Did we meet our goals?
No – and yes. We needed about 8,000 signatures on each of two petitions to repeal Quincy politician’s raises, and we got 6,030 to reverse the mayor’s 79% raise and 4,642 to undo the council’s 50% pay boost. So, not enough to stop the raises from going into effect on January 1. But more than enough to build a movement to prevent such injustices from sliding through unchallenged in the future.
The fact that we fell short of 8,000 signatures is disappointing for sure, especially after the hope we had allowed ourselves to feel when we saw our signature collection rate rise ever higher over time. “We might just pull this off!” I thought, after seeing that we’d made it more than halfway to our goal.
Still, we had less than two days to collect the remaining 3,500 signatures. We threw ourselves into it, as we had since the project’s start. Our volunteers braved miserably hot weather to collect the required signatures. New volunteers raised their hands to help, which gave all of us a lift. And we saw more and more people interested in signing because they had seen news stories about the repeal effort. It was an exhilarating and exhausting push to the finish line.
And truly, that’s how it’s been for the last three weeks. A series of highs and lows that have left us a little bruised and battered but also invigorated and hopeful. Here are some of the challenges we faced, in addition to the heat and the fact that many folks were on vacation during our 20-day (state-regulated) collection window:
Bullying. Some volunteers – to my knowledge all women – have been followed, yelled at, or told to leave public spaces (sometimes with the admonition to go home and “spend time with their families”). Ironically, these incidents have occurred at events meant to celebrate the birth of our democracy. One woman, a veteran and member of a Gold Star family, was told to leave this past weekend’s patriotic celebration in Quincy Center.
Lack of citizenship status. The state law governing this process, known as a referendum petition, says that only registered Quincy voters can have their signatures count towards the required total. And to vote, one must be a US citizen. So unfortunately, many folks who pay taxes here who wanted to sign – and whose taxes are affected by increases in government spending, such as raises – could not make their wishes known through this process.
Fear of reprisals. Many residents who wanted to sign the petitions didn’t because they were afraid of reprisals from the city government. All our volunteers reported hearing this fear. On June 30, I wrote to the city clerk asking her to address those concerns. With no reply, a few days later I emailed the city’s top lawyer, Solicitor Jim Timmins. He responded that the city clerk had been out of the office and that it was up to our group to “reassure” people who had these worries. We continued to hear these fears – unfounded or not – all across the city. (And those fears are why we decided not to turn in petition signatures to the city clerk unless we thought we had enough to repeal the raises.)
But while we did face some headwinds, our experience collecting signatures left us all feeling overwhelmingly hopeful and invigorated. Here are some of the reasons why:
More than 100 people officially signed up to collect signatures, and many others just downloaded PDFs of the petitions at home, gathered signatures, and dropped them off. People’s willingness to pitch in and help was touching and inspiring – people WANT to play a role in how our city runs. Even if our elected representatives discourage it, WE can help each other have a voice in what happens here.
Many volunteers said they had never participated in civic actions like this but felt the raises were so unfair that they had to try to stop them. These new civic engagers included folks who had voted for the mayor, members of the Asian community, and city workers who, even though they feared reprisals, joined the effort because their annual raises had been just 0 to 3% since the mayor’s last raise took effect (while the mayor’s new raise is equivalent to a 6% increase every year over the same time period), and (in the case of teachers), they had fought for months and stood out in the bitter cold to push for fair contracts.
All the interactions with signers and other volunteers have brought people together and forged new friendships. Since collecting signatures from strangers can be a daunting task, some people paired up with each other for moral support. Volunteers have been bringing petitions to residents unable to visit signing locations posted online, and acting as on-call translators when needed. Folks have shared their research expertise, musical and writing skills, and video and graphic know-how. This is a dedicated, thoughtful, and generous community, and I’m grateful to be part of it.
So, yes, I am disappointed that we didn’t hit our goal of getting 8,000 registered Quincy voters to sign our petitions in 20 days. But we knew from the start that reaching this goal would be a long shot. I consider the effort a monumental success because it has sparked so many conversations about how we want things to run here. And each of those thousands of signatures represents a conversation – a connection – with a neighbor that strengthens our community.
Our work is not finished. Stay tuned for how you can help in our next steps as we fight to make the city more transparent and accountable to us, its residents, by joining our mailing list at bit.ly/ajqlist. I have been so moved by my neighbors’ passion and commitment. Together we will bring about the change that Quincy residents deserve!
–Maggie McKee
