In response to Scott Copley’s Feb. 24 letter to the editor, “Biolab protests are rude and immature” (p.6), quite simply, the tour guides misquoted us. We never said “BU sucks.” We said, “We urge you not to go to BU because your tuition money will help fund the biolab,” and we handed out information about the proposed lab.
In response to The Daily Free Press’s Feb. 24 editorial (“Operation: Over, for real,” p.6), I completely agree that it’s nice to see student activism on Boston University’s campus again, but I completely disagree that fighting the Level 4 Biosafety Laboratory is a lost cause. BU’s strategy from the beginning has been to ignore the concerns of the low-income community of color, play them off as silly, uneducated black people who just don’t know the facts, spread misinformation and explicit lies (BU’s pro-biolab website states, “The Biosafety Lab will create new jobs for our community” while showing a picture of a smiling black woman. However, the only jobs for that community will be a couple hundred temporary construction jobs) and try to stop this issue from blowing up in the media so they won’t be forced to answer hard questions. If we can make this issue blow up in the media — and building a biosafety lab in an already undeserved community against its will is certainly newsworthy — we can force community accountability onto BU President Robert Brown and the rest of the BU decision- makers.
As far as “going through governmental channels,” as the editorial suggests, it’s being done. There is an ordinance going through the City Council that will ban BSL-4 facilities in Boston, and there is similar statewide legislation in the works. Community groups are suing BU for, among other things, environmental racism. The research that the biolab will conduct will be violating a Boston Public Health Commission regulation against rDNA research on BSL-4 pathogens, and we have plenty of prominent scientists, including BU professors, speaking out against the lab. We’ve been going through “governmental channels” and trying to dialogue with BU for the last three years, but the simple fact is BU has lots of money, lots of spin doctors, a couple of big politicians and the federal government on its side, and the people in Roxbury, most of whom are approaching the poverty line, only have their voices and the help of some of us. As Klare Allen, one of the community leaders, has said, “It’s time to stop being polite.”
Stopping the BSL-4 facility is not a lost cause, as long as we keep the pressure on everyone with the power to stop the biolab. In a suburb of Toronto, community outrage banned a proposed BSL-4 facility even after construction started. There is certainly precedent to stop the biolab, and we’re an ever-growing grassroots campaign that won’t give up until we win.
Micah Lee Member Operation: Over The writer is a former Boston University student.