Word: abt
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...shouldn't have been. Most everyone else at the convention knew Abt wouldn't be endorsed, though few expected she would receive so little support. Lots of reasons underlie the disenchantment with Abt, including the old grudge about her personal ambition and independence during the state Senate fight. Several causes, though, are more important than the rest, for they lead to the inescapable conclusion that there is more to this story than one person's foibles and that Cambridge politics is changing and changing fast...
...Abt's greatest crime, in the eyes of tenant organizers, seems to be equivocation. Though she swore never to vote against rent control, she presented a set of five problems with the program in her speech to the convention. And she said this: "Some sympathetic observers have pointed out that rent control may not be the best or the only way to protect low and moderate income people...Without better data, it is impossible to insist on rent control and condo controls in exactly their current forms." Saying that to a room full of tenant activists was not wise; better...
...Brattle St., though, they may be thinking a little differently. West Cambridge has always been the power base of city liberals; it's here that the CCA finds the bulk of its votes, and it's here that Abt and others like her must do well to win seats on the council. For a long time, this area was the home of "good government" sentiment. The Brattle St. folk, distressed at the fashion which the Irish pols were running the city, formed the CCA in the 1940s, and for a long time the organization was dominated by a sort...
...outlined above, large parts of the traditional CCA constituency may become supporters of the developers; if they do, the pressures on CCA candidates may become enormous. The demands of tenant activists will have to be compromised with the demands of the moderate elite for a "reasoned approach" a la Abt. The pulling from both sides could, in future years, rip candidates like Francis H. Duehay '55 and David Wylie right in half...
After all, there are few ties besides ideology that bind the CCA and the leftist tenant movement. One is predominantly rich and white; the other includes many lower and middle income residents, and many Blacks and Hispanics. One is fashionable; the other isn't. (Abt, dressed to the nines, looked distinctly out of place amid the blue jeans that dominated the tenant forum.) And when the CCA is liberal, it is because its members are looking out for others. The tenants will stay radical; they're looking out for themselves. Even the bridges between the two groups are tenuous. Though...