Boston Metropolis Councilor Ed Flynn has perfected the artwork of swimming upstream. As a progressive tide swamps metropolis politics, Flynn continues to name out unhealthy insurance policies and communicate out for extraordinary residents.
That is particularly wanted as Boston navigates entrenched issues and new challenges.
When a registered intercourse offender with a number of convictions for sexually assaulting a baby was revealed this summer season to be a parks and recreation worker for the Metropolis of Boston, Flynn known as for a listening to to assessment the town’s coverage for hiring ex-convicts. The listening to was abruptly canceled, incomes one other clapback from the District 2 councilor.
“It sends a sign that politics is extra vital than really making an attempt to assist returning residents and having a dialogue about potential jobs that may preclude returning residents from buying reminiscent of Stage 3 intercourse offenders,” Flynn stated.
Flynn is among the few on the council who attempt to sluggish the Wu practice, because the voices of extraordinary Bostonians are too typically dismissed by progressives in lockstep with Mayor Michelle Wu’s agenda. Take, for instance, the plans for White Stadium.
Boston Public Faculty college students desperately want an overhauled stadium, however that laudable mission is entangled with Boston Legacy, a brand new Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League group. And the invoice for Boston taxpayers retains rising.
Flynn cited the ballooning price and group opposition in calling for the Wu administration to cancel the White Stadium plan.
“Residents didn’t really feel that they have been taken critically when it got here to the price for the town, different accessible choices, the usage of public property, or high quality of life and environmental points,” he stated in an announcement.
Flynn has our again, regardless of quite a few makes an attempt to dam his efforts.
This summer season he put ahead a decision looking for an emergency declaration for the open-air drug market at Mass and Cass. There are a lot of phrases to explain the habit nightmare in that a part of Boston, and emergency is considered one of them.
However former Wu staffer Sharon Durkan, now a metropolis councilor, blocked the decision.
“Declaring an area public well being emergency doesn’t unlock any extra authority or sources,” stated Wu spokesperson Emma Pettit.
The council’s vote in Could 2024, passing a decision in help of a cease-fire within the Israel-Hamas Battle, did precisely nothing to result in peace between Hamas and Israel, however they did it anyway.
“Our message is easy: All life is treasured,” stated the decision’s sponsor, then-Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson. “The time has come for us to face up and name for an finish to this mindless violence.”
And it’s time to face up and name for an finish to the mindless degradation of life as a result of habit at Mass and Cass and neighborhoods past.
All life is treasured, and that features the victims of the opioid disaster on Boston’s streets, and the households and companies who’re caught within the crossfire.
Ed Flynn will get it, and fortunately for the town, he will get again up when he’s knocked again by progressive voices and continues the combat for Boston residents.
The Herald endorses Ed Flynn for District 2 Metropolis Councilor

