A Mystery Around Town

In the last couple months, Bostonist has noticed a series of photocopied signs taped to lampposts and walls around Downtown Crossing (an example is to the right), warning everyone to "Beware of Mary Mitchell-Nixon, L.I.C.S.W ." The signs, which appear on colored paper, go on to explain that Ms. Mitchell-Nixon is an "abuser of people with AIDS," but they don't say much else. (In fact, the only other thing on the signs is "P.W.A.'s! " While this immediately reminded Bostonist of a certain old-school, west-coast rap act, we suspect it doesn't actually stand for Psychologists With Attitude. "People With AIDS" seems more likely.) This got us (and others) wondering, "Who is this Mary Mitchell-Nixon, what has she done, and to whom?"

As the sign suggests, Ms. Mitchell-Nixon is, in fact, a licensed social worker. Unfortunately, her phone number is not listed. Lacking other leads, we called a couple local AIDS advocacy organizations to see whether they knew anything. Edward Rewolinski, the Executive Director of the Boston AIDS Consortium, said Mitchell-Nixon's name didn't ring a bell, but that he recalled seeing similar flyers several years back. He also told us that the topic had come up in a recent meeting of AIDS advocacy workers from different local groups, but no one knew any details. He speculated that Ms. Mitchell-Nixon had simply had the bad luck of working with a very angry or dissatisfied client.

That may be true, but Bostonist remains intrigued by the enterprising spirit of this unknown client. The simple thing to do, we imagine, would be to file a complaint with the state Board of Registration of Social Workers. Instead, in classic, revolutionary Boston fashion, this disgruntled citizen has taken his/her grievances directly to the people by way of an anonymous pamphlet. Now, Bostonist isn't trying to say that Mary Mitchell-Nixon has actually done anything wrong. After all, being in the blog game, we know all too well (as do our detractors, no doubt (scroll down to Aug. 25, Aug. 14, and Aug. 9)) that it doesn't take much effort to disseminate half-baked ideas. But we sure would like to know what got this particular person so up-in-arms, and also what s/he does when s/he's not busy plastering downtown with searing personal indictments on pretty colored paper. Unfortunately, we are at the end of our pseudo-journalistic rope, and must, therefore, turn to our dear readers. Does anyone know what's up with this?