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Axios
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Boston gets a Haitian cultural center, a dream 25 years in the making
The Toussaint Louverture Cultural Center of Massachusetts — an homage to Boston's Haitian community — opened this week in the West End. Why it matters: The center was a dream 25 years in the making in Boston's Haitian community, led partly by community leaders Marie and Wilner Auguste. The big picture: Boston joins Miami, New York and other American cities with large Haitian communities that have built cultural centers. Greater Boston was home to an estimated 50,000 people of Haitian descent as of 2020, per a Boston Indicators report. That includes an estimated 25,000 Black people with Haitian ancestry in Boston, the report says. Catch up quick: The center's task force won a bid to open the space at 131 Beverly St., managed by Related Beal, in 2023. By the numbers: The center will operate in the space rent-free for 25 years, with reviews of the deal every five years, said Marvin Dee Mathelier, the executive director. Related Beal gave the group $50,000, which helped cover construction costs. The organizers have raised $300,000, including $150,000 from the Barr Foundation. State of play: The center, run by two part-time employees, including Mathelier, will be open four days a week, 10am–3pm, starting next week. Visitors can see the gallery exhibit, peruse the reading room named after the late poet laureate Danielle Legros Georges and drink coffee. The center will ramp up programming and extend its hours, hosting panel discussions, dance events and possibly cooking classes, Mathelier told Axios. Zoom in: A man dressed as Louverture, the Haitian general who led the nation to freedom from French colonial rule, waved the Haitian flag Tuesday night as organizers celebrated the center's grand opening down the street from TD Garden. Boston recording artist Rebecca Zama sang the American and Haitian national anthems to scores of attendees at Lovejoy Wharf. The opening comes during Haitian Heritage Month and on the day believed to be Louverture's birthday. What they're saying:"Haitians belong everywhere," City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune later told the crowd. "We belong in every corner of this city." Friction point: Some residents wanted the center in the heart of Boston's Haitian community — Mattapan, Hyde Park, Roxbury or Dorchester. Rent-free real estate aside, Louijeune tells Axios the location reflects the Haitian community's reach across the city, from the business owners in Mattapan to the cleaning staff working in downtown office buildings. "Here in the heart of this city, we belong here like any community group," Louijeune said in an interview. What's next: Mathelier said he's looking to raise another $200,000 to hire a full-time employee to staff the center and cover costs long-term.
Boston Globe
01-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Retiring in Mass.? For older adults, a massive wealth gap exists
While the top third of retired households in the state average a whopping $3.5 million in wealth, the bottom third scrape by with around $55,000, according to a new report from Boston Indicators, the research arm at the Boston Foundation. The report illustrates the massive wealth gap between the rich and poor. Researchers found that while adults 65 and older tended to make more than their counterparts in other parts of the US, the Advertisement About 80 percent of older adults in low wealth households for example, did not have sufficient income to meet their basic needs and age in place, the report found. In contrast in other states, only 63 percent of these households fell short of that. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up And while income disparities are smaller among local residents, the prospect of looming cuts to federal programs present yet another challenge. 'What happens if [my husband's] Social Security disappears, or our Medicare?' said Kate Lee-DuBon, 68, a former high school English teacher living in Medway. 'This is a time of real anxiety for everyone,' she said. While Lee-DuBon counts herself lucky because she has a pension, the recent fluctuations in the financial market have made her more anxious about the future. She avoids looking at her retirement accounts, and hopes they'll eventually recover to their previous value. Advertisement 'I'm worried about making it to my old age without becoming a financial burden on my children,' she said. For Black and Latino families retirement disparities are worse, with nearly three-quarters of non-white households falling into the bottom third of the state's distribution — a figure that is worse than many other parts of the US, the report found. Carolyn Villers, the executive director of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council which represents 1,300 seniors, points to redlining, housing and employment discrimination among the factors that could lead to these outcomes for people of color. 'The inequities that people face throughout their lifetime kind of compound as they reach retirement,' she said. Dorchester resident Betty McGuire, 81, worked at Polaroid for nearly three decades. She raised nine children and was able to purchase a three-decker where some family members still live. But While McGuire's employer offered an individual retirement account when she was working, it wasn't feasible for her to contribute at the time. 'I just couldn't find the space or the money to put away, I just needed to take care of the family,' she said. To combat such massive inequality among older adults, the report's authors made several recommendation, including for state officials to make it easier for homeowners to defer or reduce their property tax payments as long as they reside in their home. Advertisement Currently, the state offers three such programs but the application process is complex and there are often strict eligibility requirements. According to The report also recommends that the state implement an automatic retirement program for workers who do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement savings plans. Such a program would reduce the number of people who approach retirement with little or no savings and would not affect state coffers, they write. This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Esmy Jimenez can be reached at
Boston Globe
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
In Massachusetts, men and boys are falling behind, new report shows
And while gender pay gaps persist, men without a college degree have seen their wages stagnate, limiting their economic mobility. The staggering data is highlighted in a Advertisement 'I'm concerned that in recent years as some of these data points have gotten more and more troubling, people in blue states like Mass. have have been too cautious to engage in the discussion,' said Luc Schuster, one of the authors of the report and the executive director of Boston Indicators. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Men are half the population, and if we don't engage in these issues in a thoughtful way, other more reactionary voices will step in and dominate discussion,' he added. While the authors of the report are quick to point out that the Take education for instance. Across the state, male high school students perform worse academically than female students: They're completing fewer advanced courses, graduating at lower rates, and are less likely to enroll in college. Employment without a bachelor's degree has become more challenging over the years, too, the report finds. In 1983, 87 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 were employed. That number fell to 78 percent in 2023. Why they're not employed is also distinct. Among women, 49 percent say they are taking care of their family or home. Compare that to unemployed men, 48 percent of whom state they are ill or disabled. Advertisement Men of color are especially impacted. In the state, white men's full-time median earnings in 2023 were at $1,659 a week. Black men's earnings however dropped to $1,098, and Latino men's earnings were the lowest at $929. Jobs that have traditionally been held by men such as manufacturing, retail, and wholesale trade, also saw declines in the last decade, while industries such as health care and education — ones typically associated with women — have grown. 'In the Boston area, our kind of bread and butter is health and education,' said Branden Miles, the policy and research manager for the Mayor's Office of Black Male Advancement. The office, which was Men 'who may not have had the training or the ability to access higher education are struggling' to break into these fields, Miles said. Part of the challenge for Black boys and men, he said, is battling stereotype threat, a psychological impact in which marginalized groups struggle to fight back against negative narratives about their identity, leading to stress and anxiety. Black men and boys are sometimes seen as 'challenging, a threat, or intimidating,' he said, and that's why the office tries to approach their work with an asset-based approach, focusing on the talents of Black boys and men. The ability for men to provide for themselves and their family has consequences, said Richard Reeves, one of the authors of the study and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Advertisement 'You don't freeze the wages of particular group in society and not pay the price,' he said. Reeves also points to initiatives to get more women into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but fewer efforts to get men into fields such as health, education, administration, and literacy. Workforce training and other targeted policies could address this gap to get more men into higher-paying fields such as nursing, that also face a national Ultimately, the goal is to get 'break out of zero sum thinking' Reeves said, and 'to show that it is possible to draw responsible attention from the boys and men without in any way taking away from the necessary ongoing effort on behalf of women and girls.' This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Esmy Jimenez can be reached at
Boston Globe
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
What else is gone from federal websites? Troves of census data, rattling local groups.
Related : Advertisement On Friday evening, the US Census Bureau's website was completely inaccessible for a few hours as data were scrubbed from the site. And as of Tuesday afternoon, data pages on population estimates for US counties, cities, towns, and metropolitan areas were still blocked from public view on Those datasets are among the most important maintained by the federal government and inform both public policy and funding, as well as private business operations. The following datasets were among the most consequential that were still inaccessible on as of Tuesday afternoon: Estimates of US US The Statistics of US Businesses Since the deletions, users of the Census Bureau's data have scoured the internet to find other copies in case they never come back online. The Census Bureau is not the only federal site being buffeted by content purges. Many federal agencies, Advertisement Researchers who use the Census Bureau's menu of data on a daily basis say they were not informed that the data were going to be removed and have not been told if or when they will ever be republished. Amid the wide-ranging shakeup, LGBTQ-related research papers and blogs were also stripped from the Census Bureau's website. A research paper that used census data to The purge of LGBTQ+ research comes at a pivotal time for the Census Bureau, researchers say. The agency had only recently begun collecting large-scale data on LGBTQ+ populations to try and build an accurate tally and track the issues they face. A detailed tally of LGBTQ+ Americans does not yet exist, because major US national surveys were not previously asking relevant questions. 'It's a scary time, because we've spent decades trying to build a really big, robust research base, and in one fell swoop they are trying to sweep it out the door,' said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, a UCLA-based think tank that studies sexual orientation and gender issues. 'It's an existential question: Do facts matter?' It's unclear if the Census Bureau will release future data on sexual orientation and gender identity, some of which has already been collected. The entire webpage explaining the Census Bureau's planned use of data related to 'Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity' has been shut down. Census officials did not respond to written questions from the Globe asking about their future plans. xxCensusData Globe Staff Globe Staff If the wide array of currently inaccessible content continues to remain blocked in the months to come, the impacts would be immense not just for researchers, but also for private commercial groups who use census data to model their expansion efforts, said Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators. Advertisement 'Private companies use census data all the time to target growing customer bases to determine where they might want to set up a new branch of their businesses,' he said. Boston Indicators, the research division of the Boston Foundation, also relies heavily on census data in its reports about how social, political, and demographic trends are reshaping the Commonwealth. For decades, the Census Bureau has been viewed widely as one of the most reliable and accurate sources of information on US demographic trends. The mass removal of content since last Friday has completely upended that reputation, experts say. 'The fact that all sorts of people are using this data all of the time, and then they pulled the rug out from under businesses, researchers, and all kinds of people suggests they are okay with sowing chaos,' Schuster said. 'It risks eroding confidence in the current administration.' Scooty Nickerson can be reached at
