The large manufacturing plants and meatpacking houses that dominated the East Cambridge economy 50 years ago are gone. "It used to be that the whistle would blow at noon and everybody on the block would go home to lunch and the whistle blow at one and everybody would come back [to work]" says DiDomenico American Rubber. I ever Brothers and Squire Meatpacking no longer employ thousands of Easties. The result is that more of the residents work outside the area.
But changes in the concentration of employment have not meant changes in income. "The median income is lower than other parts of the city with the exception of Cambridgeport," says LaRosa adding that a lot of people are in the unskilled labor force.
The consequence of these economic changes some charge is a weakening of family ties and a loss of revenue for neighborhood business, with no counter balancing increases in incomes. "This was a good shopping area 25 years ago," says a 35 year residents adding now many of the shops have closed up."
Although East Cambridge remains strongly ethnic, the composition of the population has shifted sharply in the last thirty years. In the 1950s, Italians, Irish and Polish residents who could afford new homes moved to other parts of the city. The housing stock in the neighborhood began to deteriorate rapidly.
In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy 40 opened the area to victims of an earthquake in the Azore Islands beginning a large scale migration of Portuguese citizens to Cambridge.
Vellucci says that "an act of God" [the earthquake] saved East Cambridge, "because the Portuguese have performed "a renaissance" of the neighborhood by revitalizing the housing stock. Many residents agree.
But others say that the Portuguese and other new immigrants, including Black Hattians and Hispanics have destroyed the friendly atmosphere of the neighborhood. "How could I be familiar with my neighborhood when there is no such thing as a stable neighborhood," a 70 year old shopkeeper says adding, "We've got a type of people here who are total strangers."
In March tension between old and new immigrants surfaced when a building on Otis St was firebombed leaving eight Black families homeless. Residents however, agree that the incident was the act of a few and not evidence of general racism. It's the case of a very small group who make the whole neighborhood look like a racist community," says Marty Sack, director of the East End community center. "We don't want to sweep it under the carpet," says Frank Budryk, a member of the East Cambridge Planning Team "we want to confront it."
As a result of the bombing, the East Cambridge Unity Committee will sponsor a workshop on racism later this month. But Ann Hill, a committee member who moved to the neighborhood from Arlington three years ago, says she has found the community too "apathetic" to discuss problems.
"They are very content to stay in their own house," she explains, adding that the neighborhood's reputation for friendliness is an "ethnic closeness" that is much greater within a particular ethnic group.
Another resulted economic and changes can be seen in the neighborhood's teenagers, many of whom have no desire to remain in East Cambridge. "There's nothing to do around here," claims an 18 year old bakery worker, adding, "It's dead."
Most residents dismiss the desire to leave as youthful wanderlust. " Everybody wants to leave but nobody does," says DiDomenico LaRosa agencies". There are a lot of people trying to buy back into East Cambridge, but they cannot because the houses do not exist.
Many who leave the neighborhood eventually want to return, says Tom "Duke" Fusco. After all he explains, "it's got its problems, but it's better than most neighborhoods around."