Word: brode
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When John Brode '52 lost his citizenship during the Korean War for leaving the country to avoid the draft, he could not have guessed that he would be running for a seat on the Cambridge City Council in 1975. But the McCarran Act, the instrument of Brode's exile, was declared unconstitutional in 1957, enabling him to return...
...economist with a background in computers and statistical analysis, Brode is mainly concerned with economic issues. "Rent control is way and away the biggest problem," he said, while pointing out that it is only a part of the overall problem of "economic pressure" on the city. "A lot of money wants to come into Cambridge, to do things like buy land and build high-rise buildings." Rent control and zoning restrictions, he said, are potential means of preserving neighborhoods, "so that blacks and working-class people can afford to stay here...
...Brode traces his ideas about government to being "impressed" with Communist-run villages in Frances, where he lived as an exile. "I'm not a liberal, but I don't think the radicals would claim me. I'm definitely left-wing, but I think that you can get something done through the political process...
...commercial developers. Independents focus instead on the need to bring businesses and high rent housing into Cambridge to increase the property tax base, a task they say would be facilitated by the end of rent control and the curtailment of downzoning. At the other extreme, non-incumbent John Brode '52 (CC '75), formerly a co-founder with Saundra Graham of the radical Grass Roots Organization, points to what he calls a "causal link between high rise buildings and crime," and argues that tax dollars from development are eaten up by the cost of providing increased city services. Brode favors abolishing...
...perennial whipping boys, the universities. When it comes to Harvard, the candidates trip over one another in their anxiousness to establish their credentials as bona fide critics of University expansion and the University's failure to increase its "in lieu of tax" payments to the city. Some candidates, like Brode, say that a simple shift in the attitude of University officials towards the community would go a long way towards relieving town-gown tensions. "The scientists at MIT are far more humane than the humanists at Harvard" when it comes to working with the community, Brode said. Harvard administrators...