Bob La Tremouille and Marilyn Wellons carried signs and distributed several hundred leaflets at the BU Bridge about Cambridge's destruction of Magazine Beach. The flyers indicate responsibility for the project lies with the Cambridge City Council and ask people to contact the Councillors.
This was Visibility No. 363 since the 1999 start of Cambridge's and the DCR's joint campaign to destroy the Charles River environment. As usual, passing drivers honked to support the visibility and pedestrians and cyclists stopped to learn more.
Cambridge's contractor began removing the grass and dirt from Magazine Beach at the start of October. Migrating waterfowl have continued to feed on the remaining grass as it disappears.
Cambridge intends to replace what is simultaneously wildlife habitat, passive open space, and playing fields for everyone, with commercial sod, an irrigation system, and fences for professional-level organized sports fields. The project will destroy passive green space, wildlife habitat on the Atlantic flyway, and general use of the fields for a wide variety of casual and organized sports.
Cambridge is converting state parkland to the privileged use of Cambridge schools and youth groups because it is too cheap to buy land for these purposes in underserved neighborhoods, where there is a crying need for them.
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Bob La Trémouille:
The above report is from Marilyn. I thank her for the excellent report.
These blog reports were preceded by an email newsletter which ran from March 2000 to 2005 and, at its peak, distribution reached 1300 recipients. They were, during most of their run, matched to visibilities at the destroyed nesting area of the Charles River White Geese.
For technical reasons, it was only possible for one person to publish the newsletter. This blog relieves me of the need to be the only person, but requires a correction to the number of visibilities. They are much greater than 363, I think. I did multiple series of reports of visibilities related to various purposes. The general series totals 363. All brought together greatly exceed 363.
We must talk and agree on correct language.
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Marilyn has reported to me a conversation with Cambridge City Councilor Craig Kelley that evening.
He preached process.
There was no process. Public complaints and public input have been flatly and simply ignored including complaints to the Cambridge City Council to Kelley's face.
They took their vote in December 1999 and did not want to know nothing in spite of constant and repeated objections.
The years of silence of a varying but always united crew of nine includes silence that encouraged the rape and murder of a young woman in fall 2001. In 2001, nine city councilors blessed the woman's killer's repeated killings of nesting geese with the praise of silence.
The killer graduated, exactly as we predicted.
By the current outrageous behavior at Magazine Beach, nine heartless hypocrites have graduated as well.
Even if the strikingly irresponsible bureaucrats for the City of Cambridge and the state had gone through some sort of meaningful process, which they did not, Cambridge has nine city councilors who have the nerve to call themselves environmentalists.
Kelley's response is the typical response of a fake Cambridge liberal: How dare YOU NOT KEEP ME from doing this terrible thing.
Claims of environmentalism by the any of the nine are flat out nonsense.
The nine repeatedly demonstrate their contempt for the environment where it counts, in their back yard, as is demonstrated by the outrageous environmental destruction they are responsible for or planning on the Charles River, at Fresh Pond, at Alewife, and almost in all other open space projects.
Fancy buildings are no excuse for cavalier destruction of the land and the vegetation and animals on it.
Holier than thou hypocrisy. Really, really heartless people.
