Jeffery McNary
2019 Candidate for Cambridge City Council

Home address:
116 Norfolk St.
Cambridge, MA 02139

Contact information:
Tel:
website: facebook.com/jefferyforcambridge/
Twitter:
e-mail: jefferyforcambridge@gmail.com
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Jeffery McNary is a new candidate this year.

jeffery for cambridge

Recently I read a quote from Anais Nin that went, “…the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” I couldn’t help but compare those lines to our community, our Cambridge, and where we find ourselves these days.

As a working writer and resident of this incredible place, I’m constantly amazed by the talent and brilliance we live amongst. Harvard is here. MIT is here, as is Lesley University. There are artists, and scholars, start-ups and industries, along side those who lace up and slip on their shoes every day to chase dreams and to make a living and embrace and own zip codes of note, whether by chance or choice.

Yet with all of that, we’re somehow just muddling through when it comes to quality of life issues. We’ve an unusually high rate of poverty for a city our size, and what’s even more disturbing, are the numbers of similar size urban areas when it comes to “Most Engaged Local Governments”, and “Most Responsive Local Governments”, resulting from a 2018 study conducted by MIT. In the latter, we’re ranked 10th, behind places like Hammond, IN and Ann Arbor, MI, while in the former we trail Macon-Bibb County, GA. CAMBRIDGE DOES BETTER!

Gunter Grass reminded us that, “Memory likes to play hide and seek…to crawl away.” But for those who have been at the tiller of City government, the time for abstractions has passed, and the period of talking and acting falsely has proven costly and painful for many, as some incumbents whine with pretense of unachieved, duh, achievements.

I’m conducting a transformational campaign for office, and I’m committed to a transformational role as a Councilor. I have begun this process by achieving the necessary signatures to make the ballot, and by submitting to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance of the Commonwealth a Form CPF D104, certifying that I do not intend to accept contributions, make expenditures, or incur liabilities for any campaign related purpose. I want our campaign to go from door to door, from mouth to mouth. The community thirst for such dialogue and fashion. It’s that day!

If and when elected, I will serve no more than two consecutive terms.

I am a senior citizen, a descendant of African slaves brought to America. I bring all the witness and passion that comes with that to this race and will continue to do so in office.

Together with a painter, a woman who volunteers teaching ESL, recent arrivals from Haiti and Bulgaria, I live in a wonderful suite of rooms and share common spaces.

My writing can be found in Harvard’s Transition Magazine, The Vineyard Gazette, Art Slant, Chicago Art Magazine, Neoteric Art, and other outlets. It’s often gone well… and sometimes, oh well! Currently I am working on a piece for stage exploring the friendship between authors, James Baldwin and William Styron.

As a youngster, I lived in a household where politics and government were regularly discussed at the dinner table. I’m a child of the 60’s, and watched Martin Luther King, Jr. on black and white TV. I shocked the hell out of my parents when one day I arrived home with a blue work-shirt and a SNCC button singing Dylan and promising, “I’ll let you be in my dream, If I can be in yours.”

Later I studied for the priesthood and spent time with the Jesuits, learning about the, “Catholic Cool”, the Berrigans, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Corita Kent. Mine is a generation that ground a war to halt and debated the social issues of the day far into night. Times change…as do avenues and directions and energies.

I found myself working political campaigns, local and national, including that of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, where I was asked to stay aboard in the administration, and there serving as Coordinator of Economic Development, co-authoring the Executive Order Establishing the Minority Economic Development Commission. I was the Governor’s representative to the Massachusetts Government Land Bank, as well as to the historic, “Linkage Agreement”, between the State, the City of Boston, and private developers, providing a significant package of community benefits.

I served on the staff of State Senator William Golden, who made significant progress on the clean-up of Boston Harbor, and later as Chief of Staff to Boston City Councilor Bruce Bolling, a champion of economic development in the City’s underdeveloped communities.

I know how the levers of government work and the responsibilities of each and how and when they are articulated.

Throughout this campaign, I’m conducting “policy-pods”, sessions with experts in the field of issues impacting like-size cities, and I will continue to do so in office. I’m asking you to participate by kicking around your views and opines to me at jefferyforcambridge@gmail.com. We’ll build that way…we’ll carve out solutions…real things we can embrace, not chatter.

I am supportive of the Barry Bluestone Housing Model, a proposal exploring, a paradigm which makes sense for Cambridge, where, seniors, students, and market rate housing are shared. It’s a tripartite partnership I will later detail.

Let’s modernize the Cambridge Housing Authority, and establish oversight of homeless shelters with real rehabilitation initiatives for residents in need. We can secure protections for seniors fallen to predators, public and personal.

As we move forward, I’ll post a new website to highlight other issues.

Join me. Talk this up with one another!!

CAMBRIDGE DOES BETTER!!!

CCTV candidate video (2019)