Another little death that no one notices
This was an avoidable tragedy
God, I can’t wait for this election to be over.
This Facebook post from former D5 council candidate Jose Rivera is pretty funny though.
You simply gotta read the comments.
In case you missed it, here’s my election guide (I posted at 8 p.m. on Sunday—quite possibly the worst time of the week to put up an article of any kind). The big focuses on Tuesday, I think, are Sheila Dibbs versus Peter Durant and Question 2. Go vote!
Anyway… Happy Halloween! Hope everyone had a good one. A little further down in the post, after some more significant stories, there’s a little Worcester Halloween rundown including an absolute must-watch video from Coney Island.
One thing: check your email for a Substack-funded gift subscription offer because that’s a fun way to give us free money on Substack’s dime. And normal subscriptions are also great.
“This was an avoidable tragedy”—Setting the record straight on the ceasefire demonstration—Human Rights Commission lawyers up—Halloween rundown—odds and ends
“This was an avoidable tragedy”
On Oct. 23, 5:35 p.m. a Facebook user named “Thomas Granger Jr Lambert” posted in The Truth About Worcester, a group with 38,000 members and a decidedly MAGA tone, about a homeless encampment on the bike trail that goes between Millbury and Worcester.
“Very disappointed on how (sic) Worcester and Millbury are handling the situation,” Granger Jr Lambert wrote.
Three days later, at 8:20 p.m. on Oct. 26, police responded to a fire at the encampment and pronounced a woman living there dead.
Officials have yet to release the cause of the fire or of 49-year-old Maryann Audette’s death. I put in a call with the state fire marshal on Wednesday, still waiting to hear back. I’d call the DA if it wasn’t a waste of time.
In a statement from the Department of Fire Services, officials said the investigation is still underway, but heavily implied it was a wildfire.
While the exact cause of the fire has not yet been determined, fire officials noted that Massachusetts was under a Red Flag warning yesterday, meaning that any outdoor fire could spread quickly and become difficult to extinguish.
And that’s how it went out to the press, which described it as a “brush fire” and thereby a de facto accident—another “little death that no one notices,” as Jessie Singer puts it in There Are No Accidents.
“We are especially willing to let accidents happen to some people,” Singer writes. People living in tents are firmly in that “some people” category. Just look at how the Telegram explained it away, quoting a sister who hadn’t seen her for two years (and so categorically could not know) to pontificate on the cause of death.
Santini said a preliminary report shows the fire was a "tragic accident." According to Santini, early reports indicate Audette was in her tent and the fire she set to keep warm was too close to the tent, leading to the tent catching fire.
Man it fuckin sucks they did that, huh? Sheesh.
Back on The Truth About Worcester, the post quickly racked up hundreds of comments. (All comments left as is. Too many (sic)s to include.)
“Freaking gross. City of Worcester, Massachusetts for real do something. Instead of spending money on speed limit signs smh.”
“Get use to it. Any piece of land or woods around or in Worcester is a tent city. And the cops can do nothing about it. It’s pretty disgusting.”
“It’s a shame this current administration treats the illegals like they are kings and queens, and do nothing for the veterans & homeless That’s a Shame but get out and vote to change it all !”
“Well well , the city does have an outreach department and from what I hear from this department , most if not all all don’t want help they “chose” to live this way , don’t help or support them by giving handouts!”
“Wow I use to love walking there. I can’t walk anymore but tons of people love to walk or ride their bikes. The city needs to clean it up”
You get the idea.
One comment, posted after Audette died, read “You must be feeling like shit considering a day later a woman died from living there. After you posted her home and embarrassed her she lost her life there. Shame”
Thomas Granger Jr Lambert responded “really like go away with with your foolish talk...”
Of course, Thomas Granger Jr Lambert did post her home, to a massive local audience of mostly-reactionary townies who want the city and the cops to “do something” to “clean up” this problem—make the tents disappear, get rid of the “blight.”
Three days later, a fire did what they demanded. Investigators have not released the cause of the fire or Audette’s death. But I’ll be following this investigation closely, even if it falls out of the dominant local media discourse, which is likely to happen quickly.
Apropos of nothing, here are some interesting factoids: between 2020 and 2022 there were 47 fatal acts of violence on unhoused people in America (that they could document), 60 percent of which occurred in 2022 alone. Of those fatal attacks, being set on fire was the fourth highest method, behind shootings, beatings, and stabbings.
Regardless of the cause in this one instance, it must be stressed: Unhoused people die in the woods all the time, here and across the country, and we have no way of understanding the scope of the death toll. The fact a story was written about this death likely has more to do with the fire than the person who died in it. And that is a reality both grim and little understood. Most deaths go unreported and unnoticed by a society all too willing to disregard and dehumanize people once they can’t access permanent housing.
The organization Homeless Death Count estimates that at least 20 people experiencing homelessness die every day in America. They die in cars, tents, shelters, and in the streets. Almost all of these deaths are preventable.”
The organization says “at least” because the government keeps no records on how or when people experiencing homelessness die. Thus the need for the organization in the first place. “We seek to collaborate with communities and organizations across the country to rectify this glaring gap in our knowledge.”
People who die while experiencing homelessness are part of our community. They are parents, children, siblings, and valued community members. We want not only to quantify the scale of an overlooked problem, but to tell the stories of those who died. In doing so, we hope to honor their contribution and understand how future deaths might be prevented.
The organization has charted the death toll, via news stories, records requests and other means, for 2018, 2019, and 2020. Worcester’s data isn’t included in any of the three years. Massachusetts information is remarkably scant overall. Only Cape Cod data appears, and only for some years.
I sent an email to the city spokesman asking if there’s a city department or agency that keeps track of deaths of unhoused people in the city. As of posting, he said he’s looking into it.
Update: pretty much right when I posted he got back to me, sharing numbers from the police: two deaths in 2020; three in 2021; nine in 2023; four so far in 2024. The spokesman noted: "These numbers are from police and don’t include any deaths that may have taken place at a hospital.”
A GoFundMe has been set up by a family friend to cover Audette’s funeral expenses.
We are deeply saddened to share the passing of Maryann Audette, who left us too soon in a tragic fire in Millbury, Massachusetts. Maryann faced many struggles in her life, including a long battle with addiction, which ultimately led her to experience homelessness. Despite these challenges, Maryann was loved dearly by her family and friends who remember her for her kindness, her smile, and the times she brought joy into their lives.
Sam Olney of Homeless Action Local Outreach (HALO) knew Audette personally. She wrote a post on the HALO Facebook page.
A good friend of mine, a mother of the group, and a woman who deserved much better, MaryAnn has tragically passed in a fire on Saturday night 10/26/2024.
This tragedy highlights the need for a sanctioned encampment in Worcester for the unhoused community. This tragedy is on the city. This was an avoidable tragedy.
In March, the city council rejected Olney’s petition for a sanctioned encampment site by a 6-5 vote, Petty in the familiar position of the deciding vote to axe the idea. (For more, check out “Creating a perpetual cycle of despair,” a post of mine from March that substantively breaks down the vote and the benefit of sanctioned encampment sites.)
It’s worth stressing again that Chattanooga, Tennessee—a city about the size of Worcester—employed a temporary sanctioned site as part of their homeless strategy and saw a 49 percent drop in their unhoused population from 2022 to 2023. What I wrote back in March still applies:
Chattanooga uses a sanctioned site as part of a comprehensive strategy and it’s working so well they’re a national standout. It makes me furious we don’t have the political will here to even consider the things they’re doing with success.
Instead, without so much as explaining why, the council chose to reaffirm that the city’s cruel and ineffective policy of endless sweeps is not going to change.
A sanctioned site not just could but would have saved Audette’s life. Olney wrote: “I cannot stress enough especially this winter, do not camp alone.” Were Audette not forced into a remote and isolated encampment site—just over the Worcester line!—by our city’s brutal policy of endless encampment sweeps, she’d have been surrounded by people who could have put out the fire. If the site was sanctioned by the city, it could have been outfitted with, at the very least, a fire extinguisher.
This is very much on the city’s hands.
HALO Worcester will be holding a protest/rally to support sanctioned encampments and to remember MaryAnn this Saturday 2 p.m.-4 p.m. at City Hall.
I’ll be there.
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Setting the record straight on the Gaza ceasefire demonstration
Since the council took the week off, me and the stream guys brought on Allie Cislo of the Worcester Havurah, one of the organizers of the ceasefire demonstration, to speak some sorely needed truth to the matter. (Starts at 18:00, which the link below should take you right to).
Cislo: “In many ways, watching the council’s response to this, it was like watching someone savagely punch themselves in the face over and over again. And you’re like ‘Oof. Why?’.”
Allie spoke cogently and intelligently, making a clear case.
“At the end of the day the coalition’s goal was to put the question of ceasefire, not just as a symbolic gesture, but as the material concerns that go into achieving ceasefire, that go into achieving the end of genocide, not with the hubris of thinking that the Worcester City Council is going to be the thing that stops genocide in Gaza, but to say that there are 13 towns and cities across the Commonwealth that have already passed resolutions much like ours, to put pressure on the Massachusetts congressional delegation, to put pressure on the Biden administration, to say, you know, enforce your own damn laws.
It is illegal on multiple counts for the US to continue to transfer money and munitions to countries that are committing human rights violations.”
On the other hand, the mayor...
It was a de facto vote, as I explained at the top of my post last week on the matter: "Shame on those with the power to act who choose silence instead"
The city council voted 5-6 on a resolution to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, then they ran away from the council chambers, ceding it to ceasefire organizers.
That’s what happened on Tuesday, and any different portrayal is an attempt, willing or otherwise, to obfuscate. And we’ve seen a whole hell of a lot of it in the days since.
Of course, this being Worcester, there was no formal vote—the political establishment conspired as best it could to keep the resolution off the agenda and the conversation from entering the public record.
But they simply couldn’t.
(I would hold this piece up against any piece of city hall beat reporting. I’m very proud of it. And I should stress that I would not have been able to write a piece like that if it weren’t for the paid subscribers that allow me to do this work full time.
Plug over! Thank you!)
And lastly, here’s an especially stupid “different portrayal” from local dipshit Dan Margolis: “Progressives” bring January 6 to Worcester for anti-Israel cause”
An elected official organized a demonstration outside the legislature, agitating the protesters into a frenzy. The official then urged the crowd to enter the chamber and act illegally. When the unruly group did so, they disrupted the body to such an extent that it could not do its work and was forced to adjourn. The elected official cheered on, and engaged in, this lawlessness. Lawmakers left the session under police escort due to safety concerns.
Sound familiar? Probably. But the above isn’t a description of January 6, 2021, when former President Donald Trump addressed and agitated a crowd that went on to storm the U.S. Capitol based on the delusion that the 2020 elections were “stolen.” This description is of events local to Worcester, Mass. Instead of the ex-president, this mob was led by officials on the other side of the spectrum, city council members Thu Nguyen and Etel Haxhiaj. Like Trump, the city councilors agitated their crowd based on lies and delusions.
Pathetic. In Michael Parenti’s Inventing Reality, he writes of the weaponization of framing and labeling. Keep the above passage in mind while reading this:
One common framing method is to select labels and other vocabulary designed to convey politically loaded images. These labels and phrases, like the masks in a Greek drama, convey positive or negative cues regarding events and persona, often without benefit of —and usually as a substitute for-supportive information. Thus, on CBS television news Dan Rather referred retrospectively to the Black civil rights movement and student anti-war movement as "the civil disturbances of the sixties." How different an impression would have been created had he labeled them "movements for peace and justice," or "movements against military intervention and for racial equality."
Margolis delivers a remarkably ham-fisted example of this distortionist strategy. They’re not sending their best here in Worcester, MA! I would suggest reading it, though, if only to show Dan that more readers than he’s ever had on his silly little blog have come from Worcester Sucks, with contempt. Unfortunately, he doesn’t allow comments. Wonder why.
Margolis’ Jan 6 riff finds a parallel in Mayor Joe Petty’s assertion that the rally was tantamount to “chaos and hate.” In our interview (22:00), I asked Allie to respond to the “chaos and hate” line.
“That sounds like the last rhetorical refuge of someone who fucked up and knows it,” Cislo said. “I don’t know what else to say about that.”
Neither do I! Except to say whhhhhf that’s the sound of the hammer on its way to the head of the nail.
Relatedly: Jim McGovern is among 64 members of congress to have recently written a letter to the Biden administration “calling for the United States to push for Israel to allow unimpeded access for U.S. and international journalists.”
Following the blueprint of the U.S. military in Iraq, Israel has limited access to foreign press in Gaza, only allowing them on official IDF-run tours and only allowing interviews with IDF-vetted personnel. Meanwhile they’ve indiscriminately murdered any journalist outside the press pen, especially the ones from Arab outlets. This mass murder of the press (a war crime, if that still means anything) has been funded by the United States to the tune of 70 percent.
We have a congressman who is willing to break rank on this genocide, and that is, unfortunately, a rare thing. This fact makes local demonstrations like the one last Tuesday all the more important.
And it also makes it all the more shameful that the city council—members one and all of McGovern’s “Crime Family”—can’t show the same courage he does on this issue. What political consequences are you worried about when our most powerful local politician is out in front on this? It’s just so stupid.
McGovern should be continually pushed to take bolder action—something a positive council vote on the ceasefire resolution would have gone a long way toward. But, sadly, we have to go around our local electeds. His Worcester office has a phone number. 508-831-7356.
Human Rights Commission lawyers up
Frustrated with the ongoing lack of transparency from city hall regarding the police, the Human Rights Commission is taking a drastic step. They voted this week to hire their own lawyer. Per the Telegram:
Saying it has hit a serious roadblock on receiving investigatory records about police misconduct claims, the city Human Rights Commission voted Monday to acquire legal representation in the matter. The panel wants the city to establish a civilian oversight board of the Police Department.
They want the legal representation toward two ends: getting access to police records they were promised and achieving the functional oversight capacity they were... also promised.
With its own legal representation, the HRC might be able to overcome the months and months of deliberate obstruction thrown their way by the city manager and the police department. (For more on that, my post from last December: “In the spirit of transparency.”)
And some of you may be old enough to remember when, in March, the city released a racial equity audit of the police department. You may also remember that a civilian review board was a top-line recommendation of that audit, and you may have even observed that after the release of that audit it has largely faded to a comfortable obscurity. (For more, my post from March: “The city should recognize this discrepancy")
Worcester Halloween rundown
Best part of Halloween in Worcester far as I’m concerned was this video:
But the haunted house at Ralph’s, despite the very real protests, was a close second.
And you gotta check out this house on Forest Street. Holy moly.
Did anyone see this?
I’d love to know if you did.
Odds and ends
One more funding pitch for the road.
A must read from friend of the newsletter Andrew Quemere: “Adding Insult to Wrongful Incarceration:
Massachusetts limits compensation for victims of wrongful convictions to $1 million. Advocates want to change that—but some lawmakers are seeking a compromise that would put more people behind bars.”
In other friend-of-the-newsletter news, Greg Opperman’s1 Turtleboy election sticker is among the several you may receive for voting Tuesday!
District Attorney Joe Early was awarded the ‘traffic safety hero’ distinction by the AAA Northeast despite the record high 10 car crash deaths in his city this year. Great job Joe.
In Grafton, another example of the revanchist suburban homeowner digging the state deeper into the housing crisis.
More than 160 voters attended Grafton’s Fall Town Meeting on October 21, and nearly 100 turned down a planning board measure that would have changed zoning to allow residential units above commercial units in neighborhood business and community business zones by special permit.
Abolish the town meeting style of government, I say. It is insane that 100 people get to decide against adding housing density to a region that sorely needs it. That is the opposite of democracy. These town meeting voters might not be dickheaded enough to say it out loud but they all think like this:
Hate in my heart.
Anyway here’s a good and relatable song:
Ok more on Sunday!
In the first version, I had this as “Greg Carlson,” which is a different Greg. Still a friend of the newsletter but not the right friend. Classic brain fart! Sorry to both the Worcester Gregs.