Boston's mayoral race is pretty heated this year. In one corner is Thomas Menino, long time well-entrenched mayor of Boston. I mean, he's been mayor of this town since I was in elementary school even though no one can understand half of what he says. Menino doesn't give speeches so much as he mumbles in front of a microphone. In the other corner are Flaherty and Yoon, running together as a team some call "Floon".
This post is more about Sam Yoon than it is about the rest of the mayoral race. Yoon came to Boston as an adult, became a community organizer and then the first Asian American to be elected to Boston's City Council.
As I decide who to vote for, I admit that I wonder if I should vote for him because he's an Asian American. Intellectually, it seems like a poor reason. If he's going to be the first, isn't it even more important to make sure that he'll be a good one? Should I vote for him because he has community organizing in his past? As a reason, it may be a slightly better one since it points to experiences and values that I want to support.
Behind these questions though, is a deeper question: as an organizer/activist/etc, do I think that positive social change can be achieved through politics? Sometimes Boston politics seems synonymous with corruption (think DiMasi and scalping legislation, or more recently, Menino and the missing emails). If politics corrupts, why corrupt people who could do good elsewhere?
Even if I don't trust politics all that much, it's good to have friends in the right places, right? Someone sympathetic to your causes?
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