A Worcester Sucks Christmas card
Plus, an addiction resource guide for the holidays
Hello everyone! Keeping it real short today as the idea is to mostly take the week off (hopefully). Hope every one of you is able to do the same! I for one sure as hell need it after the past couple weeks.
Only two main things to share: one, a holiday resource guide for addiction put together by Willa Odefey, a journalism student at CUNY and former Worcester resident. It’s neat the way she put it together, and features advice she gathered from Worcester folks who answered the call out I plugged in here some months back.
Then I’ll be employing a rare paywall to directly address the subscribers who keep this newsletter in business, with a heartfelt Christmas thank you and a tease of a new merch design I’m really excited about.
First, a few quick notes:
—The big (non) story of the moment, at least among the “inner circle” set, seems to be Khrystian King getting mad at Mayor Joe Petty at the last council meeting. It seems townie councilors and their townie base are perfectly willing to do a bit of light racism if it affords them some stable ground vis-a-vis the DOJ Report. Here’s what happened: King raised his voice when Mayor Joe Petty refused to follow council rules in an effort to discredit King’s legitimate criticism of Kate Toomey’s chairmanship of the public safety subcommittee.
As things tend to go, the campaign to center this one, small moment in which King raised his voice is of the ‘whisper’ variety. No one’s really saying anything out loud. Well, almost no one... For instance, this disappointing bit of tone policing from Nicole Apostola, a person I otherwise respect.
Unlike Apostola, most have correctly chosen to keep their thoughts about a Black man’s decorum off the internet. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have thoughts. The chatter from the whisper network has apparently been loud enough King felt compelled to put out a statement today.
"At no point during the December 17th City Council meeting did I threaten or attempt to intimidate Mayor Joseph Petty. My intent was solely to ensure that the rules of the City Council were followed equally and fairly by all participants.
As Councilors, we each have an obligation to uphold the procedures that govern our meetings, ensuring that the voices of every member and the public are treated with respect and impartiality. The rules of the Council are designed to facilitate productive discussions, foster transparency, and uphold the integrity of our work.
You can read the rest here.
King got mad for a good reason. He was making the long-overdue point, publicly, that Kate Toomey’s public safety subcommittee has been “impotent,” in his words. Mayor Joe Petty refused to get down from the mayor’s seat to give his opinion that King’s assessment was “unfair.” It’s a rule he violates pretty much every week, and this time he violated it to discredit King directly. King insisted. Petty didn’t budge. A stalemate. Petty absorbed this as a personal threat because... well... I’ll let you do the psychoanalysis. Or refer you to Jennifer Gaskin, who nailed it, as she typically does, in her post yesterday: The “Angry Black Woman” and “Scary Black Man”: Racist Tropes Rooted in Propaganda.
Anytime a Black person displays emotion, someone nearby is ready to label it “aggressive,” “intimidating,” or “threatening.” It doesn’t matter if it’s in the workplace, at a parent-teacher conference, or during a simple disagreement at the grocery store. Black women raising their voices to advocate for themselves or others are branded as angry. Black men simply existing in spaces where their presence is unfamiliar (or unwelcome) are immediately met with suspicion.
This past week in Worcester, we saw this in real-time. Vice Chairman Khrystian King was accused of being threatening and intimidating during a City Council meeting. For what? Speaking truth and standing firm. This is typical – a Black man asserting his voice is suddenly a menace. His tone, his stance, his words are scrutinized under a different lens than his white counterparts.
This was a significant moment, but not because a Black man raised his voice. Finally, someone called out Toomey and Petty for their intentionally defanging the Standing Committee on Public Safety, what should be a key oversight body. King’s choice of words was appropriate. It is impotent.
Recently, This Week In Worcester dug back through the archives, looking for a single instance of police accountability in Toomey’s nine years as subcommittee chairwoman of the police accountability subcommittee. They came up with nothing.
During Toomey’s tenure as chairperson of the committee with jurisdiction over matters related to the Worcester Police Department, no item related to police misconduct or citizen complaints about police has appeared on the committee’s agenda.
Not once.
The committee also hasn’t taken up use of force or similar policies.
A citizen petition asking that her subcommittee explore systemic racism in the police department has sat on the “tabled” section of city council agendas for months. Who tabled it? Toomey. And she did so because there was an upcoming review of crime statistics, which she called the same thing as systemic racism. Therefore, she argued, the petition was redundant. Bewildering. From a post of mine back then:
“We’re actually going to be having a public safety committee meeting at the end of this month. Wednesday, May 29. And the crime statistics are going to be discussed at that point. Therefore I’m going to be filing this petition.”
The petition was about systemic racism, not crime statistics? Those are two different things? So a very very very stupid rationale from Kate here even if she was being honest (she wasn’t).
Similarly, she argued in a response to This Week In Worcester that she’s prevented by council rules from doing police accountability. The rule she cites is one that says city councilors can’t direct the city manager to hire or fire specific employees. The rule says nothing about reviewing policies, disciplinary procedures, data collection and reporting or any of the myriad other issues pointed to in the DOJ report. Again, we see her conflate two unrelated things in bafflingly stupid fashion in order to shield the police from accountability. Just like every other time, we can assume the mayor will allow her to get away with it.
If all that is more acceptable to you than a Black man losing his temper a little bit one time... You’re very much part of the problem. Annoyed that I have to say that.
Anyway... this was supposed to be a ‘quick’ note.
—S.O.S. Worcester and Worcester Youth Cooperatives have launched a capital campaign to help build out a bookstore and replace their harm reduction outreach van, among other things. These are great organizations that work closely with groups like Project Priceless. The bookstore plan is particularly exciting. Any help would be appreciated.
—Help me with my year-end list by dropping your favorite Worcester Sucks story in the chat!!
Addiction resource guide for the holidays
By Willa Odefey
Willa Odefey writes the newsletter Been An Okay Boy. For questions, concerns, follow-ups Willa can be reached at Willa.odefey82@journalism.CUNY.edu
The next part’s for paying subscribers! Merry Christmas to the rest of you and thank you for reading!