Author: Lucas De Oliveira

  • Robert Cappucci makes yet another bid for mayor; one of three challenging Mayor Wu

    Robert Cappucci. Georgia Epiphaniou photo.

    Robert Cappucci has been campaigning for public office for more than five decades, with runs for state representative, Congress, City Council and now, for the fourth time, mayor of Boston. 

    “A winner, as they say, never quits, and a quitter never wins,” says the 80-year-old one-time Boston Police officer.

    He has been successful twice: In 1987, and again in 1989, he was elected to the Boston School Committee. He didn’t have an opportunity to win a third time because membership on the school panel became an appointed position in 1991.

    Before, during, and in between his attempts to win public office, he has had his hand in different lines of work. In addition to his time with the BPD, he was a substitute teacher in the for Boston Public Schools and, for several years, he was involved in real estate.

    A lifelong East Boston resident who grew up with four siblings and served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War (1968-1974), he has never been married. He describes himself as a “workaholic.”

    In 2013, he announced a campaign for mayor but failed to turn in enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. In 2017 and 2021, he made the ballot, but did not advance beyond the preliminary municipal elections, receiving 6.7 percent of the vote in 2017 and 1.1 percent in 2021.

    Cappucci has roots in electoral politics. His father, Enrico, represented East Boston as a Democratic member of the Massachusetts House from 1937 to 1949. He says his father told him that he wasn’t cut out to be a politician. “I guess he knows what a politician is, and I don’t.”

    Still, Cappucci didn’t know exactly what his father meant by his assertion – Enrico died in 1976, two years before his son’s first run for public office, for state representative – but he later interpreted it to mean that politicians pander to different audiences. 

    “As I got older, I think of a politician as someone that is pretty good with their words, so they don’t really commit themselves,” Cappucci says. “A politician to me seems to have no — I hate to say it — conscience.”

    He is running as a conservative in a city that has had a Democrat in the mayor’s office continually since James Michael Curley took office for the third time in 1931. But Cappucci has never been deterred by the political makeup of his city, where 39.7 percent of voters are Democrats, 55.2 percent are unenrolled, and 4.3 percent are Republicans.

    “Although it’s a liberal city, there are plenty of people out there that have my way of doing things,” he says, “a conservative way.”

    John Dillon, a self-styled “liberal,” has supported Cappucci the office-seeker from his first run for School Committee through his bid for mayor in 2021. A knee injury has kept him on the sidelines this year.

    “He did his service on a nuclear submarine. Do you know what you have to do — to go through — to do that?” Dillon asked. “You’re put through all sorts of psychological tests and everything else, so it told me he was a real bright guy. And the fact that he always wanted to help the poor was another thing that really hit me.”

    Cappucci says he is running as a “unifier candidate,” which to him means bridging the gap between Democrats and Republicans on certain issues.

    In 2021, he was a critic of so-called “sanctuary cities.” Though he didn’t clearly lay out his stance for his latest campaign in this interview, he did say he favors President Trump’s efforts to increase arrests and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

    “He’s going after, from what I have been observing, people that are very bad,” Cappucci said. “They’re killers, they’re murderers, they’re rapists. That’s who he’s targeting.”

    When pushed on this statement with examples of detentions involving undocumented individuals without criminal records — like Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Milford teen who was detained by ICE on his way to volleyball practice in May — Cappucci said he wasn’t sure that media accounts were accurate. 

    “As my father always told me, being an attorney in politics, he said, ‘Don’t believe everything you read,’” he said. “So, when you get situations like that, I’m not sure we’re getting the truth.”

    Cappucci is a critic of incumbent Mayor Michelle Wu, especially with respect to her handling of the situation at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, an area with a history of rampant substance misuse. 

    Richard Masterson, a Cappucci supporter and lifelong Roxbury resident, said no one is solving the problem. 

    “It seems like they just push it from one area to another area to another area,” he said. “There are people shooting up drugs, needles hanging out of their necks and out of their arms, and sitting on the curbs. They have nowhere to go.”

    Cappucci holds Wu responsible for the ongoing problem. He told Masterson that, if elected, he would seek to reopen Long Island Hospital, which offered addiction treatments but was closed in 2014 when officials deemed the bridge to Long Island to be in poor condition. 

    Among his other concerns about Wu’s mayoralty is the ongoing redevelopment of White Stadium in Franklin Park. “I really have a problem with trying to do things when you’re giving away the tax dollars,” he said. “We need that money for so many reasons.” He said housing, education, and infrastructure should take precedence over the stadium.

    Although wins and losses are out of his control, Cappucci says that running for office is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.

    “As a Catholic, I’m trying to do the best I can. So when I go before him — when I pass away — he can say, hopefully, ‘You did a good job.’”

  • Domingos DaRosa eschews funds in his long-shot mayoral challenge

    Domingos DaRosa stands on the corner of Dudley and Burrell streets, and it seems as if everybody in Roxbury knows him. Friends, family, and strangers yell to him on the sidewalk, across the street and even from their cars. “They love you, Domingos,” said a passerby standing outside Ideal Sub Shop.

    DaRosa is hoping to convert that goodwill into votes for his first bid for mayor of Boston. 

    A near-lifelong Boston resident, the 47-year-old DaRosa moved from Cape Verde to Boston with his family when he was 10 months old and grew up with part of his home in Dorchester and the other in Roxbury. 

    “Growing up here, we had nothing,” he said, “so we built a community with the community. Being Cape Verdean in a community, we were so diverse. Spanish, Black, Cape Verdeans, you name it…all the kids in the neighborhood, we all hung out together.”

    DaRosa, the father of four, owns a landscaping business and volunteers as a coach with the Boston Bengals Pop Warner football program. He launched his campaign on Feb. 2 of this year with a simple post to his Facebook account: “I’ll be running for the mayor seat in Boston.”

    This is not his first city campaign. He ran unsuccessfully for City Council at-large seats in 2017, 2019 and 2021.

    His campaign manager, Sharon Hinton, said she was surprised with DaRosa’s decision to run for mayor.

    “I’m not going to lie. When I first thought about it, I was like, ‘Seriously, mayor?’” said Hinton, who campaigned for DaRosa during his 2021 venture. “I was thinking about who he was coming up against.”

    DaRosa is one of three challengers who made the ballot to challenge Mayor Wu, with Josh Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and East Boston resident Robert Capucci being the other two. The four will face off in the preliminary municipal election Sept. 9 to determine which two candidates appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.

    Hinton was initially deterred by the lack of funding for DaRosa’s campaign, noting his disadvantage in that respect compared to some of the other candidates. But, that helped to inspire his campaign slogan, “For the people — not the money.”

    Said DaRosa: “I have no money, and I don’t want it, I don’t need it, I don’t care for it, and I don’t think I need it to be able to achieve my goal.”

    While he is raising small dollar donations, he mainly depends on volunteer labor. Hinton isn’t paid for her efforts; one of the students he coaches in the Pop Warner program designed his campaign website; and friends and family members helped to gather the 3,000 signatures necessary to get his name on on the ballot. 

    Natalya Bethel, a DaRosa supporter, used to pick up needles with DaRosa at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, an area with a history of rampant substance abuse.

    “You have to get a mayor that really cares about the city for the city to improve,” Bethel said, “to clean up that mess, to clean up the violence.”

    For DaRosa, substance abuse in the Mass. and Cass area has long been a problem for him and his Pop Warner program. “I had 300 kids on my football program, and the last season I had, I was barely able to get 30 kids on the field,” he said, citing parents’ concerns with substance abuse on the Clifford Park field in Roxbury. 

    He noted that a 9-year-old player from the Pop Warner program was pricked by a hypodermic needle while running laps in 2022.

    For 15 years, DaRosa has tried in his own way to alleviate the issue by picking up needles throughout Clifford Park and in and around Mass. and Cass.

    In 2020, he moved to raise awareness about the issue by dumping used hypodermic needles outside former Gov. Charlie Baker’s home in Swampscott, which resulted in a court order forbidding him to be within 100 yards of Baker’s residence thereafter.

    As mayor, DaRosa says he’d reopen Long Island, a city-owned facility that housed homeless people and offered addiction treatments until 2014, when the bridge to the harbor island was deemed unsafe. A prolonged and ongoing legal battle between Quincy and Boston has been one major reason that the island — which is owned by Boston— has not been re-used.

    DaRosa says he doesn’t want to rebuild the bridge. He wants to use boats to ferry people and supplies to the island. “Once someone is on the island,” he said, “there’s no way for them to go get the drugs or the paraphernalia they need.”

    He is also against consumption sites in Boston — except for those on Long Island. 

    Some of his other priorities, DaRosa says, include affordable housing, after-school programs and resources for students, public safety initiatives that address illegal substance distribution and gun violence, and direct communication with Immigration Customs and Enforcement. 

    “Wu has no input on how ICE comes into the city,” he said. “They just do what they want to do, and who suffers? Everybody.”

    DaRosa said he wants a more humane detention process for undocumented immigrants. At the same time, he said he believes in prioritizing legal residents and undocumented individuals who are making an effort to obtain legal status.

    “For those who come illegally, we will aid you in finding a way of becoming legal,” he said, “but we’re not going to harbor you, to say, ‘We’re going to hide you among the rest of the people,’ while the rest of the people are the ones taking the collateral damage. That’s not fair to the greater good.”  

    He also offered another point: “I’m the only one on stage that’s an immigrant, remember that. I’m the only one that’s a survivor of BPS. I’m the only one that’s a survivor of gun violence, I’m the only one that has been fighting Mass. and Cass without a political view, just to help the human who’s struggling.”

  • ‘To the People Like Us’ — Students tackle community changes through opera

    From left  – Katelyn Geary, Nina Evelyn, Timothy Steele (piano), on the floor is Cerise Jacobs and Kayla Faccilongo, Linda Maritza Collazo and Jesús Daniel Hérnandez. Miu Tung Rong photo

    Daniela Martinez, a graduating senior at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, joined 826 Boston in the fall of 2023, thinking she’d be writing plays, not the libretto for a new opera. But for six months last year, Martinez worked alongside other students at the writing nonprofit brainstorming, scene writing, and creating the text for the opera “To the People Like Us.”

    A year later, on June 28, the opera is set to premiere at the Strand Theatre in Uphams Corner.

    “To the People Like Us” follows three teens living in an unnamed city neighborhood. Costanza and Malakai, who are native to the area, confront the possibility of displacement when Indigo, whose mother is the developer responsible for the pressure, moves onto the scene.

    The opera was created by a dozen students from 826 Boston’s Youth Literary Advisory Board — a program that offers students stipends for their work as writers and editors — in collaboration with White Snake Projects, an activist opera company.

    Above: Nina Evelyn. Miu Tung Rong photo

    “White Snake came to us with the idea of students writing the libretto,” said Asiyah Herrera, a teaching artist for the Youth Literary Advisory Board. “I was cautious and hesitant because I’ve never written a libretto before.”

    Herrera said there was a steep learning curve for everyone involved, herself included. The writing they had worked on together previously was done on a much smaller scale, she said.

    She split the students into three groups, assigning each team specific scenes in the story to work on. Two individuals from White Snake Projects came to the sessions to guide the students through the writing process.

    “It was mainly just us and the writers at White Snake,” Martinez said, “making sure the plot points would be something that White Snake would want to represent, or the characters would be something that they would want on the stage and be okay with.” 

    Mezzo-soprano Kayla Faccilongo. Miu Tung Rong photo

    Each season, White Snake Projects assigns a social justice issue as the focal theme of their shows. The organization chose climate change for 2025.

    While students centered the opera on climate change, they used the opportunity to adapt the story into a real-life issue they’ve seen firsthand: gentrification.

    “They wanted a story that was about themselves and their own experience, like all of the places they’re talking about are real places in Boston,” said Pascale Florestal, the opera’s director.

    “The 826 Boston location is in Jamaica Plain, and Jamaica Plain is currently being gentrified,” Martinez said. “A lot of us — including myself [because] I live in East Boston, which is also being gentrified — had experience with it, so that came from ourselves.”

    Jorge Sosa, who composed the music for the opera, said it was important for him not only to stay true to the students’ vision but also to use art as a tool to explore related social issues.

    “I think that music is speech. Art is speech, and we can use it to say whatever we need to say,” Sosa said. “For me, I use my right to free speech to talk about the issues that are important to me.”

    Even though Sosa has never met the students in person, he said he shares their vision and concerns, and though the music may not change the world, he thinks that it still has the potential to create an impact.

    He said the music needed to reflect the characters and the world in which they lived. He jokingly describes the opera as an “electronic zarzuela,” a Spanish operetta style that alternates between spoken and musical scenes. He also included references to salsa and bolero in the show.

    Florestal acknowledged that opera has a reputation as a higher-class, elitist activity. She said it will be interesting to see how typical opera-goers react to the performance.

    “My job is to show people in opera who may not think about what it means to tear down this building and build a skyscraper, to the families who live in that building or the families who rely on that corner store for groceries,” she said. “Those people, oftentimes, who are affected by these larger implications of the system that we live in don’t get an opportunity to have their voices heard.”

    Martinez said she wants this opera to motivate people “to open their ears and listen to each other and have actual conversations, instead of just yelling back and forth at each other and sticking by their stubborn ideals.”

    “To the People Like Us” will have two performances on June 28, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ticket prices are “pay what you can.” RSVP information is available on the White Snake Projects website.

  • Exhibit at The Local Hand focuses on the way literature inspires art

    The Local Hand on Dorchester Avenue was the venue for an art show inspired by the novelist Octavia E. Butler on May 30.

    Artists, curators and guests gathered last Thursday (May 29) at an Ashmont gift shop and gallery to mark the opening of a show featuring pieces inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower.”

    “Pages to Palette,” on display at The Local Hand through June, features works from 13 local artists, with 10 of them exhibiting and selling their original pieces and three “honorable mention” artists selling prints of their work. The show includes paintings, pottery, and mixed-media pieces.

    Michaela Flatley, owner of The Local Hand, handed each of the 10 main artists a $500 check at the opening reception – something that, she said, is not typical for art shows. She said it was important for these artists to be paid, regardless of whether their work sells.

    “It’s very core to my mission at The Local Hand to pay artists and to make sure that they’re compensated for their cultural contributions,” Flatley said.

    The shop was packed with guests coming and going throughout the two-hour reception. The event was held in collaboration with Just Book-ish, a Dorchester bookstore that will host a discussion about Butler’s work on June 22.

    The collaboration just made sense, Flatley said. “It’s art inspired by literature and a very important book. We just felt like we were aligned on what we wanted this event to be and also who we wanted to give a platform to.”

    She said the idea of curating an art show inspired by Butler’s work came from her neighbor, Lisa Graustein, one of the featured artists, who said that “Parable of the Sower” was chosen in part because of its relevance to current events.

    Written in 1993 but set from 2024 to 2027, “Parable of the Sower” chronicles the life of Lauren Olamina, a hyper-empathetic Black teenager living in a post-apocalyptic United States devastated by a climate crisis and social inequality.

    “They gave us an indication 30 years ago that we were going to be at the level of patriarchy and white supremacy that we’re in now nationally,” Graustein said. “We were like, ‘Wow, you’re a prophet,’ but we didn’t want to internalize the message.”

    Ann Schauffler, a guest at the opening reception who saw an opera performance based on Butler’s Parable series, called the book relevant and powerful. She said she loved seeing artists’ comments in response to the book at the show.

    The novel’s 1998 sequel, “Parable of the Talents,” features a president who uses the slogan “Make America Great Again,” something the event organizers made sure to mention during an announcement at the beginning of the show.

    “Butler believed that if we paid close enough attention, we could then see the destruction that was before us, and if we look directly into the abyss, we could elect to change it,” the poet and JustBook-ish co-owner Porsha Olayiwola said during opening remarks.

    In “Parable of the Sower,” Olamina creates a religion called “Earthseed,” with tenets centering on adaptation and change. Some of the artists featured at the exhibit applied the theme of “change” to their work. 

    Liliana Marquez created her piece out of a cabinet door sample and pieces of rubber wall base. While she created a second life for these materials, she said they changed her as well.

    “This piece is about mutual change — about how we, like the Earthseed in ‘Parable of the Sower,’ can adapt, rebuild, and create something more just and harmonious,” she said.

    Flatley finds art to be not only a sign of resistance but also a tool that allows people to come together. “Art is always important, especially in times of political turmoil or any sort of existential dread,” she said.

    Artist Sherwin Long stands next to his piece, Earthseed 21, last week in The Local Hand. Jacqueline Manetta photos

    Sherwin Long, another featured artist, said he believes that creating art that addresses themes of social inequality can disrupt complacency.

    “To be a part of a show that allows us to express these notions and even touch upon these topics, this is what art is about,” Long said. 

  • In council forum, topics run the gamut from affordable housing to immigration, rent control, bike and bus lanes

    Part of the at-large panel (l-r): Erin Murphy, Henry Santana, Ruthzee Louijeune, Marvin Mathelier and Alexandra Valdez at a Hibernian Hall forum on May 22, 2025. Photo by Georgia Epiphaniou

    Seventeen candidates for City Council seats fielded questions about affordable housing, immigration enforcement, and other topics last Thursday evening (May 22) at a forum at Roxbury’s Hibernian Hall.

    Nine candidates for the District 7 seat and eight for the four at-large seats participated in the nearly three-hour forum, which drew more than 100 people and was moderated by Yawu Miller, editor in chief of The Flipside, and WGBH reporter Saraya Wintersmith.

    The at-large field
    All four incumbent at-large councillors running for re-election attended the event: Ruthzee Louijeune, Julia Mejia, Henry Santana, and Erin Murphy. City election officials have also certified nomination signatures for five challengers, so far: Will Onuoha, Marvin Mathelier, Alexandra Valdez, Yves Mary Jean, and Frank Baker. All but Mary Jean were in attendance.

    Baker previously served as the District 3 councillor for 12 years. Valdez is the director of Boston’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and Onuoha worked as the executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Fair Housing & Equity, among other posts in over two decades in city government.

    Marvin Mathelier, a Marine Corps Reserve veteran, said his goal is to bring to the City Council the values instilled in him by military service.

    At-Large City Council panel: (from l to r) Will Onouha, Julia Mejia, Erin Murphy, Henry Santana, Ruthzee Louijeune, Marvin Mathelier, Alexandra Valdez and Frank Baker. Photo by Wen Qi

    Asked how they would make Boston more affordable, Mathelier, Valdez, Santana, and Louijeune give similar answers about supporting rent control, community involvement, budgeting, zoning, mixed-income social housing, and reusing old buildings.

    Onuoha introduced a new idea on workforce housing, targeted to families that earn too much to qualify for affordable housing but can’t afford market rate housing. He says no one should pay over 30 percent of their income for housing.

    “Affordable housing is not affordable,” he said. “That’s a myth that we tell people.”

    Mejia said she supports a displacement tax, a fee that she says would mitigate the loss of residents and businesses due to rising property values, typically caused by gentrification.

    “I’ve been questioning this whole idea, because we’re getting displaced in high numbers” she said.

    Murphy talked about education and workforce development.

    The candidates gave varying answers about how they would support communities targeted by ICE. Baker and Onuoha recommend that immigrants stay off social media. “Do not say anything bad about the government,” Onuoha said.

    Baker thinks Boston police should have a relationship with ICE to create transparency. “There should be some sort of liaison with ICE to see where they’re going, what they’re doing,” he said.

    At-Large City Council panel included (from left to right): Marvin Mathelier, Alexandra Valdez and Frank Baker. Photo by Wen Qi

    Most of the candidates said the city should do more to educate immigrants about their rights. Mejia, who was born in the Dominican Republic, said she survived Trump’s first term and can do it again.

    “I’m prepared to stand up to Trump,” she said, while reinforcing the need to educate immigrants about their rights.
    There was some support among the candidates for bike and bus lanes.

    “I don’t want to walk by no more ghost bikes,” Louijeune said. “I don’t want that. I don’t want that for our children, to say that someone died here because we didn’t do our job to build a safer, better city.”

    Baker said the city should explore expanding water transportation and Valdez and Mejia emphasized that each neighborhood needs its own plan for bike and bus lanes so it makes sense to businesses and residents.
    “People can’t do one size fits all,” Mejia said.

    Murphy blamed increased traffic congestion on bike lanes and speed bumps. “I think it’s important that we don’t just wake up one day and find out that our streets look different and we didn’t have to say anything,” she said.

    In a “speed round,” everyone except Onuoha, Baker, and Murphy said they support statewide rent control legislation. Everyone except Baker said “yes” when asked whether they support inclusionary zoning requiring 20 percent of housing in market-rate developments to be income restricted.

    Onuoha, Valdez, and Baker went on record opposing an elected school committee and against abolishing the Boston police gang database. Everyone else voted yes on those questions.

    There was unanimous support for approving a $4 million increase in the city’s rent subsidy program to provide permanent housing for 130 homeless families.

    Baker was the only candidate who didn’t answer a question about whether universities should increase their payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT funds. Baker held his paddle sideways, refraining to answer and drawing an eruption of laughter from the crowd.

    District 7

    District 7 City Council panel: (from l to r) Wawa Bell, Samuel Hurtado, Said Abdikarim, Said Ahmed, Mavrick Afonso, Miniard Culpepper, Roy Owens, Natalie Juba Sutherland and Jerome King. Photo by Georgia Epiphaniou

    The first part of the forum focused on the District 7 seat now held by Tania Fernandes Anderson, who recently pleaded guilty to two of six federal corruption charges after allegedly arranging a kickback scheme that netted her $7,000. Fernandes Anderson, who has said she intends to resign from the seat before her term expires at the end of the year, is not running for re-election.

    Nine candidates have qualified for the ballot for the preliminary election to be held on Sept. 9, with early voting starting on Aug. 30: WaWa Bell, Samuel Hurtado, Said Abdikarim, Said Ahmed, Mavrick Afonso, Rev. Miniard Culpepper, Roy Owens, Natalie Juba-Sutherland, and Jerome King.

    The candidates began by explaining what makes them qualified for the job.

    “I think that our community has been ill-represented for a long time,” said Bell, who went on to say he wants to continue the “positive work” of Fernandes Anderson, who was in attendance at the event.

    Miller asked the candidates how they would work to make District 7 more affordable. Bell expressed support for rent control and a cap on how much landlords can earn.

    The candidates all agreed to advocate for the statewide “Homes for All Massachusetts” rent control legislation that would limit rent increases and ban no-fault evictions. The response came during rapid-fire questions for which candidates had to respond with a paddle with “yes” on one side and “no” on the other.

    Bell and Culpepper emphasized a push for more homeownership, while Juba-Sutherland mentioned a need for more financial literacy among homeowners.

    “What financial literacy does [is] it teaches us how to manage our money,” Juba-Sutherland said. “Because we can actually say, ‘Yes, we can own our homes,’ but can we keep our homes?”

    Afonso, who is the director of external affairs at the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, called for the development of “surplus land” and accessory dwelling units for affordable housing.

    Candidates answered questions about how they would support communities targeted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. King called himself a “fighter” and questioned who ICE agents are.

    “All I see is a bunch of people running around with shiesties on,” King said. “They don’t show their face.”

    Nearly all candidates expressed some form of support for community members targeted by ICE, except Owens, who did not answer the question and went on to talk about congestion pricing.

    Both Hurtado and Abdikarim emphasized educating immigrants about their constitutional rights. Afonso said he supports more funding for legal resources for immigrants.

    From left: Said Ahmed, Mavrick Afonso (standing), Miniard Culpepper: and Roy Owens. Photo by Wen Qi

    “This is a sanctuary state,” Afonso said, ”so let’s provide these people the counsel that they need if ICE comes to try to take them away.”

    During rapid-fire questioning, all candidates backed Boston’s inclusionary zoning policy requiring 20 percent of units in market-rate developments to be income restricted and indicated support for amendments that would increase participatory budgeting funds.

    Bell, Hurtado, Owens, Juba-Sutherland, and King said they oppose the Wu administration’s decision to lease White Stadium to a professional women’s soccer team. Abdikarim, Ahmed, Afonso and Culpepper all said they support the plan.

    All except for Juba-Sutherland and Owens voted to abolish the Boston Police Department’s gang database. Juba-Sutherland voted “no,” and Owens abstained from the question.

    Hurtado was the only one of the nine candidates to vote against a fully elected school committee.

    A strong turnout at the Boston City Council Forum, Hibernian Hall, Thursday, May 22, 2025. Photo by Georgia Epiphaniou