Word: controllers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...could not, even if they wanted to, which most probably didn't-moderate these emotions. The housing convention had lapsed into a period of inactivity after its formation and initial pleas to the City government, the universities and everyone else to "do something" about housing. The ferment over rent control revived the organization evaporate, as its supporters would drift instead to the Cambridge Rent Control Referendum, the radical group pushing for rent control...
Thus, the appeal of rent control as an issue--and the need to keep the housing convention going--made it likely that many a sign would be waved and many a voice would be raised on the issue. Yet more general factors--the style of Cambridge politics and the idea behind the agitation over the specific issue of rent control--were also at work...
...this, of course, and might not even want to, but his advocacy of such action strikes responsive chords in his East Cambridge supporters. Even in normal times, which these are not, politics in the City are apt to be heavily charged with rhetoric; the passions inherent in the rent control issue were amplified by this political style...
Packed council chambers are always likely to spark symbolic confrontations, and the chambers were very packed indeed during the rent control debate. In large part, this was due to the idea behind the entire housing convention movement, an idea currently popular with Federal agencies in Cambridge and elsewhere--"citizen participation." The young CEOC staff members who, behind the scenes, did much of the housing convention organizing take "citizen participation" in local government as one of their guiding lights and speared no pains to assure a large turnout of angry citizens for the council meeting and housing convention rallies...
...housing convention might have been one force to help build it, but its battle for rent control convinced many of its members that rent control is the most urgently-needed measure. The loss of the battle appears to have induced many to switch to referendum campaign where their fight for the cherished rent control can continue. Whether the housing convention can lure these supporters back, if only for an evening, to back for example, approval of a housing site is unclear. It may be impossible, for rent control remains the most attractive issue...