Word: ackermanns
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...Ackermann says no politician, man or woman, is as assured as he seems: "When someone is in power, he is bound to make mistakes; then criticism is good but everyone fears it. We are tougher on the outside than inside. If you are in power, people will hate you. As chairman of the School Committee hearing on Frisoli. I felt like a worm when people booed and hissed me as I walked out. What else can you do to someone's ego? To stop thinking about your ego is the key thing. If you can't get over...
...first post as school committeewoman, Barbara Ackermann found herself in the minority as a member of the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), a liberal reform civic group which has a party status in Cambridge city politics and now controls five out of the nine city councillor spots. The superintendent was an "independent" and was difficult to work with. "It was frustrating being in the minority and not in the same party as my superintendent Ackermann said so I established goals people couldn't be against--libraries, which at that time weren't in any of the schools. That's where...
...Ackermann became frustrated with her job on the School Committee because it didn't allow her to make major policy changes, especially regarding one of her primary goals building new schools. "Schools need the proper space to teach in," she said. "Children need clean space to learn in and we needed new schools; all the school building is done from city hall. When my daughter graduated Cambridge High and Latin. I decided to run for City Council...
ONCE ELECTED to the Council, Ackermann always seemed willing to speak her mind, even when it meant confronting powerful City Manager William Corcoran, and especially on her pet issue of rent control. When Corcoran chose the rent control commissioners without consulting with the city councillors, Ackermann was first to attack him: "(He) showed contempt for the four councillors and members of the library board and the blue-ribbon panel on a rent control administrator by not consulting with them," she said at the time...
Another "cause celebre" that Ackermann supported was the "People's Peace Trenty" in April 1971, which she sponsored before the City Council, and which called for America to agree to immediate and total withdrawal from Vietnam. Because of her constant pressing of the problem of drug treatment, Corcoran finally approved a $67,000 outside grant for a community-based drug treatment program. One of her major fights has been against the highway that Governor Sargent wants to put through Cambridge; as chairman of the T Committee she gathered support for the Boston Transportation Planning Review (BTPR...