You know the backstory about Warfield Place: the tree ordainment, the 2,300-signature petition; the overwhelming opposition to the asphalt-heavy street plan. But you may not know about the extent of the city’s hostility. You may not understand how vulnerable your own neighborhood is.
The Department of Public Works taped the street plan to our doors the same week they solicited construction bids, allowing for no resident input. This indifference to our feedback was underscored a few weeks later in a Zoom meeting with DPW Director Donna LaScaleia, where she said the plan was “go or no go” and wouldn’t be changed.
Fifty of us met with Mayor David Narkewicz to express our opposition. We felt sorely disrespected at the meeting, and that’s when our grassroots organizing began. For months, we spoke at City Council meetings, wrote letters and made phone calls. The mayor didn’t budge. On July 18, he even reposted the original street plan on his Facebook page.
But the week of July 19–23, things started to turn. The tree warden came to Warfield and discussed our concerns. He said the DPW was considering revisions. We waited. On Tuesday, July 27, the DPW sent a new version with key improvements. They finally mentioned sustainable materials. They committed to replanting more than two trees. This was encouraging; at long last, the city seemed to be listening.
We hoped collaborations would continue. I personally wrote to LaScaleia and said the plan was progress. We got ready to perform an unrobing ceremony for the trees. We sought advice from (the only two receptive) council members, Rachel Maiore and Marianne LaBarge, who approached the mayor’s office via the city solicitor on Wednesday, July 28, and requested mediation with the mayor. We wanted less divisiveness. Even if we lost the trees, we wanted to work with the city to find a solution we could all live with.
As a backup, we had a legal case ready to go: a request for a temporary restraining order based on the city’s unlawful denial of a shade tree hearing. But we didn’t want the situation to become unnecessarily adversarial. We hadn’t filed the lawsuit because we believed Narkewicz and LaScaleia were working with us in good faith. We were dead wrong.
At 10:25 a.m. on Thursday, July 29, a neighbor called to tell me our legally parked cars were being towed, simultaneously, by different trucks. No notice, no signage. I went outside. LaScaleia was running from tree to tree, ripping off ordination robes and offerings of flowers, prayers, poems and painted stones. I implored her to stop — to let a Buddhist priest remove the robes. She did not even pause.
A fleet of enormous landscaping trucks rumbled in behind the tow trucks, escorted by police cars. Workers instantly started sawing limbs. No safety tape, no roping off the area. Six armed officers stood by in flak jackets, with more police on the way. This was not a construction site; it was an invasion. I instructed our lawyer to file the temporary restraining order request.
It is standard, if one believes in the rule of law, to halt something irreversible if one knows a judge is about to rule. This is called “preserving the status quo,” and it is about as axiomatic in legal practice as saying “Your Honor.” City solicitor Alan Seewald received word in the courthouse that an emergency order was being filed. But the status quo was not preserved.
Back on Warfield, workers sawed from both ends of the row, and bystanders were filling the sidewalk. I climbed into a tree. My wife climbed into another. The DPW was in such an unhinged race to fell these trees that they even started chainsawing the tree I was sitting in while I was sitting in it, 15 feet up. At this point, it was 10:36 a.m. I had been outside for 11 minutes.
I received word that the temporary restraining order was officially pending, just waiting for a judge. Several trees still stood. I notified police officers and DPW officials about the order. They ignored me. A lawyer on the scene identified herself as an officer of the court and instructed the DPW to halt work. They ignored her. The lead plaintiff in our case showed officers an electronic copy of the filing. They ignored her. My wife was pulled from the tree and arrested.
Officers ordered me down. I asked to speak to the mayor or Police Chief Jody Kasper. No dice. I saw tears of anger and disbelief in the eyes of the neighbors with whom my wife and I had shared sourdough starters, gardening tips and Thanksgiving dinners. I looked at the multi-family homes that line our street and tried to imagine Narkewicz doing this to a wealthier neighborhood. I could not.
Six officers climbed onto a landscaping truck, pried me forcibly from the tree to the truck’s roof, and arrested me. At that point, the two healthiest trees were still standing.
While I was carted off, the judge ruled in our favor. The police and DPW were repeatedly informed of the ruling, but kept cutting, by conservative estimate, 19 minutes after the temporary restraining order was issued. They violated it brazenly, surrounded by people imploring them to obey the law.
The mayor would later defend this operation as standard practice. In truth, there was nothing standard about it. A small, mixed-income neighborhood challenged the mayor and the DPW. They didn’t like it, and they made us pay. Do not make the mistake of thinking this is only about trees. This is about human unkindness and a failure of democratic government.
Authoritarianism, even in miniature, hyper-local form, is shocking to witness — even more so when it is carried out by “progressive” leadership, which turns out to be progressive only so long as it is never questioned. Try standing up to it, and it turns haughty and mean.
If this can happen on my street, it can happen on yours. The attack on Warfield — and make no mistake; it was an attack — shows the danger of autocracy. Regardless of how you feel about the repavement, I hope you are troubled by the city’s actions. I hope you will ask the candidates in our next election whether they denounce the city’s treatment of Warfield’s residents, plan to hold the DPW accountable, and will institute changes to ensure this never happens in our “Tree City” again.
Kathryne Young, a sociology professor, lives on Warfield Street in Northampton.