Politics
Frank served in Congress for 32 years. He died at the age of 86 earlier this month.
Barney Frank in his Washington, D.C., office in 1991. Shayna Brennan/Freelance
A memorial service for Barney Frank will be held at Faneuil Hall next month.
The longtime Massachusetts congressman died at the age of 86 last Tuesday. Frank had been in hospice care at his home in Ogunquit, Maine.
The memorial celebration will take place at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 8, Frank’s former campaign manager and longtime friend Jim Segel confirmed to The Boston Globe.
Frank, who served in Congress for 32 years, was an outspoken liberal well-known for his advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. In 1987, he became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay.
After the global financial crisis of 2008, Frank helped craft the major banking reform bill that became known as the Dodd-Frank Act.
Frank remained vocal about politics until the end of his life. In recent interviews with outlets like CNN, he spoke about how liberals should fight back against the reactionary populism that defines the Trump era by taking a measured approach with a long-term view.
Frank was working on a new book, “The Hard Path to Unity,” at the time of his death. It was set to focus on how liberals in America and around the world “lost support to xenophobic populism.”
Frank said he was disgusted by the current state of American politics under the current Trump administration, which he believed was slowly imploding and would make way for a renewal of liberal governance. The next generation of Democratic leaders, Frank said, should strive to embrace progressive ideas without pressing them on voters.
“The main obstacle to our defeating populism and going further in the right direction is that mainstream Democrats have to make it clear that we oppose that part of the agenda of our friends on the left that is politically unacceptable. They’re right about a lot of things but you have to have some discretion,” Frank told the Associated Press. “You should not take the most unpopular parts of your agenda and make them litmus tests.”
Ross Cristantiello
Ross Cristantiello, a general assignment news reporter for Boston.com since 2022, covers local politics, crime, the environment, and more.
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