Looking back, that marks the other historical current-towards a more privatized and selfish view of the world, one that cared about property values above all. In the privacy of the voting booth, the citizens of this theoretically liberal town voted the plan down two to one. All the town fathers agreed, and the ministers were in favor of it.īut some homeowners petitioned for a referendum. King, the town's Suburban Responsibility Commission had come up with a plan to build one hundred units of affordable housing. It seemed to my ten-year-old brain that the long arc of history was moving in the right direction, towards solidarity and greater inclusivity.īut that same spring, there also was a plan to build the first affordable housing in lily-white Lexington.Īfter a visit from Dr. My father, a mild-mannered business reporter, was very uncharacteristically there with them, and it made a big impression on me.
All were arrested and taken off to the town public-works shed for the night. Several hundred townspeople went down to stand there on the Green with the veterans. But the town fathers said no, that was illegal, and threatened to arrest them. The first fight of the Revolution took place on its historic Battle Green, and because of that, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, an antiwar movement led by John Kerry, wanted to camp there. Our family had just moved to Lexington, the birthplace of American liberty. What happened at each of these events, and what do they mean for you now?īILL MCKIBBEN: They happened about six weeks apart in the spring of 1971, when I was ten or eleven. The first was a protest, the second a referendum. GRIFFIN OLEYNICK: You begin your book by describing two pivotal events from your childhood in the Boston suburbs.
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