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The New Bedford Light: New Bedford’s growing Hispanic population lags in voter turnout. One in every four New Bedford residents is Hispanic, but none of the 11 city councilors are
August 11, 2025
Excerpt from The New Bedford Light | By Grace Ferguson, Tavishi Chattopadhyay and Jakob Moskowitz |August 11, 2025.
Photo: Jack Spillane / The New Bedford Light
The influence of New Bedford’s fastest-growing population is easy to spot.
You can find restaurants serving any tortilla-based dish you desire on Acushnet Avenue. More teachers and police officers in the city are speaking Spanish than ever before. The recent renovation of Dias Field into a soccer complex reflects how children’s interests have shifted from baseball to fútbol.
One place the changes haven’t reached: the City Council chamber. One in every four New Bedford residents is Hispanic, but none of the city’s 11 councilors are.
Hispanic residents turn out to vote at lower rates than the rest of the city, casting less than one in every 10 votes during recent general elections, according to a New Bedford Light analysis of voter data in collaboration with Boston University’s Spark! Justice Media co-lab.
In New Bedford, Hispanics are a young population with many recent immigrants, which means a smaller share of the city’s Hispanic population is eligible to vote compared to the city as a whole. While 65% of New Bedford residents are U.S. citizens over the age of 18, just 44% of the city’s Hispanics fall into that group.
GBH News: Boston could begin to fine contractors under its diversity hiring policy — but not for missing the hiring targets
Originally published November 17, 2021 | GBH News
A Boston commission approved a new policy Wednesday to impose fines on developers who fail to provide the city demographic data on their workforce, under a longstanding city ordinance that requires builders to employ Boston residents, women and people of color.
The new policy allows fines of up to $300 per day for each violation of a series of procedural requirements. Only one member of the Boston Employment Commission — Priscilla Flint-Banks, the newest member — voted against it, saying that it does not go far enough.
GBH News: Boston Struggles To Boost Minority, Female Labor Force In Construction
Originally published October 18, 2021 | GBH News
Four years after the City of Boston established more ambitious goals for equitable hiring in construction jobs, none of the city’s top projects hit the standard for hiring women and less than a third met the standard for hiring people of color, according to five years of city data obtained by GBH News.
Despite the new city standards meant to keep jobs local, residents have actually worked less on major projects, measured in the hours of labor. Local participation fell from 28% of hours in 2017 to 24% in 2020 — less than half the city’s 51% benchmark.
Priscilla Flint-Banks, who serves on the Boston Employment Commission that oversees the jobs policy, said adherence to the city’s hiring standards is “horrible.”
GBH News: The Long View: Boston’s White Working-Class Voters In Decline, Strength Of White Progressives Rising
Originally published October 13, 2021 | GBH News
The traffic circle in front of the Holy Name church in West Roxbury is home to a revered status in Boston politics. Four precincts in the high-voter turnout Ward 20 cast ballots in the parish hall on election day, and the circle at the intersection of Centre Street and West Roxbury Parkway has become a pilgrimage site for electoral candidates running citywide.
Last month, a little more than a week before the Sept. 14 preliminary election, the circle was split between campaign volunteers holding signs for at-large City Councilors Annissa Essaibi George and Michelle Wu, both of whom would advance to the Nov. 2 final in the mayoral election.
Their campaigns have come to symbolize the clash between Boston’s older and newer politics, with Essaibi George’s moderate platform resonating in the more conservative, predominantly white precincts in South Boston, Dorchester’s Neponset neighborhood and West Roxbury, while Wu’s progressive platform is finding appeal in liberal precincts in Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and the South End.
NBC Boston: Massachusetts Police Data Points to Racial Disparities in Arrests
Originally published April 1, 2021 | NBC Boston
When former Newton resident Tim Duncan and his wife were walking to the grocery store in May, they expected a leisurely stroll. Instead, Duncan, a Black man, found himself staring at a gun.
“We wanted to spend some quality time together,” Duncan said. “All hell broke loose after we turned the corner.”
Newton police officers stopped Duncan and his wife while looking for a murder suspect thought to be in the area.
The officers soon realized Duncan was not the man they were looking for, he said. However, Duncan, a former deputy athletic director for external affairs at Northeastern University who spoke out publicly about the experience last summer, said he believes the incident is an example of racial profiling.
CBS Boston: Minority-owned businesses were last in line to receive loans, latest PPP data show
Originally published January 4, 2021 | CBS Boston
Thousands of minority-owned small businesses were at the end of the line in the government's coronavirus relief program as many minority owners struggled more than White owners did to find banks that would accept their applications or were disadvantaged by the terms of the program, according to an Associated Press analysis of the low-interest government loans.
Data from the Paycheck Protection Program released December 1 and analyzed by the Associated Press show that many minority owners desperate for a relief loan didn't receive one until the PPP's last few weeks while many more white business owners were able to get loans earlier in the program .