“I am not an admirer at all of the mayor of Boston,” Brian Camenker, who leads Mass Resistance, says of the city’s first-term mayor, Michelle Wu.
“I think she's a horrible communist,” he tells AFN, “if you want my opinion."
Mayor Wu’s critics might agree with that description, especially the 15 people who are listed in an email (see photo below) that was sent from a mayoral staffer to a Boston police captain. Among the names on that list is Christine Vitale, an at-large City Council candidate and a vocal critic of Wu.
“[Mayor Wu] made it clear she will abuse her power to silence her critics,” Vitale, referring to the list, told WCVB-TV last week.
The list also includes members of the Boston Accountability Network, a watchdog group known as BAN. The group’s Twitter account shows it is investigating and confronting Boston politicians, such as an unlicensed city council member who crashed her car into a home.
BAN, which includes Vitale, also organized protests outside Mayor Wu’s home last year to demand she end a controversial COVID-19 shot mandate for City of Boston workers. The names of some those protesters are included on the list, according to The Boston Herald.
The emailed list itself, which was sent a year ago this summer, was only made public after the Massachusetts Free Press submitted a public records request. Now that the list was no longer a secret, a spokesman for Mayor Wu blamed it on the Boston Police Department, which expressed concern for the mayor’s safety last year due to unruly protesters, he said.
Mayor Wu was a self-described “progressive” City Council member when she was elected in 2021 with great fanfare because she is Asian and female, both a first for Boston.
At her victory speech, the mayor-elect promised a “Boston for everyone" after running on a campaign platform for "racial, economic, and climate justice."
To their credit, some Boston-area media outlets have not let the minority, female mayor off the hook. “Was this list meant to be an intimidation tactic to the people who are on it?” a WCVB-TV reporter asked her last week.
“Um…it…certainly no,” the Mayor unhappily replied.
In a related Boston Herald op-ed, columnist Joe Battenfeld asks a common-sense question about claims Boston police requested the 15 names. "Why would police," he writes, "request a list to be sent to themselves?"
Regarding the protesters, Camenker says they haven’t been arrested for breaking the law while the Democrat mayor they were protesting was behaving terribly, such as firing police officers for refusing the COVID-19 shot.
A police sergeant and an officer were terminated earlier this year for refusing the COVID-19 shot and after joining protesters in front of Mayor Wu’s home, according to news outlets.
Like her denial of being involved in the enemies list, Mayor Wu denied involvement in firing the two cops, Sgt. Shana Cottone and Officer Joseph Abasciano.
Sgt. Cottone's name is No. 3 on the enemies list, just below Christine Vitale.
