The Boston Globe, February 2023
Who has more “equity” credibility on the streets of Boston? Mayor Michelle Wu or Ted Landsmark, one of several Boston Planning and Development Agency board members who challenged the mayor’s plan to dissolve that agency and create a new one in the interest of “resiliency, affordability, and equity,” as Wu put it in a letter to the Boston City Council.
As a mayoral candidate, Wu ran on the rhetoric of “racial, economic, and climate justice.” But Landsmark is a living symbol of racial injustice, as captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Stanley Forman for what was then the Boston Herald American. The infamous incident, which led to Forman’s now-iconic photo, happened on April 5, 1976, during a demonstration against court-ordered busing on City Hall Plaza. Landsmark, then 29, was walking across the plaza when he was attacked by a group of protesters, one of whom was wielding an American flag.
