boston progress radio

As you may or may not know by now, Boston Mayoral candidate Sam Yoon did not have enough votes this past Tuesday to move on to the November General Mayoral Election. He lost by a mere 2300 votes to the second-place finisher Michael Flaherty.

You also may or may not know that I actually had an opportunity to work full time for his campaign during the past three months. I actually got hired on the second Friday in July during East Meets Words Open Mic.

These last three months have been exhilarating and exhausting. It was more than I could ever dream for—being that close to the inner workings of the campaign and to the point where I was actually driving Sam Yoon around to the different neighborhoods in Boston.

Now I know I was pretty critical of him when I wrote about his missteps back in March 2009. He quickly learned from his mistakes and tried to build a positive message and platform for change.

Despite the overwhelming odds of unseating a Mayor who has been in office for 16 years, had over 2 million dollars to spend, and have about 22,000 city workers at his disposal, the Yoon campaign held it together, built a lot of positive momentum, and over 17,000 Bostonians believed in what he was saying and voted for him. That’s pretty much a basketball arena.

I grew up by leaps and bounds by going around the different neighborhoods of Boston and just listening to their stories whether they were jubilant or tragic. It was a classroom that was on the streets of Boston and not in some book and I got a good education out of it.

I don’t know what I am going to do now, but I still teach English at Federated Dorcester Neighborhood Houses, but we will see, Sam has a lot potential to do great things and who knows maybe he will run again for Mayor in 2012.

Last 5 posts by chunfai

• The Tragedy in Binghamton, NY - April 7th, 2009
• Sam Yoon and Ethnicity - March 25th, 2009
• Beat Collective Brings Down the House (or Bookstore) at East Meets Words' 4th Anniversary - March 19th, 2009
• The Rise of Mandarin Speakers in Boston's Chinatown - February 27th, 2009

Tags: News.