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Worcester Queers Must Organize

By Asa Reyes

“The people who are trying to do something for all of us and not men and women that belong to a white, middle-class, white club” — Sylvia Rivera

On Trans Day Of Visibility, the IOF, continuing its genocidal campaign, killed six more Palestinians in Gaza, including a father and son. It was March 31. The same night in so-called Worcester Massachusetts, a city which failed to pass even a symbolic ceasefire resolution in 2024, the City Council continued its facade of LGBT* allyship by highlighting the same white trans women already approved by the white club. One of whom held an event earlier in the year to end the “trans military ban” with Seth Moulton (just in time for the draft!). Moulton is a senatorial candidate who after Kamala lost her presidential bid made headlines blaming the loss on democrats’ support of trans people, not their support of the genocide.

“The queer liberation struggle cannot be disentangled from the anti-imperialist struggle. They are fundamentally connected.” — Sa’ed Atshan

Early last year the city blocked an investigation into transphobia in the administration, quietly shelved the DOJ report detailing racist brutality and rape in the WPD, and voted against a ceasefire resolution for Gaza. The Mayor does what he usually does in giving away keys to the city to chosen “leaders” of a group and hoping it all blows over. And since 2025 (and much, much longer), it has. He and the council got away with it because we are not organized. Taking a step back, many queer people are part of projects doing good work like WooFridges, Solidarity Outreach Survival, Food Not Bombs, LUCE and others. This shouldn’t change: trans and queerphobia can’t be eradicated until we first combat the hate against “addicts,” “prostitutes,” and “criminals.” As queer and trans people many of us are struggling with addiction, homelessness and doing sex work to survive. Many of us know in larger leftist organizations, trans people are an afterthought, especially trans people of color and transfeminine people. We are supporting other movements as we should, and leading ones we are also members of, but only we can lead our own liberation. We don’t need protection but the political and material capability to do so ourselves.

“’It’s not my pride, it’s their pride. It’s your pride, not mine. You haven’t given me mine yet.’ I have nothing to be proud of except that I’ve helped liberate gays around the world. I have so many children and I’m still sitting on the back of the bus, still struggling to get kids into proper housing, and to get them education, to get them off drugs” — Sylvia Rivera

Seemingly the only ones organized among us are careerists who are going for positions for themselves, more interested in their personal branding or consulting company than building that capability.

In September 2025 after the city fumbled in even its symbolic performance of allyship, including raising the wrong flag, the local Pride coalition chose to step away from the city’s usual flag raising ceremony. This followed the Juneteenth Festival Committee decision earlier in the year after the city previously took the flag down before the 19th. Instead of solidarity with other queer, trans and Black organizers among us, some of the same opportunists we see again and again became the LGBT symbol for the city administration. Holding a separate Pride flag raising with the same city council that refused accountability, refused to support police victims or take even a symbolic stand against the genocide. The same queer leader who ran for mayor in ‘23 by joining the centrist “white, middle-class, white club” establishment including the very councilor who was dehumanizing trans people last year (and surely before), requiring the investigation in the first place.

In early 2025 back to the calls for the investigation we saw more of this queer “leadership.” After a Vietnamese non binary councilor revealed they were called “it” by another councilor, not in the cool nonbinary way, the city scrambled to respond. Mayor Petty, doing the only thing he knows, gave a key to the city to the same white trans woman, again. She would then go on to make a public statement with her consultant company letterhead calling out the only local online queer exchange group for being “unwilling to allow different opinions” while queers organized around transphobic attacks. One wonders how these same queer “leaders” would have responded to Sylvia Rivera at Liberation Day 1973 where she fought for her right to speak against a heavily white, cis and upper class audience.

On the night of the vote the same white woman called in as the only trans person in opposition to the investigation and the sanctuary resolution, proclaiming Joe Petty as “one of the good ones”, someone who has always shown up for our community (for photo shoots sure). During this Joe Petty deadnamed and misgendered her in his thanks for her comment. After weeks of meetings packed with hundreds of queers, the city council led by Joe Petty fawned their support for the LGBT but refused the substantive investigation into their own behavior, opting instead to only pass the symbolic resolution.

Where did that energy go? There aren’t more organized queers to come out of it. After another electoral cycle of queer people and allies devoting their time to democrat campaigns we still got a more conservative council, and the same school committee. Campaign messaging sells the idea that if they just replace their opponent they can make things right. Too much focus is put on the player who said a slur, instead of the system that allows dehumanization across the board. Later on when the DOJ report broke detailing abuse and rape of sex workers from the WPD, where were the same queers? Black and brown trans people especially are pushed into sex work, yet this does not impact all queer people the same; solidarity with sex workers is not a priority in our movement. What’s more, some of our feminist movements harbor sex worker exclusionary sentiments, which inevitably harms trans and gender non conforming people as our movements are inextricably linked.

“I’ve been trying to get up here all day, for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail! They’re writing me every motherfuckin’ week and ask for your help, and you all don’t do a god damn thing for them.” — Sylvia Rivera

Backlash through co-optation to the countercultural Black, queer and feminist liberation movements became obvious in the 1980’s. By the 2000’s the non-profit industrial complex and its lawyers were able to frame marriage as the goal, instead of a target. Marriage became something queers aspired to, instead of seeing it as an avenue for colonial control. Institutional monogamy found another way to quell the threat we are to the capitalist patriarchy. Assimilation became the foundation of the LGBT rights movement.

“We can no longer let people like the Empire State Pride Agenda, the HRC in Washington, speak for us” — Sylvia Rivera

From our origins of Black drag kings and queens, Black transsexual sex workers throwing bricks at pigs, our movement has been co-opted. Identity politics, Rainbow Capitalism, Bioessentialism, Pinkwashing, white respectability and disposability politics, and the non profit industrial complex have disarmed us. Many even in close affinity still can’t deal with their own white supremacy and transmisogyny, Black and brown transsexual women are pushed out of the very movements we helped create.

These idealized communities require disposability to maintain the illusion—violence and ostracism against the black/brown/trans/trash bodies that serve as safety valves for the inevitable anxiety and disillusionment of those who wish “total identification”. —Porpentine, Hot Allostatic Load

The state of our movement is in shambles. Queers are wrapped up in non profits, candidates that don’t care about them, or organizations more interested in using us as political tools to win their campaigns or increase membership. “Protect the dolls” has become a catchy phrase for social media bios or t-shirts while queer, especially Black and brown, trans youth are still struggling with high rates of homelessness, addiction and HIV. With little options, many of us pushed into sex work to live. While HIV research is being cut, trans people are being forced to detransition in prison, trans women are being v-coded, trans people are being attacked in every state in the country, and in most countries across the world.

“The degree to which any movement is progressive or revolutionary is measured by its independence from the rulers of the society it seeks to change” — Leslie Feinberg

We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we know this isn’t working. Queers can not simply attend more city council meetings, vote more or get trans faces in high places. Queer people, especially trans people of color, need to organize together, look at and address our movement problems, and seriously work on developing a revolutionary strategy. “Just do something” has not been enough and won’t be. When our so-called leaders don’t depend on the strategy working, it doesn’t have to. If metrics for funding are the goal and not revolution, and our humanity is used for campaigning, we will always be struggling for basic rights through piecemeal reforms, and struggling to survive.

“You can’t build a revolution with no education” — Fred Hampton

The urgency put on us is what requires us to seriously reflect, study, and strategize. The situation is not too urgent to study, the situation is too urgent for us to continue wasting our time making the same mistakes that our movement has made over and over again. Mistakes that we can avoid if we learn from the revolutionaries before us. Studying past movements needs to be seen as a serious way to develop strategy and win, not a distraction or chore.

Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, they’ll be capitalists and we’ll have Negro imperialism. — Fred Hampton

If any of this speaks to you and you are interested in organizing for protection and power of queer people in Worcester, join us, a collection of angry queers that want to destroy the club, not join it.

To get involved, reach out us at WooTRAN@protonmail.com. Ally looking to support? Here’s two incarcerated trans women you can support now: https://catracha.noblogs.org/jaia-and-gia/

Asa Reyes is a Worcester based anti-zionist and transfeminist organizer, currently a hotline operator for LUCE, leading Zero Fare WRTA and organizing trans prisoner support. Last year managed multiple city council and school committee campaigns, and part of organizing the trans sanctuary city resolution. She is the founder of the transfeminist blog Catracha.

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On next year’s ballot, if all goes well, we may be called upon to make a decision about rent control. Massachusetts has a fraught history with the policy, including at the ballot initiative level, and I wanted to pull together a little state political history as we launch into the first phase of what will undoubtedly be a dramatic clash between the people and Big Real Estate.

The first thing to know about rent control in Massachusetts is that it is functionally banned at the moment. In the mid-90s the Massachusetts Rent Control Prohibition Act passed via statewide ballot initiative by a pretty narrow margin. The law does exactly what the name says—it prevents local control over rents. The only exception to that would be affected property owners opting into a proposed rent control law or local ordinance. As you may have guessed this never happens.

Technically the legislature could enact a statewide policy but they almost certainly won’t, at least not anytime soon, though not for lack of trying. In the past few years, because of the steep incline in rent, there have been multiple failed attempts to pass rent control. For instance, just in 2024, the legislature passed a housing-specific bond authorization bill that conspicuously left out any stabilization on existing rents, or landlords’ ability to hike rent prices year to year. If there was any question about who might be to blame for that, look no further: after the 2023-2024 legislative session ended, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors publicly gloated that they had “successfully blocked” rent control’s inclusion in the bond bill. Legislators tried again in the 2024-2025 session, this time with a standalone bill, and it failed again, probably because of the same interest groups. Advocates warned that if it did they would take rent control to the ballot, and folks… have you heard the good news?

On September 3rd (a day-early birthday present to me, I think), Attorney General Andrea Campbell certified an initiative petition brought by the coalition Homes For All Massachusetts. If passed on the 2026 mid-term ballot, the new law would bypass the legislature on rent control and enact it statewide. Rent increases would be tied to the Consumer Price Index’s estimated cost of living, and would never exceed more than 5 percent of the previous year’s rent even for new tenants. So, if you pay $2,000 a month, your landlord could not raise your rent by more than $100 a month in your next lease term; if you move out, they can’t fuck over the next person who signs a lease, or gentrify the neighborhood as easily. You can see the summary and full text here.

This certification does not mean that the question will be on the ballot, however. In Massachusetts, an initiative petition needs almost 75,000 signatures by mid-November—two months from now—in order to be considered by the legislature, which is given the opportunity to pass the petition as-is, propose a substitute, or do nothing. If, after consideration, the legislature does not pass the initiative as written (they won’t), the initiative effort needs approximately another 12,500 signatures before mid-June to get onto the ballot. On most signature collection efforts like this one, it’s to be expected that a good chunk of signatures will be thrown out, so they will need to build in a buffer. This means that the coalition will likely need to gather at least 100,000 signatures to get on the 2026 ballot.

The rental market is increasingly captured by speculative investment. In many places, 20-30 percent of residential sales are made to investors, and in some communities that number jumps to more than 50 percent. Almost one in ten apartment units in Massachusetts is owned by private equity. I got a chance to ask Jonathan Morales at Homes For All a few questions about the ballot initiative. He breaks it down really well:

“Because Massachusetts has no limit on how much rents can be increased each year, profit-seeking corporate real estate investors are increasingly buying homes and hiking rents astronomically, raising the price of housing for everyone else.”

But Gillian, you might say, the reason we don’t have rent control now is because of a ballot initiative that was voted in by a narrow majority. Why would it be any different this time?

The difference is that now, no matter where you live in Massachusetts, cost of living has become unmanageable. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies has determined the entire state of Massachusetts to be cost-burdened using 2023 data, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their monthly paycheck on rent. Around a quarter of renters statewide are designated as “severely cost-burdened,” meaning they spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent. It’s not just a Boston metro area problem anymore; the whole commonwealth is underwater.

The other thing is that rent control does work. Study after study has found that it lowers rents and increases rental market stability; basically, people don’t get priced out of their own neighborhoods as easily. When local control over rent was banned in Massachusetts, all of the places that had it at the time voted to keep it. The rest of the state, which did not have rent control, pulled the rug out from under them.

But this time the conditions are different. From Cape Cod to Pittsfield, we’re all getting screwed.

Ballot initiatives are an enormous undertaking, requiring massive amounts of funding and organizing capacity, and so they usually need the support of a broad coalition. Politically, rent control is kind of perfect for it. Outside of labor, housing is the issue that touches the widest swath of the general population; everyone is in the housing ‘base’ so to speak. I’ve personally rented in Somerville, Boston, and Worcester over the past 10 years; no matter where I go I get gouged, and my friends all over the state experience the same. Everyone either experiences the consequences of a landlord-controlled housing market, or we know other people who do.

Unwilling legislatures can disappear something like rent control into endless committee meetings at the behest of their big donors. A ballot question can’t be so easily smothered by special interests—if it gets on the ballot we are all going to be talking about it.

Homes For All is taking the lead on this initiative effort, and I would say it’s well situated to do so. H4A is itself a coalition of housing justice organizations, and the campaign for this ballot question, Keep Massachusetts Home, includes an even broader cross-section of groups, including labor unions, community organizations, and faith-based groups from across the state. We’re still in the very early stages—I’d be willing to bet that this effort is going to grow by orders of magnitude. More than 100 groups joined an early organizing call with Homes for All, hundreds of volunteers have already signed up to collect signatures, and they only put boots on the ground this past weekend. They’re going to need a lot more though; this is about as grassroots as it gets. If you want to get involved, click here.

There’s something about the thought of rent control coming back to the ballot that I find meaningful. In 1994, rent control died on the ballot. It’s a little bit poetic. Maybe next year, like a phoenix, the policy will be reborn from its own ashes.

On the flip side, we need to prepare ourselves for a well-coordinated and highly funded opposition campaign—our friends at the Massachusetts Association of Realtors put out a distinctly pissy press release on 9/3 announcing their intent to “work with our industry partners to build a strong and diverse opposition committee.” I suspect that means we’ll be seeing some vewy scawy ads coming our way next October.

I think we can likely anticipate their narratives, because opponents of rent control have used the same talking points for decades now. Rent control as an issue is uniquely sensitive in Massachusetts, precisely because it has existed here before. Even though it currently does not, big real estate is still extremely traumatized about the whole thing, and regurgitates the same set of talking points about it over and over. Their favorite narrative/veiled threat is condominium conversion. Basically, if you rent control us, we’ll just convert all your apartments to condos and sell them off. However, this ‘market-based’ presumption, which supposes that increased condominium conversion is necessarily a direct result of rent control, relies heavily on a case of historical happenstance, and does not account for condominium conversion policies that exist now.

In the late 70’s and 80’s an economic upturn and the Baby Boomers’ coming-of-age ushered a glut of new homebuyers into the real estate market, leading to a nationwide condominium boom, including in Massachusetts. This gutted the supply of rental properties as they were converted quickly into condominiums faster than they could be replaced with new rental stock. In Mass, the condo boom overlapped with a time when rent control existed in Cambridge, Brookline, and Boston. Most opposition narratives in Massachusetts fixate on Cambridge specifically.

In 1991, the city of Cambridge released a report, titled Rent Control Reform in Cambridge: A New Agenda For Fairness. It made suggestions for improvement to a long-standing rent control system within the city. Today, opponents of rent control love to pick it apart and moan about how many problems there were not only with Cambridge’s system, but with the very idea of rent control. However, no one, not even the opponents, can say rent control didn’t work. The report directly credits rent stabilization with keeping Cambridge affordable. This would be proven correct four years later when rent control disappeared and rental prices immediately skyrocketed citywide. While condo conversion was inarguably an issue during the rent control years, it became a much bigger issue immediately after rent control disappeared. The MIT study linked above found that the condominium stock in Cambridge jumped by 32 percent after the repeal of rent control—this supposed nightmare condo hell world that big real estate is selling us actually got way worse immediately after rent control was gone.

The causal relationship seems debatable, or at least multifactored, since the condo boom was a nationwide phenomenon and not specifically limited to cities with rent control. Really, the big issue was that during the boom there weren’t enough protections for people getting their apartments condo-ified out from under them, rent control or no. Now, the conditions with regard to condo conversion policy are very different in Massachusetts than they were 40 years ago. As a direct result of the chaos during the condo boom, a 1983 law introduced protections for tenants against condominium conversion. These protections were expanded in the 90’s and again very recently in the 2024 bond bill. The original 1983 law also allows localities to introduce more strident protections municipally, which many places in Massachusetts have done. Notably though, Worcester is not one of them.

Additionally, in order for something like the condo boom to happen again, people would need to have the money to buy property. By-and-large, they don’t. According to a 2025 Harvard study, a first-time homebuyer would need an annual income of $126,700 to afford the typical cost of a home today. In Worcester, the median household income as of 2023 is $69,262. Homebuying is currently at its lowest level since the mid 90’s (which is coincidentally around the time when the condominium boom finally kicked the bucket). It’s just not realistic unless prices go down and incomes go up.

Opponents of rent control ignore the different world we live in now with regards to the economy and condo conversion policy, and happily continue to use the scary PR—in Worcester, Moe Bergman, Donna Colorio, and Candy Mero-Carlson have all directly cited condo conversion as a major concern preventing their support of rent control. They do so, conveniently, in the same 2022 Telegram article. Colorio, a landlord, even pointed to Cambridge as an example. Bergman, who is also a landlord, basically said rent control is anti-capitalist (I’m paraphrasing), which made me laugh. Kate Toomey didn’t specifically use the phrase ‘condominium conversion’ when explaining why she opposes rent control, however she vaguely referred to it as “limiting housing” which I think might be partially referencing condo conversion. In any case, that article is pretty interesting, firstly because it’s rare to see a bunch of elected officials to go on-record with their reasoning, even if it is self-serving and insincere, and secondly because in this case the opponents of rent control all sound like they are reading from the same script. If rent control goes to the ballot, I would expect more of the same.

The opposition narrative really boils down to a preventative Austerity Strawman, the same strategy that’s repeated by the Right cross-policy. Any perceived or hypothetical hiccup within a system, even one that does not interfere with functionality, is blown out of proportion and catastrophized as a way to chip away at public support, justify reductions in funding, limit bureaucratic capacity, and corrode the whole system over time until it becomes unusable and eventually abolished. The Trump administration is currently doing it, Shock Doctrine style, to our entire government. Our clown show city council has been doing it about Mill Street bike lanes for god knows how long now, and as recently as last week. Opponents of rent control use austerity propaganda in an attempt to inoculate a populace against even thinking about trying to do it again. “Rent control?! But what about condos?!” they yelp, ignoring the actual policies that exist and the economic reality we live in right now, hoping that I’ll forget that this year my friend’s landlord tried to jack up their rent by $400 a month. Girl bye.

Worcester in particular has experienced a rapid escalation. As Jonathan from Homes For All points out:

“From the Forbes article in 2024 identifying Worcester as one of the most ‘competitive’ rental markets in the country, to the surge in unhoused people and families in Worcester reported in June, corporate landlord greed is destroying our communities and displacing our neighbors.”

We all see it, and it’s gotten to the point that even our city council can’t pretend it isn’t happening—Kate Toomey conspiracy-theorizing about “the towns” sending their homeless residents to Worcester is just a desperate see-no-evil attempt to come up with some other, any other, explanation as to why more and more people are being forced to live outside on the street. It couldn’t possibly be that people can’t afford their cost of living, it must be some other completely insane thing that no one has ever witnessed happening.

Of course the public opponents of rent control in our fair city are the same villains we’re used to. It makes sense. But I want more people to think about that as we inch ever closer to the city council election. Rent control will still fall under statewide jurisdiction even if this initiative makes it past the ballot next year, but the makeup of our city council determines how much further we can go. Local tenant protections, eviction bans, stringent safety regulations, equity incentives, expanded limitations on condominium conversion—all of these fall under local control and are ways that the city council could be acting on the housing crisis in Worcester at this very moment. If rent control passes, it could go a lot further if our city elected officials would be willing to work for the public interest rather than sneer down at us and wail about bullying.

On the other hand, say our city council barely changes after November. If rent control gets enacted statewide, there’s nothing those cranks can do about it.

Gillian Ganesan (@gillianganesan) is a Worcester-based organizer, writer, and concerned citizen. Former campaign strategist at the ACLU, focused on police surveillance and the First Amendment.

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How do we make the anti-Petty case to well-meaning liberals?

By Brett Iarrobino

A funny little thing happened to me at a Worcester Common protest. This past May, I attended “Hands Off Worcester Mothers,” a demonstration quickly organized by Mass 50501 in response to the illegal ICE abduction on Eureka Street, the agents protected and assisted by the Worcester Police Department. It was a well-attended event, considering the kidnapping had unfolded just three days prior. Several other demonstrations cropped up throughout those three days, all of them urging our community to show up against the nationwide fascism that had finally trickled into our backyard. I went in with a similar mindset, knowing that every neighbor counts in moments like these, that the more people who stood out on a hot Mother’s Day afternoon against the unjust disappearance of vulnerable people, the better.

But it’s election season in Worcester, and my mind was also thinking about who we’d soon vote into City Hall, the building that looms behind the speakers at every Worcester Common protest. It’s August now, and we are less than 100 days from November 4th. Worcester Sucks regulars know how these dots connect: the tragedy on Eureka Street, one that ripped apart a Worcester family and saw our city’s cops throw a teen girl to the pavement, is at best ignored and at worst exacerbated by the majority of our city council and the City Manager they confirmed to the position. How do multiple protests get off the ground in such short spans of time, rallying dozens or hundreds of Worcester citizens to a righteous cause, but we are still saddled with a majority of elected officials who are too afraid to do anything about it?

As I thought about Eric Batista’s press release commending WPD’s presence and his outright lie that there was no collusion between the department and ICE, I began a chant at the Common. It was as much a warning to the chair of the council that handpicked Batista’s ascension to the City Manager role as it was an invitation for every Worcester resident repulsed by Eureka Street to turn their outrage into action. To my pleasant surprise, it picked up quite a bit of steam: “VOTE PETTY OUT! VOTE PETTY OUT! VOTE PETTY OUT!” It rippled through the crowd, briefly getting in the way of a speaker (sorry, 50501), and causing a white woman in her 60s or 70s standing right in front of me to shoot back some serious daggers.

I had a feeling my chant would ruffle feathers—anyone who’s served fourteen consecutive terms of governance in a small pond like ours would surely have a wide sphere of influence. And something told me that there was a Venn diagram between that circle and the crowds that frequently show up to rage against an abuse of power at the national level, one they believe is perpetrated exclusively by the far right. Sure enough, after the chant ran its course, this attendee staring at me set down her anti-ICE sign to inform me that she happens to know and like Mayor Petty. She said she finds him to be a great guy; she knows for a fact that he is “in fumes” over what the Trump Administration is up to, and he actually adopted children from China. (It’s not immediately clear what this had to do with the conversation, but she felt compelled to throw it in there, so why do her the disservice of a misquote?)

I could dedicate the rest of this column to debunking the blatant silliness of this protester’s claim—that our mayor’s displeasure with ICE and raising of non-white children somehow absolves him of his complicity in the police department’s misconduct—but that’s not the point of my writing this. I’m more compelled to note that this lady represents a significant contingent of community members who—silly adoption anecdotes aside—are entirely worth engaging as we work to reimagine our municipal government into one that truly cares for its populace. I have no doubt that she and I both want very similar things for our community and country. She also, after all, dragged herself out into 80-degree weather on Mother’s Day to decry our neighbors being dragged off the street. Like me, she is probably also disturbed by the Trump administration’s re-institutions of Muslim bans, their obsession with trans people’s passports, and all the other weird fixations that come with 21st-century fascism.

The second-largest city in New England is full of these well-intentioned voters. They simultaneously send one of the most reliably progressive representatives to Congress every fall and are represented by the likes of Petty and Mo Bergman, two city councilors who are ostensibly Democrats on paper but entirely indifferent to state-sanctioned kidnapping. Effective reporting documents our city’s turnout issue each election cycle, but equal attention is owed to the fact that every year, hundreds of liberal and left-leaning voters not only vote, but are also duped by recognizable career politicians, unaware that they are more sympathetic to the will of the national environment, wealthy developers, and the overzealous crank neighbors who all thrive off their indifference. It’s a shame Petty is not as great a leader as he is a politician. By schmoozing through Pride events and saying the right things to disenfranchised groups, our mayor sustains a tenure not unlike many of the national Democrats who have been rightfully lit up these past six months for their relentlessly feeble response to democratic backsliding and human rights violations. If the same collection of protesters gathered at City Hall to denounce Trump’s actions were made aware of how often our city government does nothing or denies its collusion with the very same practices that assembled their dissent to begin with, what could our next local election look like?

About four hours from Worcester, in New York City, a political newcomer just bucked the system by reaching out and engaging a new coalition of voters who felt disaffected by the status quo and sought out meaningful change in their everyday governance. Zohran Mamdani continues to play it smart, linking the worn and well-known faces of his competition with Trump and his billionaire friends, reminding voters that the national atrocities they see on the news every day stem from the same political influences who would much rather see him fail.

It’s one of many lessons Worcester could stand to learn from this success story: all those people who show up to tell off ICE should be informed how, exactly, our City Manager and his elected supporters condone ICE’s presence. Every time the subject of the election arises, you’ll read here that just 1,000 new voters are needed to reposition our municipality into one that represents care and progress. The good news is that those 1,000 voters are already here; they could live across the street from you, above or below your floor, and they’re all plenty fired up by the outcome of last November. They congregate at the Common every time something has obviously gone wrong. The time has come to assemble some talking points and encourage them to conceptualize the throughline between our federal government’s cruelty and our municipal government’s disinterest in any meaningful challenge to it.

I tried this approach already with my newfound protest friend; after letting the woman who approached me finish her rant, I reassured her that while I was certain Petty was indeed a very nice guy, my conviction that he and most of his colleagues were unfit to meet this moment remained. I told her about Batista’s absurd Eureka Street statement, riddled with falsehoods. I told her that Petty was among the majority of councilors who thrust Batista into the City Manager position despite their insistence they would do a robust, competitive search to fill the role (they didn’t). And while I don’t think my status as a protest rando was strong enough alone to reshape the version of Petty she’s friends with, this person listened to everything I had to say.

While the ease of feeling smug and satisfied in the face of this neighbor was tempting, it would be a disservice to the movement we’re trying to build to not loop her in on what I know and what informs my vote in our city. The mayor’s thousands of biennial votes don’t come out of thin air, and I am sure many of the voters who provide them will continue to show up at the Common, ready to bemoan the actions of the executive branch and be braver than the leaders they’re giving them to. If you ride for Worcester Sucks like I do, surely you are also stocked with well-reported voting records and City Hall press releases that are the perfect receipts to bring up in a conversation similar to the one I had at this rally. How nice of a silver lining would it be to see our city change for the better in the face of all else that is changing for the worse? We should all do our part to get out there, find a neighbor who is both compassionate and ready to listen, and invite them into this vision we’re trying to build. With only 77 days until November 4th, and just 14 days until the Sept. 2 preliminary, I hope another anti-Petty chant picks up steam near me. I also hope another well-meaning Petty supporter incredulously asks me why I’m chanting it.

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Brett Iarrobino is a teacher in Worcester Public Schools and a co-founder of the Worcester Writers’ Collective. Send a line to worcesterwriterscollective@gmail.com to learn more.

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Four precincts control the entire city

By Gillian Ganesan

Greetings fellow residents of Worcester, where nothing is possible and everything is fine! I can’t stop thinking about the upcoming municipal election. Pacing around my apartment muttering to myself about cronies and voter turnout. My wife is used to it by now.

Last time we did this, we lost. With the exception of a couple stalwart fighters on the city council and the school committee, we carry on under a quavering, nasally regime of cranks. White devils with money to burn decided who governs a city of marvelous diversity—I’ve recently been inspecting a depressingly thorough little tabulated spreadsheet breaking down the last municipal election, and like, four precincts, all coincidentally touching the Holden line, far and away out-voted everyone else. That’s four precincts that control our city, out of sixty total. They stay tucked away behind Newton Hill and cast their wicked ballots over the rest of Worcester. What the hell! (Highly related post from March: “The uneven geography of political backwater”)

CUTLINE: Precinct/ward map

It’s a condition that we’ve never been able to shake. Historically, we have always been a city made up of immigrant workers, most often governed by a tight-knit group of fashy nativists who set up their own little gated community within the walls of city hall. In the early days of the 20th century, when unions were building a movement across the commonwealth, Worcester was the white whale of organized labor. The industrious capitalists of the municipality pitted ethnic groups against each other, using language barriers and neighborhood lines to hold organizing at bay. A strike would break out, and factory owners could bring in new workers easily, preying on desperation and division among the working class. Meanwhile, they, the ruling class of their day, stayed in perfect formation, in solidarity with each other against the population of the city. They all went to the same private schools, frequented the same clubs, sicced goons on immigrant workers, and spent their leisure time in the surrounding towns. Sound familiar?

The glue that holds our cranks together, which has always held them together, is a common interest in their own wealth. Our current crop spend money on each other’s races, shake hands with the same developers, and live in the same pricey neighborhoods. They barely have to do any actual campaigning, because in exchange for selling their council votes to the highest bidder, they receive support and name recognition. Case in point: Alex Guardiola, running unopposed for school committee in District D, received in December donations from various members of the bunch–Joe Petty, Mo Bergman, Kate Toomey, even our dear insurrectionist Kathi Roy joined in the fun. His campaign was nice enough to contribute to Bergman and Mero-Carlson as well. I hope they’re all enjoying their little circlejerk.

How long do we have to endure this? The hallmark of a typical Worcester city official is simpering cowardice and unapologetic greed. Even when good people have managed to squeeze through the iron gates of cronyism into elected office, they are faced with a cabal of bootlickers. The Petty Pals are all too willing to sell the soul of this city down the river so that more “luxury” apartments can stand empty next to a stadium built on false promises, while around the corner the cops gleefully commit hate crimes, harass homeless people, and kidnap our neighbors. As ever, forever. They’ve repeatedly (literally) locked us out of civic participation, and are currently trying to make it impossible for Worcester residents to have a say in the process of government, the timing of which seems awfully interesting considering the city-wide outrage at their multifaceted inaction.

The thing is, despite the corruption and cronyism, their grasp on Worcester’s government is not as tight as it seems. Last time around, Candy Mero-Carlson, Worcester’s premiere transphobe, only won by 160 votes. A completely beatable number in District 2, which is why it hurts so bad to think about what could have been (all of us living blissfully, not having to watch Candy get belligerent once a week). Breaking down the at-large numbers, it shakes out like how you might expect – Joe Petty got the most votes, around 11,000, with Kate Toomey and Khrystian King close behind at around 10,000. The counts drop off from there. But the margins are not impossible. Last election, only 19.42% of registered voters turned out. Even bumping our city’s participation up by 1% could drastically change our at-large situation. For instance, Donna Colorio and Morris Bergman languish in the tepid zone, around 8,700 total votes each, city-wide.

They only beat out most of the progressive candidates by a few hundred votes—it was not a sure thing for them. What would happen if 1,000 more people had shown up? 1,500? What if we could get them to vote this time? With almost 119,000 currently registered voters in Worcester, the possibility doesn’t seem so far-fetched to me.

People are registered to vote here, they just are not showing up down-ballot. Worcester is a unique place, but in this way, it’s like everywhere else. Many people just don’t have the information they need to know when local elections are, who is running, or what the difference between candidates is. So they don’t vote, because it’s easier not to. People have busy, difficult lives—going out of their way to engage with politics is not a priority for most.

Despite this, it is extremely possible to motivate people to go and cast a ballot. It’s what field organizing–door-knocking, phone-banking, et cetera–are designed to do. I’ll spare you a full background on my career, but I spent a long time running field campaigns up and down the ballot. In my ~professional~ opinion, municipal elections are where they work best, partially because turnout is typically so low that the city establishment gets lazy. Joe Petty’s little clique relies on people staying home to hold onto their power. We may not have the money or the connections that they do, but we can work harder and talk to more people. Sometimes that’s enough. Andrew Cuomo was basically pre-anointed to be the next mayor of NYC until Zohran Mamdani showed up and inspired people to fight for something new. What if we tried that here?

Right now we are looking down the barrel of another municipal election. September 2 for the preliminary, where Worcester decides its next group of at-large councilors and the District E school committee candidates; November 4th for the general, when we vote for our district councilors, the mayor, and the rest of the school committee. Like always, an election is a window of opportunity, but the window will close. For a little while now, Bill and I have been mulling over what to do about it. We decided the best place to start is to just invite people who care to get together. To that end, we’re holding a series of bar nights, where people who want to be involved in this election can gather and hang out. Trade canvassing anecdotes, bits, commiserate about what a shitshow our elected officials are, each of us offering what we can. The first one is next Thursday, 7/31, at Steel&Wire. We’ll have some of the good candidates there, I’ll be helping people get involved with volunteering if they aren’t yet, and Bill will be running some fun open-newsroom activities. Very casual, mostly just about having a nice time with nice people. I’d love to meet ya!

I don’t really like the slogan that often goes around: “when we fight, we win.” I think if we’re fighting for something real, there’s always a risk of losing – and frankly, if victory comes too easily, it probably doesn’t meaningfully impact the power structure. However, it is true that there’s no possibility of winning anything without a fight, and there are losses that set up wins down the line. Maybe we don’t break down the iron gate this time. But if we can push a couple good people through the bars, and support them while they’re in there, maybe next time we can get a couple more through. And after that who knows. Someday maybe we’ll wake up in a city that sucks less. It’s a sacred hope kept alive across the ages by everyone who ever gave a shit about each other.

Gillian Ganesan (@gillianganesan) is a Worcester-based organizer, writer, and concerned citizen. Former campaign strategist at the ACLU, focused on police surveillance and the First Amendment.

Out of curiosity I searched the Telegram archives for Ozzy pieces and found some remarkable coverage of a show in 83 at the DCU Center (then the Worcester Centrum) in which 12,000 people went nuts and 40 people got arrested.

A little more on that in the next proper newsletter going out to inboxes, hopefully tomorrow, where this piece will also appear. I’m going to start running guest pieces on their own ahead of time like this.

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Now to John…

I’ve Listened to Preachers, I’ve Listened to Fools

By John Edward Keough

Only a couple of weeks past his retirement concert, John Michael ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne has passed from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease. I wanted to write this story for many, many years. The best way to start is to quote Ozzy from an interview hid did with David Von Bader back in 2013:

"It's a name. I didn't wake up one morning and go, 'You know what, I'm going to call myself...' It started as a joke name really. I'm OK with it, you know? You know, it's better than being called an asshole."

This, of course, is about Ozzy’s nickname, The Prince of Darkness. In the 1970’s here and in the UK, the music industry was pulling away from itself. More and more, bands with either gimmicks, or completely new styles were able to sell albums, and sell our venues without the benefit of a traditional Billboard-style hit.

The darker,moodier form of blues we now all call metal, was not new. What Ozzy and Sabbath were able to do was marry three elements folks hadn’t seen before. Heavy, blues music mixed with repetitive lyrics that touched on occult and spiritual themes topped off with the theatrics of Ozzy himself. This combination had not yet been seen in the vast majority of the world.

The other part was they took it serious. KISS had a somewhat parallel career, but many of their antics worked because they (and their crowd) were not taking it seriously. KISS opened for Sabbath for a time, before their own touring act began to sell out bigger venues.

Ozzy’s nickname came very much from his own struggles with addiction played out in real time, but also because his eerie high-pitched voice seemed very much to reflect a connection for fans to another world. Sabbath fans, especially 70s era Sabbath, are dead serious about their band.

Ozzy often credited the Beatles, and in particular the song, ‘She Loves You’ with inspiring him to become a musician. Listening back to that now, it is a long hard road to get to such songs like ‘Diary of a Madman’ (which absolutely, as the kids say, slaps). Yet, Ozzy’s penchant for harmony whether in Sabbath or as a solo artist, makes some sense if we trace it to the Fab Four.

Ozzy’s influence cannot be overstated. No More Tears is all over almost every song from the grunge era. He was ripped off by everyone (I am looking dead at you in the face Candlebox!), and credited by a list of music royalty.

Elton Friggin’ John guested on an Ozzy song. Seriously. (I bet the editor of this fine publication will insert a link to it here: Ordinary Man.) By the way, this song also slaps. The lyrics are nonsensically good.

Elton comes in at this point in the song:

‘Many times I've lost control

They tried to kill my rock and roll

Just remember I'm still here for you

I don't wanna say goodbye

When I do, you'll be alright

After all, I did it all for you’

Makes you wonder what a universe with Elton in a metal band would look like. Probably a better one. That’s a tangent I could get lost in, but we are here to talk about Ozzy.

Ozzy’s struggles and open talk about addiction became a primary part of his public persona, particularly in light of his reality show fame on ‘The Osbournes’, where he appeared as a much softer Prince of Darkness. His grandpa version was shocking to many fans, but he won over scores of former critics by being very much the family man (at least on the show).

He was very famously fired from Sabbath for a few years and it led to a song that again has had profound influence in “Goodbye to Romance”:

‘I say goodbye to romance, yeah

Goodbye to friends, I tell you

Goodbye to all the past

I guess that we'll meet, we'll meet in the end’

I could go on and on about specific songs, and how Ozzy’s voice brought elements to them that other singers just could not replicate (including the many, many lead singers for Sabbath when he was separate from them). That would make this a normal post-death rock review.

I am not normal, as those of you who have read me over at This Week in Worcester can attest, or those of you who follow my films. I can’t help but look at Ozzy in the context of the Great Hypocrisy of the West: Public Christianity.

Now, before you attempt to tar and feather this publication, give me a chance. Ozzy was not the hypocrite here.

‘Yes, I've been a bad guy

Been higher than the blue sky

And the truth is I don't wanna die an ordinary man

I've made momma cry

Don't know why I'm still alive

Yes, the truth is I don't wanna die an ordinary man’

See, a hypocrite wouldn’t admit to being a bad guy, or an addict or that he hurt his loved ones. No, hypocrites instead do what was done to Ozzy for decades.

One particular leader stands out. The Jimmy Swaggart. Yup, if you don’t know it, he also recently passed away. The actual epitome of American Televangelism. This guy had it all. Money, planes, books and of course, a little action on the side. Some folks in the music industry think Ozzy was talking about him in Trap Door:

‘Can you see your reflection

False strength and hollow protection

Run from pain and rejection

the truth stabs again

till the skin is broken

and the cut is open

and the words once spoken

just fade away’

I can’t pin it down, because Ozzy was often talking about himself, but it fits the late Swaggart. This man once said that Ozzy’s music was ‘degenerate and filth.’ It certainly is not!

As a former sound leader for churches, and a roaming consultant for worship teams, I can tell you that Ozzy’s songs are most likely not going to be played in a church (unless of course a secret metal head is your sound guy). Not that I was ever a secret metal guy. That said, he constantly touched on the spiritual world.

The late, great Lester Bangs, from whom many rock critics copy their entire personality, once wrote of Black Sabbath:

“They are probably the first truly Catholic rock group, or the first group to completely immerse themselves in. the Fall and Redemption: the traditional Christian dualism which asserts that if you don’t walk in the light of the Lord then Satan is certainly pulling your strings, and a bad end can be expected, is even imminent.”

He did so in his epic essay, “Bring Your Mother To The Gas Chamber.” (Yes, that is the title. Creem Magazine circa 1972, and yes I read part two in old issues of Creem when I was a hapless angry loner foster kid. I ate those magazines, and looked for depth. When I encountered Lester, I thought he and I were kindred spirits. I wrote him letters that he never answered, and they were very often parodies of his articles.

He never answered because he died in 1983, but in 1992 I did not know that, I thought Creem was a magazine about current music things, hence my penchant for music much older than me.)

Catholic Rock. I mean, a band with a lead singer (Elton John???) dressed as the Pope, and then a bunch of monks in the band? How could that not be awesome? (St. Paul and the Broken Bones aren’t terrible, check out Apollo and get back to me. If you get that song, you and I can be friends. Sanctify, to cover a little Biblical love, you can play for your person and thank me later).

That said, the dualistic nature of Sabbath was truly borne out in Ozzy’s solo career. Everything was fall and rise. Death and light. Sin and forgiveness. There is no place in the actual, real Bible (not the overly interpreted ones that our current crop of public Christians like to quote) for hypocrisy. Jesus (who would be an elite leadman if He so chose), once said,

‘Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be more severely punished.’

Jimmy was calling out Ozzy while he was hanging out with each and every sex worker in the (dirrrrty) South. The open embrace of our lovely President Trump (I am sure something he did today proved how wonderful he is) by the Southern Baptists, despite his many divorces (and the other things, you know ‘em), is very much in line with the Swaggart class of preacher. Swaggart was a Pentecostal who thought Pentecostalism was too weird for TV (the first of many compromises, I’m sure).

Ozzy, meanwhile, was torturing himself for thinking about Sharon while he was still married to his first wife Thelma. He was consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol and drugs, and was never home due to constant touring. Yet, he admitted it. Publicly.

Now, this is not an excuse. I too have admitted my own transgressions on a regular basis (my own Swaggart, the local Q, continues to rail at me and the publisher of this esteemed enterprise). Those very public failures are not washed away in the blood (as the kids say) of public self-flagellation. No, not at all. That said, I would rather laugh with the sinners then cry with the saints (yes, I blatantly ripped off Billy Joel, and I am proud of it).

We come now to the most important part of my study on the great Blizzard of Ozz. The name of the band. Black Sabbath was named after A HORROR MOVIE!!

Those of you who know me are cackling now. Of course it was a horror movie.

Black Sabbath originally in Italian, “I tre volti della paura” literally The Three Faces of Fear was a 1963 horror anthology that did terribly at the theaters but became a bit of a cult classic. Boris Karloff himself serves as a kind of host for the three parts, each taking place in a different time and country.

The subjects of dishonesty, mistaken identity and hypocrisy (and an early film zombie) very much influence the band that took the film’s UK and American title as their moniker. Ozzy bit the heads off of doves, and once, famously, a bat, but he also raised millions for children’s charities.

His last concert is estimated to have brought in $190 million for three causes: Cure Parkinson's, Birmingham Children's Hospital, and Acorn Children's Hospice. A man, who by all accounts, was rich and had it all, gave of himself, and of his excess right up until the end.

He also, very famously, made Trump stop using Crazy Train.

‘Mental wounds not healing

Life's a bitter shame’

The only thing I guess I can hold against Ozzy is that he was a celebrity guest manager for the British Bulldogs at WrestleMania 2. Can’t keep a Brutus the Barber Beefcake fan down.

Ozzy Osbourne is much more likely to be singing, as my mother has always said, with the angels than any of the hypocrites. His life was marked, in the end, by his public confessions, and the tears on the faces of his fans at the last concert tell you all you need to know. Rest easy John Micheal.

‘Though I Know We Must Be Parted

As Sure As Stars Are In The Sky

I'm Gonna See You When It Comes To Glory

And I'll See You, I'll See You On The Other Side

Yes, I'll See You, I'll See You On The Other Side’

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John Edward Keough is the president of HollyWooot Film Group, the Executive Producer at Manny Jae Media LLC, the co-host of the This Week in Worcester Podcast and a featured correspondent for This Week in Worcester's online newspaper.