Brookline PAX, founded in the 1960s as an anti-war advocacy group, once was the leading edge of progressive local ideas, and has long been a fixture of Brookline politics.
In more recent years, the group has seen its influence shift and often clashed with newer (and younger) organizations on issues like housing and policing.
This month, changes within PAX came to a head. On May 5, longtime PAX chair Marty Rosenthal lost his Town Meeting seat in an election upset, stepping down as chair soon after. In the same precinct, fellow PAX board officer Judith Vanderkay was also unseated.
And the week after the election, eight of PAX’s 41 board members resigned with a pointed message.
In an emailed statement on behalf of the group, Julie Johnson, one of PAX’s former chairs, said that although they are proud of the “long and important history of working for peace, civil rights and social justice” in the organization, they feel “our progressive values and the decisions of PAX were too frequently not aligned.”
The organization’s leaders see the time of transition as an opportunity.
Michael Burstein, who is taking over Rosenthal’s co-chair role, said he would “like to try to make sure that we keep pushing for, especially with everything going on in our world right now, the importance of various issues that need to be stressed as much as possible.”
A proud history
On any given Saturday, the Coolidge Corner sidewalks are filled with protesters. They wave anti-fascist and anti-Trump signage, play instruments, and hand out fliers.
PAX is one of the founding organizations behind the weekly “Brookline Rally for Democracy,” which hasn’t missed a Saturday since April 2025.
Taking part in protest is crucial to PAX’s history, dating back to 1962. Brookline locals Ethel and Ben Alper were largely credited with the founding of the group, which is now chaired by Burstein and Neil Gordon.
During the Vietnam War and amid widespread fears of nuclear armament, PAX sought to promote peace and democracy, with the motto “think globally, act locally.” Town meeting resolutions and warrant article recommendations are a pillar of PAX’s activism. According to the Brookline Chronicle, PAX brought a 1970 resolution to Town Meeting for an “immediate end to the Vietnam War.”
The group historically took stances on national subjects like abortion, nuclear weapons, and the death penalty, and local issues like housing, property tax, and rent control.
“PAX is, over time, consistently pro-education, pro-diversity, pro-labor,” said Gordon. “Name the progressive issue and PAX hopefully comes out on the right side of it.”
It maintains a role in how decisions are made in Brookline, endorsing candidates in local elections and taking positions on legislative proposals at Town Meeting. PAX also maintains an email listserv that features discussion on town issues, announcements, and other community news.
State Rep. Tommy Vitolo, who holds the largest congressional district in Brookline, is among the organization’s notable members, as are School Committee chair Bob Weintraub and recently-elected Select Board member Anthony Buono.
Local advocacy once grounded in housing politics
As times, and politics, have changed, critics on the left claim PAX fights for a status quo that does not uphold modern progressive standards.
“PAX was always for public housing, subsidized housing, and rent control,” said Johnson, who led the recent resignations. An early member of the organization, she joined PAX after moving to Brookline in the late 1970s. Her husband, former Massachusetts State Rep. Frank Smizik, chaired PAX for a time.
When she moved to Brookline, property values were starting to increase, apartments were being converted to condominiums, and the town was losing rental housing. She recalls a chaotic time, with the eventual statewide abolition of rent control in 1994. “There were several thousand people who left because they couldn’t afford it,” she said. “People had been longtime renters, and they could no longer afford housing in Brookline.”
In 1985, amid contention over rent control and increases, the Brookline Citizen newspaper covered a report written by PAX which claimed the 16% rent increases the town faced at the time were profitable for landlords at the expense of tenants, and that the impact of rent control on homeowners was less than originally anticipated.
Johnson recalls PAX and the Brookline Tenant Union often being active in the housing discussion in Brookline.
Now, with questions of development and new housing dominating the debate, newer organizations like pro-housing Brookline for Everyone and Brookline by Design, which advocates for a more deliberate planning process, are more often drawing lines in housing politics.
How far does PAX’s progressivism go?
As is often the case in local politics, where PAX fits in can be difficult to pin down, and varies depending on the issue.
On housing, some PAX members argued the organization is more closely aligned with Brookline by Design, and the group’s leader Linda Olson Pehlke sits on PAX’s board.
Gordon argued “as indicated by our relative endorsements, PAX is more closely aligned with Brookline for Everyone than it is with Brookline by Design.”
Lack of organizational consensus on housing is indicative of the way PAX has become more about the opinions of a small few, Johnson says.
“There are many people on the board that don’t agree with , but they don’t come to meetings because they know they’re going to get out-voted,” Johnson said.
PAX has also clashed with newer groups, like Brookline for Racial Justice and Equity, on issues of race and policing.
The organization maintains anti-discrimination and anti-racist priorities in writing. However, former co-chair Rosenthal has said publicly, and told Brookline.News in an interview, that certain community members can be “excessively anti-racist… If you go too far you’re basically exaggerating.”
The organization’s 2023 identity statement says support for civil rights and social justice are founding principles “as PAX activists helped expose racial discrimination in Brookline, when people of color were often prohibited from buying or renting property here.”
Also detailed in the statement are “collective progressive priorities.” Among these are tenets like upholding democracy, championing peaceful resolution to global conflicts, addressing systemic racism and building antiracist communities, funding education, addressing poverty, and confronting issues of discrimination against women and LGBTQ+ people.
Some community members, like Chi Chi Wu, believe these ideals are “lip service to the concepts of diversity and inclusion.”
Wu, a member of the town’s Commission for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Community Relations (CDEICR), said she is concerned by the PAX leadership’s proximity to controversies of alleged racial discrimination.
She referenced her civil rights complaint against Gordon and the Select Board, filed after her application for reappointment to the commission was rejected in December due to posts from her personal social media. She alleged that Gordon has targeted her with personal attacks.
An outside attorney found that Wu’s claims did not constitute discrimination. Gordon said the investigation’s report “speaks for itself” when asked to comment on Wu’s accusations.
Wu said “most people in Brookline think of themselves as progressive and know it’s not politically palatable to say you’re anti-DEI, even though some of these folks are anti-DEI,” and argued that PAX is representative of this issue.
Johnson sees the aversion to certain topics like race as a response to “the things that have happened in the community, and there seems to be a tension.”
She saw 2020 as one of these moments, as the town entered the conversation around racial justice and police reform in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
Johnson argued that period caused change in PAX, in part due to Rosenthal’s belief that “Brookline was being tarnished, that Brookline was not a racist community, and that we have the best police department in the state,” Johnson said. It led to the organization responding in a way that some progressives felt was minimal and overly deferential to the police department, she believes.
Rosenthal said he does not believe Brookline is a racist community, that Brookline’s police “are human beings and they make mistakes,” but that implicit racism exists everywhere, including locally.
“It’s almost like they’re fighting these local battles in an ideological form and I think that’s inappropriate,” Johnson said. For her, interpersonal conflicts and grudges hinder progress on real societal problems and social issues that saturate Brookline.
For his part, Rosenthal feels similarly, arguing that “there’s been much too much personal attacking and divisiveness and nastiness” in local discourse.
An opportunity to refocus?
Johnson sees the present as another pivotal moment because across the country, communities are questioning their moral and political values.
She said “now would be a really good time” for PAX to get more involved with advocating for state and national issues as they used to, especially considering so many of its leaders are Town Meeting members.
In an email to Brookline.News, Gordon said the organization is already doing that.
“We’ve brought recent resolutions in defense of democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law. Marty’s been quite involved in helping to improve proposed ant-ICE policies and procedures.” He also included the fact that PAX supports flipping seats in Congress to Democrats and that they help raise funds for “voter empowerment groups.”
Another of the most common critiques of PAX is its aversion to multigenerational leadership. According to Johnson, PAX previously had leadership term limits, but does not anymore.
Gordon told Brookline.News, “There’s an alphabet soup of organizations with progressive-sounding names offering bumper-sticker solutions to complex issues. What have they actually accomplished?” He said PAX has an “unmatched” impact on town government and “that our roots go back six plus decades is something we’re proud of.”
A mixed verdict at the polls
Some of PAX’s critics maintain that its influence is waning.
Alongside Rosenthal and Vanderkay’s defeats, endorsements were a mixed bag this election. PAX’s pick for Select Board, Anthony Buono, pulled off a surprise upset over incumbent John VanScoyoc.
In the School Committee, however, PAX endorsee Aylit Schultz was the one candidate to lose. 85% of PAX’s endorsed Town Meeting candidates won, compared to 95% for Progressive Brookline, which was established in January.
Successful School Committee candidate Suzanne Federspiel wondered about changes at PAX after the election.
“They had supported me in the past and they did not endorse me this time. I don’t believe I’m less progressive, so I’m kind of thinking they’re less progressive,” she told Brookline.News.
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