Fifty-five years ago, in the Spring of 1968, while a Junior at Clark University, a small, liberal arts college west of Boston, I woke up one morning in my apartment to hear the news that a massive group of students had taken over the college’s administration building.

“Studies have shown that adding sentencing enhancements often increases recidivism, that it is racially biased and applied in a racially biased way, and that it costs us taxpayers huge amounts of money.” That’s what Madame D.A. told her audience in Montclair.

I have to do something distasteful to me today, and that is to criticize the people behind the Pamela Price recall.

The more we learn of Madame D.A.’s stunts at the recent Montclair meeting on public safety, the worse she appears. She deliberately packed the room with her supporters, thereby preventing true neighborhood residents from attending. She was surrounded by bodyguard thugs, like a Mafia chieftain. She lectured and bloviated, instead of answering questions. The end result was that Montclair voters will decisively vote against her in the Recall.

Justin Phillips, the race columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, whom I’ve referenced often in this space, has done something surprising. He appears to be backing off his support of Pamela Price.