When I heard that agents of the Bush administration’s Justice Department had arrested Chuck Turner on corruption charges, my gut instinct told me something was very wrong with this picture. Turner has a life-long history of advocacy and self-sacrifice. The FBI, on the other hand, despite TV and Hollywood makeovers, has a long, well-documented history of disrupting and destroying movements for justice and social change. Why should this case be any different?
If Turner is guilty of anything, it’s fighting hard for Boston jobs for Boston people, sustainable economic development and peace. He stood outside the accepted norms by helping to found the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party, by building a grassroots movement in his district and by leading the fight to stop the Bush-Boston University biolab on Albany Street.
The real criminals are those elected and appointed officials who persist in supporting the placing of Level-4 pathogens in the heart of the community. The real criminals reside in the administration that insists on a program of biological weapons proliferation in response to a terrorist attack emanating from the U.S. Army facility at Fort Detrick, Md. They add to this stupidity by trying to place these hazards within a children’s hospital in Oakland, Calif., atop an earthquake fault in Livermore, on a hurricane-zone sand spit in Galveston, Texas and here in the heart of Gridlock City.
I have no doubt that Chuck Turner will be exonerated, and that the movement for a healthy community will continue to grow and prevail.
Sandy Eaton
Quincy
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I think the BioLevel 4 Safety Lab is a great asset to our community. It can promote further development for cures for diseases and pathogens we do not know. Many people are uneducated about the lab. A lab has never been the mark of a terrorist attack, nor has there ever been a breakout. I feel hollywood dramatizes things like this causing people to fear something that is nothing. The real problem is lack of communication and education. If the government and University accurately communicated what the lab was for to all those involved I think it would have less protest against it. I for one can’t wait to see it built.