The Battle of Urban Changes

If you have a pulse and have lived in the Boston area for any significant period of time, it's hard to miss the fact that things are changing. As the powers-that-be taut "New Boston" initiatives, revitalization efforts have been focused on our urban centers with the effect of -- whether intentionally or not -- accelerating gentrification in once neglected neighborhoods like Roxbury, Charlestown, or Dorchester.

Perhaps one of the most effected has been Somerville -- once sarcastically referred to as Slumerville -- which has seen a drastic increase in housing prices and economic revitalization in some areas as higher-income folks moved north from Cambridge encouraged by the extension of the Red Line into Davis Square. Long a bastion of working-class Irish and Italian families, the changing face of the city has left many of the people behind as longtime residents see their children and grandchildren forced out by increasingly unaffordable prices. It's a problem that not only hits the pocketbook, but opiate-abuse, related overdoses, and suicide has disproportionately effected teenage working-class whites in Somerville. Obviously it's not easy to draw a direct correlation between changing demographics and these consequences, but an irrefutable sense of desperation has swept across this population.

One of the most touching outcomes of this desperation is a website created to honor Matthew O'Brien, who died of a drug overdose in 2001 at the age of 17. If you scroll down further you'll see pictures of 10 other Somerville teens who have died of opiate abuse or suicide over the last few years.

As the deaths increase and little changes, the anger and resentment brews stronger. Over the last few years, a number of incidents have occurred at Lexington Playground near the Somerville Bike path. Effectively located as the entrance to West Somerville when traveling from the east, a group of white teenagers called "DavilleSquad" have placed themselves there to protect their neighborhood -- now the most gentrified but once the core of the city's Irish and Italian base. Recently, Alderman At-Large Denise Provost noticed a spate of graffiti in the park threatening violence against "yuppies." Sadly, when Alderman Provost complained to the Department of Public Works, in what may perhaps be a further manifestation of this resentment the DPW responded by cleaning very little--leaving mostly the hateful "Kill a Yuppie" slogans.

Bostonist by no way condones such sentiments, but it's hard for us to see the culprits as anything but misguided victims. We hope that soon, leaders in Somerville, Charlestown, East Cambridge and other communities that face similar resentments can begin effectively addressing the desperation and hate before any more innocent lives are lost.