SWEET ROSEI believe that Rose Kennedy would most definitely have allowed Occupy Boston protesters to camp on her lawn (see "Occupational Hazards," October 14). Having lived through the 1929 stock-market crash, Kennedy would have seen our modern-day "Hoovervilles" cropping up and would have organized to feed the occupants, not remove them.
The Hoovervilles of the 1930s came about in many respects for the same reasons that the Occupy movement did: as a response to the establishment's lack of response to the economic suffering of millions of unemployed and homeless all across America. Sure, things aren't quite as bad now as they were then. We have unemployment insurance, health care, and a really lame stimulus bill, but all that only slowed the downward spiral, not halted it. What is going to happen when unemployment extensions come to an end and the unemployed have no where to go? Millions with no income and no roof over their heads?
What is happening economically is an emergency much larger than the war on terror or any other scam the political and corporate establishment could blow up our collective asses, and Menino knows it. He just doesn't want to see it camped in downtown Boston.
Well, that's just too bad. Because what's coming if you continue to enforce that utterly cynical line you've drawn in the greenway will be larger and angrier than the police will be able to deal with.
Maybe Menino should think a little about what Rose Kennedy would do.
LLOYD HART
VINEYARD HAVEN
CORRECTION
In our September 30 article "Fighting Foreclosure," Chris Faraone reported that "Eliza Parad, an organizer with the Chelsea Citywide Tenants Association, pulled at even heavier heartstrings. After a series of health problems led to her wife committing suicide, Parad found a community bank that was willing to purchase her home at the market value. But BoA refused to sell, darkening an already nightmarish scenario for Parad and her children." That is actually the story of Chelsea resident Jose Ulloa, which was being read out loud by Parad as a result of Ulloa not being in attendance.
