[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 14392-14393]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            JACK H. BACKMAN

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 23, 2002

  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, last weekend, Massachusetts suffered a great 
loss. Indeed, when Jack Backman died, the world lost a man who was as 
fiercely dedicated to the cause of social justice as anyone of whom I 
have ever known.
  My association with Jack Backman began in January 1973, when I became 
a freshman Member of the Massachusetts Joint Legislative Committee on 
Social Welfare, of which he was the Senate chair. I was proud to work 
under his leadership in those years for policies that would preserve 
some minimally decent life for the least fortunate among us. I have 
never worked with an elected official more willing to follow where his 
conscience led him with no regard whatsoever for electoral consequences 
than Jack Backman. And to my pleasant surprise and often to the chagrin 
of others, it turned out that when voters were presented with an 
example of someone prepared to do exactly that, they responded in a 
favorable way. Jack Backman genuinely brought out the best in 
democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, in the Boston Globe for Tuesday, July 23, Renee Loth, 
Chief Editorial Writer, drew on her years as a reporter to give people 
a fair portrayal of this extraordinary man. I very much appreciate her 
doing this, in such a personal and compelling way, and because I think 
this model of how we Representatives should do our jobs ought to be 
widely shared, I ask that Ms. Loth's eloquent and accurate tribute to 
Jack Backman be printed here.

                 [From the Boston Globe, July 23, 2002]

                            Jack H. Backman

                            (By Renee Loth)

       I LAST SAW Jack Backman at a forum on women's issues at the 
     University of Massachusetts in Boston in May. I told him the 
     state could use him back in the Senate, where he had served 
     for 16 years, and I meant it. Jack H. Backman, who died 
     Friday at age 80, represented not just his constituents in 
     liberal Newton and Brookline but an entire population of 
     otherwise disenfranchised citizens: prisoners, mental 
     patients, street people, drug addicts.
       Concern for the less fortunate has become so marginalized 
     in state politics that social

[[Page 14393]]

     spending is usually connected to a ``sympathetic'' interest 
     group, such as children, or politically sophisticated groups 
     such as the elderly or women. But Backman, whether in flush 
     times or lean, represented causes for which there was no 
     obvious political reward. With characteristic clarity, he 
     once said he found it ``morally abhorrent'' that the 
     dispossessed had no voice in government. So he gave them one.
       During Backman's tenure in the House and Senate (1965 to 
     1987), Massachusetts was at the national forefront of social 
     reform, much of it tied to his efforts. His legislation 
     created the first Office for Children, the first lead paint 
     removal act, and a guaranteed annual income for the blind and 
     the disabled. He helped fund and implement the groundbreaking 
     consent decrees that U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ordered 
     to improve conditions at state facilities for the retarded. 
     He led regular tours for freshman legislators of the state's 
     maximum security prison in Walpole.
       He pushed to pay welfare mothers a living wage, to divest 
     state funds involved in the apartheid regime in South Africa, 
     to deinstitutionalize juvenile justice, to give prisoners 
     rights to education and training. He worked with a calm 
     persistence some found maddening, using the Committee on 
     Human Services (then called the Social Welfare Committee), 
     which he chaired, as a pulpit for hearings on society's ills. 
     He annually filed one bill--to appropriate $100 million in 
     housing construction funds--for at least 11 years, mostly to 
     illustrate the housing woes of the poor and the elderly.
       Philip Johnston served for eight years with Backman on the 
     Human Services Committee. ``He always took the view that it 
     was his role and our committee's role to push the envelope on 
     social justice,'' Johnston said. ``He felt that someone 
     needed to articulate what was right and let others decide 
     what was feasible.''
       In 2002, elected officials are reviving the chain gang and 
     charging prisoners a day rate for room and board. The 
     Legislature just passed a budget that eliminates health care 
     coverage for 50,000 low-income and disabled adults. We really 
     do need Jack Backman--dreamer, believer, humanist, optimist--
     back at the State House. He was the rarest of politicians: 
     someone whose heart was bigger than his ambition.

     

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