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Peace Through Bagels(a past Boston Phoenix article about Dan, by Sara McNaught) Dan the Bagel Man, as he calls himself, isn't like the other vendors who set up their pushcarts each morning. They lay out costume jewelry and sunglasses and bags of sweet-smelling caramel peanuts, hoping to entice students and tourists into a quick purchase. "My goal is simple. I want democracy for a country that still doesn't have it," says Dan, a bagel vendor outside Park Street Stations and, at 36 still something of a hippie. For Dan, his bagel cart is his podium. On his hat he sports more than 75 political buttons spanning issues and decades. They range form "SUPPORT THE HOMELESS" badges to anti-Vietnam War pins. "I am a doer," says Dan, whose unruly curls and big brown eyes are accentuated by colorful clothing, globe earrings and numerous peace and solidarity medallions around his neck. "I need to live, so I work," he says, "but I also combine business with reality. I sell bagels and the truth to anyone who wants to be educated." He explains how cars wreck the ozone layer and how the demolition of rain forests and pine forests in Canada add to the problem. He informs people - as they decide between a plain bagel or an onion - that Poland Springs does not, in fact, get its water from one source. The water comes from all over the country, and the company isn't really even Poland Springs anymore: it's owned by Nestle. Back in 1990, Dan received his first warning from the landlord who manages pushcart vendors: he was too political. The next year, he was warned for handing out flyers. He responded by setting up tiny toy dinosaurs and soldiers around his cart to show that the Gulf War was nothing more than "old dinosaurs fighting over oil." Everyone knows Dan, including the politicians on Beacon Hill. Some stop by his cart to keep him up-to-date; others swing by to be clued in themselves. And if they don't come to him, he goes to them. "I'm always in the State House and City Hall," he says. He says he has spent many an hour in City Hall with former city councilor David Scondras, and has taken his numerous concerns more than once to the office of Councilor Byron Rushing. Jamie Carson, a 19-year-old political student at UMass/Boston, says she doesn't really like bagels, but drops by his cart anyway - just to hear what the bagel man has to say. "I have instigated hour-long debates in my public-policy classes based on something Dan the Bagel Man has told me that morning before class," she says. "He's better than any teacher I've ever had." Dan was destined to be political since he was a small child. He explains how he attended his first protest when he was eight years old: "My mom was against Vietnam, and me and my brother and sister went to a protest with her. I've been involved ever since." Although his childhood stomping ground was leafy Framingham, Dan's teen years involved regular trips to the city. He was an avid reader and also loved to be where the action was. That's also why, he sys, he dropped out of Northeastern after a year: to join the real world, to get his hands dirty. He went to work with Greenpeace for a year and then went of the Washington, where he grew even more politically active. "I also went to Miami in 1987 to join the South Florida Peace Coalition and protest the testing of nuclear weapons," he says. "But I was only there long enough to spend nine days in jail." Dan's philosophy has often gotten him in trouble. In 1991, he and his bagel cart were kicked out of Park Street by Parks and Recreation Commissioner Charles O'Connell when he was caught hanging a bulletin board with political newsletters and cartoons on the cart. Dan believes the reason his political activities have been "beaten down" is because his landlord is good friends with the governor. But whether it was conspiracy or just a nuisance evictions, that was only the first of many run-ins he's had with the city over his political views. Although he was reinstated a year later, Dan stayed in the new location he'd found at Back Bay Station, where he could be politically active more safely. That is, until he was kicked out of Back-Bay for attending a Nelson Mandella speech at the Hatch Shell in 1993. Apparently, Dan had also been warned by the landlord of the Back Bay vendors not to be so politically vocal. So, when he and his fellow vendors were seen leaving the speech and congregating in the neighborhood, Dan was let go. "But that was okay," he says. "I took a break for a while and I just went back to Park Street last year." Dan works a grueling schedule, spending 14-hour days at the bagel stand. If he's not there, he might be handing out free vegetarian buffet meals for the homeless with the activist group Food Not Bombs. On Monday nights he strategizes with member of the Homes Not Jails to find ways to get the government to turn abandoned buildings into permanent housing for the homeless. Despite his hard work, Dan settles for the bare necessities in his own life. He has no phone in his Brighton apartment, but doesn't fret. "This is one across the street at the Citgo station," Dan says, " and that does the job."
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