Tom Keane

Help wanted: Robots only, please

“Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.”

— John Lennon

“The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century . . . The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

— Jean-Luc Picard

Both the late Beatle and the captain of the starship Enterprise might be proved right — and in the not-too-distant future. Change, rapid change, is about to descend on us, a point underscored by a just-released report from the Pew Research Center, “Digital Life in 2025.” That’s just a scant decade from now. and the upheavals that its batch of experts predicts are seismic. And by the time 2035 or 2045 roll around? The nature of work — and leisure — may be fundamentally altered. It might be the utopia of the singer and the explorer, or it could prove a nightmare.

The causes of this change are computerization and rapidly advancing improvements in artificial intelligence. AI is the stuff that gave us the worlds of “The Matrix” and “Terminator.” But the present fear isn’t that computers go rogue; rather they simply replace us. For it seems almost certain that an increasing number of jobs — blue-collar and white-collar — will be soon performed by computers.

We’ve seen it already. There are no more toll-takers on the Tobin Bridge, for example, and soon there will be none anywhere. (A crisis for local pols, perhaps: The pool of hack jobs is growing ever smaller.) Tellers have been replaced by ATMs, typists by word processors, travel agents by on-line bookers, paralegals by search engines, and security guards by cameras.

But technology is on the edge of rapid advancement that will make all of these look relatively minor. I’ve written before about driver-less vehicles and their potential widespread adoption, if not 10 years from now, then certainly in 20 or 30. Imagine the jobs no longer needed: taxi and limo drivers, delivery drivers, bus operators, and truckers. Truckers alone represent 1.7 million jobs.

So too, technology will replace other professions. If Roomba can vacuum your floor, why not the equivalent for your yard? Most repetitive work — especially manufacturing — will eventually be replaced by robots. Boston-based Rethink Robotics has humanoid-like models available for sale right now. Computers and software will shortly replace everything from tellers to insurance appraisers to data entry clerks. Higher-skilled professions — such as lawyers — aren’t immune either, with software increasingly capable of handling much of their work. A widely quoted study from the Oxford Martin School predicts that technology threatens to replace 47 percent of all US jobs within 20 years. One of Pew experts even foresees the advent of “robotic sex partners.” The world’s oldest profession may be no more.

When all this happens, what, exactly, will people do? Half of those in the Pew report are relatively unconcerned, believing — as has happened in the past — that even as technology destroys jobs, it creates more new ones. But half are deeply worried, fearing burgeoning unemployment, a growing schism between the highly educated and everyone else, and potentially massive social dislocation. (The fact that Pew’s experts are evenly split also exposes one of the truths of prognostication: A coin flip might work just as well.)

Much of this debate over more or fewer jobs misses a key element, one brought up by some of those surveyed by Pew: These are primarily political issues; what happens is up to us. If lower-skilled jobs are no more, the solution, quite obviously, is training and education. Moreover, the coming world of increasingly ubiquitous robotics has the potential for significant increases in productivity. Picture, for instance, an entirely automated farm, with self-replicating and self-repairing machines planting, fertilizing, harvesting, and delivering. Food wouldn’t be free, but it could become so cheap that, like water (Detroit excepted), it’s essentially available to everyone for an almost nominal cost.

It’s a welfare state, of course, but at some point, with machines able to produce the basic necessities of life, why not? We’d have a world of less drudgery and more leisure. People would spend more time doing what they want to do rather than what they have to do. It might even cause us to rethink what it means to be human. Robots will allow us to use our “intelligence in new ways, freeing us up from menial tasks,” says Tiffany Shlain, host of AOL’s “The Future Starts Here.” Just as Lennon hoped and Star Trek predicted.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on August 31, 2014.

When the standoff is over

If Arthur T. Demoulas succeeds in buying out the Arthur S. side of the family — petty squabbles might still cause a deal to unravel — the debate will begin: Who won in the Market Basket standoff? Maybe Arthur T., now firmly in control. Possibly Arthur S. and his kin, graced with far more money than the demands that originally precipitated this crisis. Perhaps both sides of the embarrassing and now besmirched Demoulas family are losers. Or, perhaps, with the benefit of good PR firms, both emerge winners.

It’ll take a while to sort out the family dynamics, but if and when the standoff is finally over, the real winners should be seen as Market Basket’s employees — “associates’’ in the company’s nomenclature — and, to a lesser but still significant degree, the customers who supported their calls for a boycott. They made this happen, and did so despite threats to workers’ livelihoods, stern lectures that they should simply give up and get back to working and shopping, and risks that their tactics might backfire, destroying the business they said they loved.

The threats were many. In mid-July, the company fired those it regarded as ringleaders of protests against the removal of Arthur T. as CEO. By the month’s end, the new co-CEOs told all employees to get back to work by Aug. 4, or they’d be terminated, backing up their warnings by holding an early-August job fair. In mid-August, management made another attempt, saying if employees didn’t return, “the company will consider you to have abandoned your job.”

More insidious, perhaps, was the growing chorus of voices urging workers to return. “I think it’s important . . . for the associates to understand that they can go right back to work and they would do a service to the people served by Market Basket,” Governor Deval Patrick said two weeks ago. The company’s so-called independent directors were delighted and readily agreed, “No one should ever hold 25,000 associates, 2 million shoppers, and our local economies as leverage in a business negotiation.”

It all sounded so reasonable: You’ve made your point, folks. Now get out of the way and let the smart business people sort it out.

The rebellious employees refused to follow this sage advice. “We will not go back to work when the governor, the board, or any other entity tells us to,” they posted. Their argument was that if they did return, if things went back to normal, then the pressure to resolve the family feud would be off. Of course, that same pressure could ruin the business, but that’s a claim frequently made when workers strike. And in this case, the rebels were almost certainly right. The intense rivalry and bad feelings within the family were at such a level that, from the Arthur S. side of the family, almost any outcome would have been better than letting Arthur T. back in charge. From the employees’ point of view, though, having Arthur T. back was the only acceptable outcome.

So what will this hard-earned victory mean? This may be such an odd circumstance that it is sui generis, never to be repeated. Or it could be, as Chris Faraone dramatically phrased it in Esquire Magazine, that the worker and customer revolt was “the last stand for the middle class.” Company mission statements are often padded with talk about how they value their people. With their victory, the Market Basket protesters may take that talk one step further, pushing other businesses to recognize that their success comes not only from those who risk money, but also from their employees — and that those employees are entitled to a share of that success.

Still, many worry that after weeks of empty stores and empty shelves, Market Basket may be permanently damaged. I think them mistaken. When the doors reopen, expect to see a surge of customers — not only those returning but new ones as well, intrigued by all the hype. During the first few weeks, Market Basket will have its work cut out for it. Employees, I expect, will be keeping late hours. But pull it off, and the company they won back will not only be as it was, but better still.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 26, 2014.

Ice Bucket Challenge a gimmick best not repeated

Good for Barack Obama. While vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, he refused Ethel Kennedy’s ice bucket challenge. You know the saying: Just because every idiot in the world is jumping off of a cliff doesn’t mean you should too. No question, the group-think summertime craze is proving an effective way to raise funds. But that doesn’t make it right.

The challenge, as you’re probably aware, is that someone dares you either to douse yourself with a bucket full of water and ice or send $100 to the ALS Association. Dares, I’ve always thought, bring out the worst in people.

“Eat this earthworm.”

“No, of course not.”

“I dare you to eat this earthworm.”

“OK.”

In this case, the worst has been brought out in droves. George W., Charlie Sheen, and Oprah are only a few of the luminaries who have all posted videos showing themselves getting soaked, as have tens of thousands of ordinary folks. Why? The humiliation of getting wet, apparently, is better than having to cut a big check (although to be fair, many get doused and donate anyway). Or perhaps it’s that, celebrity and non-celebrity alike, people crave attention, likes, and hits so much that they’ll do most anything.

For his part, Obama said he’d give instead. If you’re going to play the game, I guess, that’s the right approach. And a lot of people must agree. The ALS Association — the acronym stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — didn’t invent the concept of the challenge but surely is delighted someone did. Since the fad began, the association says it’s seen $41.8 million in contributions — a big jump from a paltry $2.1 million in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, big disease advocates such as the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, and the Alzheimer’s Association must be eyeing the challenge with envy, marveling not only at the ALS Association’s growing bank account but also the publicity it’s garnered. Are there to be future ice bucket challenges for them? Or perhaps variations on the theme — the hot wax challenge, maybe? The prospect of third-degree burns might prove even more effective than cold water.

And, one has to ask, why the focus on ALS? According to the Centers for Disease Control, far more people die each year from heart disease (596,577 in 2011), cancer (576,691) or Alzheimer’s (84,974) than ALS (perhaps 5,600). But somehow, the ALS Association is now the charity du jour, benefitting from a clever idea that went viral. And that, unfortunately, illustrates the real problem all good causes face: getting people to notice them.

You would think the merits of something — eradicating a disease, educating the impoverished, or cleaning up the environment — would be enough to move people to be altruistic. But that’s rarely the case. Every charity somehow needs to break through the clutter of competing pleas. For big donors, that means one-on-one appeals. For smaller donors, group activities seem to work.

Some have criticized the Challenge as slacktivism, as if the millennial generation was somehow uniquely trying to get away with doing as little as possible. But slacking off is an age-old phenomenon and non-profits, knowing that, have learned to dress up their appeals as something else. Thus they hold grand banquets, the purpose of which is to figure out how to get people to pay more for a meal than it actually costs. So too, we’ve seen a proliferation of runs, walks, and rides — the Walk for Hunger, the Jingle Bell Run (for arthritis), or the Pan-Mass Challenge (cancer). Mass perambulation is largely unconnected to any of these causes, of course, but for some reason is an effective way to get people to start giving.

The ice bucket challenge follows these antecedents but adds a new and troubling twist. Charities have always been comfortable using guilt as a motivator — children and puppies in danger seem to work especially well. But the challenge crosses a line. Those issuing challenges are not only telling others what cause to support but also saying that if they don’t, they must suffer a penalty. Threats to compel giving? It seems the opposite of what it really means to be charitable.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 24, 2014.

Hillary is inevitable no longer

Hillary Clinton is no longer the inevitable next President of the United States, a summertime development that is not unexpected yet still surprises. Now the question is: Who will be the first to mount a challenge?

Two potential challengers (although both deny they’ll run) hail from right here: liberal firebrand and US senator Elizabeth Warren and our cool and collected governor, Deval Patrick. The interest they’ve attracted is evidence of Massachusetts’ continuing influence in national affairs.

Indeed, even though he keeps saying no, there might be a third Bay State contender in the wings: 2012’s loser, Mitt Romney. After all, Hillary’s problems aren’t only that Democratic knives are becoming unsheathed. Republicans also sense that, with a mainstream nominee, they might actually win in 2016.

What a difference six months has made. Back then, polls showed Clinton handily beating potential Republican rivals. A February 2014 McClatchy-Marist survey, for example, showed her with a 58-38 percent lead over former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a 58-37 edge over New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and a 58-38 advantage over Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Her numbers were so strong it seemed possible that no serious figure would contest her for the Democratic nomination.

Today, according to the same pollster, Clinton’s numbers have dropped by 10 or more points, while her three potential opponents have all edged upwards. She now leads Christie, for example, by a slim 47-41 percent.

It’s not as if the three Republicans deserve credit for those shifts. Rather, Clinton is somehow hurting herself. Some point to her new autobiography, “Hard Choices,” and the controversies it engendered. As part of the book-peddling tour, for example, she told ABC News that she and husband Bill were “dead broke” upon exiting the White House. That clumsy effort to identify with the struggling working class was the kind of patronizing, tone-deaf comment that got Romney into so much trouble last time around.

Then too, there was Clinton’s much-publicized break with Obama on foreign policy. “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” she recently told The Atlantic. That deliberate shot at the president earned her a caustic rebuke from Obama buddy David Axelrod, who tweeted, “Just to clarify: ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ means stuff like occupying Iraq in the first place’” — a clear reference to Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq invasion.

More important, I think, is the simple fact that Clinton is back in the public eye again. Many are remembering why they didn’t like her in 2008, when for a time she also seemed like the inevitable nominee. She’s not warm and fuzzy or exciting. She’s of an older generation when many hunger for someone new. She’s part of the Democratic establishment, only reluctantly embracing the economic-inequality issues that so fire up the party’s left wing.

And as books such as Kim Ghattas’s “The Secretary” make clear, she is decidedly different from Obama on foreign policy. Clinton was the hawk in the administration, a proponent of a muscular and unapologetic US presence on the world stage who sided most frequently with then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. She makes Democratic doves flutter nervously.

But whatever the reasons, any number of polls measuring favorability or perceived leadership show marked losses for Clinton over the last few months. The sense that she is vulnerable — and could even lose to a Republican — make it increasingly likely that someone credible will soon throw his or her hat in the Democratic ring. And once that happens, look for other hats to fly in as well.

The list of possible challengers includes not just Vice President Joe Biden and Warren and Patrick, but also Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and perhaps even California Governor Jerry Brown. (After all, 76 is the new 66, right?)

Clinton still has the edge on name recognition, access to money, and the makings of a powerful national organization. Even if a number of primary challengers emerge, chances are still good that she’ll end up as the nominee in 2016.

But all of that seemed true in 2008, too. As any bookie will tell you, good odds aren’t the same as a sure thing.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 19, 2014.

Tax credit for theaters leaves some waiting in the wings

Good, innovative theater in small local venues is a true cultural asset, just the kind of cutting-edge stuff you’d think Massachusetts would encourage and just the kind, you’d think, that the Legislature’s proposed theatrical tax credit would boost.

You’d think wrong, however. The tax credit only applied to theaters with 500 seats or more, leaving most of the locals out of luck.

That, in truth, is only a minor flaw in what was a bone-headed scheme that favored the rich versus the poor, the big versus the small, and the unimaginative versus the innovative. Billed as a promotion for the arts, it was really about jobs — and it would have been bad at that, too, an inefficient and ultimately self-defeating way to lift the state’s economy.

Luckily for the Commonwealth, Governor Deval Patrick vetoed this piece of foolishness Thursday. But still — what were the legislators thinking? As written, the law gave theatrical companies a tax credit of 25 percent on pretty much any of their expenses. Capped on $3 million per production (and $10 million a year statewide), it was a pretty rich incentive, much like the state’s film tax credit. And as just as the film credit was supposed to be an incentive to boost local film-makers, so the theater credit should be designed to support local theater.

But as the minimum seat requirement illustrates, that’s hardly the case. Only big theaters would benefit — most of them to be found in what we call Boston’s Theater District — and then, and most striking of all, only if the productions were bound for Broadway. Small, inventive productions with little chance at the increasingly commercialized and Disney-fied New York venues were excluded. If you can’t make it there, apparently, you can’t make it anywhere.

The upshot: State money — your money — was to be spent to help big and commercial theaters produce stuff that’s big and commercial. This wasn’t about art; it was about commerce.

It’s an old game as well: The 50 states have long competed against one another, trying to lure businesses into their borders by offering bribes. Bribes, in this case, mean some kind of benefit: special tax breaks, cheap loans, even direct investments. Rhode Island, you may remember, did that with Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios. Didn’t turn out so well.

And why a tax break for theater? Well, New York and Illinois do it. So does next door Rhode Island. (You’d think they’d have learned.) The bribes by states to get new businesses don’t do anything for the national economy; all that’s happening is businesses are moving from place to place. But sometimes it works for individual states. The Massachusetts Department of Revenue, for example, reported in 2013 that $44 million in film tax credits generated 497 net new jobs. That’s seems good until you realize it works out to $88,000 a job. One wonders: Why not just fund the unemployed directly?

Oh yeah. Because then we wouldn’t get to see Tom Cruise.

Celebrity aside, other Massachusetts businesses — biotech, health care, and computer software — must have wondered why they aren’t getting a 25 percent tax credit. Don’t they too create jobs? Doesn’t the state want them?

In fact, some do get tax breaks. The others must need better lobbyists.

The New York Times recently counted up a total of 1,874 different kinds of bribes offered by the states, totaling $80.4 billion. Impartial analysts, such as the Tax Foundation, say these aren’t worth it. It’s not only that the economic boost generated by the breaks is no great shakes. It’s also an opportunity cost: The money could likely be better spent elsewhere.

Businesses like stable and fair tax policies. A tax break for one industry is unfair to everyone else, making for an uneven playing field. It would be far better for local economies if states took the money they spend on various incentives and used them, say, to reduce taxes across the board, improve their infrastructure, or better educate their workforce.

All of this is well-known, and most legislators and policy makers understand it to be true. But if Rhode Island and other states are doing it, then, runs the logic, we have no choice but to do it as well. It’s kind of like a tax arms race, with every state trying to one-up each other, all foolishly and madly headed downhill. Kudos to Patrick for putting a stop to it.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 17, 2014.

We’re No. 1, or No. 9, or maybe No. 42

Top 10 lists are everywhere, and Boston ranks high. But that may not mean all that much.

We are, for example, supposedly one of the coolest cities in America. Really! Forbes Magazine says so, ranking Boston ninth. You may wonder how this can be. After all, we’re impolite, stodgy, and not especially noted for our fashion. Nevertheless, the list-makers give us points for arts, culture, and recreation. We’re pretty good when it comes to restaurants, too. But the key factor is that a lot of young people live in Boston. The logic is as follows: Young people are cool, young people live in Boston, so therefore Boston must be cool. The flaw in that reasoning can be found in the city ranked coolest of all: Washington, D.C. No city that houses the likes of John Boehner and Harry Reid could be thought of as cool.

Perusing the world of lists, I note with delight that Brookline — the little community that many years ago refused Boston’s entreaties of annexation — ranks No. 3 on Movato’s list of the snobbiest small cities. I glory in this contrast with cool Boston until I run across yet another list of the snobby — this one from Travel & Leisure — and there’s Boston, at No. 3.

It’s hard to reconcile these two ideas: We’re both cool and snobby. Perhaps we’re so cool we put on airs about how cool we are. Or perhaps — and more likely — it’s the problem with list-making altogether. These compilations may be fascinating, but much of the process is humbug.

Lists have been around since antiquity. The first may have been the Ten Commandments, and they neatly illustrate the art’s pitfalls. Ranking is difficult — why is the prohibition on murder below honoring mom and dad, for instance? And how about the admonishments that never made it to the tablets? Many a parent would have preferred that “Thou shalt not hit thy sibling” was in there instead of, say, adultery.

Fast forward from Moses to the Internet and we now seem to have lists about everything: best beers, worst presidents, top nude beaches, you name it. Pick a topic, almost any topic, and you’ll find a list. And one of the most popular has to do with ranking the places we live.

Boston seemingly does quite well. Time Magazine ranks us ninth on its lineup of America’s healthiest cities. We rank ninth as well on the American College of Sports Medicine’s list of the fittest. Rent.com says we’re the fourth-best place to be single. Boston makes Budget Travel’s cut of the most beautiful cities in America, in part because we’re third on architecture firm RMJM Hillier’s list of best cities for design. Meanwhile, Parent Magazine rates Boston first in its ranking of best cities for families.

And then there are the lists we don’t make. We’re not on Law Street’s list of the most dangerous cities, thank God. Boston isn’t on GPS company TomTom’s list of the 10 cities with the worst traffic (a surprise, no doubt, to commuters on Interstate 93). Nor do we make the website 24/7 Wall Street’s list of the least literate.

It’s easy to get self-satisfied about all of this, especially with Business Week ranking Boston fourth in its listing of the top 50 cities to live. But then doubts and questions creep in. Rent.com may say Boston is a good place to be single, but another similar listing from the Wall Street Journal puts us way down at No. 42. Despite Parent Magazine praising Boston as family friendly, we somehow make The Daily Beast’s list of the 15 worst places to have a baby. And several researchers (including economist and Globe contributor Edward Glaeser) recently ranked Boston a lowly 38th on their index of happiness.

So what does it all mean? Not much, I think. Lists are an effective way to sell advertising — new ads pop up with every click — and they make for great conversation around the water-cooler. But in truth they don’t tell us much. If you’re not pleased where you’re now living, no list will persuade you otherwise. And if you’re enjoying life, don’t let a list lead you astray. The best piece of advice I can offer (or maybe third- or fourth-best): ignore them all.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 12, 2014.

From the right, common sense on drug policy

DRUGS ARE BAD for you, no question. But wars on drugs are worse — at least the way we’ve been waging this battle. But change may be coming, and from the least likely source: the right wing. Just as it took Richard Nixon to reopen ties with China (a Democrat would have been pilloried as a commie sympathizer), so it may take conservatives to reform our nation’s drug and sentencing laws.

Rand Paul, a Republican, is the son of libertarian and former US representative Ron Paul, whose two runs for president inspired much enthusiasm, albeit few votes. The son is a senator from Kentucky; he’s more moderate than his father and is in the mix for the 2016 GOP nomination. One might think drug policy low on a conservative’s priority list. But Rand is one of those leading the charge for change.

Last month, he and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (a rising Democratic star) jointly unveiled a plan, called the REDEEM Act, to limit employers’ access to nonviolent criminal records. The bill, designed to reduce the stigma that makes ex-cons often unemployable, comes in the context that most nonviolent offenses are drug-related.

That proposal follows on the heels of another Paul initiative, one that would wipe out the disparity in the way we treat cocaine and crack. Crack is cocaine that, through the magic of baking soda, has been made smokeable. Overhyped fears about its spread caused Congress in 1986 to make crack-related penalties 100 times harsher than those for ordinary cocaine. The disparity was nonsense and — if not by intent then by effect — racist: Cocaine was popular with upper-class whites (see, for example, “The Wolf of Wall Street”), while crack was more common in urban black communities. While 2010 saw improvements pushed by the Obama administration — the disparity was reduced to 18 to 1 — by rights the two drugs should be treated as the same.

This isn’t merely about fairness, however. It’s also part of a dawning recognition that the lock-’em-up mentality of the war on drugs has failed. Almost half of federal inmates are there for drug-related offenses. That penchant for imprisoning — 2.2 million Americans at this point — makes us the most incarcerated country in the world. Moreover, the $51 billion we spend each year has done little to stanch the use of illegal drugs. As Esquire observed last year: “The war on drugs is over. Drugs won.”

This refrain has long been a liberal trope. But coming from a Republican such as Rand Paul, it’s unexpected. Paul’s not alone, however. Irascible Newt Gingrich wrote in 2011 about the “huge costs in dollars and lost human potential” of excessive imprisonment. “The war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has been a failure,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said in a 2012 speech to the Brookings Institute. Evangelist Pat Robertson is now skeptical as well. And Texas’ Rick Perry, also a GOP presidential prospect, earlier this year decried imprisonment and urged the use of drug courts.

Why? Some think of mass incarceration as just another form of big government, one that intrudes too deeply into people’s lives. Others, including Paul, see it in terms of federalism: Let the states handle it. Practicality enters into the equation too. It makes sense to focus on what works, such as targeted behavioral interventions to discourage drug abuse, rather than waste money on what doesn’t.

Then, too, there is the calculus of electoral politics. Harsh, punitive policies against drugs disproportionately affect black and brown communities — the fastest growing communities in America. Republicans can do math as well as anyone. At the same time, public attitudes are shifting. The growing sentiment to legalize marijuana is but a harbinger of broader disagreement with the entire war-on-drugs philosophy.

Whatever the motives — enlightenment or the mere hunt for votes — the shift in conservative attitudes should be welcomed. As Booker and Paul’s joint appearances testify, drug policy is emerging as one case where true bipartisanship may be possible.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 9, 2014.

Work stoppage, Market Basket-style

Jan. 15, 2018. Downtown Boston was eerily quiet as it entered the third week of a work stoppage by city employees demanding the reinstatement of Martin J. Walsh as mayor.

By now the story is well known. In a rematch of the 2013 election, former city councilor John Connolly took on incumbent Walsh’s bid for reelection. Relentlessly attacking Walsh for putting the welfare of city workers ahead of the welfare of residents, Connolly vowed reform, ultimately winning by a narrow margin. The brief Walsh era, it seemed, was at an end.

But immediately after a triumphant Connolly was sworn in on New Year’s Day, city workers began slowing down or stopping the delivery of key city services, refusing to work for the new mayor. A modest 3-inch snowfall on Jan. 2 went unplowed, leaving the streets an icy mess. Schools failed to reopen following winter break when grounds crews wouldn’t unlock buildings. Response times to emergency calls for crimes and fires climbed dramatically. Staff at City Hall and other city offices made evident their backing for Walsh, picketing during lunch hours and prominently displaying supportive signs at their desks.

“Marty’s our mayor, and this is our city,” said one of the city workers leading the revolt. “Who are these ‘voters’ anyway? Many of them just moved here. Unlike us, they haven’t spent their lives working to build Boston.”

Either in solidarity with the workers or out of frustration with the dismal state of city streets, thousands of commuters stayed away from their offices, electing instead to work from home. Boston restaurants and entertainment venues were nearly empty while nearby cities and towns reported a surge in business. “Welcome to Providence!” said that city’s mayor, Buddy Cianci. “We’re hoping that, having discovered the great theater and fine dining of the Creative Capital, Boston suburbanites keep coming back.”

Travel and tourism officials warned that the city was losing tens of millions of dollars each day. “If this goes on much longer, Boston will be just a backwater,” said one industry expert. Indeed, with two major trade shows threatening to cancel their February bookings at the recently expanded convention center, Seaport area hotels were looking at the prospect of thousands of empty rooms.

A representative for the city workers said the solution was simple: Rehire Walsh. Worried state election officials debated proposals for an emergency election to see if voters might change their minds. “That’s fine,” said one worker, “as long as they elect Marty Walsh. We won’t work for anyone else.”

For his part, new Mayor Connolly has refused calls to resign, saying he is determined to hold on to his job. Immediately following the revolt, he had terminated several high-level employees leading the work stoppage. But in a letter issued yesterday, he was more conciliatory, saying “I want City of Boston workers back to work and reiterate that they can return without fear of penalty.” At the same time, however, he threatened to dock pay and made plans to hold a job fair to find replacement workers.

Pundits generally seemed to support the employees’ actions. “I think it’s important that we understand it’s not only voters with an interest in the city,” said one. “Businesses, tourists, students, and workers are all stakeholders too. All of them — and not just residents — should have a say in choosing a city’s leaders.”

Representatives for the Connolly campaign, however, laid the blame on Walsh, saying he had created a culture of personal loyalty that seemed to trump commitment to the city. During Walsh’s tenure, for instance, wages increased markedly. Even entry-level jobs in the Walsh administration were well-paid, with salaries far exceeding that of nearby towns and cities. Most controversial was a program Walsh called “Share the Success,” which paid city workers a hefty annual bonus based on increases in tax collections. “They know they won’t be getting that under a Mayor Connolly,” said one observer.

Political analysts said that a revolt by city workers seemed unprecedented, although many pointed to the well-known Market Basket work stoppage in 2014 as inspiration for the employees’ actions. “Perhaps they figure that, if it worked once, it’ll work again,” said one commentator. “It makes you wonder how far this thing will go.”

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 6, 2014.

Harbor Garage project is everyone’s concern

When it comes to plans to redevelop the Boston Harbor Garage, the worries of abutters matter, but the public interest matters more.

I once used to live at Harbor Towers, the two concrete buildings perched on the edge of the Boston Harbor next to Rowes Wharf.

“Best views in the city,” my father once told me.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because they’re the only ones that don’t have to look at Harbor Towers.”

True enough. The Harbor Towers are ugly, products of the same architectural insanity that gave us Boston City Hall, the State Service Center, and, adjacent to the Harbor Towers, the garage. The towers and the garage were both designed by I.M. Pei, a saint to architects — proof, I guess, that even saints can sin. The hulking, impersonal garage is particularly malign: It tells you much about our past attitude towards the water, and the way we blithely polluted it, that the best use for such frontage was a place to store idle automobiles. So one would think that everyone with an interest in the renaissance of Boston’s waterfront would welcome proposals by the garage’s owner, Don Chiofaro, to tear down the building and replace it with something better, something beautiful.

And pretty much everyone does seem welcoming, with one ironic exception. The residents of the Towers — some, but by no means all — have girded for battle. On July 21, the Towers’ trustees greeted Chiofaro’s plans with a scathing 12-page letter. The critique struck wearisomely familiar themes: too high, too dense, too much. “We support redevelopment of the Harbor Garage site,” one of the trustees insists to me, but when I ask what, if anything, would satisfy them, I get this response: “Let them propose something and we’ll see.” It’s an old game: Make developers negotiate against themselves.

Why the opposition? Perhaps, once the garage is done, they fear they’re next. Perhaps it’s mere NIMBYism. Or perhaps it’s because the towers are dependent upon the garage: It houses not only resident parking (a deal that’s due to expire in 2022) but also the buildings’ HVAC and mechanical systems.

All of this confrontation has created the widespread perception that the battle over the garage is basically a fight between the towers residents and Chiofaro. That’s a shame. It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be. This is everybody’s battle.

Cut off from the city by the elevated Central Artery, Boston Harbor was once a squalid and inaccessible mess. Today, thanks to the Big Dig, the Deer Island sewage treatment plant, and efforts by innumerable individuals and organizations, the city is reclaiming the water. A crucial player in that has been Vivien Li, head of the Boston Harbor Association and a driving force behind the creation of the HarborWalk, a path of waterside public access that extends for 39 miles. She also sits on a key harbor review commission, one of the many entities that will be reviewing Chiofaro’s proposal.

Chiofaro’s plan has breathtaking beauty. It envisions two towers, one terra-cotta, the second glass. Uses would be varied, including offices, residences, retail, and a hotel. The two towers would be connected by public space with a retractable roof. Views from the street to the water would be plentiful, and the city skyline would be strikingly improved.

A good start, in other words, but there’s still a long way to go. The project’s mass may, indeed, be excessive. Li points out to numerous concerns, including shadowing, wind and congestion. Creative thought about mitigation might lessen their impacts, she says.

More broadly, she argues, buildings can’t be viewed in isolation, but rather have to be considered as part of the fabric of the area. For example, can the plans for the Harbor Garage be a spur for rethinking the space in front of the New England Aquarium?

Still, she and many others — such as the activist group BostonNow — frame these issues in the context not of how do we stop it but, rather, how do we make it work? Chiofaro’s plans have provoked much discussion, and for good reason: The public has a deep and abiding interest in what becomes of the entire waterfront. Harbor Towers has a loud voice, no doubt. But it’s everyone else’s that deserves a listen.

This column originally appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe on August 3, 2014.