The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 291

THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE SEPTEMBER 12, 1993 Uphill battle for at-large candidate Ed Jenkins plicating the program within the schools. "Yes, students graduate from Madison Park High School (the city's leading vocational program) with skills, but there's no notes Jenkins. "There are only a few apprenticeship positions available each year in the building trades. We need more commitment from the unions and private industry to these kids." Political Notebook Change made its debut on the Cambridge political scene with endorsements of 10 City Council and four School Committee candidates, the real news wasn't in what they said but in what they didn't say. The alliance offered no written platform or statement of goals, apparently preferring to be identified merely as an antibody to the 48-year-old Cambridge Civic Association.

The alliance, CCA head Phil Dowds was quoted as snickering, "has no political mission other than not to behave as a group." The CCA types may not get it, but that's not a bad goal. If Bill Clinton had listened to the group-think of the party types, he might have abandoned his ultimately successful pitch to the center. Had Ross Perot's voters indulged their conservative group instinct instead of their angry radicalism, Kenne-bunkport would still be the summer White House. Whenever you think Bill Weld is performing up to Republican stereotype, he usually surprises and pleases those who want cookie-cutters in the kitchen, not in office with a leftward twitch. Psst political individualism is in.

And if CCA bete-noire Elaine Noble gets in this fall, call it a shot across the bow of group-think, Cambridge-style. The way politics has treated Boston City Council at-large candidate Eddie Jenkins, you wouldn't blame him if he chose to take his ball and go home. In other political cultures, Jenkins, 43, a handsome, articulate former National Foot-bull League player with a South End law shingle and a Jamaica Plain address, would be the picture in the dictionary margin next to the phrase politically viable. Not here. His 1990 Democratic primary challenge to Suffolk County District Attorney Newman Flanagan, on the heels of the Carol Stuart murder case and a string of other Flanagan gaffes, fared poorly.

Then, in 1992, Flanagan resigned in search of a land where dinosaurs with loud ties still roam free. Gov. Weld, entitled by law to name Flanagan's successor, was said to want a nonwhite DA. Jenkins, who announced his willingness to become a Republican if appointed to the job (it only hurts for a minute), had the support of Weld's secretary of transudation at the time, Richard Taylor. Done deal, right? Wrong.

Ralph Martin, a former hire of Weld's at the US Attorney's office, had a strong track record, the backing of former US Attorney Wayne Budd, and, in the end, the job. to be protected, they want to feel their property values are going to remain the same, and that they won't see the street crime from Roxbury and Dorchester moving in on them. I tell them the best way to protect their lives is to ensure there's a future for the young people." Jenkins talks a brave game about a high vote count in minority neighborhoods, but recent history insists he'll need white working and middle-class votes to win a council seat. Fortunately for the candidate, there seems no shortage of white and black commuters who want to shake his hand during his frequent stops at the Ashmont and Forest Hills MBTA stations. During one recent visit, some voters bypassed one of the mayoral candidates to get to Jenkins.

Momenta like that give hope. "People understand the need for change, and they remember I was a standup person in 1990," says Jenkins. "People are looking for solid leadership, someone who will really talk to them. And I'm the kind of person who will stand up and tell you the truth." Last month when the Alliance for Bitter feuds and lifetimes of sulking have been generated in local politics by far less. But Jenkins didn't sulk.

He continued his work with the group 1,000 Black Men, a four-year-old coalition of African-American male role models who mateh troubled inner-city kids with mentors. He put in time at his law office above the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Washington Street, from which he can watch the city's continuing decay. Now he's back again, running for a council seat. "I want to get in there and do a job and then go back to private industry. I want to change the way we look at public service.

We need new people who come in and then go back and find other ways to serve." Yeah, that's page 2 of the challenger's handbook. But Jenkins backs up the posturing. His work with 1,000 Black Men'and in other youth-service activities has convinced Jenkins that you don't always have to turn to the public sector for help. For example, the virtually expense-free mentoring provided by 1,000 Black Men has caught the attention of Boston School Committee chairman Paul Parks, who's exploring the possibility of du Restaurants So Jenkins has been talking with representatives of the AFL-CIO about mimicking the success of a St. Louis program in which organized labor has an ongoing job-development strategy involving inner-city kids.

Might that alarm white working-class Bosto-nians painfully aware of the shortage of op-portunitieB for their own offspring? Jenkins doesn't balk. "When I campaign in West Roxbury, people tell me they want interpreting liquor laws ChySpeak minor, the minor subsequently got behind the wheel of a car, thereby doubling the establishment's liability. There are many negligence judgments on record granting plaintiffs hundreds of thousands of dollars against bars and restaurants for allowing patrons who later harmed themselves or others to become drunk on their premises. These awards have grown in number and cost over the years, taking place all over the United States. Last year in Spokane, one man was awarded more than $1 million from the patron has a false ID but turns out to be over 21, there is no case against the owner.

In practical terms, except at bars that cater to a young crowd where abuse is expected and well monitored, an owner can't really card every patron at the door. He or she must weigh individual circumstances, using good sense in deciding who "looks young" and applying the law selectively. Yes, it is true that if a restaurant fails to card someone who turns out to be under 21, it could lose its liquor license. On the other hand, if it serves alcohol to someone who is intoxicated, the risk to purveyor is much worse, and only begins at license revocation. Here also, the restaurant must act selectively, and short of a breath analysis test, can- -not be sure.

The difference between the two situations, however, is striking. First, the restaurant can reason ably know that a patron who has racked up a substantial bar bill and is displaying impaired motor functions is intoxicated, because they helped to get him into this state. Second, the risks to society are an order of magnitude higher. Our court system recognizes these differences, and their severity. In fact, in most Superior Court or appeals cases that involved serving a T.

the restaurant that had served the drunk driver who hit him. The laws that govern alcohol are based on the desire to protect members of society from harm, both from themselves and others. The liquor license is a privilege and a public trust, where practicality must be balanced against good sense. If you had to choose, in which situation would you rather see someone make a judgment call and stand his or her ground: a family having a quiet dinner with a son who doesn't drive, or an irresponsible adult being allowed to reach inebriation and placing other people's lives in jeopardy on his drive home? CITY HOSPITAL We care for Boston. ft ft a frequent restaurantgocr, I ve developed a healthy respect for what it takes to make a successful restau rant The hours are long, the competition stiff, and it's a constant struggle to develop and hold a quality reputation.

Having a liquor license can be an important factor. However, with that liquor license comes a forest of rules, regulations and liabilities, many of which are open to interpretation. So much comes down to instinct and the judgment to know what is really important, and why. An incident I experienced recently gave me a glimpse of what can happen when an owner's understanding '( of the law is flawed. One sultry Monday night in August, we invited our son, a senior at Brandeis, to join us for dinner at a By Cynthia Barron tau- I rant, Vinny Testa's in Brookline.

I only two glasses arrived with the bottle of wine we had ordered, I requested a third. The waiter re- fused to accept our 21-year old son's college ID, which lists his birth date and sports a good likeness. "Do you have a Mass. driver's license or an-! other picture ID?" he asked. When our son answered no, the waiter refused to serve him.

Stunned, we assured him that we could vouch for our son's majority, to no avail. Polite but adamant, we were bounced up to the owner, who said he couldn't take the chance of serving us, even though we offered to re-I turn after eating with proof of our son's age. A liquor license was a pre cious commodity, he claimed, and Ming could sway him. College IDs i are too easily faked. I demurred.

As an instructor at a university, I am all too aware of how easy it is for an un derage student to purchase a faked i driver's license. Surely, as middle class professionals, we would have i been willing to spend the money to fake the very best rather than settle for a mere college ID! However, his implication was clear: Either we were scum who would risk fine or imprisonment by condoning our son's use of a fake ID, or we had been sent to trap him. His words echoed in my mind when we returned later to "clear our honor." While my son and docu ments in hand, waited for the owner, .1 watched a middle-aged man in a iv rumpled suit rise unsteadily from the bar. First he tripped over his i stool. Then, swaying like a boat in heavy weather, he barely made it to the men's room.

From there, with glazed expression, he wobbled out the door and into the driver's seat of his car. No one seemed concerned that this man had been served en-, tirely too much to drink and was driving home alone. The juxtaposition of events made me angry. Was there some balancing act going on, where the wine our son didn't consume canceled out the liquor the other patron did? I em-' barked on a research project. 0 What I learned was food for thought.

There are several sections in Chapter 138 of the General Laws about service to minors, drunken driving and both together, and all rely on the purveyor for enforcement. The laws against serving li quor to minors are clear: Don't do it. The law also states that a restaurateur cannot be prosecuted for any violations when serving a minor if he "reasonably relies" on a Massachusetts driver's or liquor license as proof of age. But the law is silent on other forms of identification, be they out-of-state driver licenses or college IDs. After allf vhe issue here isn't the ID, it's the drinker's age.

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