A memorandum regarding Final Report of the Cambridge Advisory Committee on City Art, Monuments, & Markers

Final Report of the Cambridge Advisory Committee on City Art, Monuments, & Markers

This document represents the Final Report of the Cambridge Advisory Committee on City Art, Monuments, & Markers. This Committee was jointly chaired by City Councilor Denise Simmons and Cambridge Peace Commission Executive Director Brian Corr. It was composed of a diverse set of Cambridge residents who devoted their expertise and lived experience to the project over several months.

This Committee explored the compelling questions about how we create the narratives of our society: about who we choose to elevate in those narratives, and who is diminished or completely left out. These narratives are built into our society in a multitude of ways, from the voice of which stories and personalities are documented in our history textbooks, to whom we name our public buildings after, to the names of the streets we live on. Whether or not we are fully cognizant of it, we engage with the history all around us practically every day. In recent years, we have witnessed and taken part in a growing effort to be much more deliberate in that engagement and mindful of its impacts.

That desire to be more deliberate led Councilor Simmons to sponsor a policy order in April 2019 that called for a full accounting of local streets, schools, and public buildings that may be named in honor of those who had ties to the American slave trade. The order’s intent was not to erase our city’s sometimes complicated history, but rather to invite us to more honestly confront our history and the questions of how we shape and share our community narrative – and how it shapes us.

Two months later, Councilor Simmons sponsored a second policy order that sought to take this work further, asking City Manager Louis A. DePasquale “…to establish a working committee to review the monuments, memorials, and markers throughout Cambridge to determine whether any of these commemorate those who were linked to the slave trade or engaged in other similarly shameful acts, to determine which individuals – particularly women, people of color, and those from other historically marginalized communities – should be newly recognized with a monument, memorial, or marker, and to report back to the City Council on this matter in a timely manner.” And that is where our work began.

In response to that policy order, the City Manager appointed a diverse group of Cambridge residents – individuals embodying multiple dimensions of diversity – to serve on this new working committee. We both were appointed as co-chairs, and the work of the Committee was expertly shaped and facilitated by Executive Director Corr in partnership with Ora Grodsky of Just Works Consulting, an individual steeped in facilitating these types of processes through the lens of meaningful participation and deep inclusion.

We would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank the Committee members and City staff who were all so generous with giving their time, talent, experience, and expertise these past several months, making these recommendations possible in hopes of creating a better City.

Sincerely,

_____________________

_________________________ E. Denise Simmons

Brian Corr

Co-Chair

Co-Chair

BACKGROUND

The work of the Cambridge Advisory Committee on City Art, Monuments, & Markers (the Committee) is the embodiment of a deep commitment: a commitment to honestly confront our history; to understand how the stories we tell about our past shape our present and future; and to tell a fuller story of who we are and where we have come from so that we can co-create a better, more inclusive future for all. This work includes asking the questions about whom we choose to celebrate, how we understand their lives, and whether there are other, lesser-known but no-less-important individuals who ought to be lifted up and celebrated.

While Cambridge is rightfully known for promoting equality and for its activism, and has played often- highlighted roles in both the standard narratives of our nation’s history and the narratives of progressive social change, Cambridge is not an island, separate from the rest of society, nor is it immune from historical or present-day discrimination, oppression, or exploitation.

Cambridge is a complex community where some of the most privileged individuals in the United States live side-by-side with families living in poverty; where a variety of racial, ethnic and linguistic communities live, work, learn, and play together; and people whose families have lived here for generations are neighbors to people who came to this country as undocumented immigrants and refugees, as professors, graduate students, and technology workers, and as people searching for a community where they feel comfortable, welcomed, and able to feel at home.

The intent behind this endeavor was not to erase the sometimes-complicated history of our city. Rather, it is to compel us to reckon more honestly with the complexity of our history and acknowledge that many of our celebrated stories have only told a portion of the truth. These narratives have, at times, omitted recognition of tremendous harm and oppression of certain peoples; at other times, these narratives have ignored important contributors to our shared story.

The Committee, composed of Cambridge residents from a variety of backgrounds, viewpoints, and experiences, was appointed by City Manager Louis A. DePasquale, and due to the Covid-19 pandemic met remotely each month between January and June 2021. This working committee set an aggressive timeline to effectively take on and fulfill their charge: to “advise the City Manager and City Council on issues relating to public art, monuments, and historic markers on City-owned property.

Specifically… to develop recommendations on how the City should address City-owned monuments and markers, particularly those which may be viewed as inconsistent with the values of Cambridge, by which we mean a just City that prioritizes anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion.”

To place this work in its historical context, the six months during which the Committee met included: a global pandemic; continued police brutality and increasing gun violence across the country; increased awareness of the unfolding climate catastrophe; a presidential impeachment; a presidential election; an insurrection by white supremacists attacking the U.S.

Capitol, Congress, and its staff and police officers in an attempt to prevent the orderly transfer of power to the incoming administration; and the discovery of multiple unmarked gravesites of Indigenous children who died from mistreatment, neglect, disease or accidents in government-funded residential schools in Canada after being forcibly removed from their families and culture, reminding the United States of its own genocidal past and present.