It happened again
'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only City Where This Regularly Happens
Hello my lovely Worcester Sucksters! (Suckers? Sucklings?) Before we begin, two plugs:
—The WCU Local 69 Book Club meets tonight at 7 p.m.—live in person and on Twitch. We’re discussing chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Eight Hours For What We Will. More info here.
—The Honeybees, a Tom Petty cover band I play in with some good and talented buds, is at Ralph’s on Saturday night. Playing allll night. Going to be fun!
This week I’m trying out a tweak to the posting schedule. Instead of one monster post on Sunday with four to seven stories in it, I’m splitting it up. Thursday edition / Sunday edition. Just as much stuff but in two bites instead of one.
Today, Greg Opperman comes back with another crucial piece on the disaster scenario this city presents to pedestrians. Read the first one if you haven’t—“This City Kills Children”—it’s very good. After that I dig into Donna Colorio, the way she’s tied up a proposal to lower speed limits citywide, and how embarrassing it is that she can do so. On Sunday I’ve got some stuff about housing and homelessness planned but no spoilers. Got some preeeetty interesting records back from the city teehee.
It happened again—The Donna Colorio Problem—The Pommel Horse Guy—Odds and ends
It happened again: 13-year old critically injured by car
By Greg Opperman
On Monday, July 29th, 13-year old Ayuen Leet was critically injured after being struck by a car on Shrewsbury Street. She is currently in a coma. According to a statement from ACE Worcester, “Ayuen and the Leet Family have been a part of the ACE community for a little over a year shortly after they emigrated from South Sudan to Massachusetts. Ayuen is a rising 7th-grader at the New Citizens Center and a student in ACE’s after school and summer reading programs.” Having resettled from South Sudan, Ayuen and her family narrowly escaped a brutal civil war. The cruelty of escaping an armed conflict, only to be struck down by a careless driver, is unimaginable.
The accident marks the second pedestrian crash in District 2 in a little over a month, the first being the fatal crash that killed Gianna Rose Simoncini on June 27. The accidents are notable for their proximity in location (less than a mile apart), as well as for the victims themselves (both 13-year-old children).
When a driver strikes a pedestrian with their car, it kicks off a predictable cycle of discourse. Almost immediately, reactionaries start blaming the victim. Like this...
And this...
And this...
Was she in a crosswalk? What was she doing outside in the first place? Where were her parents? Shouldn’t she have known better? Nevermind that jaywalking was criminalized due to a 100-year old lobbying campaign from the automotive interests to wrest control of streets away from pedestrians in favor of cars (a topic for another day). Nevermind that 32% of serious injuries occur at crosswalks. Don’t think too hard whether a coma, or death, is fair punishment for a child, for what would otherwise be a $1 fine.
The cranks definitely don’t want to ask any questions about what the driver was doing, i.e were they texting? Were they speeding? Was their inspection sticker out of date? What were they even doing on Shrewsbury Street in the first place? The driver always escapes any serious scrutiny, and always gets the benefit of the doubt.
Next, sensible people call for reasonable solutions to increase public safety, such as when Councilor Etel Haxhiaj called for a public health and safety emergency to protect vulnerable drivers last week. Councilor (and crank) Moe Bergman purposefully delayed Councilor Etel Haxhiaj’s proposal to declare a public safety emergency for vulnerable road users to the next meeting later this month. Bergman has the power1 to continuously hold the order, effectively killing it, if he feels like it.
But the situation has gotten so bad that the mayor and city manager are going around Bergman’s obstructionism, in a major break with tradition. In a statement earlier today, the pair declared a “Road Safety and Traffic Violence Crisis,” essentially a slight rewording of the proposal Bergman held up.
As Bill will dive into in the next section, crank councilor Donna Colorio has used her chairmanship of the traffic and parking subcommittee to sandbag a proposal to lower the speed limit to 25 mph citywide. Batista and Petty also call out Colorio in the statement.
Last month, Candy Mero-Carlson, who represents the district where both Ayuen and Gianna were hit, joined councilors Bergman, King, Colorio, and Russell in a failed effort to roll back traffic calming measures on Mill St, despite preliminary evidence suggesting that the traffic calming measures are working. The councilors’ steadfast opposition to merely acknowledging the problem puts them clearly in support of social murder, whereby the untimely deaths of vulnerable people are orchestrated through social neglect and oppressive political choices. While they might not be responsible for Gianna’s death, or Ayuen’s coma, they will be partially responsible for the next one, the next one after that, ad infinitum.
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit engaging with these cranks online, and it is overwhelmingly clear where our city’s representatives stand. For them, no amount of evidence, no amount of death will ever be enough to justify slightly modifying our streets to be safer for pedestrians. We already know the answers to why tragedies like these happen, what we can do to fix them, and who is standing in the way of progress. For me, there’s only one question left: “Why are these people like this?” This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but somehow, it is.
There’s a quote, attributed to Frank Wilhoit, that perfectly sums up the conservative value proposition. It explains why reactionaries, from the lowliest online poster to the most powerful in the city, unite to stonewall common sense progress:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Our political system is built for favored in-groups to evade consequences for their actions. It metes out harsh punishment for even the smallest infraction from out-groups. The law protects, but does not bind, our police as they brutalize non-violent protestors. The law binds, but does not protect, homeless people as the city sweeps encampments while offering few alternatives. Finally, we create laws, like jaywalking ordinances, that bind, but do not protect, pedestrians. Other laws protect drivers from consequences when they inevitably strike a pedestrian, and we opt not to implement or enforce binding provisions like reasonable speed limits. So far, no charges have been brought against the driver who killed Gianna.
It doesn’t matter how young, how old, how poor, or how vulnerable pedestrians are. To the cranks, they’re just not in the club. It doesn’t so much matter where the battle lines are drawn, so much as it matters that there are battle lines. They’re on one side, and screw anybody on the other. The in-group must be protected at all costs, even when the cost is the constant maiming and murder of children.
Worcester is at a crossroads, or rather, a crosswalk. We can take basic measures to reduce the amount of needless suffering in our city, or, if the cranks have their way, we can collectively participate in the routine sacrifice of pedestrian lives. One thing is clear: If we don’t do anything about this now, we never will.
You can support Ayuen’s family by giving to their fundraiser on PayPal.
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Now, a different riff on the same theme by yours truly...
The Donna Colorio Problem
Much has been made in the national political chatter of the past few weeks about calling right wingers ‘weird’ and how surprisingly effective and disarming it is. We here at Worcester Sucks have already figured that out—sub ‘weirdo’ for ‘crank’ or ‘lady uncle’ and for years now we’ve been doing to Donna Colorio or Moe Bergman what everyone’s doing to JD Vance.
In both cases, it’s pretty clear it works: It puts them in positions to double down on that which makes them weird, and it causes them to throw tantrums.
As Greg already covered, the local weirdos just can’t help themselves: They say pedestrians deserve to get hit by way of overtures to crosswalks and jaywalking, and they never ever consider that the driver is to blame.
And, if weirdos/cranks have a modicum of power, like Bergman and Colorio, they do things like put a public safety declaration on hold and deliberately tie up a proposal for a 25 mph speed limit because they don’t personally want it.
A couple days ago Joshua P. Hill in his New Means newsletter summarized the ‘weirdo’ moment nicely:
Of course it’s not just that these guys act odd, and say immensely unpleasant, weird things, which is all true. It’s also that their policy preferences are disturbing and that when their particular brand of weirdness is translated into action it makes for real unpleasantness and mass harm. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been leading the charge on this front, saying: “These are weird people on the other side,” and they “want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room, that’s what it comes down to … These are weird ideas.”
Extending that locally, they want to keep the streets deadly, they want to keep the electric fence of zoning around the “nice neighborhoods,” they want to make every visible aspect of the cityscape hostile to unhoused people, and they want the police going into the woods to hunt them in perpetuity. They want to make sure the police have all the tools of oppression they can get their hands on. They shovel money at the police and underfund the schools.
And, Hill asserts, it all stems from a certain mentality that should ring familiar to even a casual observer of Worcester politics:
The strangeness of the right is directly related to the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality many of these men hold that says “If the world is no longer built for me I will throw a tantrum.” And although the world is still largely built for them, it isn’t to the degree that it was sixty or one hundred and sixty years ago.
Hard to read that and not be reminded of the painfully stupid battle over a totally normal redesign of Mill Street. Colorio and Bergman were both active opponents of the redesign, and now Colorio is using all the power afforded her to block a proposal that will save lives.
The proposal is this: Reduce the speed limit to 25 mph citywide (save for highways, which the cranks do not seem to understand, perhaps willingly) and expand 20 mph “safety zones” (school zones, colloquially) to other areas that would benefit from them—daycare centers, parks, senior centers, youth centers). The proposal would greatly benefit pedestrians while mildly inconveniencing drivers.
The administration submitted this proposal last December. Since, there have been 90 accidents in the city involving pedestrians and cyclists. A normal council could have approved it by January, easily.
In the initial report, City Manager Eric Batista wrote that it’s part of the overall Vision Zero Safe Streets program, an initiative to bring the city down to zero pedestrian deaths— “appropriately managing vehicle speeds will be a critical aspect of this effort,” he wrote. (Credit where due: Vision Zero is probably the best initiative Batista, or any city manager in recent memory, has set in motion.)
The 25 mph proposal has the support of the police department, seemingly the majority of the city council, the public (as we’ll get to), and it’s neither new nor radical. A change in state law in 2016 gave municipalities the option, and 66 give or take have done so. These include big cities like Boston, Springfield, Somerville, and Cambridge, as well as small towns like Harvard and Holland. Even Southbridge beat us to it, enacting it citywide on July 23. Embarrassing.
But here in Worcester, the council hasn’t voted on it yet. Why, you ask? Short answer: Donna. Long answer: Donna Colorio.
The mayor and the city manager seem to agree. They put Colorio on blast in the same joint statement Greg referenced above:
Two proposals are pending before the City Council - reducing the statutory speed limit citywide from 30 mph to 25 mph and enabling establishment of 20 mph Safety Zones. The proposed ordinance governing this regulation is expected to return to the City Council floor from the Traffic and Parking subcommittee soon.
As chairwoman of the Standing Committee on Traffic and Parking, Colorio has broad authority on how long something takes. She sets meeting times and agendas. If she likes an idea, it can take weeks. If she doesn’t, it can take months. The 25 mph proposal has been in committee for mooonths. Since it was sent there in December!
Colorio decided the idea, being so radical, warranted a public hearing in each of the five council districts. The first one took place on Jan. 31, and she telegraphed her personal opposition in a series of statements thinly veiled as questions. She asked what’s to say people will follow the lower speed limit. She asked whether people will know that the speed limit is lower, saying she doesn’t personally know speed limits of roads she drives on. She warned about possible mass confusion among motorists. She asked if “we can enforce it.” She asked how many cities have proposed then rejected the idea. She brought up the case of West Springfield, saying the concerns that prompted that community to reject the proposal were valid. She asked for a report on all the cities that brought it up then rejected it.
Most curiously for a cop-loving crank, she made all these statement-questions just minutes after a WPD officer spoke glowingly of the idea.
“Slower speeds is going to give people more reaction time and be able to stop their motor vehicle before they crash into somebody,” said WPD Sergeant James Foley.
Just as strange: Directly after Colorio, Kate Toomey spoke in glowing support of 25 mph—a rare and refreshing Toomey Good moment amid all the Toomey Bad ones. “Making sure we save people’s lives is incredibly important,” she said. Insane that’s up for debate.
After her, though, we were back to crank normalcy: Moe Bergman compared the push to jumping on a bandwagon. A few years of data from other municipalities is insufficient, he said. “We need to wait and see.”
When Kate Toomey’s right on something, you have to be an extra special crank to be opposed to it.
With Toomey, the proposal likely passes a council vote by 6-4 or even 7-3. The issue is getting it out of committee. On the committee, the vote is sure to be 2-1 (King and Nguyen in favor, Colorio opposed). The only power Colorio has is dragging out the process, which is exactly what she’s doing.
Over the exhaustive five hearings between January and April, 21 residents spoke on the issue, and only 5 were opposed, according to meeting minutes. Some of the names of those opposed will sound familiar—Wayne Griffin and Fred Nathan especially. The Super Cranks, reflexively opposed to everything. Our weirdest weirdos. Our Lady Uncles.
Colorio, having lost the battle she started with the hearings, shifted to a different terrain: an online survey. It was launched after she requested it at the last of the five public hearings in April. According to meeting minutes, Colorio “discussed the importance of local community participating,” as if that hadn’t already happened. Transparently looking for a new forum which will tip the “community” back in her favor. Classic case of asking a question a different way when you don’t like the answer.
The proposal sat in ambiguity as this “online survey” was apparently taking place. At the last council meeting in mid-July, Councilor Etel Haxhiaj made a motion to close the survey and call a subcommittee meeting to vote on the proposal. Now, as we covered, the mayor and manager are taking that push even more public.
Still, as of writing this, Colorio has no scheduled meetings until September. There’s no mechanism to mandate she call a meeting sooner, just political pressure.
Everyone knows that when she does, it’s going to be a 2-1 vote. She knows she’s going to lose. The only card she has left to play is delay delay delay. We’ll see what she comes up with next! Meanwhile, children are dying and getting severely injured as cars ram into their bodies at high speeds. The city manager and the police department and the majority of the city council want to do something concrete about it, and Colorio won’t let them.
At the end of the last council meeting, Colorio made an odd comment, illustrating the point.
They were passing a bulk motion of routine Traffic and Parking orders at the tail end of the meeting when Colorio stood up and said:
“This is a lot of work we’ve done since January. At one point we had four meetings in six weeks. And so we put through a lot of items, 25 to 30 items each day, as we see this in our agenda, it was a lot of work. I’m grateful we got through as many items as we could. Just when we seem to get through the agenda gets bigger and bigger.
She’s covering her ass here. Oh I’m just so busy with ‘no parking sign’ requests I can’t get to the speed limit thing. Translation: I believe I have good reason to delay, and I plan to keep doing so.
Evidence of this exists on the list of pending items in Traffic and Parking. The proposal is slotted 114th out of 116—dead last, save for one from Haxhiaj and another that has the word “refuge” in it, dangerously close to “refugee.”
Weirdos, man. They’re just weirdos. These people do not deserve their seats. In this Colorio example especially, we see a city council that’s a direct hindrance to the city. They’re part of the problem. In fact you could argue they are the problem.
In that light, it’s very, very, very encouraging to see the city manager publicly call out and circumnavigate the cranks. Call their bluff! Then do it again! The only reason a Colorio or a Bergman keep their seat is that only close observers and members of the “inner circle” really see how bad they are—how they’re weirdos beholden to a small group of weirdos who really, at the end of the day, hate the city. It’s a politics of pure grievance. And I’m tired of it.
We should all be tired of it.
The Pommel Horse Guy
Woof ok time for a change of pace, I think. Luckily, we have one: a Worcester kid who’s so good at gymnastics and so stone faced otherwise that he became a meme. You love to see it.
As you probably know by now his name is Stephen Nedoroscik and he’s from Worcester and he’s incredibly sick at the pommel horse. His performance put the U.S. team over the line to a bronze medal. And then there was one funny picture of him. Thus a meme is born: the Pommel Horse Guy.
And it’s a rare ‘totally wholesome’ one at that.
Bonus points for a Kamala tie-in.
Odds and ends
Thanks for reading another edition! On Sunday I’ll do the news roundup I usually do down here.
For now, please consider helping out...
...and don’t forget about book club tonight! And Honeybees Saturday night!
Also, should I actually do this?
Lastly I went to Billy Strings at the DCU yesterday (kicked ass) and look at how sick this god damn show flyer is...
Councilors can, and frequently do, pull a move called “hold under privilege,” which pushes an item to the next meeting. The first “hold under privilege” doesn’t need a vote and can’t be contested. The second, third, fourth, etc. holds need four votes, which Bergman almost certainly has.
Providence in RI put in lower speed limits city wide with lower speed limits still near schools. They also put in traffic cameras to enforce it, which themselves got tangled in legal issues. I will say, it only takes a ticket or two to change your local driving. The speed limit thing is good, but if it's never enforced it sort of becomes
guidance and not law.
My suburban town has the 25 mph limit unless otherwise posted, but people routinely speed through neighborhoods. I also see people go around stopped school busses at an alarmingly high rate. I would need to dig for the data, which I won't, but it feels like enforcement of traffic violations is very limited.
Worcester drivers drive where, how, and as fast as they want. Cops fail to do much about it. Those flashing “your speed is” signs are hardly a deterrent. When have you ever seen a radar trap - other than Mill Street a few weeks back? Never. Too much actual work involved.