Memorial Day: Marching Through Dorchester

After the march to Cedar Grove Cemetery and a volley from the rifles, people took their time scattering. It was one of those intervals when a solemn observance dissolved into a holiday weekend. Children played with flags and make-believe swords. As the sprinkles became more noticeable, many took refuge under trees or claimed a spot for their folding chairs. Members of veterans posts who had filed down Dorchester Avenue were trickling back into formation before the speakers’ platform. One of the veterans, dressed in a cap and white shirt, scanned a row of gravestones until he came to a stop. For a moment, he snapped to attention, gave salute, then moved on.

In the unchanging ritual of Memorial Day, all wars and veterans seem very much alike. People who served in Vietnam listen to speeches about World War II and Iraq, and the roll-call of the deceased skips from war to peacetime and one era to another. Among the Dorchester veterans who died in the past year was 29 year-old Army Specialist Edgardo Zayas, who was killed in a roadside bomb explosion while on patrol in Baghdad. A Dorchester native, 19 year-old Kevin J. King, died while training for Iraq in the US Army at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Also mentioned during the roll-calls was the man for whom the John McKeon Post is named. He died 65 years ago in a reconnaissance plane over the Philippines and, before the war, had taken part in the same ritual at Cedar Grove as a member of St. Brendan’s Band. And, while Brigadier General Thomas J. Sellers was giving his address about the National Guard in Iraq, and politicians were setting up their umbrellas, a veteran of an earlier war ran a comb through his white, rain-slicked hair.

After the speakers finished, the veterans reassembled and got ready to head back out. For a while, there was some confusion in the ranks of the McKeon Post about whether there’d be a march past a reviewing stand. The commander went to ask the veterans just ahead of them in a trolley bus. He came back and reported to a tall man with a banner, who announced, “We’re going to climb a hill.” The commander then gave an order: “Follow the bus.” But, before they could advance, another post member added, “Tell the bus to go.”

When the last soldiers had withdrawn, the clouds retreated and the plod of a bass drum gave way to the treeborne ricochet of bird calls. Because it was Memorial Day, many of the gravesites looked freshly spruced up. They stood in tight, orderly rows, many of them with personalized markers. There were angels, fairies, teddy bears, butterflies, even a leprechaun, a pine cone, and a golf ball in a flower bed. To judge by the things left behind, Memorial Day was the opposite of Halloween. Instead of the living dressing up as the dead and paying a visit, the dead were decked out as the living and receiving visitors. Their outpost was the house next door with the freshly planted flowers. And, once again, it seemed a flier who never grew old could be a kid playing in the band.

District 2: One Decision, Two Undecided

The voters have decided who will be the next City Councilor in District 2, but two candidates who ran to succeed the late Jim Kelly are still considering whether to run for a full term later this year.

In yesterday’s results, the winner was Bill Linehan, a city official from South Boston, with 52.6% of the vote. Susan Passoni, a financial analyst from the South End, received 46.5%. As expected, Linehan carried all the precincts in South Boston, along with two neighboring precincts in Dorchester. Passoni carried all the precincts covering the South End, Chinatown, the Leather District, and Bay Village.

The most pronounced change in voting was in Chinatown, Ward 3, Precinct 8. In the preliminary election April 17, Linehan carried the precinct decisively, with 246 votes to Passoni’s 97. The difference between the two candidates in that precinct alone was greater than the spread between Linehan and the candidate with the most votes from South Boston, third-place finisher Ed Flynn. What made the result even more surprising was that Passoni had carried the precinct when she ran against Kelly in 2005. After this year’s preliminary, visitors to Linehan’s campaign website could find a testimonial from an influential Chinatown supporter, Frank Chin.

In the final election, the results from the same precinct were the other way around, with Passoni getting 52.1% of the vote. It’s also possible that Passoni, despite losing throughout the district, may have turned out more people who failed to vote in the preliminary. Short of proving this, it can be noted that, compared with the figures in April, the vote in precincts carried by Linehan increased by 6%, while the vote in precincts carried by Passoni increased by 42%. It’s also possible that Linehan found new voters in South Boston and Dorchester, while some people from those areas who voted for other candidates stayed home.

Even though candidates for City Council had to file for nomination papers by 5 p.m. the day of the special election, it’s still unclear how much opposition Linehan will face for his first full term later this year. As of this afternoon, Passoni was still undecided.

Also among those filing for papers in District 2 were two of the other five preliminary candidates from South Boston, Ed Flynn and Bob O’Shea. This afternoon, Flynn said he wanted to leave his options open. He said, “I’m very positive about finishing first in South Boston and finishing first in Dorchester.” Should he run against Linehan, he’ll be taking on a candidate who was endorsed for yesterday’s vote by all elected officials from South Boston.

By this afternoon, knowing that the incumbent would be from South Boston, O’Shea had decided against running. “There was enough division. We got a guy now. We’re going to get back to the business of governing and let this settle out,” he said. “I don’t want to go through that again, and I don’t think the neighborhood wants to go through it.”

Walking Toward Peace: Mothers' Day, 2007

The image of Eric
“Emoe” Paulding was in a white border. He wore a red tee shirt, with a Cleveland Indians logo. Ten years ago, he was the only young person to be murdered in Boston, at age 16.

Cedirick T. Steele appeared on a placard carried by his brother Dametre and his father, Kenneth Way (in photo above, right). In the middle of the placard was a photograph of Cedirick in a blue pinstripe suit and a New York Yankees cap. He was killed in March of this year.

There were several small photos of Siugerys García, a 17 year-old from Dorchester who was killed little more than a month ago in Florida, allegedly by her boyfriend. On the placard with one group of photos, it said, “Siempre te recordaré,” or “I’ll always remember you.” On the placard held by her mother, Dominga Ortíz, it said, “Espero verte pronto,” or “I hope to see you soon.”

One group of thirty people in the Mothers’ Walk for Peace was going the route in memory of Luis Geréna. He was fatally shot in January at age 13, in Jamaica Plain. His mother, Wendy Jiminián, remembered his smile. “It made me happy,” she said, “and stronger.”

Before setting off on the 11th annual walk, Christopher “Kit” Chandler was looking at the dozens of faces in round badges pinned to a traveling memorial. It was hanging from the wall of a clubhouse at Town Field. Chandler was there mainly for two people, sons of his best friend and his mother-in-law. Looking at the rows of faces, he said he could recognize others. “So many people I know,” he said. “It’s shocking.”

Donald Averett stepped up next to Chandler.

“Don’t make no sense. All kids,” said Averett. He started going on the walk in 2002, after the death of his son.

“Something’s got to change,” he said. “These kids got to learn, got to put the guns down.”

Before the walk got under way, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis called for reaching out to mothers not taking part in the walk. “The only way that we could avoid a situation of retaliation, retribution—an eye for an eye,” he said, “is the criminal justice system.”

Mayor Thomas Menino told marchers to share the city’s responsibility for preventing violence. “Each one of you,” he said, “can reach out if you see a young man or young woman who’s going in the wrong direction.”

After going along Dorchester Avenue to Peabody Square, the marchers turned toward Codman Square and Four Corners, before looping back along Columbia Road and Geneva Avenue. Many were chanting loudly for peace, while others did something quiet. Two children, Derrica Stone and Jonathan Gomes, wheeled a plastic "peace marker" down the middle of Dorchester Avenue, leaving a squiggly trail of symbolic purple. Eleven year-old Ivana Douglas walked silently, carrying a placard with a picture of her brother Geoffrey. He was killed at age 16 in 2001, when two other teens tried to steal his gold chain while he was on the Red Line in Dorchester.

Along the way, the walk passed within view of recent murders, on Washington Street, Columbia Road, Olney Street, and Geneva Avenue. On Geneva Avenue, there were also houses posted with “No Trespassing” signs and the wall of a corner store overspread by twelve images of a woman with a handgun. These were an ad for a magazine and a feature about “war” between entertainers and paparazzi. As the walk passed, a bystander noticed the incongruity and said, “It’s ‘war,’ and we’re talking about peace.”

At the end of the march, there was more outreach at Town Field. Marie Larose, mother of Hardy Celestin, who was fatally shot last October at age 17, went up to console Wendy Jiminián, saying, “You are not alone.”

Among those making connection with the faces on the traveling memorial was Zinha Gonçalves (in photo above, left). One connection was with her cousin, Jason Fernandes, Boston’s first homicide victim of the year, at age 14. Gonçalves could identify four relatives. “We know a lot more,” she added.

See also NNN'S multimedia photo essay on the walk.


Note: a survivors group for men meets every other Thursday at the office of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, 1452 Dorchester Avenue. The next meeting is Thursday, May 17.

Quiet City: Hopper’s Reticent Landscape

When the nighthawks come to roost, everyone else is supposedly asleep. As Edward Hopper shows them perched by a counter, their glassed-in space looks unnaturally bright—like an overexposed photograph or, yet, the real world in the dilated pupils of a dreamer suddenly roused. When Nighthawks was painted, in 1942, an all-night diner would have been fairly common in New York City, but Hopper makes the setting look almost paranormal. Instead of a public place that can be seen by anyone, it seems we're looking at something reserved for the eyes of an undercover detective, or a voyeur. Yet the frisson that comes from Hopper's paintings seems to have less to do with any choice of subject than the overall impression that even inanimate objects are presented in a different way, somehow more explicitly

With their transcriptions of commercial and social banalities, the paintings betray Hopper’s training as an illustrator. They also approach, or mimic, the mechanical visualizing of a camera. By suggesting the absence of a human observer, or at least the concealment of an observer, the paintings give viewers the sense of being a fly on the wall, even if the wall is across the street and one story up. In Hopper's wide shots, city locations may be spacious, but they’re devoid of crowds. Because the human figures are usually viewed from a distance, they often convey less about themselves than the size or tone of surroundings.

For all their detachment, Hopper’s paintings are also striking for their minute detail. They faithfully reproduce features of buildings, signage, and the mundane props of commerce, not unlike the depopulated inventory of Parisian streetscapes and architecture in the photographs of Eugène Atget. But the details in the paintings are also about reproductions—the way the world is configured in mass production for mass consumption. This can be seen in the generic symbols of commerce, or the repetitive patterns of its infrastructure. In Hopper’s best known paintings from New York City from the 1920's through the 1940's, even the interiors are usually mass-produced: apartment buildings, hotel rooms, or offices. If there’s a single space, it has multiple, look-alike parts: rows in a theater, seats on a train, tables at a restaurant, or stools at a diner. Hopper’s Hotel Room, minus the occupant and her belongings, is so barren as to look more like a storage compartment than a surrogate home. In these massively reproduced settings, it’s easy for the human figure to look more generic than singular. Instead of the painter’s individual portrait, the impression is more like seeing a photographer’s proof sheet.

In Hotel Room, there’s at least the hint of a secret. A woman who’s almost completely undressed sits on a bed and reads a piece of paper. Though a black rectangle in the window indicates nighttime, it appears the unwrinkled blanket and sheets have yet to be pulled aside for going to sleep. The paper almost certainly hints at some kind of relationship, and possibly disappointment. Whatever that may be, the melodrama would hardly be new. What is new for its time is how it’s easier and more common for that relationship to involve a stay in a hotel room. But there’s little to be read on the woman’s face, which is in shadow. Rather than reveal an event in her life, she blends in with her surroundings—a room not of her own, where intimate matters are concealed, even in the absence of others. Against this interchangeable backdrop, with the occupant in a quadrant among quadrants, it is hard to distinguish between romantic attachment, a honeymoon, or a one-night stand. But, rather than inadequately signifying only one of these scenarios, couldn't the painting also convey how all of them--even if only by association or undertone--could overlap in a single time and place?

It might even be said that some Hopper paintings are less real than realistic. Like Atget’s photographs, the paintings show settings with little or no visible trace of function or personal narrative. In the 1940 painting, Gas, there’s man at a pump, but no car, and no grease-stained rag hanging from his trousers. In Chop Suey, there’s still no food on the table shared by two women—just the anticipatory marker of a teapot. In New York Movie, there’s a disconnect between the shadowy zone of theater seats (some still empty) and the glow of a lamp on the blond hair of an idle usher. Dressed in a blue uniform, she stands against the back wall of the auditorium, with a hand pensively on her chin, oblivious even to the likely discomfort of keeping vigil in high heels. Office at Night shows a man sitting at a desk and a woman standing at a file cabinet. They certainly seem as functional as any office workers, but the woman’s outfit—highlighting graceful calves and the swell of haunches—is much more distracting for the viewer than the man at the desk: enough to dramatize the absence of any other form of interaction, or its concealment. Even when there’s a hint of interaction, whether between the women in Chop Suey, or the man and woman side by side in Nighthawks, we can infer little more than the faintest evidence of conversation—a few crumbs of dialogue, or even gaps between words (as if the scene had been caught by a shutter pressed at random).

The disconnect between surface and function that made Atget an accidental Surrealist has a similar effect in Hopper’s paintings. In Hopper’s freeze-frame, even a mechanical object or the plain grid of storefronts, as in Early Sunday Morning, breaks loose from the tyranny of the functional and claims, if not exactly a life, then a presence of its own. One reason for this is that the grid isn't entirely plain. The molding at the roofline and the cornices over the windows are a touch of decorum, but also the mark of a style outmoded in the age of skyscrapers and Art Deco. Their obsolescence is still fresh, still untouched by the aura of preservationism. Once meant to embellish function, or even disguise it, these features become all the more noticeable--more crystalised, as it were--as the storeblock's functions, with passage of time, seem more transitory.

By contrast with the likelihood of quiet conversation between the women in a Chinese restaurant, the large fragment of a sign outside the window speaks all the more loudly to an unseen horde of potential customers. No longer directed only at people walking by, the sign is meant for people moving in traffic, even at some distance. Changing the view of common figures by the way they are juxtaposed is what Hopper also does even in one of his most straightforward paintings, The House by the Railroad. What is almost too obvious to notice is that the figures in the painting seem deserted, with neither inhabitants in rooms nor a train on the rails. The house seems unusual because it is not juxtaposed with other buildings that have similar characteristics. True, this could be an isolated house in the countryside that could very well be glimpsed from a train. But, instead of a more natural streak passing by, Hopper gives the surveillance of the stationary viewer. This makes the house, or at least its ornamental surface, look all the more monumental, like some ancient edifice encountered in a wasteland.

It is easy enough to say that many of Hopper’s paintings are sparsely populated—not only by human beings, but by everyday objects that rival them as centers of attention (a hydrant, a radiator, an idle cash register, a typewriter, a barbershop pole, even the lustrous pair of coffee urns in Nighthawks). Is this an obsession with objects, the dehumanization of people, or the surrounding vacuum that makes them stand out as dissimilar equals? In Hopper’s urban settings, there’s even an absence of litter, as if a crumpled paper bag or a dented can might be loaded with narrative distraction.

Commentators usually describe the human figures in the paintings as solitary or even lonely. Maybe it is more appropriate to say that, in the city paintings, the people are deprived of solitude. For anyone who grew up accustomed to smaller communities (including Hopper himself), it must have been very noticeable how a big city imposes reserve. Far from necessarily being trapped or in some personal crisis, the people in the paintings might be--not entirely unlike some of Hopper's buildings and roofscapes--maintaining decorum: when among strangers, their personal business, except when discreetly announced, should be kept inside. That even extends to the painter and viewer of the paintings, who are, as it were, kept at a distance.

Even when two people might be speaking to each other, as in Nighthawks, their intimate exchange is masked by the semblance of disengagement. Surrounded by a world of strangers, they adapt by putting on a psychological armor that makes them seem impenetrable. And the strangeness from which they defend themselves is registered less by the presence of other people (who are hardly in abundance) than by their absence, as in the empty seats ignored by the usher at the movie theater. Do these individuals strive for singularity amid so many interchangeable reproductions, or do we see only the surface: a mask that copies the mechanical surroundings, to avoid standing out? Not only are Hopper’s urban landscapes a far cry from the prototypical familiarities of Norman Rockwell, but also from the vernacular spontaneities of urban villages. Considered as a real-world model for a representational painter, the impenetrability of Hopper’s figures can simply be a fact of life, at least for their time. What could make him an accidental documentarian is how much cities have changed. If their zones of spacious impersonality remain, they are more taken for granted, but also more porous and more adjustable. After all, in the age of wireless and digital reproduction, even crowded public space can be punctuated by absorption in a laptop or iPod, the encryptions of graffiti, or the invasive privacy of talk on a cell phone.

Regardless the distance in time for viewers, Hopper’s paintings condition them to see that appearances are not always to be taken at face value. A piece of visual surface can just as easily be a mask, a mirage, or a sign (literally or figuratively)—such as the framed landscape on the wall of a hotel lobby, so much like the landscape rolling by in the window of a train (where, as in the hotel lobby, the view is disregarded by a woman with graceful legs reading a book). Against Hopper's non-descript backgrounds, ordinary clothing (whether a man’s fedora or the woman’s single glove in Automat) can seem a trifle genteel or at least calculated—even if no more a declaration of status than the strain of decorum put in relief by impersonal surroundings. Because of her glove, the woman sitting at the table in the automat looks almost fastidious, but Hopper places her slightly off center horizontally, making her compete for the viewer's attention with a radiator on the floor and a flock of lights reflected overhead.

In the real world of cities, these combinations of appearances are what civility and schedules only allow us to glimpse on the fly. By freezing that almost photographic moment, Hopper lets us observe watchfully and head-on for as long as we please. Too invisible to feel self-conscious, we are free to contemplate what the Surrealist Louis Aragon once referred to as the “poorly lit zones” of human activity. “There, where the most equivocal activity of the living is pursued,” he wrote, “the inanimate sometimes assumes a reflection of their most secret motives: our cities are in such a way populated with unrecognized sphinxes who don’t stop the passing dreamer and pose deadly riddles unless he turn toward them his meditative distraction.”

Once we have the power to do that, even the impenetrable becomes revealing.

An exhibit of Edward Hopper’s paintings and sketches is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from May 6 through August 19, 2007. Photographs of Hopper paintings courtesy of the MFA.

City Council Special Election I

Seven names were on the ballot in the special preliminary election for City Council in District 2, but the competition was really among three candidates who finished within three percentage points of each other: Susan Passoni, Bill Linehan, and Ed Flynn. Though the district has long been dominated politically by South Boston--overshadowing the South End, Bay Village, the Leather District and a small part of Dorchester--the preliminary vote showed that Chinatown—straddling only two precincts—can be pivotal.

In recent years, parts of the district outside South Boston have been gaining in electoral clout. That hardly guarantees a victory in the final for Passoni, who lives in the South End. But the preliminary signals one tipping point in that the candidate who got the most votes in South Boston, Ed Flynn (1445), failed to make it to the final.

Finishing close behind Passoni throughout the district, Bill Linehan got the second highest number of votes in South Boston (1287), and he was far ahead of all the other candidates in Chinatown’s largest precinct, which also includes the Leather District. Ward 3, Precinct 8 gave Linehan 246 votes, even though the turnout here was only about 14%. In the same precinct, during the final election of 2005, when Jim Kelly won his last term, he received only 188 votes, despite a turnout of more than 32%. In that same election, the precinct gave Passoni 305 votes. Observers say it’s likely she’ll pick up some of the votes this year that went to other candidates, especially South Boston environmental justice activist Mary Cooney. Some votes for other candidates could also go to Linehan, and it’s anybody’s guess about the split among new voters in the final.

What’s also apparent is that Linehan has picked up support in Chinatown that eluded Jim Kelly. There could be many reasons for this, including Linehan’s work in Chinatown for Mayor Menino’s Administration on the addition of upper grades to the Josiah Quincy Elementary School. Other factors could include support from Frank Chin, a long-time community leader who enjoys good relations with City Hall. According to Lydia Lowe, the executive director of the Chinese Progressive Assn., the “City Hall machine” was a factor, at least in Chinatown precincts. Even if that overstates the role of Mayor Menino, Passoni is more noticeably at odds with the administration on issues such as powers of the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the construction of a biodefense lab near Boston Medical Center. Less clear is what, if any difference can be explained by rising numbers of new, non-Asian voters. And even Lowe says Chinatown turnout was highest among the elderly.

Another part of the Chinatown community—including residents of Castle Square, Mass Pike Towers, South Cove East and West lies in Ward 5, Precinct 1. This also includes Bay Village and part of the South End. In 2005, Passoni received almost two-thirds of the vote in this precinct. In this year’s preliminary, she had 57%, well ahead of Linehan’s 16%.

If Passoni is to win in the final election on May 15, she needs more votes from South Boston. In this year’s preliminary, with all the other six candidates from South Boston, precincts in that area gave her only from 2.9% to 16.9%. In 2005, the same precincts gave her anywhere from 15% to 37% of the vote, so that suggests she can do better in May. But that could still be far short of the votes for other South Boston candidates going to Linehan.

Whoever wins in May will have to run again for a full term later this year. There have been close special elections with large fields that set the stage for a much less competitive regular election. If Passoni were to win, there would seemingly be an incentive later this year for someone who could unify and mobilize the still dominant vote from South Boston—even if it’s unclear they would do better than Linehan. If Linehan wins and Passoni doesn’t challenge him, then Flynn’s performance shows what could be done, provided the South Boston vote isn’t split by any more candidates from the same neighborhood. But special elections also make an obvious but dramatic change in a candidate's political status: the difference between wannabee and incumbent.

Escalating Gun Toll, Escalating Response

City officials and church leaders are promising an escalated response to Boston’s rise in fatal shootings.

According to the Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, this will include federal investigations, possibly involving use of anti-racketeering statutes. A similar approach led to a dramatic fall-off in gun crime in Boston during 1990’s. Following a meeting between officials and church leaders this afternoon in City Hall, Davis said the investigation of people responsible for recent acts of gun violence is moving ahead more quickly. “They will not get away with this,” he said.

Davis said there would also be a “massive influx” of police officers in four neighborhoods most severely affected by the gun violence. The strategy would include putting administrative officers on the street one day a week.

The interim director of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, Rev. Jeffrey Brown, said church leaders would use their Easter Sunday sermons to ask for volunteers. The plan is to have those volunteers walk the streets, introducing police officers to the neighborhood, in hopes of reducing the level of distrust in the community. In recent months, officials have expressed some frustration over the apparent reluctance of people with knowledge about violent crimes to come forward.

“Our city is hurting,” said Rev. Brown, adding later, “We have to build a level of trust if we’re going to get through this period.”

The president of the Black Ministerial Alliance of Boston, Bishop Gilbert Thompson, said, “We want the people in the community to know there’s more than just 911 they can call.”

He said it was also important for families of victims to realize that getting closure by solving a case benefits the larger community.

“It’s not just the police that are asking for this,” he said, “it’s the church, it’s the community.”

Rev. Brown said the coalition was looking to have more home visits coordinated with police to deter young people engaging in violence. And he says the “ceasefire” campaign to broker truces between gangs should go citywide.

Marching for Peace and Justice

One victim was the “beauty” who was shot outside an after-hours party on Geneva Avenue. The other was the “coed” who was shot less than two weeks earlier, on a Friday afternoon on Olney Street, near the Holland Elementary School. The plan was to go from the scene of one killing to the other, in what organizers referred to as a march for peace—and for justice. And one way of calling for justice was to make a point: the coed, Quintessa Blackwell, was just as important as the 23 year-old “beauty” from out of town, Chiara Levin, whose killing prompted the intervention of the out-of-town volunteer crime-fighters, the Guardian Angels. “Quintessa was beautiful, too,” community activist Joao DePina told about fifty marchers as they stopped between locations on Geneva Avenue. And she was beautiful, he said, because all God’s children were beautiful.

It was Quintessa Blackwell’s face that was on the badges worn by marchers, on tee-shirts, and on the “peace flyers” passed around by her older sister, Gin-Gin. Just as she instructed, the flyers were posted along the march route. Like the march itself, they were a message from the neighborhood to the neighborhood, coinciding with what would have been Quintessa Blackwell’s 19th birthday.


As the marchers went from Olney Street to Geneva Avenue, there were several messages. These included a demand for a meeting with Mayor Menino and a call to “Start snitching.” More quietly, those who know the neighborhood say getting people to talk, even with the pressure of a grand jury subpoena, puts them at risk of retaliation. So the mother of two sons who were murdered, Isaura Mendes, had a message and an observation. The message: “The mayor can’t do it alone, the police can’t do it alone—we can’t do it alone. We have to do it together.” Later, the observation: “Our children talk, sometimes they get hurt.”

When the march reached the house near the shooting on Geneva Avenue, City Councilor Charles Yancey, also had a message. “The problem is not the police, and the problem is not the mayor,” he said. “There are far too many people in our community who have disrespect for life, and we must bring them to justice.”

* * * * *

Three killings in Dorchester since late last November took place around house parties, between 3 and 6 in the morning. Some have been quick to point out that house parties had nothing to do with the shooting of Quintessa Blackwell or the 11 year-old student found with a loaded handgun in the Holland Elementary School. But others are concerned that violence at the parties will get worse: if people don’t avoid the parties out of fear, they’re even more likely to show up with a weapon. “I think these after-hours parties are hotbeds for potential violence,” said City Councilor Rob Consalvo. Two years ago, he was the sponsor of an ordinance that created fines for people connected with parties, whether as property owner, host, DJ, or the person taking money at the door. He calls the parties a “perfect storm for a disaster waiting to happen.”

State Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry (D-Dorchester/Milton) says it would help if more people felt they could report the parties to police without fear of being detected. She says the special “party line” used in Area C-11 during the summer should be available year-round. For reporting parties, Consalvo advises as many as three steps: call 911 then, if necessary, the nighttime duty supervisor and, if the first two steps are not enough, call the station commander on Monday.