Ohhh, yeah, Boston must have high expectations for THIS City Council member…
Back in the Home of the Bean and the Cod, where of-color Mayor Michelle Wu held an apartheid Christmas Party to which no white officials were invited, (in case you’re curious, yes indeed, Mayor Wu has attributed Claudine Gay’s demise at Harvard to “racial bias”), newly elected city councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson has to retake her oath of office after a video was circulated on social media showing that she neither said the words nor raised her right hand during this week’s swearing-in ceremony.
Fernandes Anderson was instructed by both City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune and the city’s law department to retake the oath, both verbally and in writing. The do-over was supposed to take place at 9 a.m. today, but though City Clerk Alex Geourntas arrived to swear in, she wasn’t there. The District 7 councilor’s staff told Geourntas at around 11 a.m., and again shortly before 1 p.m. that she was on her way, but Fernandes Anderson eventually called in at 3:15 p.m. to say she wouldn’t make it.
Fernandes Anderson was caught not saying the oath verbally in a video posted by Boston Accountability Network. The city charter requires city members “before entering upon the duties of his office,” to “take, and subscribe in a book to be kept by the city clerk for the purpose, the oath of allegiance and oath of office prescribed in the constitution of this commonwealth and an oath to support the constitution of the United States.” She apparently did sign the book.
Asked by reporters about whether her not saying the oath verbally support complaints challenging Fernandes Anderson’s standing as city councilor or votes she took this week, Geourntas referred them to the city’s law department, which referred them to the mayor’s office. Mayor Wu’s staff had no comment, and referred the reporters to the City Council president, who ignored multiple calls seeking comment through her chief of staff.
Let me guess: Michelle Wu will say that forcing Fernandes Anderson to actually say the oath required by law is racial bias.
Ethics Alarms 
Seems like she’s just going to put this off until people give up and accept her as a City-County Council member.
One wonders why she didn’t take the oath and raise her hand. She’s hard of hearing? She was having a stroke at the time it was given? She doesn’t understand what oaths are? Her religious beliefs don’t permit her to take oaths? She doesn’t support the Constitution of the United States?
What could it be?
It’s going to be awfully hard for anyone – including Ms. Fernandes Anderson – to whine about racial bias or “whatever” bias, since she is voluntarily becoming part of a structural system put in place by bigoted men with lesser levels of melanin who only sought to keep people of her gender and skin tone suppressed and silent. Isn’t her participation in this council (which has maybe been around for two centuries in Boston) just feeding the gaping maw of the white-male patriarchy that has come to dominate all facets of American society and which perpetuates systemic racism?
Anyways…
Ms. Fernandes Anderson did sign the book, so I’m assuming she is bound by the oath to the same degree as speaking AND signing it. But this feels like a setup. Was her signing of the book recorded on video? If not, what’s to prevent her from later coming back and stating, “Someone forged my name right there so I’m not bound by the oath…and I didn’t speak the oath nor raise my right hand, so I’m not bound by the oath.”
My next thoughts are based on my assumption that obeying the terms of the city charter is required for city politicians.
How do we expect the citizens of a city to obey the laws of the city when those put in power refuse to do so? And in this case, she refused to do so in such a way that it was seen by lots of people. If this councilwoman-elect doesn’t deem it important to follow all the requirements of her office, then she must not deem actually holding the office to be all that important.
According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know . . .) she is a practicing Sunni Muslim.
jvb
She was supposedly “committing” a Muzzie prayer, and tried to brush it off by saying everyone is going to violate the oath anyway, so why say it.