Taking it to the streets - Boston

Taking it to the streets
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | June 10, 2004

FROM: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/conventions/articles/2004/06/10/taking_it_to_the_streets/
The demonstrators who lined Causeway Street this week have certainly made a statement, in a show of defiance that has already slowed preparations for the Democratic National Convention. If anyone doubted that unions can still put bodies on the streets, now they know better.

Yet this battle isn't about numbers. It's about two strong and stubborn personalities: Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Thomas Nee, the president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. This became personal a long time ago.

Had Nee been available for comment, he would have likely disputed that. Yesterday, Menino himself was reluctant to personalize their fight, saying, "I saw Tommy Nee at an event the other day, and we had a very cordial conversation."

That's nice to hear, but it doesn't change the accumulated bad blood of recent years, exemplified by the heckling of Menino's family by the BPPA at the State of the City speech last year. As Menino's former friend City Councilor Jim Kelly could tell Nee, there is no faster way to escalate a feud with Menino than to drag his family into it. It doesn't help that Officer Thomas M. Menino Jr. has been pressured to toe the union line in opposition to his father. Menino publicly dismisses the use of his son as a pawn, but his friends say he seethes privately.

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and I am a member of the Greater Boston Labor Council with him as Reps from our respective Unions. He's out there for his men and women. I know him, also, because we share the same labor attorney. He doesn't want to hurt the city or the Democratic Party, but his only leverage is the convention. Police officers can't strike, it's illegal, so they have to use unconventional means (no pun intended).

Like so many of us in the Labor Movement, these times call for extraordinary measures to help our members. The federal government, in these dangerous times, are laying too much of the financial burden on cities in this country. Before we build police stations and fire houses in Iraq, and pay police and firefighters there, we should first take care of our own in this country.

Until that time comes, Tommy Nee is taking care of his own.

We we will have a third union member in Septmeber.

But who does Nee think is going to help him in the long run?

Certainly not Bush!

I have read that this union is a rare one, in that in usually supports repukes.

This looks politically motivated to me.

Our Labor Council has supported Tommy's efforts and has been in the forefront for Kerry. However I've never discussed his position directly involving the Presidential race. If you are interested, I will ask him at our July meeting, and if he shares it with me, I will post his response on DU.