Update 29 May 2008:
Scroll down for video of the speeches of Gov. Deval Patrick and others at the launch of the Commonwealth Compact.
A link to transcripts of the speeches is provided as well.

(Boston, Mass., May 23, 2008) - The Commonwealth Compact was formally launched today with Gov. Deval Patrick, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and hundreds of leaders and individuals from the state's business, non-profit, health care and civic sectors, at a breakfast at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB).

The Compact aims to improve the hiring, promotion and retention of minorities and women in the state's workforce, and to make Massachusetts more welcoming for immigrants.

As of this morning, at least 102 businesses and organizations have signed on to the Commonwealth Compact, meaning that they are committed to practices that:

• increase the representation of people of color and women throughout their organizations, especially in management, senior management and positions in board governance.
• retain and promote people of color and women.
• connect with the diversity of the communities and customers that they respectively serve.

The Compact is a project of Steve Crosby, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy at UMB; Ralph Martin, managing partner of Bingham McCutchen and former chair of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce; Steve Ainsley, publisher of the Boston Globe; and Robert L. Turner, director of the Compact, Boston Globe fellow at the McCormack School and the Globe's former deputy editorial page.

Gov. Patrick, one of the speakers at the launch, remarked that the Commonwealth Compact could not be coming at a better time.

"Get used to it," he said, echoing his sentiments at his gubernatorial inauguration more than one year ago, when he saw the racial diversity of guests that included "the high and the mighty, and the meek as well, side by side."

It is "absurd" he said, to even consider the notion of not employing talented people of color to "advance our institutions."

Noting the progress that China, India and other countries have made in improving their educational and economic infrastructures, he called diversity initiatives such as the Compact "our economic imperative...to make sure that all of our residents have the opportunity to play a role in our state economy and in our social opportunities."

That the population of Massachusetts has declined, and could stymie the economic potential of the state, was not lost upon Patrick.

"Now more than ever [as the state's population growth rate has slowed down], we have to make sure that all of our people are engaged and ready for success...including women and minorities, individuals with disabilities,...members of the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] community...and the immigrant communities as well."

Patrick praised the contributions of immigrants to the state's economy, noting that:

* In the life sciences sector, one of the key drivers of the state's economic success, one in four start-up companies has an immigrant founder.

* Biotechnology companies in New England that have at least one immigrant founder produced more than $7.6 billion in sales and employed more than 4,000 workers in 2006, according to the Immigrant Learning Center.

* Massachusetts is home to some 16,000 Hispanic-owned businesses.

* In the U.S., Massachusetts is among the top 10 states for businesses owned by Hispanic women.

"We'd be nuts not to take advantage of that," he said, referring to the gains to the economy that have resulted from immigrant entrepreneurship and labor.

Mayor Menino called the 102 businesses that have signed up with the Commonwealth Compact a "great start."

However, he warned that good intentions must be followed by action.

"Just because you signed up, [that] doesn't mean you're participating," he said, to a round of applause.

Organizations that have signed on to the Compact are held accountable through benchmarks [2].

The series of benchmarks cover six major categories:

• CEO Commitment:
  Leading indicator: A diverse leadership team that includes people of color and women who share the CEO's commitment to organizational diversity

• Board/Governance:
  Leading indicator: A diverse board membership that reflects the consumer population and geographic area served

• Workplace/Personnel:
  -- Leading indicator: A diverse workforce, across all levels and job categories, that reflects the consumer population and geographic area served
  -- Leading indicator: People of color and women who develop and advance their careers and achieve increased levels of responsibility and seniority

• Customers/Consumers/Services:
  Leading indicator: Customers and consumers who reflect the larger consumer base or geographic area served

• Suppliers/Vendors:
  Leading indicator: contracts with minority- and women-owned firms

• Community Engagement:
  Leading indicator: Advancement of specific civic agendas promoting diversity, inclusion and racial, ethnic and gender equity.

The Commonwealth Compact benchmarks [3] measure the progress of organizations through information provided – and kept confidential – about their employees and activities.

"If you don't want to be held to those standards, please remove your [organization's] name from the Compact," Menino said.

But all organizations, especially those in the private sector, are encouraged to join the Compact. Racially-diverse workforces can offer competitive advantages, Menino said.

"To succeed in today's global economy, we all need a diverse workforce [at] every level...from the stock room to the board room," he said.

"We compete against cities around the world. The more our workforce reflects our global population, the better prepared we'll be to succeed in today's...world."

COMMONWEALTH COMPACT-RELATED LINKS:

To learn more about the Compact, visit compactlaunch.umb.edu [4] or e-mail commcompact {at} umb.edu.

See and listen to video of Gov. Patrick delivering his speech at the launch of the Compact, at www.mass.gov [5].

The video also shows guest speakers Mayor Thomas Menino and Vanessa Calderon-Rosado.

Read transcripts of the speeches of Gov. Patrick, Mayor Menino and Ms. Calderon-Rosado, at www.mass.gov [6].

Watch New England Cable News (NECN)'s TV coverage of the Commomwealth Compact, with political reporter Alison King, at necn.com/Boston/Business/Encouraging-diversity-with-the-Commonwealth-Compact/1211578400.html [7].

Listen to a WBUR radio interview with Ralph Martin at wbur.org/news/2008/77471_20080523.asp [8].

 

Following is the text of Steve Crosby's address at the launch of the Commonwealth Compact.

Launch of the Commonwealth Compact
Opening Statement
Steve Crosby, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston
May 23, 2008

From its inception-sometimes for good, sometimes for ill-Massachusetts has been at the forefront of the debate about immigration, and about our country's ability to accommodate diverse people of all types: Anne Hutchinson, King Phillips War, abolition, "Irish need not apply," busing, the gay marriage decision.

Our history of diversity is by turns rich, traumatic and inspirational. At this moment in history when immigration is again in the forefront, when Massachusetts' future is dependent on immigrants and other diverse peoples, and when this nation of immigrants is turning fearful and shutting down its borders-perhaps Massachusetts can again lead the way.

Let's remember the history of Massachusetts:

In 2004, while the Boston History and Innovation Collaborative was researching Boston's 400 year history of innovation and economic regeneration, we came to a startling realization: out of 60 of the most prominent innovations in Boston's history, well over a third had women, immigrants and minorities as prime movers. As examples,

* In 1721 the African slave Onesimus persuaded Boston's most powerful citizen, Cotton Mather, to try a West African tradition of small pox inoculation.

* Lewis Latimer, son of an escaped slave, invented the carbon filament in 1882 that made Thomas Edison's light bulb commercially viable.

* In 1887 Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman to graduate from MIT did the research and policy development that made Massachusetts the first state to establish standards for its public water supply.

* Louise A Giblin, a black female chemist at Boston Floating Hospital, helped invent the Similac baby formula in 1919.

* Dr. William A. Hinton, the first black professor at Harvard, developed the diagnostic test for syphilis in the 1920s and 30s, when the disease was the nation's largest public health concern.

In addition to the critical role women and minorities played in Boston's history of innovation and of economic regeneration, the contribution of prominent women and minorities on other fronts is a proud one:

* Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony led the women's suffrage movement.

* David Walker and his "Walker's Appeal" helped inspire the abolition movement.

* There were more black lawyers in Boston than almost any other northern city: James Wolff, Butler Wilson, Archibald Grimke, Edgar Benjamin and William H. Lewis; many led the way in defending the rights of Irish and Italian immigrants.

* In 1880, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins was the first black woman to write, direct and produce a non-minstrel play in this country.

* 1n 1862, the first officially-recognized all black armed military unit in the union army was founded, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers.

 

By the late 1800s, Massachusetts had a powerful brand as a desirable place for African Americans, and as a signal community representing tolerance and inclusion.

* In 1903, W.E.B. Dubois wrote of Boston:

It is the Negro's Mecca, the heart of his political and educational future. In old Boston, the Negro is rising, and nothing stands in the way of intelligent, representative men who are willing to use the mind to uplift themselves and their race.

* In 1902, Clement Garrett Morgan, a prominent African American lawyer praised the Greater Boston area as "the one place in the Country where talented men of color can be treated as men."

* Boston's reputation for tolerance and inclusion became a magnet for innovators and free thinkers. Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish immigrant, visited Boston by direction of his father; after witnessing a State House rally against the Ku Klux Klan, he wrote his father that Boston was the place he wanted to make his home.

 

A considerable body of scholarly work demonstrates that economic success has in the past been driven both by diverse people and the progressive social culture that diversity has cultivated. Academics and practitioners alike continue to alert us to this important economic reality:

* Richard Florida writes in The Creative Class:

Societies throughout history have tended to flourish when they are open to new people and ideas while stagnating during periods of insularity and orthodoxy. Recent studies have shown that talented and creative people favor diversity and a wide variety of social and cultural options.

Massachusetts has benefited from this truth. For 300 years, well into the 20th century, our economic and social prosperity in Massachusetts was inextricably linked with our openness to diversity and our reputation for tolerance and inclusion.

But by the mid 1900s things had changed. A changing economic climate caused an evolution of the waves of white ethnic immigrants from agents of change to protectors of the status quo.

New England's slow steady decline in traditional manufacturing, replaced by electronics-which reinvigorated the economy, but with a smaller, well-educated work force, which prospered in the suburbs, not in the cities-left urban breeding grounds for economic competition and cultural conflict.

These trends culminated in Boston's transformative and destructive decision by the Boston School Committee to preside over the unconstitutional segregation of the Boston public schools.

That era is symbolized by a single photo: African American lawyer Ted Landsmark attacked with a flag when he inadvertently mingled with a mob outside of City Hall demonstrating against Judge Garrity's court ordered busing remedy. This single image indelibly branded Boston as a racist city.

And on top of this change came another: since the 1970s, Massachusetts' population of people of color began to grow and diversify.

* In 1970, less than 4% of our state's population was non-white. Today it is 21%.

* 27% of all Massachusetts births last year were to foreign-born women.

* What was mostly African American became mostly Latino and Asian: there are 140 different languages spoken in Boston, and the largest immigrant groups are Haitian, Dominican and Chinese.

This pattern of immigration - once again - is absolutely critical to our economic health.

Were it not for these immigrants, the Massachusetts population would be declining.

Our already tight workforce would be tighter; we would lose federal benefits and possibly another Congressional seat; our tax revenue growth would decline; and the baseline employment to our key industries of health care, higher education, and life sciences would be imperiled.

As the Boston Foundation, Mass Insight, researchers at Northeastern, the Brooking Institution and others all agree, immigrants will be a prime demographic engine for growth in Massachusetts for a long time to come.

Yet, against the backdrop of these remarkable changes in our demographics, and notwithstanding the critical role that immigrants and people of color play in our economic future, the legacy of busing stains our brand as a community which does not embrace people of color:

* As Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon said during the discussion of Kevin Garnett's trade to the Boston Celtics, "you have this history of bigotry against African American people in Boston. Fact is Boston has that history and black players know it and you do not want to go voluntarily to Boston."

Wilbon went on to say, "I wasn't saying that Boston is a racist place. I was saying that this is a conversation that black people have. How separate are the worlds of black and white people for white people not to know that black people have this conversation? And not just black people but people of color. This conversation" he says, "has been going on forever."

* And indeed that conversation does go on. Ask virtually any young professional of color in our community who has recently moved here; ask him or her what their friends said about the possibility of moving to Boston. Ask Jim Rooney, the executive director of the Convention Center Authority about trying to get the organization "Blacks In Government" to come to our city for their annual convention. Ask Mayor Menino about the skepticism of people of color across this country when he fought to bring the Democratic National Convention to Boston.

It is a negative brand which persists. A brand which inhibits the flow of minority professionals to our community. A brand which impairs our economic growth.

And behind that brand is the stubborn reality that people of color in Massachusetts have life experiences that are vastly different from that of whites:

* A McCormack Graduate School survey in the fall of 2006 asked this question, "In the last 12 months, did you personally experience discrimination in employment because of your race or ethnicity?"

2% of whites said yes; 3 ½ times as many Asians said yes; 9 times as many Blacks said yes; and 13 times as many Latinos said yes.

* The Boston Foundation's "Boston Indicator's Report" points out persistent disparities in critical areas such as health care:

-- Infant mortality rates for Latinos and Blacks in Boston are 3-6 times higher than whites.

-- Asthma hospitalization rates for children under 5 in Boston are 2 ½ -3 ½ times as high for Hispanics and Blacks as for Whites.

* Paired testing by the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston shows that African Americans and Latinos experienced discrimination in roughly half - that's half - of their attempts to rent, purchase or finance homes in Greater Boston.

* And even now, we refuse to let the children of undocumented immigrants who graduate from our high schools attend our public colleges and universities unless they pay the rates of out-of-staters.

And the stubborn reality persists that few people of color - or even women - have penetrated the leadership of virtually any of our organizations - corporate, health care, education or cultural.

* Another recent McCormack Graduate School survey, done by the Center on Women in Politics and Public Policy, assessed over 500 boards of directors in Massachusetts:

-- 92% of major public corporate board members are white; 94% of hospital boards are white; 86% of higher education boards are white; 80% of cultural boards are white.

-- Representation of women is only marginally better. 87% of corporate boards are men; 77% of hospital boards are men; 65% of higher education boards are men; and 58% of cultural boards are men.

 

This is not the City, the region or the Commonwealth that we want to be.

This is not a reputation or a reality that serves our political or social or economic interests, especially with an aging workforce, and a slow growth state, situated at the heart of a global economy.

But today there are signs of change everywhere - the Governor's Office, the Office of the Senate President, the Office of Attorney General, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, the Office of the Mayor of Fitchburg, and the Boston City Council.

* In the corporate world, there are:

-- Juan Carlos Morales
-- Sam Martin
-- Brian Burke
-- Yvonne Garcia

* In education, there are:

-- Keith Motley
-- Drew Gilpin Faust
-- Susan Hockfield
-- Jackie Jenkins Scott
-- Gloria Larson

* In healthcare, there are

-- Cleve Killingsworth
-- Elaine Ullian
-- Ellen Zane
-- Jarrett Barrios

* In sports, there are the new Big Three, and Ramirez and Ortiz.

And many more.

* And, most remarkably, there are profound changes on the ground

-- Deval Patrick carries Southie, 50%-39%!

--11 of 46 Massachusetts mayors are women

-- As many as 5 Latinos will be running for Boston City Council, 2 for the State Senate, and 5 for Mayor of Lawrence.

With these dramatic symbols of change, it is time to seize the moment - at a time when race and gender dominate our political debate; as our country fights to keep its place in the global marketplace; as our state's politicians and economic leaders seek to promote innovation, to compete for talent, and to deepen our workforce.

Now is the time to create a new reality and a new reputation that Boston and Massachusetts are hospitable to people of color.

Now is the time to create a leadership structure which is accessible to, and representative of, the people who live here.

This is the mission of the Commonwealth Compact:

To establish Massachusetts as a uniquely inclusive, honest, and supportive community of and for diverse people.

To acknowledge our mixed history in this effort and to face squarely the challenges that still need to be overcome, understanding that the rich promise of the nation's growing diversity must be fully tapped if Massachusetts is to achieve its economic, civic and social potential.

Source: EthnicNewz.org

Copyright 2008 New England Ethnic News, EthnicNewz.org. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express permission of the news source. Contact NEWz for more information.

SEE ALSO:

New Initiative Aims to Make Massachusetts Better for Minorities, Immigrants and Women [9]

Immigrants Make Up the Bulk of High- and Low-skill Healthcare Jobs [10]

Can Immigrants Save Massachusetts' Shrinking Workforce? [11]

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