Somebody is going to die. As a direct consequence of Newton’s decision to become a sanctuary(-lite) city, a brown person is going to kill a Newton resident. That’s the conclusion of Chair of the Newton Republican Committee, Tom Mountain, in a column posted on WickedLocal* (which will presumably be printed in this week’s TAB).
Update (2/28): Per Andy Levin, Mountain’s column will not appear in the TAB this week.
The column is irresponsible fear-mongering. As we learned over-and-over, when you demonize a group, some rootless person listens, is activated, and takes deadly action. This week a gunman asked two Indians about their visa status and shot them, killing one.
The column is ignorant. The available evidence suggests that sanctuary cities are safer, for the obvious reason that undocumented immigrants are far likelier to engage with the police if they aren’t worried the police are going to deport them, which makes it easier for the police to do their job well.
The column is exploitative. Mountain uses the 2011 tragedy of a Milford family — whose son, Matthew Denice, was killed in a gruesome crash by an Ecuadorian immigrant, Nicolas Guaman — to make the point that we need to fear brown immigrants. To be fair, the family is willing to be exploited, the mother having appeared on stage with Trump as an Angel Mom at the Republican National Convention last summer.
The column is flat wrong on the link between sanctuary city policy and Denice’s death. Mountain writes that the Guaman had previously been convicted for assault on a police officer. In fact, Guaman did not have a criminal record. There is no record of an incident that would have caused police to investigate Guaman’s immigration status.
The column is flat wrong on the politics and the policy. Mountain claims: “The Obama Administration had tied the hands of local and state police to prevent them from detaining or even reporting illegals to federal immigration authorities.” What Mountain is refering to, presumably**, is the federal Secure Communities program, a program initiated and piloted under the Bush (W.) administration. Under Secure Communities, local and state law enforcement run arrestee fingerprints through ICE databases, on top of FBI databases. The Bush administration recruited 14 local partners. Far from tying any hands, the Obama administration expanded the program to over a thousand jurisdictions.
More importantly, because the connection to ICE begins with arrest processing, the Secure Communities program is irrelevant to Matthew Denice’s death.
When the Obama Administration came to the conclusion that the Secure Communities program was not effective in meeting its aim of reducing serious crime by undocumented immigrants, it shut down the program and shifted to prioritized deportations, focusing on serious criminals.
The Trump Administration has taken steps to revive the Secure Communities program and the president has issued an executive order relaxing the Obama administration’s focus on serious criminals and broadening the scope of immigrants the DHS can focus on to include immigrants with minor offenses or even no convictions. With a fixed number of current agents, broadening the scope inevitably means that enforcement efforts will target fewer and fewer serious criminals. (Adding more agents quickly is problematic, at best.)
Far from focusing on the so-called “bad hombres,” the Trump immigration policy gives immigration agencies incentive to round up not-dangerous undocumented immigrants with minor criminal records instead of the truly dangerous.
If Mountain is really interested in preventing death in the community, he could focus on the threatened repeal of the ACA, which is likely to lead to 40,000 more deaths per year. Or, he could call for investment in traffic safety. Death from vehicular-related crashes is up again for the second year in a row.
One suspects that making us safe is not Mountain’s objective. It’s keeping us white(r). Straight out of the handbook of racist demagoguery, Mountain is bringing attention to a single crime by a single person to demonize a disfavored group***.
Stirring up fear and hate. For shame.
*I don’t link to racist demagoguery. If you want to read it, you’ll have to find it yourself. Or look on your driveway tomorrow.
**I asked Mountain for clarification twice by email. He did not respond.
***h/t to @jbouie for the formulation.
Sean is right on here. Tom Mountain’s relentless, ham-handed and unAmerican fear mongering is more than just extremely tiresome, it’s irresponsible.
Also, a longtime journalist for the Globe and Herald and former media critic for WGBH, I’m disappointed in the Tab and Wicked Local editors for their increasingly lazy brand of community journalism. While it is a laudable goal of a community newspaper to share diverse voices and opinions, it does its readers a disservice by allowing itself to become one man’s personal platform. Diligent editors should work to find a variety of thoughtful voices with varying opinions, and not simply print everything that comes across their desk. The Tab also needs to apply a higher minimum factual standard to submissions in these days of rampantly alternative facts, even for opinion columns.
@Ralph: When Tom Mountain writes, intentionally of not, it’s not “one man’s personal platform.” Mountain is chair of Newton’s Republican City Committee.
I have enough Newton Republican friends to know that his views don’t align with theirs. But I do not understand how come Newton Republicans allow this man to misrepresent them.
Even if he is chair of the local Republican Committee, the TAB editors still need to execute control over their paper. It’s one thing to champion ideas from a minority viewpoint. It’s quite another to peddle racism.
Tom Mountain is deplorable, no doubt. This type of fear mongering is so damn frustrating. Yes Sean if Tom is so interested in saving lives: ACA and road safety are a great place to start. I would add domestic violence and dare I say it common sense gun safety laws to this as well.
I can’t help but think about the EVAN HOFFMAN case. Evan Hoffman violently killed Jose Puzul-Perez, of Chelsea with his reckless driving. Go to this article if you aren’t familiar with the case http://www.wickedlocal.com/x41621936/Family-calls-for-justice-for-man-killed-in-Newton-accident
Mr. Puzul-Perez would still be alive if Hoffman had ever been held truly responsible for any of his MANY illegal, troubling activities including several DUIs – the first in high school, breaking and entering an ex-girlfriend’s house, and destruction of property just the night before the crash. Even in this case, that resulted in the death of a father and beloved member of the Guatemalan community, Hoffman was sentenced to only 15 months in jail. Compare that to the 15 years that Guaman was sentenced to.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see that if this case had been reversed, that Hoffman (privileged white guy) had been killed by Puzul-Perez (brown immigrant) that the sentence would have been years and not months.
@ Greg: I think you made my point. This is just Mountain being Mountain. Regardless of whatever nominal post he now holds in a local political group, we’ve heard this perspective ad nauseam from him. It doesn’t add to the overall discourse, which is what the Tab/Wicked Local editors should be concerned with.
oh boy, here we go. Women of the golden Circle, circle the SUV’s..
Please allow me to lend a little off-topic context that I think is relevant to the way Republicans think and govern…
According to the Boston Globe, last year alone Massachusetts lost nearly 2000 lives to heroin. TWO THOUSAND LIVES! That puts our state on the same loss-of-life scale as a new 9-11 every 18 months. A majority of these lives have been lost as result of our Republican Governor’s failure to understand and adequately address the heroin epidemic. Maybe if Republicans demonstrated a little less fear mongering and a bit more competency I would pay closer attention to what they have to say. Then again, the Republican Party does have a long history of getting every major issue wrong.
@Mike: Reasonable people can argue as to whether or not Charlie Baker has done enough to address opiates. But no reasonable person could say a “majority” of those 2,000 lives would not have been lost if our governor had a different policy. That’s really oversimplifying the complexity of the problem.
Harry – do you want to explain your comment?
This column is unfit for print. I am appalled that the Newton TAB continues to allow Mr. Mountain to peddle such obvious lies.
As many who have written to the TAB know, they are not averse to using their editorial privilege, and yet this is, I believe, the 4th time throughout this debate they have given him a platform.
Due to the very low murder rate in Newton, its highly unlikely someone is going to “die” due to the sanctuary status. However….
Could ‘real’ criminals who happen to be illegal immigrants feel more safe in targeting Newton for such crimes as Burglary, theft.. Mmmmm a real possibility
Could schools see an influx in illegal immigrant children? maybe one or two, simply because of the high rents in Newton
I think the real point is that someone may die because a emboldened white man will see it as his right/patriotic duty to kill someone because of the color of the person’s skin or the religion the person practices. This is what we are seeing in NC, SC, Kansas…
The US economic model is dependent on immigration for highly skilled talent, university students, workers and to prop up the aging population as birthrates drop. The much more likely scenario is the American first/protectionist government policies drives our country into economic downturn. During significant economic downturns we will see an increases criminal activity as people are left fewer options to feed and house themselves. This criminal activity will be perpetrated by people who are mostly native born residents and yes mostly white because that is what the data shows.
I second the reservations expressed here about the Tab providing a platform for Mr. Mountain. It is surprising given the Tab’s otherwise reasonable and thoughtful reports and editorials. Is Mountain the only Republican in Newton worthy of or interested in publishing their opinion? It is really bad for out local Democracy that he is the only voice of the Republican party in Newton.
I wish Andy Levin would join this discussion.
Tom Mountain is a provocateur; his style is meant to elicit an emotional response from readers, as he very obviously did with this column. I can also tell you Tom Mountain is read by more people (online) than any other TAB columnist… by far. Apparently, many readers “love to hate” him. Others, a minority here in Newton, strongly agree with him. I don’t happen to agree with the argument Tom made against “sanctuary cities” in the column; it’s a red herring and I told him so. I expressed my own views on the matter early on in the debate.
@Bryan P. Barash: You don’t seem to have been paying close attention.
@Ralph Ranalli: Hi, I’m Andy Levin, editor of the TAB. I believe you are relatively new here? Mountain’s column aside, would you care to elaborate on this? “I’m disappointed in the Tab and Wicked Local editors for their increasingly lazy brand of community journalism.”
@HarrySanders: You are so funny. Cryptic, but in possession of excellent comic timing. Don’t worry, I get along just fine with the “Women of the Golden Circle.” They are good people.
@Greg– I respectfully and strongly disagree. According to the Department of Public Health website, opioid related deaths held fairly steady through the first decade of this century before spiking in 2013 and growing to epidemic proportions since Baker became Governor. There were 532 such deaths in 2010 for example, and 1747 deaths in 2015, Baker’s first year in office. And the deaths increased to over two thousand in 2016. So it’s not only “reasonable” to say good policies and practices could have [at a minimum] cut the recent heroin death rates by more than half, logic, and a look at the State’s own numbers indicate that to be the case.
Not to go too far afield, but THIS is the topic that should be front and center in Setti’s campaign against Baker. Every 18 months, our small Commonwealth is absorbing an equivalent loss of life to heroin as our nation absorbed on 9-11. And it’s happening in large part because our Governor doesn’t understand the nature of heroin abuse, let alone have a clue how to deal with it. Honestly, I don’t think Setti does either. But the next Governor of Massachusetts is going to be handed this raging epidemic, and that person better damn well be ready to deal with it. In the meanwhile, my heart bleeds for those who are suffering from this horrid addiction, because the Governor of Massachusetts has forgotten that they are human beings who deserve to be saved.
Andy is 100% correct. If I were in the newspaper business I would publish every single Tom Mountain editorial that I could get may hands on. It is an editorial, not news. The standards are different. Plus, you get always free click links from V14. The only better way to sell papers is to get a Kathleen Kouril Grieser editorial (whom I usually agree with).
Thanks @Jeffrey Pontiff.
Yes, KKG’s columns are also very provocative… and anyone familiar with my views knows I intensely disagree with her about the need for housing diversity. Sometimes she writes things that others find offensive. Others agree with her very much. So be it.
KKG writes for the TAB? I never noticed.
Mike, I appreciate and share your concern about this issue, but that is truly a gross oversimplification of a very complicated problem. Most public health officials would point more to the fentanyl and other synthetic opioids flooding the streets over the last couple of years, which are responsible for the vast majority of those deaths. (These synthetic opiods are much cheaper and much more potent than heroin, and Narcan is much less effective in reversing the effects.)
Andy, you have an interesting position on which editorials are published – Tom Mountain is click bait, making money, so he can write anything he chooses. I’m wondering how far he can go before you find him offensive enough to at least edit him. I don’t see actual filth in other editorials.
@Marti: “Click bait” is when a headline promises something but the story fails to deliver. Or, when you see a headline stating something like, “You’ll never guess what so and so said about…” Tom Mountain is not “click bait.” He is, however, popular.
What specific passage(s) in his latest column are you referring to as “filth”?
BTW, I do want to clarify a point about a line I just noticed in Sean’s intro, about Tom Mountain’s column presumably being in this week’s TAB: It will not. That decision was made last week, not because of criticism of it here this afternoon. Our opinion section is finalized early Tuesday morning, a few hours before the entire paper goes to press. I made the decision in order to allow other columns space to run in print. This week you’ll get opinions by Bob Jampol and Nick Pasquarosa on the “Welcoming City” ordinance being approved, as well as yours truly on the Orr block debacle.
@Greg: Your favorite!
Andy,
Post updated.
@Andy, relying solely on click data to make editorial decisions may be good business, but it doesn’t make for good journalism. There are many things that make money, but it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily the right choice.
If you want to make the TAB a source for racist and hateful speech just for the clicks, go ahead and do it. To your credit, you’re admitting it. I don’t agree that it’s the right choice. What you’re doing isn’t new and frankly, not that uncommon. It’s just really disappointing.
There are a lot of stories in this city that are worth writing about and a lot of problems worth commenting on. Maybe there is a way to find writers who are more interested in commenting on those.
The editor of the Newton Tab thinks a local housing activist writing about up zoning and parking issues is as provocative as a local alt right political activist who says foreigners are coming to Newton to kill?
I haven’t read Mountain’s column yet, but I can see right off the bat that the victim he seems so concerned about is misnamed. His name was “Matthew Denice,” not “Matthew Denise.” Not sure whose error that is — Mountain’s or the Tab’s — but if a basic fact like that is wrong, then what else is wrong in here? Or in other Mountain columns…or other Tab columns.
@Chuck Tanowitz: I leave making money to the sales department. But if a columnist is popular, I do consider that.
@ Anonymous: I think I have an idea who you are. No, KKG is not TM, not by a long shot, though she does upset many people, just in a different way. That comment was in response to Jeffrey Pontiff, who mentioned her as another controversial columnist.
Next?
@Tricia– Thank you for responding to my posts. I’d encourage you to read last weeks front page Globe article on the “opioid crisis.” Perhaps you already have. The Globe did an excellent job at singling out heroin–far and away–as the leading killer among what are commonly referred to as “opioid related deaths.” If I recall correctly, more than 80% of deaths in that category were distinctly heroin related.
Yes, Fentanyl plays a role. But it’s important to understand how Fentanyl is most often used as it relates to overdoses. In most overdose cases involving Fentanyl, it has been used as an additive by heroin dealers to “cut” heroin by increasing its volume. Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin, so there is a clear profit incentive for dealers to combine it with heroin, in most cases unbeknownst to their customers. The vast majority of people dying from Fentanyl are heroin addicts, who would never have encountered the former if not for their addiction to the latter.
I think a lot of people are confused by the rhetoric du jour, which makes constant reference to an “opioid epidemic.” In my opinion, we don’t have an opioid epidemic, we have an opioid problem that’s feeding a heroin epidemic. And this is a distinction that seems to be missed by most law makers and public officials, who in their haste to do something about the problem, have done exactly the wrong thing…
For example, patients who have developed an addiction to prescription pain killers, have been forced to turn to heroin after new regulations and protocols interrupted their access to pain medication. I believe an addiction to pain pills is something that should be dealt with exclusively between a patient and their doctor. The government should stay out of that relationship. Patients whose pill addiction is being scrutinized by a physician, have an excellent chance of recovery. But when their physician is forced by statute or protocol to terminate their prescription, many of those patients turn to a heroin dealer instead. Similarly, patients who have been turned away by archaic rules and protocols at methadone treatment centers, have no real option other than heroin.
I am in no way an expert on this topic. I began researching heroin addiction in Massachusetts for my own edification three months ago, after a young associate of mine admitted to being a heroin addict. I’m appalled by how the government has force fed this heroin epidemic. And mortified by how heroin addicts [in general] are treated when they seek help. The number of people we are losing to heroin far outpaces traffic deaths in Massachusetts. In my opinion, I lay the blame for this squarely at the feet of Charlie Baker, who seems perfectly content to allow 2000 Massachusetts residents a year to die from an out-of-control heroin epidemic.
By the way… Kudos to @Andy Levin for taking part in this discussion. Not an easy thing to do.
I don’t see a link to Tom’s column. Did I miss it? I’d like to know what it is that is upsetting people here. Mostly, they just don’t seem to like Tom and diverge into a Lot of their of their own biases about him and Republicans.
@Chuck – Really good point, it is great how much Andy engages with the community especially when the TAB comes up. It is also one of the huge benefits of having an editor who lives in the community.
It would be great if the Tab could publish other Republican-leaning columnists. I’m hungry for some healthy debate, and I don’t like the Democratic monoculture that pervades Newton and nearby communities. But Tom Mountain’s columns are nothing but provocation for the sake of it. I hope there are other, principled Republicans in Newton who would be willing to write worthy op-eds .
@Sean Roche: If you’re writing about a column, you should link to it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to google for. Sorry, it’s just a bit ridiculous to have a discussion based on your opinion without the source.
@Chuck Tanowitz and Bryan P. Barash: Thank you; appreciate it. I enjoy a good give-and-take. Bryan, regarding an earlier comment about folks writing to the TAB and our using editorial privilege: if you were referring to letters not being published, I plead guilty. You might be very surprised how many are submitted. I probably run about 60 percent to 70 percent of them, doing my best to pick and choose the best and most unique. This was certainly the case with the immigration debate, but also applied to many of our hot topics – development, leafblower, elections, you name it. It is a great problem to have!
What Chuck said. For an enemy of the American people, Andy Levin really isn’t that wretched.
@Andy: Absolutely a great problem to have. My point was just that Mountain seems to get published while what I consider very worthy columns frequently don’t.
But we just saw a national election where “shock stories” that got good ratings took up a lot of air time and helped elevate a man (Trump) who was rewarded for his bad behavior. Maybe its just as much on us readers for consuming these stories at a higher rate.
When I was editor of the TAB, we stopped publishing Tom Mountain (except for his veteran-honoring columns) because I was spending too much time fact checking and then editing him. Just sayin’.
For the record, I think Tom is writing this crap because he’s trying to get the attention of people outside Newton. I think the best thing to do is 1) do not link to him, and 2) ignore him. There’s little he likes better than being the center of conversation.
I totally agree with Gail. I’ve seen links to his editorials on closed Facebook advocacy groups with people wanting to know what the hell the Newton Tab was thinking publishing such obvious crap. Really, immigrants are coming to kill us.
@Gail and @Marti:
I think I have answered all of the accusations and stood my ground plenty long on this thread. You are of course free to despise Tom Mountain and strongly disagree with my decision to publish him. Enough said.
Fair enough Andy, but I expect that you’ll reach the same conclusion I did at some point. I’ll just continue to ignore him and suggest to people that they do the same.
@ Andy: Hello Andy. If by “new here” you mean Village 14, then sure, that’s true. I assume you don’t mean new to Newton or the Tab, my first job as a journalist was as a reporter for the Newton Tab in 1985 and I’ve been a homeowner and raised my family here since 2000. By “lazy journalism” I meant pretty much what the other commenters here understood that I meant: Disproportionately devoting editorial space to someone who is a prolific fringe provocateur rather than working to present a mix of opinion content that actually reflects the range of opinion in the city you are supposed to be serving. Guys like Mountain are low-hanging fruit, they can be counted on to reliably generate a lot of copy and – for better or worse – generate some clicks and conversation. I was an editor too, I get it. But you need to understand that your role as editor of a community newspaper goes beyond loyalty to your employer’s bottom line. Like it or not, you are a curator of the public discourse in a community where real people make their lives and raise their children. So if you think that poisoning that well by disproportionately favoring loud voices who deal in half and non-truths and peddle division and bigotry is somehow part of your mission as a community journalist, perhaps we might grab a coffee at George Howell sometime and have a chat.
It’s not a fringe opinion, TM’s opinion is shared by a national government increasingly using police power to terrorize minority populations justified by handwaving baseless claims that undocumented citizens are disproportionately responsible for crime (the opposite is true; undocumented citizens are less likely to commit crimes than their documented peers). The TAB doesn’t need to be complicit with this agenda, doesn’t need to give it page space or attention, but has chosen to. Healthy debate exists without the proto-Nazis having a seat at the table. At some point in the future, our kids and grandkids will want to say what side their parents and grandparents were on in this fight – and it won’t be TM’s side.