In 1974, when the city of Boston was desegregating its schools, I watched the news with my dad and saw the police escorts in riot gear, the protesters screaming at the buses, small frightened faces in their windows.
Desegregation came very painfully to the Boston schools, long after John Kelly finished high school, and the pain of desegregating Boston schools was visited entirely on the students who looked like Frederica Wilson.
I was petrified because all my friends would be going to Washington, DC, to protest. I was sixteen, and I was like, "I don't think I'll be going with you guys," just because I was scared. Then you saw the news, and cops - not students in schools with guns - cops are killing sixteen year old protesters on the news. To me that was more horrifying, to have the authority figures actually killing people on the evening news, than to have another student firing a gun.
We shouldn't need riot police at schools.
Screaming. Did I mention the screaming? Screaming is usually associated with horror films and roller coasters. This is why I usually look like I've just watched a horror film on a rollercoaster. Kids love to scream. Frightened, happy, bored. They scream. I've actually learned to love the sound of a vacuum cleaner. It's just so peaceful.
The City of Boston and the T need each other. From designating bus-only lanes to implementing transit signal priority, the MBTA and Boston Transportation Department must work together like never before to unclog roads and keep riders on buses and the Green Line moving - for the health of the entire region.
I bought Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1415926, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows RSVP, The Best of Windows, Windows Strikes Back, Windows Does Dallas, and Windows Let's All Buy Bill Gates a House the Size of Vermont.
We should be demilitarizing the Boston police in weapons and tactics, and interactions with community. We should be reining in ballooning overtime for the police- a part of the city budget that has been eating into other necessary investments.
In 1953, the idea of a single female police recruit to the New York City Police Department, let alone a handful, was big news.
One day I was watching some pundits screaming at each other on a news show. It suddenly reminded me of this painting on my wall, of balloons with goofy faces rising - pundits screaming at each other and arguing off into the ether.
My dad wrestled The Rock, and I heard the people screaming and saw just how much they loved seeing my dad perform. It gave me chills.
Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies - where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.
I remember my dad watched a lot of TV that we watched, too. I remember watching Saved By The Bell because me and my sister watched it, and my dad kind of watched it with us, too, while he was cooking or whatever he was doing in the kitchen.
I watched Gretzky, I watched Lemieux. Maybe it's the time when you're playing, but for a kid coming into the league, you play the Boston Bruins and you just watched Bobby Orr.
I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857.
Mixed martial arts has small windows of opportunity and there's always new faces coming through, so it's easy to forget you.
Good news is not news. Bad news sells. Confrontation sells. And that's what the press is always looking for. I'm not bragging, but I have the highest job-approval rating of any public official in the city. And I've had it consistently. The approval rating for the police department is 70 percent. This notion that stop-and-frisk has torn the community apart is false.