Two Meetings

help.

When this assignment was over, my room looked like a natural disaster had just torn through. Scraps of paper, assorted markers, and stray drops of Mod Podge were everywhere. (A full week later, I am still finding paper scraps under my bed.) I think it was worth it, though: the end result of all of this effort was a zine that was full of color and (hopefully) useful information that could help people unfamiliar with the intricate bureaucracy of Boston civic institutions to understand the meetings I attended.

My original plan was to attend the meeting of the School Committee's Task Force on Opportunity and Achievement Gaps at Boston Public Schools (BPS) Welcome Center on October 8 at 4 pm. I chose this meeting because of my past knowledge from working in a BPS school, and seeing firsthand the disparity between what my students' experience at a non-exam BPS school and my own experience as a student in a well-funded, suburban school district. However, a lot of things did not go to plan. First, I went to the wrong room (based on information from a very confusing sign); I then tried to find the right room, and was sent back downstairs because apparently the elevator is employee-access-only, unless you check in at the front desk and hand over your ID. I did not hand over my ID, but the receptionist let me up anyway, along with a task force member who, like me, was running late. Even though I was with an actual member of the task force, though, I still managed to run into a final obstacle: the entire floor was locked off except to people who had building passes, which neither of us had, so we had to stand in elevator lobby and tap on the door until someone let us into the hallway so we could finally (finally!) get to the meeting room.

The actual meeting was very interesting, but it was also very hard to follow--there was a lot of BPS-specific and education-specific jargon that I was not aware of, so a lot of the time, I had to piece together what all of the acronyms meant and what "the ecological model" was from context. I didn't feel very comfortable interviewing anyone--it was hard to tell who the laypeople were at the meeting, as everyone was speaking as if they were an expert. I found myself thinking about my former students and their parents--many of whom were not fluent English speakers--and wondering how much they would be able to follow. 

Boston City Hall, in all of its Brutalist glory

I decided to go to another meeting the next day, to better fulfill the requirements of the assignment. I ended up attending a City Council meeting (on 10/9) because I felt that it would hopefully be more oriented towards an audience of laypeople, since its focus would be general, rather than specific. I also was especially interested to listen to the councillors because of the upcoming election--I figured a council meeting would be the best way to get a sense of the councillors, as someone who will be voting in this city for the first time in November. I did feel that this meeting was, as I hypothesized, a lot more accessible--but I also felt that you had to have a good sense of Boston as a city in order to understand what was happening. The person I briefly interviewed after (who was there as an intern for Public Facilities) said that they were most interested in Councillor Michelle Wu's plan to abolish the Boston Planning and Development Agency (which I also felt would be the most interesting/applicable part of the meeting to the average Boston resident). I decided, then, to make a zine describing her plan, as well as some background to the BPDA and some reactions to her plan.

Congrats, you win a zine!

Pre-choose-your-own-adventure state

When designing my artifact for this assignment, I wanted to make something accessible, and so I decided to make a zine. I also, though, wanted to make something that would convey how exclusionary the meetings felt. As a result, I decided to place my zine in a lockbox. I created an online choose-your-own-adventure game simulating my experience trying to get to the first room, and placed QR code in an envelope on top of the lockbox, which would take you to the choose-your-own-adventure link. Upon successfully finishing the game, you would receive the code to open the box, and then you would get to read the zine.

Cover page

An intro to the BPDA (BRA)

There are some things I felt did not go well with the zine--for one, physically, as an object, it was pretty clunky because of the sheer amount of paper glued together on it. If I were to redo this project, I would use sturdier paper; I would also maybe try to scan and make color copies of the original for display purposes, rather than using the original.

One thing I really enjoyed, and thought I did well, though, was my use of color and images. I maybe could have incorporated more photographs, but I think the "highlighting," the borders I created, and the little gender-fluid blobs I drew as stand-ins for the reader all made it easier to read, and a lot more accessible.

Some reactions

For the quotes, I chose one from my in-person notes, and got the rest from a feedback portion of Councillor Wu's Abolish the BPDA website. I did have to paraphrase some of them to get them to fit in the speech bubbles (and also to make them easier to understand). 

Feedback/resources 

I really wanted to include a space for people to write their own thoughts about the plan--especially because there was no public comment at the City Council meeting. I also thought it was important to include resources--so people could learn more if they wanted to. I included links to both the BPDA website and the Abolish the BPDA website, as well as two organizations I know of in Boston that do work related to housing justice. 

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