Match Corps: Lawrence

Match Corps:
Lawrence
Lawrence High School
Ayer Mill, Lawrence MA
Located on the Merrimack River
Performing Arts Center at Lawrence High School
YOUR GUIDE TO LAWRENCE, MASSACHUSETTS:
Your new home for the next school year.
 Lawrence Overview & Facts…2
 Lawrence Schools…………....3-4
 Neighborhood Map…………....5
 Restaurants……………………..6-7
 Things to Do…………………….8
 Lawrence History………………9
 “City of The Damned”:……… 10-13
(Recent News Feature about
Lawrence)
 “Community Gardens”:……..14-15
(Recent News story about
Lawrence)
The City of Lawrence
Basics
Lawrence
Boston
o Located in Essex County,
Massachusetts, along the Merrimack
River.
o About 30 miles from Boston, 25 miles
from Manchester, New Hampshire.
o About 7 square miles.
By the Numbers…
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Total Population:
Percent of Population of Hispanic or Latino origin:
o Dominican
39.6%
o Puerto Rican
22.2%
o Central American
4%
White not Hispanic
African-American
Percent of Foreign born persons:
o Percent of Foreign born from Latin America:
86.5%
Language other than English spoken at home (2006-2010)
76,377
73.8%
20.5%
7.6%
36.0%
74.9%
Educational Attainment Profile (for persons over the age of 25)
Percent of Population 18-24 with LESS than a High School Diploma 37.1%
Percent of Population Over 25 with LESS than a 9th grade education 19.7%
Percent of Population Over 25 High School Graduate or higher
66.5%
Percent of Population Over 25 with Bachelor’s Degree or higher:
11.6%, compared with 38.3% statewide
Income/Economics (Lawrence v. State of Massachusetts)
 Per Capita Money Income in past 12 months
 Median Household Income
 Persons Below Poverty Level (Percent)
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2010)
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$16,557 | $33,966
$31,631 | $64,509
26.5% | 10.5%
Lawrence Schools
Lawrence High School (LHS) is comprised of six stand-alone schools all
contained on the same campus. Each school has a distinct theme, and a separate
set of administrators and teachers. Math Fellows will be deployed in either
the Business Management & Finance or the International High School.
The Six Schools of Lawrence High:
1. Business Management & Finance*
2. International High School*
3. Math, Science & Technology
4. Health & Human Services
5. Humanities & Leadership
6. Performing & Fine Arts
Notes on International High School
This school is designated for English Language Learners. Many of these students may have
recently relocated from other countries to Lawrence. 89% of students are eligible for free or
reduced lunch.
Click Here for the Lawrence Public Schools Website
Lawrence Schools Demographics and Stats
10th Graders Performance on Statewide Math Assessment (% of Students)
Proficient or
Higher
Advanced
Proficient
Needs
Improvement
Warning/Failing
Lawrence 31%
11%
20%
37%
32%
77%
48%
29%
16%
7%
State
(Data from: Massachusetts Department of Education, Spring 2011) Click here for More District Information
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Pictures of Lawrence High School
Lawrence High School
Inside Lawrence High School
Performing Arts Auditorium at
Lawrence High School
Hallway in Lawrence High School
4
View of Devlin Fields: Home of Lawrence High
School’s Baseball and Soccer Teams
The Neighborhood
Map of the High School Neighborhood
Lawrence High School
Memorial Park
Movie Theater
Where Do I Buy Groceries?
Lawrence
High School
Market Basket is 1 mile walk (about a 20
minute walk) from the high school.
Whole Foods is 2.7 mile drive from the
high school.
Click here for a map with directions to both to grocery stores!
5
Local Eats: Th
| 230 Winthrop Ave | Lawrence, MA | 01843 | Directions from School |
Bollywood Grill: Now Showing Fine Indian Cuisine
| 350 Winthrop Avenue | North Andover, MA | 01840 | Directions from School |
We love the movies. Bollywood is located in the heart of Bombay, cinema capital of
India. Bollywood puts out 180 movies a year, is center of pop music and, of course, the
gossip. We wanted to share some of our culture's movie past and present and we hope
you enjoy the following special features, our entertaining cuisine.
| 106 Common Street | Lawrence, MA | 01840 | Directions from School |
Café
: “The Best Traditional Homemade Mexican Food!”
| 180 Common Street | Lawrence, MA | 01840 | Directions from School |
More Restaurants
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Local Eats (cont.)
| 160 Winthrop Ave | Lawrence, MA | 01843 | Directions from School |
Inaka (田舎) in Japanese means the rural area or place outside the major metropolitan
areas. Open since August of 1999, Inaka has garnered a reputation for engaging
creative fresh sushi, warm cozy atmosphere, and a wonderful combination of both
Korean and Japanese cuisine. Inaka has the best sushi and bee bim bahp around!
Rega’s Grill: Korean & Japanese Cuisine
| 609 S. Union St. | Lawrence, MA | 01840 | Directions from School |
We specialize in authentic, homemade Korean and Japanese food based on delicious
family recipes. We always use fresh, high quality ingredients and never use MSG. At
Rega’s Grill we feature an “all you can eat” buffet, available to cook at your own table
or to sample from our buffet table, which offers cooked meals, fresh fruit and sushi. We
also provide food for takeout or catering.
| 29 Salem St.| Lawrence, MA | 01843 | Directions from School |
From a Yelp Review: “The best Italian style pizza around a 10 mile radius. The crust is the
highlight for me. Very crispy, thin yet chewy at the same time, to die for (think New Haven
style). They use a fresh tasting chunky homemade sauce with very little seasoning. Cheese
is very high quality as well. My favorite topping so far is Spinach. They make a killer
Spinach and cheese mixture that they use on this pizza and in their Spinach pies that is
unreal.”
7
Things to Do
Get Outside!
Lawrence Heritage State Park offers many recreational and educational activities.
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Accessible Boating
Accessible
Restrooms
Bicycling Paths
Boating
Boat Ramp
Canoeing
Fishing
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Hiking
Historic Site
Picnicking
Scenic
Viewing Area
Walking Trails
Visitor's
Center
Click here for
more
information.
Nightlife
Claddaugh Pub: This Irish Pub has food, sports, trivia nights, and live music.
Located at: 399 Canal Street, Lawrence, Massachusetts 01840 (2 miles from
Lawrence High School)
Website: http://www.thecladdaghpub.com/
Centro Night Club: Dance/Music Club
Located at: 55 Common Street, Lawrence, Massachusetts 01840 (2 miles
from Lawrence High School)
Website: http://www.facebook.com/CentroNightClub
Visit Boston
Boston is a great place to visit on the weekend. Boston is located about 30 miles Southeast
from Lawrence.
Drive: Lawrence is about a 30-minute drive from Boston.
Take the Commuter Rail: You can take the Commuter Rail (Haverhill Line) from Lawrence to
North Station in Boston. The trip takes about 1 hour. The fare is $8.75 as of June 2012. Look at
the MBTA website for directions/schedules.
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A (Brief) Lawrence History
The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912:
“In 1912, a new state law went into effect
reducing the workweek of women and
children from 56 to 54 hours. But because so
many women and children worked in the
mills, men’s hours were also reduced. When
the first paychecks of the year revealed a cut
in pay, thousands of workers, already barely
surviving on an average pay of $8.76 a week,
walked out of the mills, and the Great Strike
had begun.
Bread and Roses Strikers
For nine weeks in a bitterly cold winter, over 20,000 workers, mostly new immigrants,
dared to challenge the mill owners and other city authorities. Thousands of picketers,
many of them women, faced state militia armed with guns and clubs. But the strikers were
generally peaceful. The two fatalities were both of strikers. A cache of dynamite, first
attributed to the strikers, turned out to be planted by mill owners and their friends in a
clumsy plot to discredit the strikers and their radical union, the Industrial Workers of the
World. Observers were impressed by the strikers’ inter-ethnic cooperation, their soup
kitchens, the important role of women, and their reliance on song to bolster their spirits and
express their beliefs. Some women strikers reportedly carried banners proclaiming
“We want bread, and roses too”, symbolizing their fight both for subsistence and for
dignity. Although the use of the phrase here has never been documented, the “Bread and
Roses Strike”, symbolizing the fight for subsistence and dignity, has stuck as the name for
this seminal event.”
(Info from: http://breadandrosesheritage.org/)
Want MORE History?
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Lawrence History Center: Immigrant City Archives and Museum: Located on Essex St.
in Lawrence. For more information, click here: http://www.lawrencehistorycenter.org/
Explore the Industrial Trail: http://essexheritage.org/themetrails/industrial/index.shtml
ATTEND THE 2012 BREAD AND ROSES
FESTIVAL ON SEPTEMBER 3RD, 2012.
Click here for information about the Festival
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City of the Damned?
Lawrence is a city with a complicated history and a multitude of present
challenges. We do not want to shy away from the present troubles the city is
facing. A recent controversial article in Boston Magazine highlights the
particular challenges facing the city of Lawrence.
Lawrence, MA: City of the Damned
By Jay Atkinson, Boston Magazine (February 2012)
NORMALLY A CELEBRATORY EVENT, this year’s
inauguration of Lawrence city council and school
committee members is somber, almost funereal. Father
Paul O’Brien, the pastor at St. Patrick’s church in
South Lawrence, takes to the podium at Lawrence High
to deliver a prayer. “We live in a community that’s
not safe. We all know that,” he says. A tall,
imposing figure in his black clerical garb, O’Brien
swivels his head to the right, looking at the elected
officials seated nearby — a group that includes Mayor
William Lantigua. “Let us pray for those who serve in
public safety. And for our elected officials, that
they understand better that they must step away from
corruption.”
Father Paul O’Brien, the pastor at
Lawrence’s St. Patrick’s church, is willing
to rail against corruption, but hopes his is
not a lonely voice in the wilderness.
Times are hard in the state’s poorest city. The mayor
is under federal and state investigation for
campaign-finance improprieties and other questionable
behavior, while a state-appointed overseer is
managing the city’s municipal budget. Lawrence’s
public school system is in receivership — the former
superintendent, Wilfredo Laboy, is under criminal
indictment for fraud and embezzlement, and the high
school dropout rate is more than 50 percent. Publicsafety cuts have been drastic, and felony crimes have
skyrocketed from 1,777 in 2009 to 2,597 during the
first 11 months of 2011. Unemployment is as high as
18 percent, compared with the state average of less
than 7 percent. With 76,000 people squeezed into 6.93
square miles, violent crime on the rise, and a public
school system that’s the worst in the state, the
once-proud “Immigrant City” has become an object
lesson in how to screw things up.
Father O’Brien turns back to the audience. “Let us
pray to be people who stand for the truth,” he says,
“who are not intimidated by corruption.”
Afterward, I mention to O’Brien that his prayer
sounded like something uttered by Karl Malden, who
played a crusading priest in the 1954 film On the
Waterfront. “In a place like Lawrence,” he replies,
buttoning himself into a black topcoat on the front
steps of the high school, “you’re either on the side
of darkness or light.”
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IN 1845, Abbott Lawrence and his brother Amos raised
a million dollars and created a holding company, the
Boston Associates, which purchased seven square
miles of land on either side of the Merrimack River.
Abbott Lawrence then hired an engineer named Charles
S. Storrow, from whose drafting table arose a
planned industrial city that would produce textiles
for the world. Just the Ayer Mill alone was equipped
with 400 broadlooms, 44,732 spindles, and nine giant
steam boilers rated at 600 horsepower each. The
equipment was operated by workers of Italian,
Polish, Lithuanian, Syrian, Irish, English, German,
French-Canadian, and Portuguese origin.
Immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican
Republic began arriving by the middle of the 20th
century, just as the textile industry was migrating
south in search of cheaper labor. The city has had
difficulty replacing the lost jobs, and for the past
four decades, most people in Lawrence, an estimated
74 percent of whom are Latino, have struggled to get
by. Lawrence saw its median household income fall
more than 20 percent between 1979 and 2010 to
$31,631, the lowest in the state. (In comparison,
Holyoke’s median household income is $31,948,
Springfield’s is $34,628, and Chelsea’s is $40,487.)
Over the past five years, Lawrence’s median singlefamily home assessment value dropped 18 percent to
$221,800, second only to Peabody’s 20.3 percent loss
during the same period. And last year, in its
scathing district review, the Massachusetts
Department of Education noted that 23.8 percent of
the 12,800 students in Lawrence public schools were
less than proficient in English.
NEW HOPE AROSE in January 2010 with the inauguration
of William Lantigua, the first Dominican-born mayor
in Massachusetts’ history. Many in Lawrence believed
they had found their champion.
On the night of the election, which Lantigua won
with 54 percent of the vote, Luis Medina, a campaign
volunteer who was born in the Dominican Republic and
grew up in Lawrence, was among the throng of
Lantigua supporters at his headquarters on Essex
Street. When word spread that Lantigua had won, “it
was a joyful moment,” says Medina, 44, a union
electrician who works in Boston. “Some were crying.
The rest were jumping up and down.”
But the honeymoon was short. Lantigua immediately
generated controversy by trying to keep his job as a
state representative while serving as mayor.
He also feuded with the fire and police departments,
the disagreements becoming acrimonious and personal
and culminating in a claim that police officers had
actually tried to run him down in an unmarked car.
Two years into his first term as mayor, Lantigua has
been the subject of four voter recall attempts, and
is the target of a federal probe into campaignfinance improprieties.
City of the Damned, cont.
ON A BITTERLY COLD DAY, we’re in an SUV on our way to
buy heroin. The driver is a burly fellow in an old
ski vest who doesn’t say much. In the back seat is a
fortysomething middleweight with a pugilist’s
flattened nose.
The two men resemble the small-time dope dealers they
purport to be, but in reality they’re members of a
drug task force operating in Lawrence and surrounding
communities. (Their identities are not being revealed
because of the risk to their effectiveness and
safety.) Street dealing and its attendant violence
are worse than ever in Lawrence, but the task-force
agents stay focused on the big picture — the major
players in the area, and the out-of-town heavies
bringing the stuff in.
The undercover cops are on their way to make a
“controlled buy” from a house that’s been identified
as a major source of heroin. Crossing the bridge, we
turn left and run alongside a park near South Union
Street, empty but for a man walking his dog. A squat
man in his forties appears — the informant who will
make the buy.
The informant climbs into the SUV and one of the
task-force agents searches him, joking when his hand
rests on the man’s phone.
“Is that a gun?”
“Yeah, but I got a permit,” says the informant.
Everyone laughs.
“Let’s buy small,” an agent says. “I want to have it
tested, see where it’s coming from. See who’s
shipping.”
Minutes later, the informant gets out of the SUV and
walks to the house. A tall man in a hoodie greets him
in the driveway and leads him inside.
Five minutes crawl by. The longer it goes, the better
the chance something bad is happening. Suddenly the
door to the house swings open, and the informant
jumps down from the porch and walks away, head down,
hands in his pocket. Back in the car, he’s holding a
baggie with a gram of heroin. It’s the size of a
pencil eraser.
“That’s a nice piece, bro,” says the agent in the
back seat. “He cut that off a finger?” The informant
shakes his head. “He don’t fuck around with fingers.
Just fuckin’ bricks.”
Over the next half hour, the task-force agents point
out a dozen more such targets, houses across the city
where high-volume drug dealing is being done.
“We could do this all day, every day” in Lawrence,
says the driver. “A house a day.”
But they aren’t able to. Lawrence’s budget crunch has
all but gutted the city’s law enforcement. In fiscal
year 2011, Lantigua cut the police department from
151 officers to 110. (Staffing levels have
subsequently risen to 118 officers through grant
funding, according to police chief John Romero.)
After the reductions, felony crimes — including
murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary,
arson, larceny, and auto theft — rose 23 percent from
the previous year, Romero says.
The Lawrence Police Department’s “special operations”
units have been especially hard hit by the cuts.
(page 2/4)
The street narcotics unit, consisting of seven
experienced plainclothes officers, was shut down by
Lantigua (who declined to comment for this story) on
July 1, 2010, along with five other special units
that focused on gangs, burglaries, auto theft and
insurance fraud, domestic violence, and community
policing.
Known for feuding with the mayor, police chief
John Romero has had his forces cut drastically in
the past two years.
From July 1 to December 31, 2009, when the special
ops units were fully staffed with a total of 35
cops, there were 990 felonies committed in Lawrence.
During the same period a year later, after the cuts,
that number rose to 1,410.
“Drugs fuel most of the crime in the city,” says
Romero, who was a New York City cop for 30 years
before becoming Lawrence’s chief in 1999. He says
that, on the one hand, he can understand the staff
cuts. “I get it — there was no money. But I told the
[city] council, you need to understand what’s going
to happen.”
One of the task-force agents from the drug buy says
the cuts have been devastating. “We’ve had 24
murders in the last 30 months,” he says. “I’d say 80
percent of those are drug-related. Taking away
special operations has set the city back 15 or 20
years.”
Orlando Rosario drives a tow truck through the
streets of Lawrence. A stout Latino Falstaff with a
permanent 5 o’clock shadow, Rosario has been working
for Sheehan’s Towing for more than a decade and
knows every shopkeeper, cop, and crackhead in the
city. Driving along, he points to where an expensive
SUV has been left running at the curb — an
incongruous sight in this neighborhood filled with
junk cars and taxis.
Tow-truck driver Orlando Rosario knows
Lawrence’s streets — especially the seedy ones
— better than anyone.
“Watch,” he says. “That’s a drug house.”
As we cruise by, an attractive fortyish blonde walks
briskly outside and slams herself into the driver’s
seat. She has something in her hand and stares down
lovingly at it. In the passenger seat is a young boy
who’d been left alone in the car.
Rosario points out one drug house after another.
Passing a fast-food restaurant at the intersection
of Essex Street and Broadway, he says, “Here’s where
all the crackheads and prostitutes go in the
morning. You’ll see ’em here every day between 7 and
9. It’s like their office.”
Broadway is thick with traffic between Essex and
Lowell streets. A short while later, a guy pulls up
alongside, calling out in Spanish to Rosario.
“He’s a teacher,” Rosario says. “Bigtime drug
dealer.”
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City of the Damned, cont.
BORN IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, William Lantigua
moved to the U.S. in 1974 at the age of 19, settling
in Lawrence. He worked as a technician at Schneider
Electric in North Andover for 23 years while doubling
as a community organizer and volunteer campaign
strategist in local elections. In 2002, he was
elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives
from Lawrence’s 16th Essex District. He was reelected
four times before announcing his candidacy for mayor
of Lawrence in 2008.
Lantigua’s victory brought new hope to the
overwhelmingly Latino population of the city: Here
was a guy, like many of them, who had come to
Lawrence from the Dominican Republic looking for an
opportunity. A tall, slender man with a shaved head,
Lantigua, now 57, possesses a kind of endearing
clumsiness in front of a crowd. But his mien can
quickly turn cold, and he’s often surrounded by a
dozen or more grim-faced men wearing baggy suits that
look like they came from the Russian politburo’s
thrift shop.
Unfortunately for the city, Lantigua’s political
persona changed as quickly as his moods. First, there
was his refusal to give up his position as state rep,
claiming he could do both jobs simultaneously — and
collect both salaries. (Finally, in February 2010,
his colleagues in the House forced him out by saying
they’d deny Lawrence $35 million in bailout money
unless he quit.) Then, last May, it became known that
Lantigua and his live-in girlfriend, Lorenza Ortega —
who works in the city’s personnel office — were
accepting federal fuel assistance to pay the heating
bills for their condominium. Since the mayor is paid
more than $100,000 a year, he and Ortega were clearly
ineligible for the approximately $1,165 annual fuel
subsidy that’s meant for struggling families.
Lantigua bristled when questioned by reporters,
claiming he didn’t know he was receiving fuel
assistance and that he was preoccupied with city
business.
Meanwhile, the mayor has prevented his department
heads, including the police and fire chiefs, from
releasing information or talking to the press without
his permission. That gag order is just one source of
Lantigua’s strained relations with his public safety
departments. He has stated that firefighters get paid
to sleep, and that Lawrence police are “intimidating”
and “lazy.” Certainly, the current administration
inherited severe budget problems from the previous
mayor, Michael Sullivan. But Lantigua’s
dismissiveness hasn’t helped him win points with the
fire or police departments.
Lantigua’s ham-fisted patronage system is also
drawing heat. One personnel change in the police
department has fueled an ongoing circus of
accusations and finger pointing, not to mention
suspicions of a secret federal investigation. Right
after his inauguration in January 2010, Lantigua
demoted deputy police chief Mike Driscoll, a 20-year
veteran of the department, and replaced him with
sergeant Melix Bonilla, who’d been a top Lantigua
campaign aide.
It wasn’t long before Bonilla was caught up in
controversy of his own. Approximately a year after
Bonilla’s appointment, his 17-year-old son, Jamel
Bonilla, allegedly used his father’s gun in a home
invasion. (According to the Eagle-Tribune newspaper,
Melix admitted as much as part of a deal that gave
him immunity from prosecution; Jamel was indicted and
pleaded not guilty.)
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(page 3/4)
Then, in April 2010, Bonilla sent police chief John
Romero a memo suggesting the department trade several
seized vehicles to a local car dealer, Bernardo Pena,
who had ties to Lantigua. In the end, the police
department gave up 13 vehicles, including a Lexus, a
Cadillac, and an Acura, for four used Chevrolet
Impalas.
Lawrence’s state-appointed fiscal overseer, Robert
Nunes, estimated that the city lost $36,408 on the
deal, and stated that the swap violated state and
federal laws. (According to the Eagle-Tribune, the
Essex County district attorney’s office and the state
inspector general are still investigating the deal,
and the FBI has also questioned people involved in
it.)
Subsequent revelations raised questions about Pena’s
relationship with Lantigua. As the controversial car
deal was under way, Pena donated $200 to Lantigua’s
campaign war chest, and in February of last year,
Pena’s company, Santo Domingo Motors, cosponsored a
birthday party/fundraiser for the mayor, with tickets
costing as much as $100.
Lantigua is also under federal investigation,
according to several press reports, for shipping city
and private vehicles to the Dominican Republic,
including a garbage truck, undercover police
vehicles, and a school bus.
Lantigua’s many issues have led not just to
discontent, but also to a determined recall effort.
Standing at the corner of South Broadway and Andover
Street, several volunteers, all Latino, are holding
signs in English and Spanish, asking passersby to
sign a petition calling for Lantigua’s removal from
office. Twenty-four-year-old Josue Hernandez stoops
into a car window, using an app on his cell phone to
determine whether the person who wants to sign the
petition is a registered Lawrence voter. Last summer,
a different recall effort failed when the city ruled
that many of the signatures collected did not belong
to registered voters. Recall organizers suspected
sabotage. Now, Hernandez and his colleagues must
gather the signatures of 5,382 registered Lawrence
voters — 15 percent of the number who cast ballots in
the last election — to force a special election. They
have 30 days to do so, and in the first three days
have collected more than 500 of them.
Hernandez’s public criticism of
the mayor may have had
repercussions — his juvenile
record, including arrests for
armed robbery, assault, and more,
was posted on a pro-Lantigua
Facebook page, the information
coming from pages originally printed from a police
department computer. (Chief Romero immediately opened
an investigation, which is ongoing, into who did it.)
Standing on the corner, Hernandez shows me a YouTube
video on his phone of Lantigua confronting residents
at a Walk for Peace last July. In the video,
residents are trying to engage Lantigua as he
repeatedly and angrily points at the ground in front
of him — implying that his critics can kiss his feet.
Finally, a political ally standing beside Lantigua
takes him by the arm and convinces him to stop. “It’s
a peace march,” Hernandez says, “and here he is
acting like a thug.”
City of the Damned, cont.
NEARLY 13,000 CHILDREN attend Lawrence’s troubled
public schools. The past three superintendents were
fired, including the most recent, Wilfredo Laboy,
who’s currently under criminal indictment and
awaiting trial. Last fall, the state declared
Lawrence a “chronically underperforming” system, and
for the first time in Massachusetts history took over
an entire district, essentially saying the city isn’t
competent to run its own schools.
The Department of Education completed its review of
the district last fall. Among the reasons it cited
for the takeover are a dropout rate that’s three
times the state average; a high school graduation
rate of less than 50 percent; a pattern of
“disrespectful and intimidating behavior” exhibited
by school committee members; systemwide
underperformance in math; an English language
aptitude that’s among the bottom one percent of all
Massachusetts districts; chronic absenteeism; and a
rate of in-school disciplinary suspensions more than
triple the state average. And in a city where the
student body is 90 percent Hispanic or Latino, the
schools have been deemed woefully understaffed with
teachers qualified to teach English-language
learners.
Inside the schools, the problems are difficult to
overstate. One day last fall, a middle school teacher
found students huddled in the back of the classroom,
according to attorney Linda Harvey, who represents
the teacher. “He’s got a knife,” said a student,
pointing at a boy holding a four-inch blade. The
teacher ran to the classroom door and yelled for a
security officer, who removed the boy. The teacher
advised the security officer to call the police and
an ambulance. Ninety minutes later, the student was
sent back to the classroom without the knife, Harvey
says.
Neither the police nor an ambulance was summoned,
Harvey says, speculating that the incident went
unreported “in order for the school to have a lower
suspension and police intervention rate.”
Harvey says the teacher later found out there was no
incident report, or any punishment. “It’s a feeling
of hopelessness regarding the future,” the lawyer
says. “These teachers hope the receiver” — Jeffrey
Riley, formerly the chief innovation officer for the
Boston public schools, who was appointed in midJanuary — “talks to them, because they haven’t been
heard from in years, and they’re on the front lines.”
Francis McLaughlin, 56, president of the Lawrence
Teachers’ Union, has taught computer science and
history at Lawrence High for the past 32 years. “We
have failed the kids. It’s not a safe city,” he says.
“Kids can’t learn if they don’t feel safe. Teachers
can’t teach if they don’t feel safe.”
McLaughlin says the district doesn’t make the
students its priority. “For a long time, they’ve been
running the school system for the benefit of certain
individuals,” he says. “The problem has been
politics, and a corrupt administration. It’s not just
been the last few years — it’s been the last 10
years. I hope justice will be served.
(page 4/4)
As he speaks, McLaughlin has to crane his neck around
the stacks of reports and articles about the
impending criminal trial of former superintendent
Wilfredo Laboy that are on his desk. In March 2010,
Laboy was indicted on eight counts of fraud and
embezzlement and one count of illegal possession of
alcohol on school property. At the same time, his
right-hand man, Mark Rivera, was charged with seven
counts of larceny over $250 after he was caught using
the school department’s graphic designers and
printers to create fliers and other literature for a
political campaign.
After several requests, I am allowed to visit the
public schools. The five-year-old campus of Lawrence
High is a vast, forbidding structure in South
Lawrence. The school and its grounds are staffed by
10 uniformed security officers. A police captain, a
detective, and two patrolmen are headquartered there
as well, but are also responsible for the other 27
schools in the district.
Lawrence is in the top third of Massachusetts towns
when it comes to spending per pupil — more than even
tony suburbs like Westwood, Sharon, and Cohasset —
but success has been elusive. On my tour, I see some
students and teachers working hard, but passing one
classroom, I notice a kid in the front row reading a
newspaper while his classmates are busy trying to
solve math problems. And later I am startled to
witness a skinny kid in a black sweatshirt
confronting a hulking security officer in front of
several other adults. “You’re talkin’ shit right
now,” the kid says to the officer. “What are you
gonna do if I let your blood flow?”
At lunchtime, I join three 16-year-old Dominican
girls as they text friends and discuss the rumors
that, once the state takes over, the school day will
be extended to 4 p.m. It may sound like a good idea,
but one of the girls is skeptical. “More kids will
drop out,” she says.
IN MID-JANUARY, the fourth attempt to recall Lantigua
fails. A large number of signatures Hernandez’s team
collected over that first weekend are disqualified by
City Attorney Charles Boddy and City Clerk William
Maloney. The officials rule that the petition,
despite having been previously approved by the city
and entirely bilingual on one side, is missing a few
lines of Spanish on the other. The city replaces the
petition with a thoroughly bilingual one — but
refuses to reset the 30 days allowed to collect the
signatures. The volunteers have to start all over
again, and eventually run out of time.
“Sometimes I feel discouraged, but the news is
getting out,” Hernandez says. “As a Christian, I pray
for Lantigua. But he’s gotten like a dictator.”
I stop by St. Patrick’s church to speak with Father
O’Brien, who stared down Lantigua during the
inauguration at the high school. “We’re surrounded by
the drug industry,” O’Brien says. He’d been driving
past the Beacon projects recently, he continues, when
he recognized two teenage boys loitering on a corner.
O’Brien waved and the two boys waved back, each with
a gun in his hand.
“They pulled them down quickly — they didn’t mean to
do that — but we’re this casual about guns now,”
O’Brien says. “It’s like the Wild West.”
13
After Seeing a Dismal Reflection of Itself, a
City Moves to Change Community
By Jess Bidgood, New York Times (May 29, 2012)
LAWRENCE, Mass. — There is a litany of
reasons one might avoid this city:
double-digit unemployment, high crime
rates, struggling public schools and, at
the top, enduring suspicions of chronic
mismanagement.
The city’s dismal finances have led to a
state-appointed fiscal overseer, and its
school system is the first in
Massachusetts to be placed in
receivership. The former superintendent,
Wilfredo Laboy, was recently convicted of
embezzlement. According to The Boston
Globe, Mayor William Lantigua is the
subject of corruption investigations by
local and federal authorities, as well as
a campaign finance investigation by the
state attorney general.
“It is tough when you’re looking from the
outside in,” said Officer Angel Lopez, a
patrolman on the city’s police force,
which has shrunk to about 120 today from
151 in 2010.
So bleak is Lawrence’s image that a
recent article in Boston magazine,
highlighting the city’s busy drug trade
and controversial politics, proclaimed it
to be the “most godforsaken place in
Massachusetts.”
For many who live here, those were
fighting words.
“I was shaking, scrambling to get my
words together,” said Aliali Belkus, who
grew up here and now teaches at Lawrence
High School, describing her response to
the magazine article. “Not because it
wasn’t true, but because it was a very
one-sided image of the city,” she
continued. “We’ve become the punching
bag.”
So on a recent Friday afternoon, several
dozen residents gathered at a refurbished
mill, ready to draw up a battle plan for
a war of words and actions that they hope
will help reshape Lawrence’s battered
image.
“We need to be ready, willing and able,”
Eduardo Crespo, a public relations
professional and longtime resident, said
to the diverse group. “Anyone for press
releases? Community relations?”
The effort is an attempt to retell the
city’s story as a tale of hope and
success alongside its difficulties, using
conventional public relations, social
media and small civic projects. But the
first challenge of the campaign, which is
called We Are Lawrence, may be ensuring
that its message resonates at home in the
face of the city’s street-level reality.
Lawrence, a city of 76,000 squeezed into
about seven square miles, rises up in
brick out of the more comfortable suburbs
that surround it. It was a battleground
for America’s labor movement, having been
the site of the Bread and Roses labor
strike, which celebrates its centennial
this year. “Ellis Island of the Merrimack
Valley,” as some local people call it,
has long drawn immigrants — and has
continued to, even as manufacturing
collapsed here in the second half of the
20th century.
According to the 2010 census, people of
Hispanic origin make up 73.8 percent of
the city’s population; Hispanics make up
only 9.6 percent of the statewide
population. Manufacturing’s decline
gutted the city’s main economic engines,
and today Lawrence has the state’s lowest
median income, according to the census,
at $31,631.
“You have to have places where people are
allowed to struggle,” Ms. Belkus said.
“People don’t want places like this to
exist anymore. And they need to.”
That struggle manifests itself, in part,
on the streets. Chief John Romero of the
Police Department said the cuts to the
force preceded an increase in violent
crime of about 63 percent, to 2,790
felonies in 2011 from 1,770 in 2009.
“Crime is probably the biggest thing,”
Officer Lopez said of the city’s
problems. “Lawrence is the magnet, the
place to go where they can feel
comfortable. Maybe because you have all
the rooming houses, pawn shops, methadone
clinics.”
14
City Moves to Change cont.
Lawrence cannot put more officers on the
streets. But the group’s organizers say
they can take small steps that might
revitalize the city, fostering pride and
economic development by highlighting its
robust history, successful charter
schools and the nonprofit groups that are
working to bring new life to street
corners and empty textile mills.
In March, a boisterous rally drew
hundreds of people to a downtown park,
many wearing signs that sought to reclaim
a word the article used to describe the
town: “Damned educated,” read one.
“Damned orgulloso,” or ‘proud,’ read
another. “Are we damned? No!” the crowd
shouted as it began a parade around the
city.
Mr. Lantigua hung back, standing with a
small group of aides. His 2010 election
as the city’s first Latino mayor was a
landmark moment, but the excitement was
short-lived as his tenure has been
plagued with accusations of corruption.
“Drug trafficking, dealing, money
laundering, suspicious travel, what
else?” Mr. Lantigua said, casually
listing the suspicions people have raised
about him.
He has not been charged and steadfastly
maintains his innocence. Still, he is
fully aware that a fair chunk of
Lawrence’s negative news media attention
is about him. “I’d like to be on the
forefront,” he said of the rally, “but I
respect their opinion. I’m being very
careful.”
(page 2/2)
read an editorial in The Eagle-Tribune,
shortly after We Are Lawrence was formed.
But organizers say the effort is about
what residents can do as neighbors, not
as politicians.
“There are ways to operate in a political
environment without being explicitly
political,” said Maggie Super Church, a
planner at the nonprofit Lawrence
CommunityWorks and a resident of the
city. “This is about changing the
narrative, empowering people to celebrate
and encouraging them to work together on
the challenges.”
It is an incremental approach, one that
was on display one recent Friday at a
“cash mob,” when members of We Are
Lawrence encouraged residents to buy
something at a family-owned hardware
store called Bruckmann’s. Customers
bought birdseed, fertilizer and cleaning
supplies at about three times the rate of
a normal Friday, the store’s owner said.
Two more cash mobs are planned — one at a
new Guatemalan bakery in June and “lunch
mobs” at various independently owned
restaurants in July.
“It’s going to create conscience, little
by little,” Ana Medina, a school
administrator who is part of We Are
Lawrence, said of the cash mob and
efforts like it. “We have been told for
so long that our city is not great, but
it has been great to all of us. It’s time
for us to say that our city is great.”
After the rally, several dozen group
members began to meet, reaching out to
local news organizations and planning
additional actions. One group marched on
Boston magazine, meeting with its
editors. Some members have created an
active social media presence, meant to
keep followers informed of community
events and projects through the city.
Others have met with the local newspaper,
The Eagle-Tribune, to plan a forum about
the city.
15
In Three New Community Gardens,
Tomatoes and Pride are Ripening
By Keith Eddings, Eagle Tribune (August 2011)
LAWRENCE — In rundown neighborhoods of the
state's poorest city — where foreclosed
homes pockmark the streets, unemployment
is
twice
the
national
average
and
childhood obesity is epidemic — help is
sprouting from the earth.
The
lettuce
was
first,
followed
by
cucumbers,
peppers,
tomatoes,
cabbage,
strawberries and cilantro. Corn, grapes
and apples are on the way. The first three
of what may be as many as 20 community
gardens officially opened this week on
what were weedy, littered lots in a stateand
federally
funded
program
that
advocates hope will reap more than the
vegetables now ripening on the vines.
As the gardens take root, the community
leaders
and
government
officials
who
planned and built them say they hope the
real
harvest
will
follow:
better
nutrition, a savings at the supermarket
for poor families and a community cohesion
that may be a building block for healing
wounded neighborhoods.
With an eye on the spring growing season,
construction began in March. A total of 26
red cedar boxes, four feet wide and as long
as 13 feet, were built and filled with loam,
compost and topsoil (the raised gardens have
another benefit: bending and kneeling is not
required, making the gardens more enticing
to the elderly). Each of the three gardens
also has a single large plot contained by
18-inch stone walls. Greenhouses also are
planned.
Several neighbors came to the project
skeptically."When they heard community park,
they thought it's going to be a hangout for
undesirables," said Art McCabe, manager of
Lawrence's
Department
of
Community
Development, which is overseeing the gardens
in a partnership with Groundwork Lawrence, a
local non-profit. He responded by organizing
a series of meetings in livingrooms and on
the streets to explain the benefits of the
gardens and to describe security. All of the
gardens are clearly visible from the street,
but behind locked five-foot fences.
"If you'd seen this before, how much
garbage we had," Freddy Pena, 40, said as
he
showed
off
the
plot
he
tends,
describing the view from his Cedar Street
home. He now looks out on tidy rows of
raised beds and a larger farm-style plot
that he and his parents and son helped
plant this summer.
Vandalism has not been a problem, McCabe
said. Today, 22 people have been assigned
plots free of charge at the Cross Street
garden. The second garden on Spruce Street
has 20 gardeners. The Giuffrida Place garden
has 84.
The effort was seeded by $582,000 in state
and federal money and began with an
assessment of the pollutants stirred into
the soils, including ash from the coal
stoves that once heated homes and the lead
and other heavy metals that flew virtually
unfiltered from the smokestacks along the
Merrimack
and
Spicket
rivers
for
a
century.
The gardens put Lawrence at the center of a
nationwide movement toward urban farming,
boosted when First Lady Michelle Obama
planted a garden beside the White House and
invited Washington's schoolchildren to tend
it.
The soil in the three gardens that opened
Tuesday with a ribbon cutting attended by
representatives from a brownfield program
run
by
the
federal
Environmental
Protection Agency tested too toxic to be
gardened. The sites were cleared and the
top eight inches of soil were trucked away
and liners were installed to prevent
remaining toxins from leaching upward.
16
Some were skeptical
Schools to be assigned plots
In April, the Obama administration announced
it would spend $1 million to develop
gardening programs at 70 elementary schools
in four states with the hope of changing the
way kids eat.
Lawrence is not part of the national
program, but three area schools will be
assigned plots in the city gardens to
supplement instruction in life sciences and
nutrition.
Community Gardens, cont.
"First
and
foremost,
it's
hands
on
learning," said Mary Chance, head of the
upper school at Community Day Charter Public
School, whose middle-schoolers will tend two
plots at the Giuffrida Place garden.
"Then you have the extra added incentive and
bonus that they're doing something in the
community to give back a little, to create a
green space. I'm a firm believe that for
them to participate in something like this,
it instills city pride."
For sure, the gardens are a lush success
story. The first three gardens were planned
for some of the city's most impoverished and
dense neighborhoods, on lots that were
unbuildable because they are too small to
hold a house or are in a flood plain.
(page 2/2)
"It's a lot more than cucumbers we get
back," said Melissa Cryan, manager of
the Massachusetts Parkland Acquisitions
and
Renovations
for
Communities
program, which provided $425,000 to
build the Lawrence gardens. "Especially
for communities like Lawrence that have
a lot of immigrants, farming in a lot
of the countries they come from is part
of their culture. So to come to the
United States and be able to continue
this part of their culture is very
important."
"When you do something like this, people
start investing in their homes," McCabe
said, pointing to a low cinderblock wall a
neighbor recently restored on a side of her
yard abutting the Giuffrida Place garden.
The gardens also may provide economic
benefits beyond saving on groceries. McCabe
said the next phase of the project may be to
develop neighborhood farmers markets where
families can sell what they've grown.
The gardens also will provide exercise and
recreation for Lawrencians, who live in a
city that has the least amount of open space
per resident in Massachusetts, according to
the Trust for Public Land.
The
gardens
also
could
help
dislodge
Lawrence from a prominent spot on another
list: the city has the most overweight
school children in the state, according to a
study last year by the state Department of
Public Health. Of the 2,564 city students
who were screened at school nurses' offices
in
2009
and
2010,
46.6
percent
were
overweight or obese based on a formula that
compares weight to height - the most among
the 80 Massachusetts school districts that
participated in the survey.
Want MORE News?
The Eagle Tribune is the local
newspaper for all of Merrimack
Valley, including Lawrence. Click
here to see the online edition.
"When you're a community of high poverty,
people are going to eat what they can
afford... a lot of pasta, macaroni and
cheese and rice," Mary Lou Bergeron, the
city's interim school superintendent, said
when the survey was released in September.
Frederick Pena, Freddy Pena's 17 year old
son, is eating something else.
"We've got beans. We have lettuce," Pena, a
senior
at
Whittier
Regional
Vocational
Technical High School in Haverhill, said as
he walked through the garden with his father
and
grandparents.
"I
planted
some
watermelon."
17