2021: Closing with Hopeful and Not-so-hopeful Signs

As 2021 closes three recent political developments reveal truths we are not always privileged to see: coverage of the death of philanthropist Jerome Rappaport; Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl turning a blind eye to racist attacks against Boston mayor Michelle Wu; and more accurate descriptions of privatization fronts like billionaire funded National Parents Union.

Rappaport was sufficiently important that the Boston Globe offered up a detailed obituary, but not detailed enough according to CommonWealth Magazine which countered with Jerome Rappaport and the Destruction of Boston’s West End. Rappaport, CW stated,

had an enormous impact on Boston over a span of more than 70 years. That included his role as the principal figure in one of the most controversial development projects in modern Boston history — the razing of the working-class West End neighborhood to make way for the high-end Charles River Park housing complex. The move has been cited by critics as one of the worst examples in the country of the damage done by urban renewal efforts. Rappaport’s extensive civic and philanthropic contributions were detailed in a front-page obituary in the Boston Globe, but the West End saga, an important chapter in the city’s history and in US urban redevelopment policy, was only given a fleeting reference.

Writing separately, CW contributors Jim Vrabel and Peter Dreier reminded us that Rappaport’s philanthropy was built on the money and power he accumulated from the destruction of the West End. Dreier took the Globe’s omission to indicate that Rappaport’s philanthropic contributions helped “to rehabilitate his tarnished image” (similar to the Sacklers).

Might journalism more closely examine the political activities of philanthropists while they are alive? Some philanthropies act as interest groups. America’s richest family, the Waltons of Arkansas, fields a well-financed political team in Massachusetts with the purpose of privatizing public education. It’s a form of oligarchic power. And it’s not well covered. Optimistically, perhaps the Rappaport criticism will spur scrutiny of philanthropic interest groups.

Adam Reilly of GBHNews delivered an important and depressing story last week about racist and misogynistic attacks launched against Mayor Wu after her announcement of emergency public health measure: Wu says hateful comments have flooded her office since announcing new vaccine regulations. Some of the abuse appeared in reader comments on Geoff Diehl’s Facebook page and his campaign manager’s response was roughly ‘yea, whatever.” (Her actual response is in Reilly’s piece). A simple ‘Geoff condemns all racist statements and we’ll block anyone making them on our Facebook page’ would have sufficed but that would take a thimble full of political leadership. No go.

This is the Massachusetts Republican Party in 2021. Ed Brooke is not walking through that door fans, Elliot Richardson is not walking through that door, and Charlie Baker is walking out that door.

Hey, maybe things are looking up for journalism identifying the philanthropic money power behind fabricated “parent” groups. The New Yorker outed the Vela Education Fund, one of the funders of National Parents Union, as a joint venture of the Waltons and Charles Koch. Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times wrote “The National Parents Union is funded by the pro-privatization Walton Family Foundation” and Amy Crawford in the Boston Globe wrote “The National Parents Union receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation and other philanthropies that have historically supported school choice, including charter schools and vouchers.”

It’s the truth. It’s not the whole truth but it’s a start. I’ll be back in 2022 to help out with that.

Money Never Sleeps. Follow the Money. And fight for our imperiled democracy.

 [Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is now available.]