Emerson College's Samuels & Associates-Wu Campaign Committee Link: (1)

On Sept. 20, 2017 the campaign committee of the current mayor of Boston (one of the largest U.S. cities to have never elected an African American man as its mayor), Michelle Wu, deposited an individual campaign contribution of $1,000 from the then-president of Downtown Boston’s tax-exempt Emerson College, M. Lee Pelton—who later left his position as Emerson College president in June 2021 to become the president of the tax-exempt and “non-profit” Boston Foundation (whose current net assets exceed $1.8 billion), prior to Wu’s election as Boston's mayor in November 2021..

And, according to data posted on the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance website, between May 20, 2013 and late April 2024, Wu’s campaign committee deposited $10,550 in individual campaign contributions from either Emerson College Trustee Steven Samuels or from other executives or employees of the Samuels & Associates for-profit real estate deal-making firm, that Emerson College Trustee Samuels is chairperson of.

Of the 17 campaign contributions, totaling $10,550, from individuals affiliated with the Samuels & Associates real estate development firm deposited by Wu’s campaign committee between May 22, 2013 and late April 2024, 5 individual campaign contributions, totaling $3,500, came from Emerson College Trustee Samuels. And between Oct. 13, 2022 and Jan. 17, 2023, Emerson College Trustee Samuels also made a $50,000 political campaign contribution to the Coalition to Stop the Tax Hike Amendment and 2 campaign contributions of $5,000 each to Massachusetts’s Democratic State Committee, one contribution of which was deposited on Jan. 17, 2023—the same day one of this Emerson College trustee’s $1,000 campaign contributions to Wu’s campaign committee was deposited.

Besides depositing $10,550 in campaign contributions from Emerson College Trustee Samuels and his business associates at Samuels & Associates between May 20, 2013 and late April 2024, Boston Mayor Wu’s campaign committee had also deposited 8 individual contributions, totaling $8,000, from Paul Egerman and Joanne Egerman--whose Paul and Joanne Egerman Family Charitable Foundation has given over $1 million in tax-exempt grant money since 2014 to the Anti-Defamation League [ADL]; which falsely accuses U.S. antiwar student protesters, who oppose the U.S. government-armed IDF’s war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and elsewhere, of being “anti-Semitic.”

And, in addition, prior to Wu’s election as Boston’s current mayor in November 2021, ADL funder Paul Egerman (who is a resident of Weston, Massachusetts, not of Boston) also gave a $50,000 individual campaign contribution on Aug. 11, 2021 to the Boston Turnout Independent Expenditure PAC; which, between May 10, 2021 and Sept. 7, 2021, spent over $332,000 supporting Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu’s 2021 mayoral candidacy.

So, not surprisingly, when Emerson College’s current president, Digital Health Impact Inc. Founder and former Dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Administration Jay Bernhardt, asked Boston Mayor Wu to break-up an antiwar and Palestinian solidarity encampment in the 2B Boylston Place Alley at Emerson College in late April 2024, Wu authorized BPD officers to arrest 118 protesters on April 25, 2024.

And, coincidentally, after Wu became the first elected woman mayor of Boston to authorize Boston Police Department [BPD] officers to violently arrest non-violent antiwar demonstrators at Emerson College on April 25, 2024, Wu’s campaign committee deposited another $1,000 individual campaign contribution from Emerson College Trustee Samuels on June 24, 2024, another $1,000 individual campaign contribution from Emerson College Trustee Samuels’s Samuels & Associate business partner, Joe Sklar (a resident of Brookline) on June 20, 2024 and another $1,000 campaign contribution from Emerson College Trustee Samuels’s Samuels & Associates business associate, Peter Sougarides (a resident of Walpole) on June 28, 2024; as well as depositing another $1,000 individual campaign contribution from ADL funder Paul Egerman and a $1,000 campaign contribution from ADL funder Joanne Egerman, on Dec. 16, 2024. (end of part 1. To be continued.)