in the church. [Reporter] Are you able to sell this much each Saturday? [McDonald] It's half gone already. [Reporter] Tell me what are the what are the favorites? [McDonald] I'd say pies and rolls. [Reporter] They really move well. Let me stop you for a second. [buyer] Yes. I don't know how to bake these, Homemade right? [McDonald] Yes. Oh Yeah.

[Reporter] Do you come here regularly to buy the pastries? [buyer] Very regularly, I know these women here. I'm always here. [Reporter] Why? [buyer] They bake delicious pies, they're homemade. You can never buy it anywhere else in the grocery, anywhere else commercially. This is all fresh and homemade. [Reporter] Are you a resident of Jamaica Plains? [buyer] Yes I live around the corner. This church is the center of everything. Right, Mrs. Campbell? [Campbell] It has been for It took years yes because of the fire and now where we ?construct? and we have remodeled and now we are doing all this to pay off the mortgage. [Reporter] You know in a way. It seems like the fire might have been kind of a blessing in disguise in that it's brought people together and created this whole of social opportunity. That's true. We have gone out into the community and the community has come in to us we've got new members and and we just love each other. We just expanded into the community, we're out here every Saturday, a picnic every Saturday we love it. And through the roar of center street traffic the Saturday bake sale continues to raise

funds to pay for the remodeling of the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain. For GBH Journal I'm David Freudberg. [Host] Updating that oil tanker story now the Coast Guard now says the Regal Sword is a bulk carrier and not an oil tanker as first reported. The vessel reportedly carries no fuel other than its own. There reportedly was no serious damage to the Exxon Chester but the Coast Guard emphasizes that a closer inspection of the oil tanker will be forthcoming. Remembering Leverett Saltonstall who died yesterday as the keeper of the public trust. Let Louis Lyons today to reflect on how much or how little public trust today's politicians can claim. [Lyons] "Salty is dead at 86," tops the morning paper. Governor, Senator, keeper of the public trust. The single line is obituary, eulogy, editorial. What since Ike has been so familiar and affectionate nickname as Salty for a public figure. His reputation rests on no contrived mythology. His picture by itself is sufficient reminder of his 46 years of public trust.

His face with that independent lantern jaw became an issue in the campaign of his first election as governor. A columnist, Bob Washburn of the old transcript, quipped that it was a political asset for a back bay Republican to have a South Boston face. James M. Curley, his opponent snorted that is ?salt and salt? took that face to South Boston he'd be mobbed so salty walked through South Boston and introduced himself to Irish bartenders along the way. As Curley's challenge had much wider circulation than Washburn's original whimsy, Salty made his response to Curly. My opponent says I have a South Boston face. It's the same face after election as before. South Boston gave him the largest voting ever according to Republican. Salty won by the-then huge margin of 130,000 to end the era of Curlyism. That South Boston face added a dimension to ?Saltensars? popularity that lasted. "It's always helped me when I'm introduced with that quip," he said 30 years later. The remembered safety of that walk of Salty's in 1938

is a lamentable symbol of change, as is that keeper of the public trust. Should have become the key identification of a politician. Distrust of politics and politicians is a prevailing public mood. Public suspicion of government at all levels is expressed daily in news and comment. A disbelief in an energy crunch and a conviction that the oil shortage is contrived. Incapacity to cope with spreading street crime has caused loss of confidence in police in courts. When juvenile gangsters charged with murderous assaults let back out on the streets the police are discouraged. But when the police explain such assaults as a bunch of kids on a rampage, respect for police is law. Street violence is out of control in certain Boston neighborhoods the Boston Globe said in an editorial last Wednesday that criticized city leaders for their silence. And it's not only the politicians who are derelict, the editorial continued. Where are the voices of the city's moral

leaders? A city cannot survive as a thriving entity if its people and its visitors are afraid to travel its streets. The only response by a public official to this pointed finger that I have seen came four days later from a Boston city councillor. He said negative reporting about the prevalence of local crime is causing the growth of an unhealthy pessimism in the country. How much is the breakdown of social control been a result of the dissolution of community itself in ?Saltenstalls? lifetime. A book about that has just been published. The Last Half-Century: Societal Politics in America by Morris Janowitz. To him the very kernel of change has been the widening separation between home and work which he finds has weakened the sense of community in both places. Daily commuting illustrates his point. Neighbors may be strangers, their interests as different as the variety of jobs they set out for each morning. On the job itself the only activity they share

in the factory may be their union and in the bank the luncheon crowd. After work their interest again diverge to golf clubs, bowling, PTA, or gardening in their numerous hometowns a very different life from the natural community built around the early flour mill, tack factory, or textile plant. Suburbanization has dissipated effective community organization, Janowitz argues, and the government, even while it has become more intrusive, has become ineffectual, Y weakened by the conflict of its bureaucratic rivalry. We see this in the resignation of the head of the Food and Drug Administration defeated by drug lobbies and Department of Agriculture blocking of efforts at cancer prevention. American traditional opposition to central planning has hobbled government in solving social problems, Janowitz says, private agencies have failed to fill the gap. They regulate themselves in their own interest but he insists unions and management have

a responsibility to work jointly in such national problems as low productivity inflation quality of workmanship. What he's asking for is able leadership and more social responsibility by all of us. [Host] Commentator Louis Lyons. Well as this reporter found out when he attempted to phone a city agency today in Boston, this is a holiday for Bostonians. City workers and a number of other workers took today off to celebrate Bunker Hill Day. For those of you who have not looked in a history book since high school, William Fowler, a history professor at Northeastern University, provided us with a recounting of the events of the first Bunker Hill Day. [Fowler] Well it Begins really at Lexington and Concord after the battle there on the 19th of April the British retreated back into Boston and the siege of Boston began dating at about that time. From the 17th of June 1775, the British in Boston realizing that they were in a very tenuous position with the American canon looking right down on top of them decided that they would have to take Bunker Hill. Actually it was breed

still to be honest with you. The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Breed's Hill but it was misnamed so the British under General Gage and General Howe went into a council of war, decided to make the assault. They came across the river, across the Charles River landed on the shores of what was then the village of Charles Town and began to make their assault up the hill. From the top of the hill was the Americans fort, the small parapet a square structure, the Americans under the command of Colonel Prescott in defending the side of the cannon and defending the top of the hill. The first rank of British soldiers went down very quickly, the second rank and third rank quickly retreated back down the hill. The British made then a second attempt at taking the top of the hill, marched up again in the face of American fire they were repulsed again for a second time. Now they are getting ready to attack for the third time in the afternoon and by this time it wasn't just a question of taking the hill, it was really a question of the honor of the British army was at stake and this time when they

approached the Americans, the Americans had run short of ammunition. The Americans were able to fire but they weren't able to sustain the fire and so the British were able to sweep over the parapet and the Americans were forced to retreat back through the Charlestown peninsula, back towards Cambridge which was the headquarters of the American army. When the smoke cleared the British had lost approximately eleven hundred fifty men and the Americans had lost about four hundred forty men. It was one of the worst if not the worst British defeat in the entire American revolution in terms of percentage of casualties that they sustained. [Host] And with today's history lesson over that ends this edition of GBH Journal, our producer tonight was Marcia Hirtz with assistance from Lee Catterman and Lisa Mullins, Stephen ?dare? Becky Rohr and engineer Michael Garrison. I'm Greg Fitzgerald.

Happy Bunker Hill Day.