Open Letter to Governor Deval L. Patrick Regarding Your Performance and the Black Community

June 9, 2009

Honorable Deval L. Patrick
Governor
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
The State House, Room 360
Boston, Massachusetts 02133

Dear Governor Patrick,

I write this open letter to you with a profound sense of disappointment. I had hoped that someone else would have stepped forward as a voice of conscience and reason to initiate a public conversation and debate regarding your performance as the first Black governor of the state. I write with considerable reluctance because I neither need nor seek the visibility that such an undertaking may generate. I am speaking only because no one has articulated the growing consensus that as governor you have failed the black community. I am speaking out of a pastoral concern for the poor, as someone whose Christian faith has compelled him to serve among urban Black youth for the past twenty-one years. Such a public challenge saddens me, because you will recall that I was a supporter even before you formally declared your intention to run for governor, introducing you to over 500 people at a benefit dinner featuring then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the next governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Unfortunately, I was right. Governor Patrick there are important questions that you must now answer.

Why is it that you have proposed a billion dollars for a bio-tech center, yet fail to see the importance of substantially funding violence prevention programs? A group of young Black students, through repeated phone calls, attempted to draw your attention to the significant impact of violence in the Black community. You ignored their concerns. Soon after another group of Black students from Harvard organized a demonstration to highlight the same issue. Your subsequent meeting with them produced no substantial results. A youth council was created, with no budget, and no power to influence in any significant way policy on the questions of public safety. An executive committee report on public safety was produced which was so poorly done that the Boston Globe failed to even report on its release or substance. Despite the many such efforts, including a call for and outline of a successful violence reduction strategy by former Suffolk County District Attorney Matthew J. Machera published in the Globe, to date no comprehensive violence prevention strategy has been adopted by the commonwealth.

CORI reform is an issue that impacts the Black community disproportionately, yet in the three years of your administration you have not succeeded in passing a bill on this matter. The effect of having a criminal record is devastating to the ex-offenders’ employment chances, and indeed some sociological studies have shown a disproportionate impact on Black ex-offenders. Lack of employment undermines the lives of the children for whom ex-offenders share responsibility and increases the offenders’ chances of recidivism. Needless to say given the disproportionate numbers of Black men who are incarcerated CORI reform is an imperative for successfully stabilizing black neighborhoods over the long term. How do you account for the slow progress on this issue?

According to the Boston Globe, at the mid-point of your administration you had made fewer minority judicial appointments in Massachusetts than the three previous Republican administrations had at comparable points. In fact the proportion of minority judges had fallen from 10.9 percent to 10.2 percent on your watch. First there is the obvious question: what message are you sending to the Black community, regarding your perception of our competence, when you are unable to identify qualified individuals to fill judicial posts? The importance of Black judges is particularly striking, given the disproportionate impact of drug laws on the Black community, and continuing evidence of bias in sentencing. The Black community might have expected that, like your colleague President Barack Obama, you have chosen to use your authority to appoint judges whose life experiences would mitigate the tendency to be less than impartial in dealing with Black defendants. How do you justify your performance in this area?

Your campaign promised the Black community more opportunity and inclusion in general. However, to date your greatest accomplishment has been the promotion of a bio-tech center in Western Massachusetts, which is still subject to very real questions of viability regarding its financing. And even if this project is successful, what are the benefits for the Black community? Where is the promised opportunity for poor, urban Blacks? Where are the benefits for the Black community from President Obama’s economic stimulus package?

Your signature initiative has been the effort to introduce casino gambling to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Here we have a testament to both your lack of effectiveness and your lack of focus on urban problems. First, your effort to promote it was rejected by the legislature. Secondly, had this venture been successful, little benefit would have devolved to cities. Where are your initiatives to help the cities of Massachusetts?

Governor Patrick, the Black community deserves to be heard. All of the issues outlined above reflect what appears to be a striking indifference to the urban poor, and more generally to the needs of the people of the commonwealth. Your unresponsiveness in the case of the tragic death of Steven Odom is one more example of this. Our concerns, as tax-paying citizens of this commonwealth, have not received the attention promised. And because it is my view, and the view of growing numbers, that we have been taken for granted, the Black community must now explore other potentially more viable electoral options to ensure that the interests of the most neglected and defenseless are given the attention they are politically and morally due. Cosmetic appearances with select clergy organizations will be no substitute for a vigorous public debate of your performance in light of your promises of good governance.

There is a sense that you promised a community that has more than its share of difficulties and challenges that if elected you would ensure that their concerns would be fairly treated. You communicated clearly that you should be supported, not because of your race, but because of your superior ability to generate measurable results. Governor Patrick speaking for thousands of Blacks, and poor Blacks in particular, we see no evidence that you have honored your promise. And frankly Governor Patrick if your performance to date is to be the basis upon which the Black community should make a choice for governor it is my view and the view of growing numbers that you should not be re-elected. There are those who would disagree, and that is good because civil and vigorous debate is at the heart of our democracy. For that reason I am calling for a series of town hall meetings across the state to discuss and debate the subject: “Deval Patrick and the state of Black Massachusetts.” I have called upon Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, to moderate the first town hall meeting, hosted by the Reverend Leroy Attles of Saint Paul’s AME church in Cambridge, in collaboration with the Boston Banner, the Boston Globe, and local and national electronic media. The objective of such a forum is to discuss in detail the measurable ways that your administration has improved the quality of life for the Black citizens who so overwhelmingly supported you in your bid to become governor of this commonwealth.

Governor Patrick, if you are to win the support of the Black community in your campaign to be re-elected, you will have to earn it. To date you have failed to do so.

Respectfully Yours,

Reverend Eugene F. Rivers 3d
Pastor of the Azusa Christian Community
Co-founder of the Boston TenPoint Coalition