After news came out that a local city councilor had shared a racist meme with other elected officials, there was muted reaction from the community in Everett, Massachusetts.
City councilor Anthony DiPierro admitted sharing the racist cartoon meme with other officials but did not step down. At Glendale Park in Everett Mercy Botchway, a high school senior at Everett High school has come on a Sunday after church, to express her feelings about the meme. She says she’s outraged, and thinks DiPierro should resign.
Botchway says many community members just keep their heads down but she thinks its time for everyone to speak out. Like Botchway, more than 80 percent of Everett’s school population are students of color, but most city officials and employees are white.
Two decades ago only a quarter of the city’s population was non white, but the city is now majority-minority. More than 50 languages are spoken in this city of 50,000, and immigrants from dozens of countries now call Everett home. But whether you are truly “from Everett,” residents say, is waved like a badge of honor that leaves many feeling marginalized, and has helped keep the “old Everett” in power.
“You hear a lot of, ‘I was born and raised’ as if that is your ticket, you know?” said Samantha Lambert, a longtime white resident who was elected to Everett’s school committee, and still feels like an outsider.4
“I always joke that I’ve been here since I was five, and I’m still not Everett enough, you know, so it's almost ingrained into our politic, into our conversations,” said Lambert. Guerline Alcy, who ran unsuccessfully for a city council seat in 2019 and worked in city hall, has lived in Everett for more than 30 years says “When it comes to politics, when you’re running, and I’ve heard it before, ‘you’re not Everett.'“
Everett’s political scene is tough for outsiders to navigate, said Antonio Amaya, who more than twenty years ago, founded La Comunidad to help Everett’s burgeoning immigrant community. He’s watched the city grow more diverse over the years, and the levers of power stay in the same hands. “We in the community, we don’t have enough political experience.”
If people want to see change, Alcy said, they’ll need to get involved. Political participation, she said, is what gives the white community an “upper hand.” “The white constituents pay attention. They know what’s going on. They read the paper, they go to the meetings. So that’s the difference,” Alcy said. Last year Everett's Mayor Carlo DeMaria won re-election to a sixth term by a slim margin.
Botchway, who has worked to register voters in Everett, said city officials' muted reaction to the racist meme will spur younger voters to shake off their complacency.
“I think we’ve reached a point where we're tired of it,” said Botchway, “Our generation is much more outspoken and much more willing to speak out, and also we have a low tolerance for these acts.”
Despite the current swirl of negative stories about Everett, residents said they don’t want their city to be defined by racism. “We have everybody here, and it’s really a beautiful thing,” said Lambert. “And I want people to know that about Everett.”