Taking it to the streets

[AmyStrange]

Taking it to the streets
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | June 10, 2004

FROM: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/conventions/articles/2004/06/10/taking_it_to_the_streets/
The demonstrators who lined Causeway Street this week have certainly made a statement, in a show of defiance that has already slowed preparations for the Democratic National Convention. If anyone doubted that unions can still put bodies on the streets, now they know better.

Yet this battle isn't about numbers. It's about two strong and stubborn personalities: Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Thomas Nee, the president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. This became personal a long time ago.

Had Nee been available for comment, he would have likely disputed that. Yesterday, Menino himself was reluctant to personalize their fight, saying, "I saw Tommy Nee at an event the other day, and we had a very cordial conversation."

That's nice to hear, but it doesn't change the accumulated bad blood of recent years, exemplified by the heckling of Menino's family by the BPPA at the State of the City speech last year. As Menino's former friend City Councilor Jim Kelly could tell Nee, there is no faster way to escalate a feud with Menino than to drag his family into it. It doesn't help that Officer Thomas M. Menino Jr. has been pressured to toe the union line in opposition to his father. Menino publicly dismisses the use of his son as a pawn, but his friends say he seethes privately.

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