A firm GRIP
Now that the primary election is over, public attention has shifted to the battle over the secession of Roxbury. Curtis Davis and Andrew P. Jones, the founders of the Greater Roxbury Incorporation Project (GRIP), hope to generate substantial public support for their referendum by the November 4th election.
The GRIP plan is for an area representing 25 percent of Boston’s land mass, roughly 12.5 square miles, to become a separately incorporated city. The new city, which would be called Mandela in honor of Nelson Mandela, the South African freedom fighter, would contain 95 percent of Boston’s black population. It would cover an area which includes Roxbury, Mattapan and parts of Jamaica Plain, the South End, Dorchester and Hyde Park.
Davis and Jones obtained a sufficient number of signatures to place the issue on the November 4 ballot as a non-binding referendum. Even overwhelming support for the initiative, however, would have no legal effect. Davis and Jones would have to use the election results as evidence of public support for the idea in their effort to persuade the state Legislature and the Governor to approve a bill granting separate municipal status to the area.
No one with any political savvy believes that there is any chance for the proposal, regardless of the size of the vote in November. Nevertheless, the Flynn administration has reacted quite harshly to the GRIP plan as though it suggests the administration’s failure to bring racial groups in the city together and to provide city services evenhandedly.
The Mayor must understand that regardless of the rhetoric that often emerges from the campaign, GRIP did not come about because of a failure of the city to sweep the streets or pick up the trash. The issue is much more profound than that. It stems from a desire shared by all people to be free and self-governing.
Afro-Americans are a minority in Boston. They always have been and probably always will be. According to Jones, this situation is politically untenable although there are many blacks who accept it. In an article in the June 5th issue of the BANNER, Jones said: Many of us want what the whites will give us, no more and no less. The irony is that they never will give us freedom, because our colonization is profitable for them.
In that same article, Jones criticized the reluctance of middle class blacks to dare to reach out for power.
We have learned that the poor people are most well off because they have nothing left to lose, that the middle class are worse off because they have opportunity but absolutely no power.
Jones is not concerned here with whether the police are courteous and effective or whether the parks are maintained. The issue is really sovereignty.
Pragmatists view the GRIP proposal as quixotic. Perhaps it is, but fantasy can be inspiring. The campaign should engender, in the consciousness of blacks, an intensified awareness that they must behave, each one, as though they have the responsibility of sovereigns. Who can challenge Andrew Jones’ conclusion that “there is a need for revolution of thought, behavior, and self-esteem within the black community of Boston”?
