A counscious choice to maintain a dangerous status quo
Psycho-geography and brain drain in Worcester City Hall
Takes an entire week to catch up on a week. Woof.
Back from a much needed vacation and I’ve been “in the shit” all week—cramming two weeks worth of shit into one shit sandwich—which I’m now serving to you hot and fresh.
Today’s post will focus on the manager’s annual non-review last week, not so much his score or anything, as that would imply it meant something, but rather the reality that the city council has gone through a tremendous brain drain from last November to now, in a way the evaluation made especially apparent.
Also, I like where it arrives in the body of the post but I should quickly add up here at the top a stunning fact I discovered in raw federal data that hasn’t been reported locally yet, far as I’ve seen: Worcester’s homeless population spiked dramatically in the most recent point-in-time count data. Almost 50 percent year-over-year, from just under 2,000 homeless people countywide to just under 3,000. Children make up both the largest percentage by age category and the most dramatic increase. Almost 400 more homeless children were reported in the 2026 data (which works off a January 2025 point-in-time count) than in 2025 (same one year lag.) The adult unsheltered population—whom most people, especially cranks, refer to exclusively when talking about the issue—was, as ever, only a tiny sliver of the total number, and it increased only slightly.
First, a few lighter news items. And of course the customary asking nicely for a little bit of money so I can keep putting in the hours upon hours it takes to write these posts.
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Shouts out to the reader in a purple tie-die shirt who said hey to me as he was crossing the street in front of Katie and I on Park Ave by WPI. I think you said something about the newsletter but I could just barely hear you over “Boys of Summer.” You look like a man who understands that when Boys of Summer comes on it stays on. Also when I finally get my act back together on the merch front I’m thinking a run of custom tie-die long sleeves.
Also we were on our way back from both of our first times going to Cool Licks. That place is bananas! Absolute crime against god (complement) the amount of soft serve flavors they offer. Most places got three tops, Cool Licks rocking a baker’s dozen all day.
Summer schedule is well upon us and things are slow at city hall.
Coming up this week, a Central Mass Planning meeting on the 15th, which includes the potentially interesting agenda item:
Planning Board on the 16th. Nothing jumping out at me.
School Committee on the 17th. Aislinn’s got you covered on that over in the WPS In Brief department: “Agenda Preview: July 16 School Committee Meeting”
I have jury duty on Wednesday. Super hoping I get picked to be honest. The sort of insights to be pulled from that experience… plus a better look at the supposed random number selection machine at the clerk’s desk for dismissing the alternate juror… for those careful readers who remember my coverage of the Haxhiaj and Spring trials. Does it exist? Who knows.
Last but not least, the trailer for BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE is out, you can watch below, and I am so stoked to see this thing. It premieres August 6 at the Hanover Theater. See you there?
For background on this project check the interview we did with producer John Keough a few months back. “Episode 59: Burnin’ Down The House”
Ok let’s start with a few quick hits.
“My god, it’s repulsive“
Well the past week’s #1 story was definitely also the dumbest. Former Framingham cop and one-time, perhaps current, purveyor of certain controlled substances Kyle Pursell’s project to disgrace the former Dive Bar reached a new zenith previously thought impossible. He commissioned a local artist (who’s definitely exactly the artist that this guy would commission ) to replace the iconic Dragon / Snake / Snake-Dragon mural on the side of the building with uh… this…….
Now, we here at Worcester Sucks would never disgrace the image of Smiley Ball in such a way. Sure we might write a Marxist economic history of the symbol for Playboy Magazine and sure there might be some slight, totally incidental in a legal sense, similarities between it and our OG logo. But we didn’t do that.
I first noticed it on the Worcester sub-Reddit, in a post delightfully slugged “My god, it’s repulsive.”
On Friday I saw it IRL and man pictures do not do the repulsiveness justice. It’s just… come on man it’s not even funny. It just sucks. It’s sad. The only cool part about it is there’s apparently video of the artist falling off a ladder while painting it lol. Happy hunting, I’m too busy.
Shouts out to Travis Duda for executing so well on the little idea I sent over: “old mural mauling new mural.”
Now in case you thought I was committing out-and-out slander with the first graf of this section, let’s take a quick look at the legacy Pursell left in Framingham. Luckily friend of the newsletter Andrew Quemere was all over this story.
Pursell was one of two officers in that department busted for cocaine-related activities that remain vaguely stated but, given what we generally know about police officers, would have had to have been a step or two above a quick trip to the bathroom if you catch my drift. The other officer was fired but Pursell pulled the classic move of resigning before the investigation concluded. Quemere got his hands on the resignation letter, which is an interesting read. “I have decided to move in a different direction in my career and pursue new opportunities.” That was in January of this year, meaning the new opportunity was very much a reference to his current desecration of Dive Bar.
Quemere, in his newsletter, “The Mass Dump,” wrote:
According to the Brady records, the police department found on February 6 that both Black and Pursell violated policies against criminal conduct, controlled substances, association with known criminals, and conduct unbecoming an officer or employee.
The department found that Pursell violated two additional policies when “his taser was not properly secured in his department-issued vehicle” and “he used his department-issued vehicle for personal transportation and transported civilian passengers,” the records say.
The department also determined earlier, on September 17, that Pursell violated two policies when he “failed to cooperate with an investigation into his alleged drug-related activities” and “failed to report to the police station at a specific date and time as ordered by a superior,” the records say.
That Dive Bar is turning into Cop Dive Bar is already, on its own, a poetically insulting development. Now we wait and see whether the city or the team will take any action to get the thing taken down. Seems to me under normal circumstances they would, but the fact we’re dealing with a member of the “law enforcement community,” however temporarily embarrassed he may be, changes that equation. In order to get the mural down, they’ll have to tell a cop what to do.
City settles with brutalized demonstrators
Though light on the details a settlement has been tentatively reached between the city and 12 of the people the police department brutalized at a BLM rally in June 2020.
The lawsuit was filed in June, 2023 and last week a federal judge dismissed it, initiating a 60-day period for the two parties to arrive at a number, it seems like.
After force marching, beating, intimidating, and firing the kitchen sink of ‘less lethal’ munitions at a small group of mostly young people on Main Street the night of June 1, 2020—pulling out all their fancy military grade toys to administer a punishment for the crime being too mad about police murdering people to leave the large rally earlier when everyone else did, the police arrested 19 of them.
The arrest reports were literally copy-pasted in some cases. They arrested people who weren’t even demonstrating. It was a mess. Charges were quietly dropped by DA Joe Early the following March, citing “insufficient evidence to continue prosecuting.” But in the weeks following the incident, the power elite of the city cast the situation as a riot that by the grace of god the police were there to stop… exactly the same thing they did after Eureka Street, by the way.
As I’ve written and spoken about a million times by now, this was the inciting incident of the whole newsletter you’re reading. I was there. It was awful and eye opening… a moment I’ll never forget. I went into it dimly aware that the cops were not what they seemed and came out knowing exactly what they were, and how the whole apparatus of city government conspired to kick the brush back over the trap door the cops had momentarily opened.
Not gunna do ‘the whole thing’ here. If you want to read more about that night and the fine points of this lawsuit, I did a whole big thing a few years ago: “Overwhelming force and garish brutality.”
As detailed in the 100-page complaint, the cops that night were expecting a fight, they created the circumstances for a fight, they instigated a fight, they fought with overwhelming force and garish brutality. A few dozen young people looking for an outlet to express their anger at a violent and oppressive institution, met with the full and terrifying force of it. After, all of the city’s political class rallied behind a narrative which lionized the cops and made a feral boogeyman of the kids. Thank god for the WPD they said. If the cops weren’t there, something bad could have happened.
Now, we wait to see how much the settlement is going to pay out. From Brad Petrishen’s piece:
City spokesman Thomas Matthews said the two sides were still working to finalize paperwork on the settlement, which won’t be official until signed.
The judge’s order notes that either side can petition to reopen the case if a resolution is not “consummated” within 60 days.
Hopefully the resolution is consummated to the great personal enrichment of those 12 people the cops abused senselessly, whipped as they were into a reactionary panic that they showed us on May 8, 2025 to be more of a default state than any aberration the more generous among us may have been willing to give June 1, 2020.
Pyscho-Geographic Brain Drain
Dork that I am, I was watching a Youtube review of a book I want to check out on the situationists, “Leaving the Twentieth Century” by McKenzie Wark, and the Youtuber, Shannon Kim, spent some time on the situationist principle of psycho-geography.
And I was reminded of an essay I’d read earlier this year in Harpers by Hari Kunzru exploring the psycho-geography of London.
In the first issue of the publication Internationale Situationniste, “psychogeography” is defined as “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” This might sound bloodless, but for the Situationists it was part of a utopian revolutionary program. The small band of café radicals sought to overthrow not just a government but the entire global system, which relied on what they called the “organization of appearances,” or simply “the Spectacle.”
This was earlier in the week, and I had just freshly pulled the following clip of Tony Economou’s “evaluation” of the city manager.
“I think our park system in this city is tremendous. Where other city can you go, move into a neighborhood and walk to a park. You can’t, only in Worcester, and I’m thankful for that.”
His earnest-appearing amazement at the fact Worcester has parks and his belief that this is somehow exceptional suggests there’s a psycho-geographical effect at play in this city, a sort of ambient diminishment of possibility.
You don’t need me telling you this, but find a city that doesn’t have neighborhood parks.
Toronto, for instance, last time I was there, Katie and I sat in a delightful and well-used little neighborhood park, eating cheeseburgers from Matty Matheson’s little burger shop that was right across the street and watching a schlocky little neighborhood jam session, about as many people playing as people watching. The weird little drum thing you sit on and slap right under your crotch. There were people all around us sitting in the three inch grass, in small groups and by themselves, and considering Tony’s comments I’d be shocked if any one of them drove there.
Closer to home, Southbridge, Leominster, Fitchburg… they all have parks in neighborhoods. I mean, come on. You would be hard pressed to find a city on the east coast of the United States without neighborhood parks.
It should be prohibitive that someone nominally in charge of our city can show, without shame or compunction, that he’s never been to a real neighborhood in another city, has no conception of what they look like, but is nevertheless convinced that Worcester as good as it can get. A true dimness of the overall imagination, let alone the specifically political variety—one that is the rule among old guard councilors, who now hold an 8 or 9 vote majority, not the exception. Off screen, as Economou’s saying one of the most embarrassing things I’ve heard a councilor say, I’m sure more than a few were nodding along.
Of course, it’s the electoral realities of Worcester that produces this outcome. Ours is a system that manifestly rewards reactionary townies who want for nothing but their place on the nice side of the tracks, and maybe, if they’re lucky, a little cut of the action. The fact Economou is in that seat is the sterling example. He eeked out a win against someone obviously more passionate, competent, creative and forward thinking—more representative of the demographic Worcester’s economic development strategy depends on, and who any smart Democratic City Committee person would be looking at as Grade A bench material.
We don’t have smart Democratic City Committee people. We have cronies enmeshed in a network of favors, antagonisms and mutual animosities. Keith Linhares was boxed out of the club immediately, probably because he spoke on the Gaza resolution and the DOJ report. And so we have Economou, who chalked the whole thing up to “words on paper” at the one candidate forum ahead of the election, and for that he was applauded and then, ultimately, elected, by about 7 percent of the fine people of shrubby District 1.
Gotta love it though. The above-board corruption capital of the state, made that way by the psycho-geographic wall between it and the outside world. Lurie’s Dome, by another name.
Now on to another guy who’s spiritually “been there forever” but is a first time councilor, Dr. Moneybags himself. Satya Mitra. Not going to spend much time psychoanalyzing this quote. It’s perfect just the way it is. (I was going to include clips but Substack will not cooperate with me.)
“Those days, if I had to listen to Frank Sinatra, I would use the turntable to put the plate and run the music. Now, if I ask to listen to Frank Sinatra, my son says, use the cell phone. So that has been the major difference.”
Moment #3 comes courtesy Kate Toomey, who offered a new riff on her recurring conspiratorial theme of other towns dropping off their needle drug users in Worcester.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the recent stabbing incident on the common and it should have been addressed I think in a more decisive and timely manner. The increase in our Worcester’s unhoused population has been linked to correlate with the decrease in Boston’s unhoused population. And I’ve heard this anecdotally from people who are out in the street dealing with these folks. These are not people that have been in our community for years. These are a lot younger group of people. They’re more aggressive and more challenging to work with. And so we have more of them. We’re doing an awful lot of things to help our unhoused. There’s no question. But we’ve got a different type of population and it’s impacting our community. We need an all hands on deck with this issue.
Sniffing bullshit, I went to the source: HUD’s Point In Time counts. The latest numbers, from a count taken last January, shows Boston’s overall homeless population did decrease by about 350, from 5,898 in 2024 to 5,540 in 2025. Worcester’s increased by just shy of 1,000. Which is crazy. 1,927 in 2024 to 2,864 in 2025. A 48 percent year-over increase.
I think I am the first person locally reporting that fact by the way, not that it’s some crazy scoop, the numbers are out there. No one else has bothered to look. You can check my work with this data set I pulled out of the raw data from HUD (PIT, housing inventory).
The data shows the most dramatic increase from 2024 to 2025 is in the “homeless children” category. Worcester added 387 more homeless children over its 718 in 2024. Children are, by nature of the state’s right to shelter law, rarely seen on the street. The “adult unsheltered” population is what Toomey’s talking about. Across all the adult age categories there’s no increase as significant as the jump taken in homeless children.
Let that fact settle in: Worcester’s meteoric rise in homelessness is animated mostly by a wave of homeless children.
Is that the data Toomey said she saw? That implies a Boston shipped out a “different type of population.” It’s worth revisiting this line from Toomey.
“These are a lot younger group of people. They’re more aggressive and more challenging to work with.”
Age 18-24 only increased by 5, 132 to 137. So who does she mean? That is, taking at her word she means anyone, and is not just regurgitating the rhetoric of whatever cop spoke to her last.
The type of unhoused person Toomey’s obviously talking about is what they call the “unsheltered chronically homeless.” When you’re talking about homelessness as a blight, these are the people you are talking about. Those, like Toomey and Bergman, who only ever talk about homelessness in these terms, give themselves away. The issue, for them, is a property issue. Not a human issue.
Unlike the uptick in homeless children–almost none of them “on the street”–Worcester’s chronic unsheltered population increased by a mere 26, from 72 to 98. Meanwhile its sheltered chronic homeless population decreased from 235 to 132, a 103 person drop that likely accounts for at least some of the 26 now marked as “unsheltered.”
Meanwhile, Boston’s reduction in homelessness is likely due to the fact they’ve built a lot of supportive housing.
Since Mayor Wu took office, Boston has created 668 permanent supportive housing units to help residents transitioning out of homelessness access stable housing paired with supportive services. These investments, alongside expanded shelter-to-housing initiatives and coordinated outreach efforts, have contributed to continued declines in homelessness even as many communities nationwide continue to face housing affordability.
Goes to show the way you end homelessness is giving people homes. In Worcester, our 160 or so shelter beds have not been accompanied by a significant increase in supportive housing, as projects like Oriole Drive are waylaid by neighbors, often with the willful support of city councilors (cough Candy Mero-Carlson cough), as these same officials trip over themselves to celebrate a day resource center and four (4) tiny home supportive housing units for homeless seniors.
The closing of CHL has and will continute to exacerbate the problem and there is no one in city hall going out of their way to sound the alarm, while there are plenty who, like Toomey, are sifting around in the dark for any way they can stomach to scapegoat the unhoused individuals themselves. When Toomey used the term “a different population” that’s what she was doing.
Thank you to Khrystian King, the only one on the council to speak to the issue plainly during the review, holding the city manager to do better.
I have significant concerns, Mr. Chairman, this past term regarding the lack of shelter, reduction in shelter beds for our homeless. We had a situation and we didn’t plan. Now the city manager reacted to that, advocated, and was able to move
and establish a level in cooperation with the private sector, but there was no plan.
One thing Gary Rosen and Moe Bergman both signaled during the evaluation was that a road redesign for Chandler and May is going to becoem “an issue.” Already, you may notice driving around that area, the cranks are gearing up for yet another reactionary piss baby tantrum.
Nothing worse than a dumb person who thinks they’re smarter than everyone else. It’s a strain of narcissism I find acutely annoying, not the least because I recognize something about myself in it... To confront in the wild of the adult world this rare breed, a dumbass so self-assured of his cunning, surrounded by contemptible intellectual weaklings who can’t even see it... It elicits flashbacks to the uglier moments of my middle and high school experience, before the malaise of real life disabused me of the notion I was in possession of some intelligence otherwise unknown, some higher purpose, some innate superiority. Before the difficult and depressing and ultimately edifying process of unlearning that boyish fantasy and re-engaging with the world out of real curiosity. For me it happened in my early 20s. For some I’m sure it happens much earlier. But, far as I’ve observed, most boys so afflicted by self-assured dumbassery shed the trait by the time they’re fully grown men. Not Moe Bergman.
Bergman displayed the character flaw in a recent Facebook exchange between a resident, who clearly cares enough to learn about the subject matter at hand, and Moe Bergman, who either can’t or won’t, and shows he has no plans of changing that. He did so with an overt and unabashed flare that’s rare to see in an adult man.
Let’s walk through it, as it’s useful for getting your head around why the “double rotary at Chandler and May” drama is on its way to being front page material for the foreseeable future, despite it being an obvious non-issue to those among us who are at least partially well adjusted.
I want to highlight the line in the last graf—”a conscious choice to maintain a dangerous status quo”—as this is incidentally or intentionally the best way of describing Bergman’s approach to politics I’ve ever read. His two main things are “cars go fast” and “more cops,” both of which are conscious choices to maintain and/or exacerbate the dangerous status quo of life in this city.
Otherwise we see here a perfectly well articulated critique, backed by fact, and put to a public official for the purpose of real accountability. Now let’s look at how said public official responded.
First of all, accidental Dril tweet. Seriously, the syntax and grammar are worrying to see from someone holding both a law degree and public office. Secondly, and more to the point, look at how “location” is highlighted in the screenshot Bergman took. It seems to me he tried to “click” on “location” and it didn’t work. So his galaxy brain rendered the conclusion that there’s “no supporting data” and thus the image becomes “meaningless.” Check and mate. Then consider that Bergman is apparently dumb enough to think MassDOT would go to the lengths of faking a data visualization to justify a road redesign project. The world’s most boring and pointless conspiracy. That little thing he did with the crash data map right there is the archetype of self-assured dumbass in a nutshell. And he put it out there for the world to see. Insane.
As Piazza mentions in his reply, the data is readily available.
Soooooo much data is readily available. I’m no wiz kid but 20 minutes on the MassDOT data portal is more than enough to see the problem.
For instance here’s five fatal pedestrian accidents in the area of May and Chandler in the past 10 years.
As Etel Haxhiaj pointed out in a post on Instagram, there have already in the first six months of the year been three pedestrian deaths.
Bergman really invoked “trust but verify” and did neither. None of this will reach him, he will never be convinced of the fact his position is a losing one, morally, intellectually, pragmatically. Like Economou he’s subsumed to the psycho-geographical diminishment Worcester’s geography produces, sitting in traffic at the Newton Square rotary thinking Worcester must be the only city in the world it’s hard to drive a car around in at peak hours.
Odds and ends
Maybe it was shaking off the vacation vibe and getting back to reality but this post really took it out of me. Subscriptions are also down to 725 paid which is not ideal! Please consider helping this outlet survive in a world that is very difficult for little outlets like us.
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Maureen Binienda’s interim superintendent gig racket continues apace.
State retirement laws prohibit Binienda from accepting a permanent, full-time position as a superintendent in Massachusetts without seeking a state waiver. However, she pointed out that she is licensed in Rhode Island and could opt to seek full-time permanent employment in that neighboring state.
Relatedly, Bishop McManus will soon be out of public life insh’allah.
Raphael Warnock is coming to the DCU in September. If you have a spare $130 lying around you can go see him speak lol.
This post from Birchtree scared the shit out me and a lot of people reading the comments it looks like. If it was meant to, nice work.
“Florida Water Blues” by Twisted Teens. What a track. What a music video. God bless Swamp Massachusetts.
Looks like they’re playing the Sinclair in a couple weeks. July 23. Perhaps I will be taking a trip to the city. Ok talk soon!
The Chandler thing is so good. Gary was one of the councilors who voted for it back in 2017, and Kate AND Tony, lol. But now, 9 years later, they are 'concerned', I wonder whos cousin did not get the concrete gig?