By Karen Grover
Last Wednesday, August 31st, tenants at Clarendon Hill Towers were treated to another great night of happiness at its Music Nite Series, created by our Resident Services Coordinators, Jessie and Wesmyne. During intermission, Karen Glover, CHT Tenant and Rep. of Somerville Bus Riders Take Action Committee, addressed the crowd with remarks concerning progress made relative to petition signing goal as follows:
“I’m pleased to report that our Bus Riders Take Action!Committee has recruited several additional
dedicated volunteers to get petitions signed. We have also placed petitions in shops on Highland Avenue and will be placing petitions inside stores on Broadway. While I thought of creating the petition due to the sick feeling I got in my gut when I realized the MBTA was trying to push these bus changes under the radar without Somerville Residents and other Bus Riders receiving adequate notice…I thought to myself… this is just downright sleazy. Anyhow, so with the help of another tech savy individual at CHT, the petition was created. I thought this is a good thing to do…instead of just feeling victimized…I felt a lot better take action. I got a lot of signatures, but thought I should branch out beyond CHT and visited other senior housing sites. Simultaneously, Billie Tauro declared his unequivocal support of the bus petition and was the first person to sign it!Yay! Billy suggested that I submit progress reports and pictures to his newspaper, The Somerville Medford News Weekly Newspaper, which I did…and Wow! The Petiton Signing gained a phenomenal amount of traction!
When original pages of the petition are filled up, we place them in a safety deposit box…enough said. As of today, September 5th, tenants have not received notice that the “mayor” will be returning to the MBTA’s intentions because this is a state matter, but she did write them a letter.
The Mayor’s staff has, indeed, been meeting with the MBTA daily to figure out how to minimize the Orange and Green Line mess…evidently those daily meetings don’t include squeezing in a basic requirement of maintaining our current ideal and direct bus routes, because if her staff did have that conversation, they would be inviting them selves back to Clarendon Hill Towers to inform us of this major accomplishment…so it obviously wasn’t brought up to the MBTA.
In the meantime, we are doing all we can to obtain the signature of every bus rider!
We have another major strategy…perhaps the best strategy of all…because Clarendon Hill Towers is a diverse, multi-cultural community and our population consists of people who come to the USA from places far and wide, the majority of residents may believe in a Higher Power. I suggest we turn to prayer. Lets pray for the MBTA, the Mayor of Somerville, MA, and the Somerville City Council to receive The blessing of Divine Intervention to guide them to make the moral and ethical decision to dump this MBTA mess of a proposal. God Bless the Mayor of Somerville, her Administration and the Beautiful City of Somerville, MA. Amen.
