Three years after she helped block visitors in a local weather change protest, Michelle Wu awkwardly batted away questions concerning the newest demonstration to snarl visitors within the metropolis — this time from her perch as Boston mayor.
In 2019 as a metropolis councilor, Wu excitedly joined just a few hundred protesters with the extremist environmental group Extinction Rebellion in protesting fossil fuels by shutting down a significant Boston roadway, tweeting a video “Taking the Congress St bridge” from her @wutrain account.
Wu on Wednesday danced round questions on whether or not she supported XR’s newest demonstration that shut down a number of streets and intersections and resulted in 15 arrests.
“I know and I share deeply the frustration and urgency that folks face, uh, we are working every day to do our part on the side of city government,” Wu stated on Wednesday.
Why isn’t Wu condemning the visitors disruptions? Because that’s not a part of her agenda or her constituency.
Wu did nothing to alert Boston commuters to the protests Wednesday morning or deter them from exhibiting up. The demonstrations got here on the identical day that National Grid introduced a 64% spike in electrical energy charges this winter, however did Wu do something about that burden on common ratepayers?
Interesting that Wu absolutely understands and accepts when protesters stand in entrance of visitors, disrupting folks’s commutes and small enterprise clients, however in the case of a handful of individuals with cowbells in entrance of her home then she places her foot down.
Wu by no means even acknowledged that she took half in a avenue protest just a few years in the past, however she will’t distance herself from her protest days. She’s Boston’s most left mayor in historical past, whether or not it’s banning fossil fuels in new building, advocating a free MBTA, creating new metropolis workplaces just like the “forestry” division at taxpayer expense, or embracing new automotive and bicycle lanes which are squeezing out motorists.
It can be good if Wu had the identical compassion for the typical middle-class person who she has for far-left extremists.
She did announce on Wednesday that she’s creating a brand new “forestry division” to “bolster the city of Boston’s tree canopy.”
This means hiring a brand new forestry chief and a dozen different new workers, with taxpayer cash. It’s simply the most recent new division or company she’s created since turning into mayor.
Forget the truth that there isn’t a forest in Boston, until you rely the Arnold Arboretum, which is owned by Harvard University. Pretty certain they’ve sufficient funds to maintain that going.
Wu has a means of arising with increasingly more liberal new concepts whereas nonetheless in some way managing to seem like she’s some form of reasonable.
She’s not. She simply smiles rather a lot whereas spending increasingly more of your cash.
Maybe her new associates on the Extinction Rebellion, which is just about all younger white activists and child boomers, can pony up some cash to pay for all of the disruption they precipitated.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”