ABSTRACT
In a modest hospitality suite reserved for monitoring the initiative ballot Question 2, “English for the Children,” people began to gather in the early evening to watch the voting results on the three television monitors, to kibitz, to work the room—all typical of election-night socializing. Two floors above, Republican candidate for governor Mitt Romney, his staff and family, had a much larger suite for what they hoped would be a victory celebration. My husband and I drove to Boston in the late afternoon, walked into the rooms devoted to the referendum question, ready for a late night of flashing election returns. We were here to savor the outcome of eighteen months of intensive campaigning. Having failed for fifteen years in my efforts to get the Massachusetts Legislature to change a state law and improve the education of immigrant kids, I became a political activist, taking the question to the people.
