The Rise and Fall of Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson

Until that December arrest, hers had been a classic American success story—“one of resilience, at times, struggle, and also of her transcendence,” as Reverend Willie Bodrick II, of Roxbury’s Twelfth Baptist Church, said of her journey. For a time, Fernandes Anderson blazed a remarkable path, from arriving in Roxbury at age 10 to becoming Boston’s first African immigrant and first Muslim city councilor. At City Hall, her passionate defense of racial equity electrified her district, which sent her back to office in 2024 with more than 70 percent of the vote. She pioneered a new model of local democracy: a district advisory council that brought together dozens of community leaders for weekly meetings. Throughout her community, she was known for her generosity, giving money to her family, volunteering at her mosque, and advocating for people both inside and outside her district. Yet Fernandes Anderson also drew criticism for her heated outbursts and use of F-bombs on the council floor, as well as her racially charged social media posts.

Throughout her community, Fernandes Anderson was known for advocating for her district. Yet she also drew criticism for her heated outbursts on the council floor.

Her troubles began when, almost immediately after taking office, she installed her sister, and later her son, as paid staffers—a clear violation of state ethics rules that earned her a $5,000 fine. Undeterred, she then brought on her best friend—who would later star in court documents against her as anonymous “Staff Member A.” It was this last hire that spun into something far more problematic: Facing the ethics fine and other financial pressures, Fernandes Anderson allegedly engineered a kickback scheme, granting her friend an inflated bonus with the understanding that $7,000 would flow back into her own pockets, federal prosecutors alleged in Fernandes Anderson’s indictment. Now, the city councilor is staring down the possibility of prison time. “I thought she was a serious star rising,” says a former Boston elected official, speaking anonymously due to workplace media restrictions. “She is very smart; she is engaging, charming, inspiring—I could throw any positive adjective at her. But she got into her car, lit up a cigarette, drove to a gas station, crashed into the pump, and blew it up.”

Fernandes Anderson returns for a Boston City Council meeting after her arrest on federal charges in December. / Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald

Weeks after her arrest, on New Year’s Day, I visited Fernandes Anderson at her two-story rental that occupies the upper floors of a grand Victorian, complete with a wraparound porch, near the border of Dorchester and Roxbury. There’s a certain poetry to the building’s neighbors: a toddler-care center on one side, a funeral home two doors down on the other. She’d moved in on the very day she was sworn in as a city councilor in January 2022, taking her first wobbly steps into public office. Nearly three years later, federal agents had arrived at this same address, setting in motion events that would ultimately bring her council tenure to an early death.

The house was quiet, as was the street outside the windows. In the living room, a lamp cast its glow over a copy of Robert Greene’s bestseller The 48 Laws of Power. We sat at opposite ends of her sectional—bought after the move. She had given her old couch to her sister, along with a black rug decorated with white Eastern-inspired patterns. Once, she’d even handed over an entire apartment to her sister, furnishings and all, before starting fresh somewhere else. “I always put myself second,” she said. “I need to work on this pattern of obsessively helping people.”

Over the four and a half hours we spent together that day, only two subjects brought tears to her eyes. The first was the prospect of being separated from her two adult children. The second was the mention of her former best friend who has turned against her—someone Fernandes Anderson says she had supported both financially and emotionally for years. (Number 2 on Greene’s 48 Laws of Power? Never put too much trust in your friends.)

The tears raised questions that loomed over everything: Was her former best friend’s cooperation with federal investigators a betrayal built on lies—a self-preserving story crafted under prosecutorial pressure, as some of Fernandes Anderson’s supporters contend? Or was it something far more devastating: the simple truth? Though we spent several days together this past winter, Fernandes Anderson declined to discuss the charges—leaving those questions unanswered. (In her April resignation statement after pleading guilty, she offered an apology “to my constituents, supporters, and all who have been impacted,” adding, “Please forgive me.”)

One thing’s certain, though: Fernandes Anderson’s rise and fall has become a political Rorschach test around Boston. Community leaders and residents of her district, who cheered her for challenging a system that sidelines people of color, see a selective prosecution—or worse, a federal setup using a vulnerable witness they could pressure—in what they view as the latest takedown of a powerful Black politician. Meanwhile, her critics, including former and current members of the city council, who believe she divided the city by playing fast and loose with racism accusations and turned her public position into a family enterprise, seem to think justice is being served. Yet perhaps beneath these competing interpretations suggests an even simpler truth: that Fernandes Anderson is someone who devoted herself to helping others but, in the end, just couldn’t help herself.

At an age when most children are being cared for, Fernandes Anderson was already learning to look after others. At four, when her mother left Cape Verde for Boston, Fernandes Anderson found herself in a house filled with uncles, cousins, and others who had nowhere else to turn—at one point, she counted, some 21 people were living there. As a child, she took on the daily ritual of watching over her younger brother and sister, ensuring they were clean, fed, and made it to school each day.

When Fernandes Anderson was 10, she prepared to fly to Boston, traveling alone to reunite with a mother who’d become little more than a fading memory. At the airport, her uncle walked her to the foot of the plane’s stairs and delivered parting words that would stay with her forever. “Listen to me; when you get to America, the first thing I need you to do as soon as you can, you get a job, you save your money, and you don’t forget your brother and sister. You send for them.”

Fernandes Anderson’s arrival in Boston was something of a crash landing. She lived in the Academy Homes housing project in Roxbury where, she says, there were fights, shootings, and prostitution. Though she quickly mastered both English and Spanish in school, she found no refuge there and was bullied by her new classmates. At night, she often lay awake missing her sister and brother.

At age 12, she showed her remarkable composure in a crisis when she delivered her aunt’s baby at home before an ambulance could arrive. She remained so calm that she even offered to cut the umbilical cord—heroics that caught the attention of Mayor Ray Flynn, who gave her an award.

The following year, as her mother struggled to find steady work, Fernandes Anderson began helping support her family, despite her undocumented status. By 15, she had squirreled away enough to split the cost of a plane ticket to Cape Verde with her uncle—so her mother could retrieve her siblings. “When they arrived, life started all over again,” Fernandes Anderson says. “My heart was fixed again.” With her family now under one roof, Fernandes Anderson assumed the role of caring for her brother and sister, just like she had in Cape Verde. “She always did more than what she was supposed to do,” says her uncle Albertino Carvahlo. “She never waited for her mother to do anything at home. You know, she would just step up and do it.”

Though she earned a spot at the elite John D. O’Bryant exam school, Fernandes Anderson struggled to keep up her grades while working multiple jobs to help her family. Being undocumented meant that she worked two jobs at once, in case she had to quietly disappear from one of them at any moment.

At 20, Fernandes Anderson became a mother, having a baby with her high school boyfriend. After that relationship ended, she married at 25 and welcomed a second son a year later. It was during this time that she discovered Islam, finding in it a spiritual home that amplified her desire to support those in need. “We take care of each other,” she says, “and we believe that charity is rewarded by God.”

Her marriage, though it ended in divorce, gave her more than her second son; it gave her a green card that finally freed her from a life of unstable jobs and hiding in the shadows. As a single mother, she made her boys the center of her world while building a career in mental health. Yet even as she juggled motherhood, family obligations, and serving the city’s most vulnerable residents, Fernandes Anderson wanted to do more. She opened her home as a foster mother, eventually welcoming 17 children into her care. “I had two Black sons and decided to mother more Black sons,” she says. “I did it because I went from extreme poverty to coming to America to getting a green card and stability. I wanted to pay it forward.”

A chance encounter in 2011 set Fernandes Anderson down an unexpected path when she bumped into the family of her former O’Bryant classmate Tanzerius Anderson—the student she remembered as the brightest in their class, now serving a life sentence on the charge of murder. At his family’s suggestion, she began corresponding with him. His writing and ideas immediately captivated her, leading her to arrange a visit. “I thought I could help him, talk to him about Islam,” she says. During their first meeting, they discussed everything from religion to quantum physics to politics. She found him emotionally intelligent, well read, and grounded. Most important, she believed he was innocent. “We fell in love,” she says. They married in 2013, and he remains in prison. Fernandes Anderson has advocated for his freedom, claiming there was a lack of physical evidence or DNA linking him to the killing. (The state’s Supreme Judicial Court denied his appeal and motion for reduced charges in 2005.) “My friends asked me, ‘Why, you have nothing with him, nothing physical, no support?’” she says. “But when you know he is your person, you know. How dare I reject destiny?”

“But when you know he is your person, you know. How dare I reject destiny?”

Marrying a man convicted of murder didn’t hinder Fernandes Anderson’s rise to office, which began, unconventionally, through her creative work. In 2016, she opened a clothing boutique, transitioning from owner to seamstress by teaching herself to sew and developing a talent for making striking gowns. Her work soon caught the attention of Ahn Nguyen, who led Bowdoin Geneva Main Streets, a nonprofit that provided Fernandes Anderson with business support. Impressed by Fernandes Anderson’s multilingual abilities and life story, Nguyen brought her on as deputy executive director in 2018, then tapped her to take over as executive director the next year. When Kim Janey’s appointment as acting mayor created an opening on the city council, Nguyen encouraged her to run. “I told her she had the skills and the talent and she should run because she would break all the barriers,” Nguyen says. “I knew she would win.”

Later, when a longtime friend expressed surprise at her decision to enter politics, Fernandes Anderson was quick to correct her—this wasn’t about politics but about making a difference. “All I knew growing up was survival,” Fernandes Anderson says. “And it was like, ‘Okay, now I’m in a good place; now I can help others.’” On the city council, that drive to help soon extended to those closest to her.

Tania Fernades Anderson, pictured at City Hall, broke barriers when she became Boston’s first Muslim and African immigrant city councilor. She is now facing federal prison time for allegedly taking a kickback. / Photo by Tony Luong

On a bitterly cold January day in 2022, people gathered together outside City Hall for a COVID-era outdoor inauguration of the city council. Sitting on the stage, Fernandes Anderson was unmistakable in her bright fuchsia hijab and a striking purple sequined dress she had designed and sewn herself.

The timing was significant—exactly 200 years had passed since Boston established its first city council, composed entirely of white men. Standing at the podium to swear in the councilors, Mayor Michelle Wu celebrated the groundbreaking diversity of the new council, calling Fernandes Anderson “our first African, Muslim city councilor who brings experience and service and a creativity that shines through with every action and statement she makes.”

Following the ceremony, one of Fernandes Anderson’s first acts as city councilor included approving her sister as her director of constituent services, with a salary of $65,000 that was soon increased to $70,000. Roughly six months after that, she named her oldest son as office manager at a salary of $52,000, then raised his pay to $70,000 just 11 days after his appointment was confirmed by the city council.

These hires, which violated state ethics laws, would not catch up with her for a while. But in the meantime, community members couldn’t help but notice Fernandes Anderson’s hands-on approach. “She was speaking up and advocating for the issues that this community cares about,” says Bodrick, who’s maintained a close working relationship with her on district issues.

Early on, Fernandes Anderson also established the District 7 Advisory Council, composed of dozens of community stakeholders with whom she meets every Saturday to discuss district issues. Louis Elisa, former president of the NAACP Boston Branch and a veteran government official, initially backed another candidate in the primaries. Yet he came to see her as providing the kind of authentic representation the district hadn’t experienced since Chuck Turner—a beloved city councilor who went to jail after taking a bribe—was in office. “Since Chuck, nobody had made a concerted effort to reach out to community-based groups and organizations to get them engaged, involved, and hear what they had to say,” Elisa says. The advisory council earned Wu’s early praise and drew observers citywide. “There is no other city councilor who has been as much of a natural convener of people than TFA, not even Michelle Wu when she was on the city council,” says North End resident Ford Cavallari, who attends the weekly advisory council meetings as president of the Alliance of Downtown Civic Organizations. “I’ve never seen anyone do it as well. It is democracy in action.”

Simultaneously, Elisa says, Fernandes Anderson used her position as Ways and Means chair to direct much-needed funding into a district that had long been overlooked. She worked to enhance both the safety and appearance of Roxbury, spearheading District 7’s ARTery revitalization plan to transform a route from Mass. Ave. and Columbus Avenue to Grove Hall into a vibrant arts and business corridor. She also took an active role in initiatives benefiting children and families, addressing “the things Roxbury has been left out of for a long time,” Elisa says.

Her influence extended beyond her district’s boundaries. One day in January, I met up with Fernandes Anderson at the Cape Verde Center in Dorchester, where she moved from table to table, conversing with elderly Bostonians in Cape Verdean Creole. She followed up on a housing issue one woman had previously raised, while another confided about needing mental health support. Fernandes Anderson translated their concerns to English for her chief of staff to address back at the office. “This center is physically outside my district, and maybe only half the people here are from my district,” she said, shrugging, “but people see me as the Black city councilor, as the civil rights councilor.”

Fernandes Anderson’s passionate defense of people of color and her complaints about systemic racism earned her loyalty in her district—but also drew accusations that she, too, was racist. One day in June 2022, as Wu considered her pick for Boston police commissioner, Fernandes Anderson, on social media, listed city government appointees who were white while wondering whether the next police chief would also be white. “The majority of Boston’s residents white? WRONG! The majority of Boston is BLACK & BROWN,” the post on her now-deactivated X account concluded.

The backlash quickly played out online and across social media. On Reddit, someone posting under the handle “Jim_Gilmore” wrote, “Since she is a Black woman who converted to Islam, she plays those three cards at the slightest hint of any criticism.” A member of X with the username @MaryAnneRachal1 accused her of having “an anti-white agenda,” while elsewhere weeks later, a Change.org petition demanding Fernandes Anderson’s resignation for “posting racist Tweets” was created. (The petition, which remains open, has only garnered 338 signatures.)

Fernandes Anderson had stepped into Boston’s simmering racial tensions—and they were about to boil over on the city council floor.

Her passionate council meeting confrontations made headlines. / Photo by Matthew J. Lee/Globe staff

On the last day of August in 2022, Fernandes Anderson stood before the city council, unable to contain her anger. “What the fuck do I have to do in this fucking council in order to get respect as a Black woman?” she erupted, pounding her fist on the chamber table.

The explosion had come after then-council President Ed Flynn moved to strip Ricardo Arroyo of his committee chairs. Flynn’s action followed the emergence of sexual assault allegations against Arroyo from the early 2000s, neither of which led to charges. Among the positions Arroyo lost was his crucial oversight of the city’s redistricting process, of which Councilor Liz Breadon was put in charge.

Fernandes Anderson told her fellow councilors that a perception existed in her district of a racially divided council. On one side of this perceived divide, at that time, were six white councilors—including Flynn, Breadon, Michael Flaherty, and Frank Baker—who were political moderates. Meanwhile, Fernandes Anderson was seen as belonging to a camp of seven progressive councilors, including Kendra Lara, Ricardo Arroyo, and Julia Mejia, who also happen to be people of color.

Fighting back tears, her voice shaking with fury, Fernandes Anderson warned the council about the implications of a white councilor now controlling redistricting. “Everyone is now super-afraid that because Councilor Breadon, a white woman, has it, that now, because all the white councilors here stick together, they will vote or try to move the districts in a way that is not diverse [enough] to be able to vote in electeds of color,” she declared, later saying, “Your votes here sometimes are racist!” (though she never specified which votes she considered racist). Her words drew fierce approval from the gallery’s Arroyo supporters, but the meeting quickly descended into mayhem. Outside the chambers, a fight broke out between Arroyo’s supporters and his opponents, with police hauling away one of them in handcuffs.

Fernandes Anderson’s behavior at the hearing not only earned her bad press but also led some fellow councilors to view her as everything from unprofessional to utterly unhinged. “I think the problem was she couldn’t translate the kind of activism she was used to into being an elected official,” says political analyst Jacquetta Van Zandt, who consulted on Fernandes Anderson’s first campaign. “They are very different things.”

Behind closed doors, five former and current city councilors paint a damning picture of her. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one criticized Fernandes Anderson for her outbursts and for her choice of husband, something the councilor said reflects poorly on her character. They described her behavior in City Hall as everything from “grandstanding” to “aggressive” to “traumatizing.” But most of all, they criticized Fernandes Anderson for how she treated her colleagues and for weaponizing racism against them. One councilor called her behavior volatile: “Other councilors feel uncomfortable around her because they don’t know if she is in a good mood or if she is angry about a specific topic and coming to attack them.” Another put it bluntly: “Her default is to attack anyone she perceives isn’t helping her cause, and that includes her colleagues.”

A veteran political consultant views this as a crucial strategic blunder. “I think she got caught up in social media and getting likes and positive reinforcement from people who are agitated about societal issues,” the consultant says. “Meanwhile, the fodder she was using was her own colleagues. Here is someone who represents her district’s needs and she was a good fighter, but her conduct in public with her colleagues wasn’t going to enable her to actually deliver on anything. She marginalized herself for no good reason.”

Over time, Fernandes Anderson worked to soften her approach with colleagues, but by then, she was mired in other problems. During that same heated council session, she alluded to dismissing her son and sister from their staff positions, rectifying a mistake she made after learning she had violated state ethics laws. Before a council of both allies and critics, she declared herself someone who acknowledges her errors and then fixes them.

She told me that it was, in fact, an innocent mistake. She had only briefly watched an onboarding video that mentioned the prohibition on hiring family members. “As a hard-working immigrant, in every job that I’ve gone to, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve always looked out for my brother and sister and brought them along with me,” she says. Moreover, she maintains that she openly introduced her sister as a staff member to everyone at City Hall—from fellow councilors to central office staff. “Everyone knew. Everyone,” she says. One councilor even noted to me that “someone in the central office should have flagged that to her.”

Getting caught hiring relatives may have been Fernandes Anderson’s wake-up call about nepotism, but it didn’t stop her from onboarding other people in her inner circle. Within months of dismissing her son and sister, she brought on her best friend—Rita Fernandes (referred to as “Staff Member A”), a mother of nine whom she had long tried to support. “When you know what it is like to be poor, you surround yourself with the same kind of people to help them, people who have a lot of chaos around them because they are poor,” she says. Still, she maintains that all three—her friend, sister, and son—“were qualified for the jobs.”

Her impulse to support others wasn’t limited to handing out City Hall jobs. “Everybody goes to her for money—mom, cousins, neighborhood person on the street, the homeless, everybody. She cannot help it,” says Nguyen, adding that in immigrant communities and communities of color, sharing resources is woven into the fabric of daily life, creating what she describes as a vast cultural gap with white communities’ views of money and support.

In the spring of 2023, Fernandes Anderson faced a $5,000 state ethics fine for hiring her son and sister. According to the U.S. attorney’s indictment, Fernandes Anderson was facing personal financial difficulty involving the fine and other debts, so she orchestrated a plan: She authorized a $13,000 bonus for Rita Fernandes—more than double what all other staff members received combined—with the understanding that her best friend would return $7,000 to her.

At the time, the criminal indictment states, Fernandes Anderson justified the outsize bonus to her staff member by claiming it compensated her for volunteer hours the employee had worked before officially coming onboard. (The indictment claims Rita Fernandes was her relative, though Fernandes Anderson insists they’re connected only through a convoluted family tree and are unrelated.)

A striking element of the indictment is where the alleged crime played out. On June 9, Rita Fernandes sent a one-word text: “bathroom.” Fernandes Anderson replied: “ready,” and, the indictment states, the two met in a City Hall restroom, where Rita Fernandes handed over $7,000 in cash. One city councilor, speaking anonymously, told me that Fernandes Anderson’s alleged willingness to commit this crime in City Hall showed she thought she was above the law.

In the wake of her arrest, Fernandes Anderson’s failure to forge stronger relationships with her colleagues seemed to come home to roost. Mayor Wu and at least four councilors demanded her resignation. Not a single colleague stepped forward to defend her.

Federal prosecutors built her case around an alleged $7,000 kickback in a City Hall bathroom. As of presstime, she maintains her innocence. / Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe

A month after Fernandes Anderson’s arrest, I sat in on her first staff meeting of 2025 at her City Hall office. Across from me, perched on a couch, was a fresh-faced new hire who’d been on the job for three weeks—which meant she’d started a week after her boss’s indictment. Yet there she was, bubbling with enthusiasm about diving into the long-term projects ahead of her.

The next Saturday morning, as snow fell outside, I watched faces fill out a Zoom grid for the District 7 Advisory Council meeting. Fernandes Anderson wasted no time setting the tone. “I don’t want to talk at all about the case,” she said. “We have a lot of district issues to go over.”

As I watched her work throughout January, everything seemed jarringly normal, as though she weren’t facing potential prison time and as if her political career weren’t on the brink of an early demise. Refusing then to resign, she insisted she would not accept a plea deal with prosecutors and was continuing long-range plans in her district. (She would later change her mind.)

If she was focused on the future, her constituents were reeling from a haunting sense of déjà vu. Leaders in Black Boston’s civic, political, and religious circles say that time and again, just as a powerful voice rises to fight for the community, federal investigators sweep in. In 2008, City Councilor Chuck Turner was arrested after accepting $1,000 from an FBI informant in what members of his district saw as a dubious sting operation. Turner had sat in the very same council seat Fernandes Anderson now occupied. That same year, Dianne Wilkerson, a state senator representing much of the same stretch of Boston, pleaded guilty to pocketing $23,500 from the same informant. Both ended up behind bars.

Years later, Monica Cannon-Grant emerged as a fierce advocate for Black Boston, her outspoken defense of the community earning her a devoted following. Her trajectory changed, though, with a 2022 federal indictment alleging she’d used donations to her nonprofit for personal expenses. She pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. “When you find a person who’s representing the interests of the Black community, they do whatever they can to move them out of the way,” says Elisa, speaking of the federal government and Boston’s power brokers. “I’m disappointed that they keep trying, using the same old tactics, to remove leadership in our community.”

If her critics are astounded that Fernandes Anderson would take a kickback inside a City Hall bathroom, skeptics such as Elisa note that the detail seems more designed for shock value than credibility. After all, he says, Fernandes Anderson has a private bathroom in her office—one barely big enough for a single person, let alone two, unless “somebody sits on the commode and the other person jumps in the sink.” And as Imam Abdullah Faaruuq of the Society for Islamic Brotherhood, who knows both women accused of the payoff, wonders: Why would a longtime friend turn on Fernandes Anderson unless she herself was in a “terrible position, scared of the FBI?”

Because Fernandes Anderson wouldn’t talk to me about the details of the case, that question lingers, at least for now. And she wasn’t the only one who was hesitant to talk: Of the 26 people I interviewed about Fernandes Anderson, more than half refused to be named. Several wouldn’t let me use their comments even anonymously. Others simply declined to speak with me at all.

Still, for some in the Black community, the details of the case aren’t even the point. Leaders who I spoke with in District 7, including Bodrick, say they know corruption isn’t unique to Black politicians—but there is a perception that prosecution of them is. Time and again, they say, Black elected officials face a different standard of justice. This sentiment has resulted in a groundswell of support for Fernandes Anderson, even among those who believe she took the kickback. As one member of her district, who has worked in government and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their job, said, “Black people see inconsistencies in the justice system and stand up for people who are being done dirty. And it looks like Tania is being done dirty by the judicial system.”

Meanwhile, State Representative Russell Holmes says that since Fernandes Anderson’s arrest, he has consistently heard community members highlight what they view as a stark contrast: While President Donald Trump placed relatives throughout his administration and maintains conflicts of interest worth billions, he has faced few repercussions. “We’re talking about $7,000, and I hear people say, ‘This is chump change,’ and ‘Can you believe the feds have gone through all this for this small amount when you are letting Trump get away with so many millions?’” says Holmes, describing conversations in his district.

This sense of a two-tiered justice system—what Bodrick calls being “gaslit by America”—runs so deep that multiple sources, including veteran political operators and elected officials, told me they have little doubt: If Fernandes Anderson ran for her seat again today, she would win.

Black leaders such as Reverend ­Jeffrey Brown, of Twelfth Baptist Church, and Holmes said that while the double standard is deeply unfair, it’s also a reality that Black politicians must operate knowing they’ll face heightened scrutiny compared to their white counterparts. That’s why some of the anger in the district isn’t aimed solely at federal prosecutors, but also at Fernandes Anderson herself. “Knowing the history and knowing the seat that she’s in, she should know that there’s an enormous amount of scrutiny on Black and brown electeds,” Holmes says. “We have to be above reproach. It was just a surprise for me because I thought she knew she had to be very careful.”

Holmes, part of the next wave of political leadership after Turner and Wilkerson, formed an informal support network with the latest generation of Black politicians. This group could have mentored emerging leaders like Fernandes Anderson, he says, but the pandemic’s forced isolation derailed those plans. Working in separate bubbles meant Fernandes Anderson missed out on crucial guidance that might have changed her trajectory. “I didn’t have a mentor,” she told me, explaining that she particularly lacked guidance from within the Black community. “The closest thing I have to it is a Vietnamese woman who lives out of state”—referring to Anh Nguyen, her former colleague at Bowdoin Geneva Main Streets who now lives in Atlanta.

It is also possible that Fernandes Anderson, always ready to help others, just didn’t know how to ask for help herself. After working on her successful campaign, Van Zandt says Fernandes Anderson no longer wanted to use her services. “I wasn’t looking to go into her staffing, but we thought that as consultants, she would keep us on for a year to help her acclimate herself to the role, which is what most smart candidates do,” Van Zandt said.

Some political rules, though, seem so basic that you shouldn’t need a consultant to spell them out: Don’t hire family, don’t mix personal finances with staff. But for newcomers or those whose family or peers haven’t served in government, the rules of power aren’t always clear. As Van Zandt notes, even in Congress, veterans know how to work the system while avoiding breaking rules: They secure internships for their kids through colleagues, not in their own office. None of this excuses breaking ethical rules, but it can help explain why some might make a mistake.

Still, whether Black community members believe the justice system is unfairly targeting Fernandes Anderson or feel betrayed by her allegedly illegal actions, Bodrick says they all share something deeper. “And that is a sense of grief, a sense of hurt and even trauma, that we are in this situation again.”

Photo by Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images

At the end of January, I attended another District 7 Advisory Council meeting, this time in person. I immediately sensed that something had shifted—both in the group and in Fernandes Anderson herself. Walking in as the meeting stretched into its fifth hour, I found just eight members still present, huddled around a long table in Nubian Markets’ gathering space alongside Fernandes Anderson and her chief of staff. Empty juice bottles and crumpled napkins were scattered across the table while a few people picked at what remained of an apple crostata.

During the first four hours, they’d tackled the district’s major challenges. Now, they turned to what loomed largest: their future representation. One by one, members praised Fernandes Anderson—for her leadership, her willingness to listen, her challenges to the mayor’s policies, her voice for the community. The tone carried the weight of a retirement dinner. Then the conversation turned to which candidates they might back if she goes to prison. “If things go badly, I’ll maybe be here till September, enough to support a campaign,” Fernandes Anderson said.

As the marathon session finally wound down, Fernandes Anderson—wearing oversize glasses, a slate-blue blazer, and a matching hijab—stood and stretched. “I don’t know how to cut people off,” she said, rolling her eyes and adding, “Boundaries!”

Later, at her home, she started putting things in order for her possible departure. As usual, Fernandes Anderson’s focus remained on her children’s needs. She was planning a move to somewhere more affordable, hoping to build a financial cushion in case she couldn’t work. Her oldest son, who had already packed most of his room, was there collecting more of his things. “She is my everything,” he told me. “It sucks.”

In February, I paid a final visit to Fernandes Anderson’s house—the one she’d settled into on her inauguration day three years before. She was preparing to leave, with U-Haul boxes stacked along the hallway and empty bookshelves lining the walls. She rested on a chair, its cushion apparently already packed away, beside a lamp stand missing its shade. She declined again to discuss the case but pushed back against the indictment’s portrayal of her having been in dire financial straits. Yes, she’d fallen behind on some expenses—but only because she was doing what she always had: delaying her own bills that could wait in order to cover urgent needs for family members. She said she only took care of people in need after her children’s needs were met. They came first—always.

Yet there were many who came after them. Perhaps a lifetime of caring for others had finally exacted its price.

When I asked Fernandes Anderson why she felt driven to support so many people, she bristled at the suggestion that this was a problem—even though she had earlier admitted it was something she needed to work on. “The more you take care of people, the more God rewards you,” she said. “Ask any woman of color, especially an immigrant Black woman—they will tell you that is what we do. It’s not a burden. It is a blessing.”