REAL PEOPLE

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Councillor Vellucci should not speak for the Riverside community as he has tried to do in his article in The Crimson on April 9th. He has not been in Riverside more than five times in his entire life.

I was born there. My family has been there since 1896. I got more votes from Riverside than Walter Sullivan even though Walter's family has been in the area as long as mine. Al Vellucci got 36 (count them) votes down here, not even a tenth of what I got. Not even, as it happens, as many votes as I got in his Ward.

Harvard expansion is already pushing hard on my community, one of the oldest black communities in New England. We cannot survive the new development that the Kennedy Library would bring to both sides of the Square. When they built the courthouse in East Cambridge, Vellucci was very upset at all the traffic the courthouse would bring. He should show as much compassion for my community.

Vellucci is remembered for his attacks on Harvard. But here he is helping Harvard get some of the land Harvard has wanted for so many years. Vellucci says only transients are opposed to the library. They may come to be because Vellucci is helping Harvard push me and my community out of this city.

If built in Cambridge, the Kennedy Library will be a monument to man's insensitivity to the plight of the blacks and the poor. That's where I come from. That's where I get my votes. We are real people who do not intend to be forgotten. Saundra Graham   City Councillor