The DNC comes to Windmill Point
07-29-2004

Hull Times
Stephen Martin

Selectman Gerry McLaughlin, along with members of the Democratic Town Committee (DTC), greeted the group and accompanied them past a makeshift security barrier, to the foot of the towering turbine.
“We’re proud and happy that a national convention would take an interest in Hull,” McLaughlin said.
A sizable contingent of local police and fire personnel, led by Police Chief Donald DiMarzio and Acting Fire Chief Robert Hollingshead, was on hand to provide security.
“We want to exercise every possible precaution to assure the safety of the delegates,” said DiMarzio, adding that the Coast Guard and Hull Harbormaster also helped to coordinate security measures for the event. “We closed the Gut (the Northern extremity of the peninsula) to traffic at midnight (Monday) night,” he continued, “so nobody had to have his vehicle towed this morning.” No vehicles, save the Hull Light bucket truck, were allowed beyond the barrier.
Necks craned to see the 150-ft-tall landmark that seems to have placed Hull on the national map, delegates asked questions of Hull Light Operations Manager John MacLeod.
MacLeod spoke of a plan, proposed by McCabe, to move the 0.6-megawatt windmill to the Town landfill, and installing a bigger (1.8-megawatt), and quieter, turbine in its place.
Meschino said, “We have an opportunity to buy a bigger turbine at a decent price, making it more economically feasible.” If there is enough opposition to the plan, she went on, alternative steps may be considered, such as selling the existing generator. The decision-making process, she said, “reflects a lot of creative thinking. We want to maximize the resources we have, but we’re not trying to cram it down anybody’s throat.” A public informational meeting will reportedly be held on or about August 12.
Hull appears to be ahead of a swelling wave of wind power.
Pennsylvania State Representative Dan Frankel related that Carnegie Mellon University has invested in seven wind turbines, to be placed 70 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Cape Wind Project Development Manager Christopher Sherman said that resistance to a proposed Cape Cod wind farm has “lost momentum.” The group will issue an environmental impact statement in August.
More windmills may soon dot the local horizon, as well.
Thomas B. Powers, president of Boston’s Island Alliance, announced that his organization is working with the National Park Service to develop turbines on various Boston Harbor islands.
“We’re eager to explore the possibilities of wind power on the islands,” Powers told the Times. The turbines would power new island visitor facilities as they are built, he said.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), co-sponsors of the Hull event, will build a smaller turbine right off the Expressway in Dorchester within a year, according to IBEW Business Agent Martin E. Aikens. The 100 KW windmill is to power the IBEW Apprenticeship and Training Industry School there.
Gesturing toward Brown, a long-time advocate of wind power, Harvard’s Solar Design Associates President Steven J. Strong said, “This guy is a real hero. (Hull Wind I) is history-in-the-making. It shows what big things a small group of citizens can accomplish.”
Hull Democrats go to the DNC. Several DTC members could be found in Boston this week, taking active parts in convention proceedings.
William Connors, who helped welcome the conventioneers to Windmill Point on Tuesday, had on Monday manned a table at the Government Center, directing delegates to various convention venues.
Committee member Shelley Fortier spent last Sunday at Park Plaza, helping conventioneers wherever she could.
Among the 137 Massachusetts delegates was political veteran Ginny Allan. This was Allan’s seventh national convention. Through the years, she has served as a delegate, an alternate, a member of the platform committee, and a convention staffer. A member of the town, state, and national committees, she is currently Vice-chairwoman of the DNC’s eastern caucus.
Active in the Town Committee for more than 20 years, Allan is executive vice president of Boston consulting firm Liberty Square Group. Liberty Square and the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe co-sponsored a Wednesday night convention party at the Rack, a Faneuil Hall tavern. Allan’s organizational talents helped make the affair, also attended by the Times, a success.
Former Hull Selectman Timothy Mackenzie, chairman of the Hull for Kerry Committee, has politics in his blood. His mother, Weymouth resident Margaret “Peg” Mackenzie, has been involved with national politics ever since Walter Mondale’s 1984 campaign. This was her sixth consecutive national convention.
The younger Mackenzie has been politically active since Studds’ unsuccessful first congressional bid in 1970. From Monday through Thursday this week, he worked at the Fleet Center, checking credentials before allowing delegates into the convention, and connecting attendees with their congressmen and senators.
For at least two days a week over the past three weeks, DTC member Gerald Nirenberg has driven celebrities, as well as such high-profile pols as Democratic primary candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, to and from various convention events.
On Wednesday afternoon, at Boston’s historic Old South Church, Marrocco – also a DTC member – spoke to delegates at an interfaith service and rally that addressed issues of hunger and poverty in this election year. She shared the podium with the likes of former astronaut and Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla), Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct), and Rev. Dr. James Forbes of New York City’s Riverside Church.
Marrocco, once homeless herself because of domestic abuse, is now community and development coordinator for One Family, a statewide organization dedicated to ending family homelessness.
“My hope and dream for low-income families is for them to find an easier path to affordable housing, education, training, and humane living than I did,” said Marrocco, who was interrupted several times by spirited applause. “I will not feel content until I see every family have an opportunity to have a permanent roof over their heads.”

© Hull Times 2004