A Progressive Town That’s Stayed Safe

AFTER 904 nights of sleeping in Manhattan’s Midtown West, I took a three-day trip — to exotic, faraway Boston. What I found there was shocking: normalcy. Boston is a liberal city — but also a pragmatic city. My 9 a.m. walk down to New York’s Penn Station for my train to Boston was normal — for the new New York. I had to avoid an emotionally disturbed gentleman brandishing a bottle, screaming at people to “get away from me.” (Good advice.)

Four hours later, I de-trained in Beantown, dropped my backpack at my hotel, and began a long walk — 21,599 steps.

I didn’t set out to take such a long walk: I had planned to spend much of the day working in my room.

But as I walked on, I found myself relaxing. I walked the tourist spots of Faneuil Hall and the wharves. I walked downtown. I walked the two parks. I walked to the Prudential Center, and then all the way through the Fens and the museum district.

I went to the museum, had a drink, took the T back, ate an outdoor dinner and walked to my hotel, by myself — in the dark.

I gradually realized that I did not feel nervous at all. Nobody accosted me screaming. Nobody looked like he was about to stab me if I refused to smile at him. The dusk-time Green Line T was a paradise of people on their way home from work, or on their way out to clubs.

Passengers chatted or scrolled their phones, rather than glancing at their fellow passengers to assess the stabbing risk.

The next day, I worked all day on my computer, outside — and the same unusual thing: Nobody harassed or threatened me. I took the Blue Line T to East Boston, and did not have to figure out where to stand on the platform to equidistantly the nationwide level of 15%.

But: First, during the critical “defund” movement of summer 2020, Boston was lucky to have a longtime, moderate Democrat mayor, Marty Walsh. “I think that just arbitrarily cutting the budget isn’t the answer,” Walsh said in June 2020.

This was during the worst of the protests-cum-riots. It was hard to take this stance — but Walsh showed cops that though he would insist on police self-discipline, he wouldn’t throw his force under the bus.

This moderate stance has continued, under supposedly progressive Mayor Michelle Wu. She killed police-budget cuts this year, winning praise from the conservative Boston Herald: “People got the message. Wu is supporting the cops,” the paper’s contributor Peter Lucas wrote.