{"id":58677,"date":"2019-08-12T01:50:42","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T01:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58677"},"modified":"2019-08-12T01:50:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T01:50:42","slug":"the-law-according-to-rachael-rollins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58677","title":{"rendered":"The Law According to Rachael Rollins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Law According to Rachael Rollins<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Boston Magazine<\/a>
\n2019-08-06<\/p>\n

Catherine Elton<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPortrait by Diana Levine<\/small><\/p>\n

The charismatic new district attorney is Boston’s<\/a> greatest hope to bring the criminal justice system into the wide, woke 21st century. What’s at stake? Only the future of law and order in our city.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first thing I notice when I walk into Rachael Rollins\u2019s<\/a> downtown corner office is the impressive wraparound windowsill jam-packed with plaques, diplomas, statuettes, and a little engraved glass prism that catches the afternoon light shining through the window. Everyone from Mayor Marty Walsh<\/a> and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly<\/em> to the Cambridge branch of the NAACP<\/a> and a Dorchester<\/a> football team has contributed an object to her collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow, you have a lot of awards,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee,\u201d Rollins says, looking up from her desk. \u201cThere are people who like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second thing I notice is that the city\u2019s top prosecutor is already on the defensive.<\/p>\n

At first blush, it seems a little odd that the woman who recently won a landslide election with 185,133 votes (a number she mentions with striking regularity) would feel the need to remind me that there are people who actually like her. Then again, ever since winning the job of Suffolk County<\/a> district attorney on a promise to reform criminal justice, reduce racial biases in the system, and essentially reinvent the role of DA<\/a>, Rollins has become a lightening rod for Boston\u2019s<\/a> law enforcement and political establishments. She has received more attention and public ridicule than any other DA in the state\u2014probably more than all of the rest combined\u2014for policies her critics warn are a threat to public safety. She has taken heat from the cops, feuded publicly with Governor Charlie Baker<\/a>, and been hammered by a fellow DA. She\u2019s also been thumped by her fellow progressives for not yet making good on some campaign promises and has been featured in more unflattering photos in the Herald<\/em> than she has spent months on the job. And she\u2019s losing experienced prosecutors by the droves…<\/p>\n

…One of the foremost reasons that early supporters thought she should run is the rare mix of personal experiences she could bring to the campaign trail. The eldest of five children of a mixed-race couple, Rollins identifies as black but, thanks to her father, says she is \u201cfluent in white Irish male.\u201d She grew up with tight finances in a working-class family, but a scholarship allowed her to attend school at the tony Buckingham Browne & Nichols<\/a>. \u201cI am everything that people don\u2019t think I am,\u201d she tells me, \u201cand that\u2019s my superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Race and class aren\u2019t the only divides Rollins has straddled in her personal life. On one hand, she is an accomplished lawyer who worked at the U.S. attorney\u2019s office and served as general counsel at Massport<\/a> and the MBTA<\/a>. On the other hand, one of her siblings has served time in federal prison on drug and weapons charges. And Rollins is candid when talking about how another has had his own run-ins with the law, and a third has battled an opioid addiction<\/a>. As the result of some of these entanglements with the criminal justice system, Rollins is the guardian and has custody of two of her siblings\u2019 children, in addition to having her own teenage girl. It was these contradictions that made her the most distinctive candidate vying for the job of the county\u2019s top law enforcement officer. \u201cThere is no one out there with such a wide range of experiences,\u201d Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell<\/a> told me, explaining why she was one of those dozens of people who flooded Rollins\u2019s phone with messages urging her to run. \u201cShe gets the story from both sides.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The charismatic new district attorney is Boston’s greatest hope to bring the criminal justice system into the wide, woke 21st century. What’s at stake? Only the future of law and order in our city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1467,8,23674,20],"tags":[3711,18301,30113,3712,30111,30112],"class_list":["post-58677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-law","category-media-archive","category-social-justice","category-usa","tag-boston","tag-boston-magazine","tag-catherine-elton","tag-massachusetts","tag-rachael-rollins","tag-suffolk-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58679,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58677\/revisions\/58679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}