At the mayor’s 5th Annual Holiday Party and Toy Drive on the first floor of the Reeves Center on Dec. 13, a healthy crowd of children, mothers, and government employees gathered around tables of free spring rolls, finger sandwiches, and cookies. Volunteers wrapped donated toys for the city’s needy children, and holiday go-go tunes blasted from a PA system. The scene started getting tense only when Mayor Anthony A. Williams showed up and began addressing the crowd. Williams managed a sentence before a pair of homeless activists, upset over the shuttering of the Randall School shelter, started singing a fake carol with the lyric “Why did you close our shelter?” The mayor could only look on in disgust, waiting for the singing to cease. Finally, he was allowed to speak, and immediately following his address he headed for the exit. “Trying to shout down me, that’s fair,” Williams says. “To shout at me giving out things to kids is out of bounds.” —Jason Cherkis