Banded in Boston
IN BOSTON, little in the way of community building takes place without the blessing of Mayor Menino. Residents don't seem to resent it, as shown by the mayor's 72 percent approval rating in a recent Globe poll. But finally a significant event not inspired or endorsed by the mayor's office will take place on May 3 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center: the Boston Civic Summit. It deserves a strong turnout.
The summit is the brainchild of City Council President Maureen Feeney and convention center chief James Rooney. The goal is to gather hundreds of community activists from civic associations, friends groups, crime watch organizations, and other volunteer groups who don't, as a rule, know their counterparts in other neighborhoods. Instead of focusing on specific issues like crime or education, workshops will focus on ways to increase the commitment and clout of local activists, including strategies on fundraising, political action, and organization building.
Boston could only benefit from such a summit on civic engagement. It's a chance for residents to assess the value of the work they do on behalf of their neighborhoods. And there will be an opportunity to see how it all fits together when Thomas Sander of the Kennedy School of Government, a national specialist on "social capital," delivers the keynote address.
It doesn't hurt either that Feeney gets to elevate the visibility of the statutorily weak council, which commemorates its 100th anniversary in 2009. Councilors have been showing welcome backbone of late, including establishing a commission on how best to protect the heavily-used, and sometimes abused, Boston Common.
Menino's reaction to the summit suggests the need for it. First, he worried that it would raise expectations to unrealistic levels. Later he expressed fears that it could be hijacked by hypercritical "yahoos." But the mayor did agree on Wednesday to offer remarks at the summit and tentatively offered his organization to help draw a crowd. Then, in true Menino style, he suggested that the all-day event should wind down at 1 p.m. before "they lose the audience."
The popular mayor is like the guy who sits behind a pile of poker chips so high that you can hardly see him. Then he bets a dollar. Menino has more than enough political capital to support an event - even one he didn't think up - that creates social networks to push positive change in the city.
The Globe poll showed that 54 percent of respondents had personally met the mayor. That's a testament to his iron-man schedule. The problem to be addressed by the upcoming summit is that too few Bostonians are meeting one another. 