Henry Smilowitz

"While they're bathing your feet, they're chopping your head off." --Saundra Graham

Henry Smilowitz, a graduate student in biology at MIT, is perhaps the least experienced member of the five-person coalition of community-oriented candidates known as the "Five."

Smilowitz has lived in Cambridge for the past three years, having graduated from Reed College in 1968, and though he has no real "political" experience, he has been the leader of a food co-op for the last two years.

Not a forceful speaker, his campaign style is less than exciting, but his association with the "Five" has given him a fair degree of exposure and he has held his own in candidates' nights at local schools. But, as with many other candidates, he has no natural constituency, and his low-profile campaign style does not seem to have won him too many votes.

His ideas are strong and he appears to have done his homework on city problems. The nicest note in his campaign literature is a suggestion that trees be planted all over the city. "I have been trying unsuccessfully to get trees planted outside my house to replace those cut down," he mourns.

He told the Crimson last week that one of the first things that a fresh city council should do is open up the city government to people. This includes publication of the ways in which all money is spent; listing of all job openings in the government; and the setting up of boards to hear cases of police brutality and other police offenses. The use of regular referendums would also help achieve this end, he said.

His feelings toward the universities are not as bitter or strong as some other candidates, and his views reflect a large measure of common sense on that subject. "The city first should prevent any more expansion by use of strict zoning ordinances. Cambridge really has enough people. But Harvard and MIT are and could be much more exciting to the city--they could become a source of life to the city," he said.

Day Care

He supports a 24-hour day care center but said that it should be carefully controled by the community. "The most important thing about a day care center," he said, "is the ratio between adult and child." "It is important to have as many people as possible taking care of children. And it would be a good thing to involve old people, have students come home after school to work in the centers, and maybe people could someday work seven hours a day and then spend the extra time taking care of kids."

He feels that police ought to spend more time on foot beats because, he says, "People just keep on getting mugged and beaten up, and having policemen riding around in those big cruisers isn't helping things much." He also favors establishing several small shuttle buses to travel most of the streets in Cambridge, so that traffic can be reduced somewhat.

Like all of the "Five," Smilowitz proposes the immediate firing of city manager Corcoran and rent control administrator Corkery. He also supports the rent control referendum, saying that it is the single most important step in preserving communities in Cambridge.