Former Local 888 member Kendra Hicks took the top spot in the race for District 6 city councilor in Boston’s preliminary election. She and other candidates endorsed by Local 888 fared well at the polls — and are now gearing up for the general election on Nov. 2.
Local 888’s Committee on Political Action also endorsed several candidates for at-large positions on the Boston City Council. All made it past the preliminary:
• Michael Flaherty, an incumbent councilor and one-time candidate for mayor.
• Ruthzee Louijeune, a former SEIU Local 1199 member who went on to serve as a senior counsel for the Democratic Party presidential campaign of Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
• Erin Murphy, a longtime teacher and Boston Teachers Union member.
• Bridget Nee-Walsh, a 15-year member of Boston’s Iron Workers Local 7.
“I’ve spent my whole life doing community organizing work,” Hicks, 32, told The Boston Globe. “In that work, you knock on doors and call people. And you have to create a vision that people can get behind,” said the council candidate, a single mother of a 5-year-old son, Zaire.
Hicks was a Local 888 member when she worked previously for the Boston Public Health Commission. Now, she is the director of radical philanthropy at Resist, a Boston-based foundation co-founded by Noam Chomsky, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
Hicks has also been endorsed by the Boston Teachers Union and the Greater Boston Labor Council, For more info on Hicks, see see www.hicksfordistrictsix.com/.
First-time candidate Hicks netted about half of the preliminary vote in District 6, which covers Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury. Mary Tamer, who landed about 43 percent of the vote in the preliminary, will be her opponent.
Local 888 has also endorsed Tania Fernandes Anderson in the race for City Council in District 7, which covers Roxbury and parts of Dorchester and the South End. She was the top vote-getter, with 26 percent.
Anderson is the executive director of Bowdoin Geneva Main Streets, which aids local small businesses in Dorchester. Her website, https://taniaford7.com/home, says she grew up in District 7 as an undocumented immigrant living in poverty.
This election season saw a big shakeup on the City Council, with at-large members Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George in the mayoral race. Those two, as the top vote-getters in the preliminary, will compete for the office in November.
Part of the City Council shakeup this year was due to having then-Mayor Marty Walsh join the administration of President Joe Biden as U.S. secretary of labor in March