In 2022, the Berkshire chapter of the NAACP released “Pittsfield Westside Neighborhood, A Case Study: Redlining in the Mill Towns of New England.” It examined how the racist practice of limiting access to financial resources for predominantly poor, Black neighborhoods has led to a disproportionately lower quality of life along racial lines in the county’s largest community. At the PCTV debate before the September 19th preliminary election, WAMC asked the candidates whether they had read the report, and if they had, what they thought.
In her answer, at-large city councilor and former city police officer Karen Kalinowsky referenced the death of a West Side resident – Shaloon Milord – who was hit by a car while crossing the street with a toddler in January.
“I did read the report," said Kalinowsky. "We still do that today. I'll give you an example- The young mother that got killed on West Street- We have not paved that crosswalk yet. We have not even put the blinking lights up there yet. I was talking to a city employee today. I said, how many months has it been? He goes, about eight or nine. And I agree with you, if this happened on Williams Street, it would already been in place two weeks after it happened.”
“I did read the report, and my takeaway is, it really brought me back to both Morningside and West Side Initiatives, both developed under Mayor [James] Ruberto, and I was pleased to be the first chair of the Morningside Initiative,” answered City council President Peter Marchetti.
“Right now, the Morningside and West Side Neighborhood Initiatives are not functioning," said former city councilor John Krol, who represented the Westside on the council as the Ward 6 representative for a decade. "We have to get those started again. And absolutely they did start. And as far as the report, yes, you can listen to a podcast that I had with Kamaar Taliaferro and Dr. [Frances] Jones-Sneed on that. We went in depth, and yes, there is a long legacy and a sad legacy in Pittsfield with redlining, and that means we have to work a lot harder in those neighborhoods.”
Despite the trio’s claims to have engaged with the report, one of its lead researchers namechecked by Krol says their answers don’t pass the smell test.
“For me, it was clear in the answers that were given last night that the four primary strategies that we identified that the city of Pittsfield and its mayor could take to repair the broken bonds of the human covenant between Black Westsiders and local government – caused by segregation, caused by discrimination and disinvestment, caused by redlining – those answers that were given last night showed at best- Not even at best, showed that there was no familiarity with what those four primary strategies that we identified were,” Kamaar Taliaferro told WAMC.
Taliaferro, the Berkshire NAACP chapter’s co-chair of the joint committee for political action and housing, worked on the report. He says from the beginning, the team working on it wanted to make sure it would be used appropriately.
“We had observed, both locally and nationally, that reports of this nature can be appropriated to justify ends that are out of alignment with those grounded in the historical analysis that we undertook, right?" he explained. "So, definitions can be changed, boundaries can be expanded, actions that are taken or not taken can be justified using a veneer of competency, especially a report that contained recommendations that were both incremental, and transformational.”
To that end, any group that wanted to receive a full copy of the 117-page report had to agree to a follow-up conference with the NAACP with questions detailed in writing beforehand. The shortlist of organizations that agreed to those terms does not include Marchetti, Kalinowsky, or Krol.
“To date, only Greylock Federal Credit Union, the Tri County Continuum of Care, Berkshire Regional Housing Authority, and the administration of Mayor Linda Tyer are the only organizations who agreed to engage in our blanket policy and who received the full report,” Taliaferro told WAMC.
Taliaferro says that the 22-page summary available on the NAACP’s websitedoesn’t include some of the report’s most important findings, and re-iterated its four major action items.
“The city of Pittsfield needs to formally recognize the detrimental impacts, and establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission," he said. "And it needs to come from the city of Pittsfield, from government. We ask that the city investigate developing structures that actually empower residents in the Westside. We ask that the current ordinances that are restricting development on the Westside that were informed by redlining that those were updated, and they were updated in socially responsible ways, and we gave some examples of how that could be done. And then we also asked to go a step further, right? Because the city alone isn't going to fully solve the present-day challenges that are associated with redlining. It needs to be a whole of government approach. Government needs to take the lead. So, we also asked that the city of Pittsfield, through its mayor, organize to influence state legislation that would increase funding for affordable residential development that would strengthen tenants’ rights and that would stabilize neighborhoods for those who currently live in them.”
The answers offered by Pittsfield’s mayoral hopefuls left Taliaferro feeling like the report had been misused just the way the NAACP took steps to prevent.
“If you're going to use the redlining report, you have to engage with the policy that we developed," he told WAMC. "Otherwise, you're going to miss nuances. Otherwise, you're going to recreate the same patterns of oppression, of concentrating capital, concentrating political capital, concentrating social capital, in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many. In particular, Black Westside.”
