OMB Editorial

This week’s editorial would have been released on May 1st, but I decided to hold it up for a couple of days; so I could think over how to approach my subject, which - appropriately enough - is May Day and the American labor movement.

Gandhi famously said “A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” The same sentiment can certainly be applied to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - and its leaders Gov. Deval Patrick and the state legislature. And I can think of no better time to do so than right now as those worthies move to slash the budget of the Women, Infants and Children program by 20 percent in the Fiscal Year 2012 budget - following three years of nine percent annual cuts to WIC. Dropping the WIC budget from $12.4 million to $9.8 million in one fell swoop.

Now that the media circus is over, the tremendous price being paid by former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner and his family following his conviction on charges of taking a $1,000 bribe from a government informant is only under discussion at the grassroots level. Fortunately, his supporters have made it their business to circulate information about the facts of his incarceration at a federal penitentiary in West Virginia - and other relevant updates - throughout the Boston progressive community.

It's hard to believe, but Open Media Boston is celebrating its third anniversary today. On March 20, 2008, I wrote our first editorial and kicked off a big project ... launching a new kind of online community news weekly. A publication that was open to viewer participation, but that held to professional journalistic, editorial and production standards. A publication that used a fairly traditional Associated Press style when reporting the news, but had an openly left-wing editorial stance.