Keep it alive until you know what to do with it
What to do with this sick little posse of mediocre townie whites?
Happy Memorial Day everyone. I’d say something sarcastic but reality’s got it covered.
I’m a day late so let’s jump right in. A statement of theme:
Our own correspondent is sorry to tell / of an uneasy time. That all is not well...
(The deadline playlist for this post)
I worked on this all weekend (please clap).
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If you know someone who’ll dig this share it with them maybe?
Very close to 5,000 overall subscribers would be cool to hit that this week!
Also: Announcing a new branch of Worcester Sucks Media Empire: The Bandcamp! Call it a strange trauma response but lately, I’ve been making silly little electronica songs out of stupid things councilors say. It is very fun and cathartic for me. So why not throw ‘em online. Head to the Worcester_Sucks.MP3 Bandcamp page to check out my newest, hottest track “WHAT’S IN THE TRASH?” and one more.
You can download the tracks for free or send me a few bucks—whatever! Pay what you want baby. I think it’s pretty funny and also goes sorta hard (?). Will update the page as I make em so if you’re a Bandcamp person give it a follow, too.
In the words of Mac DeMarco, “just garbage but fun to make.”
Ok!
Keep it alive until you know what to do with it
As we’re coming up on the five year anniversary of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin's murder of George Floyd, the discourse is awash in reflections on what 2020 meant and what it didn’t. The general consensus among honest people who actually care is that police reform was handicapped, walked back, obscured, and subsumed by the copaganda machine. The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter provides a good breakdown, centered on the Trump administration’s recent walkback of DOJ investigations of police departments across the country.
It’s fitting that the Worcester Police Department would provide us two neat local bookends to this national moment, with its two most garish displays of police brutality, excessive force, and cruelty. June 2020: the force marching of protestors down Main Street (the ur-event of this newsletter, by the way). May 2025: the eager partnership with masked federal agents to ensure the forced removal machine runs smoothly—that a group of mothers don’t get in the way of the disappearing of a mother on our streets. Five years and we’ve gone nowhere but backward. Whine of tape rewinding: all the lofty proclamations and equity audits and investigations played in a rapid satanic reverse.
In the weeks since Eureka Street, we’ve seen the same people deploy the same tactics they did in June 2020 to absolve a police department that behaves beyond reproach. At the same time they assure us they are in complete control of it. “I want to reaffirm to all of you that my administration is prepared to manage the city through this while staying true to the vision that we as a community have set ourselves,” Eric Batista said during his State of the City address Wednesday.
During the same week he publicly announced new “security measures” at city hall, like metal detectors, ID checks, the front steps converted to a parking lot, locks on all entries, private security details... Taken together, the new protocols appear to emanate from a desire to prevent future demonstrations at city council meetings. That would be more like battoning down the proverbial hatches than “staying true” to any “shared vision.”
Just as in 2020 the police union officials are telling the truth about themselves and in doing so find themselves in direct contradiction with “city leadership”—all the assurances of the mayor and the manager and the rest of the cranky blob holding the necessary seats in city hall.
Something happened this past week that went mostly unremarked on but best represents the two steps back we’ve taken since 2020’s one step forward. Father Jonathan Slavinskas, chaplain of the Worcester Police Department1 attended his first meeting as a member of the Human Rights Commission on Monday. In a conversation about the WPD’s handling of Eureka Street, he did not try at all to hide the reason he was there. The reason Eric Batista put him in that seat while removing two dedicated police reformers. The efforts made to resist the Eureka Street forced removal, he said, were akin to using immigrants as pawns for political gain.
“I pray that our undocumented immigrant population is not being used as pawns for any political gain whatsoever, to attack the police department or try to get votes in any way, shape, or form.”
Sorta seems like he’s praying for the opposite... or for people to believe the opposite. In any case, clearly advancing an argument! With his next breath he asks his new colleagues on the Human Rights Commission to request the manager conduct an “external investigation review to be done on this incident completely.” Reason being, he’s got a conspiracy theory brewing, and he’d like the manager to confirm it. In his words: “Because the fact that there were so many people involved in this on Eureka Street out of nowhere, I think, speaks volumes.”
If he means “speaks volumes” about the fantastic community organizing work of LUCE and Neighbor To Neighbor (they both need funds and volunteers, folks!), I’d hand it to him. But we all know that’s not what he means. He’s clearly processing the whole situation as some sort of orchestrated attempt to embarrass the Worcester Police Department by “the left.” I suppose it’s less personally embarrassing a scenario than what happened: that “the left” showed up because they give a shit about their community and are organized and entrenched enough that when ICE shows up, they catch wind. And then the WPD showed up on ICE’s behalf—because ICE called—and acted embarrassingly.
If I were in Slavinskas’ position here, of having to reflexively support the police 100 percent in all arenas, I’d be scrambling for a conspiracy theory too. But I wouldn’t be on a commission that was created for the sole purpose of providing public accountability of the police. And we do not, in fact, have to hand it to him.
This is the person that Eric Batista put on the closest thing we have to a civilian review board, directly replacing two dedicated police reformers—smart women Batista removed from the commission because they were doing too good a job. And leaving a seat vacant at the same time. In their place, he puts someone willing to publicly advance ghoulish conspiracy theories that tickle the cranks in all the right places. (Kudos to the rest of the HRC for pushing back, especially Rob Bilotta who directly countered Slavinskas’ claims. It’s not political games, Bilotta said, to have an honest conversation about how to be better. The WPD leadership and union leadership need to be a part of that.)
An aside: During a recent private meeting, the majority of the city council enthusiastically received the news, from Batista, that Slavinskas would be replacing Ellen Shemitz.
A second aside: the church visit that Petty et al. touted back in January when he and Batista made their high minded comments about how WPD doesn’t help ICE... that was Slavinskas’ church.
A third aside: Back around 2020, this church was a crime scene! Christopher Slavinskas, a relative of some kind, was found guilty of stashing $200,000 in drug money on behalf of Kevin Perry, a local restaurateur who played a supporting role in the Worcester renaissance narrative with his Hangover Pub—that is, before his sell-fentanyl-and-buy-property scheme caught up with him. New Human Rights Commissioner Jonathan Slavinskas was present at the sentencing hearing.
Leaving these little asides here to say our city is controlled by a sick little posse of mediocre townie whites, all of them engaged in non-stop B movie machiavellianism.
The person who put Slavinskas in the position to say what he said about Eureka Street on Monday takes the podium at the JMAC two days later and opens with a solemn reflection on how seriously he takes the ordeal.
“A family experienced irreparable trauma,” Batista said, then, “today our city stands on the brink of division.” (Brother, I think we are well past “brink.”)
“We cannot, we cannot go back and change what happened, but we can learn from it and come together as a municipality and as a community to determine how we respond when we move forward.”
(That’s when the demonstrations started. A shout of “shame.” A person walked through the frame with a sign depicting Batista in an ICE vest, which... lol)
The same person who replaced Ellen Shemitz with Jonathan Slavinskas telling the city we can’t fix the past and need to, instead, “come together.” Much like the rolling up of one’s sleeves, “come together” is an often-deployed phrase from city hall types that is bereft of meaning (a dynamic we broke down heavily in the latest Outdoor Cats). Whatever he means by that (if he means anything at all) is no thank you. Check please!
Welp like I was saying...
Right where we were in 2020. How Augustus talked about the police then, how they "exercised great restraint,” is one-to-one with how Batista and Joe Petty and everyone else are talking about the police now.
“Unfortunately, after that protest, there was a small group not looking to share outrage about George Floyd, but bent on destruction and chaos," said Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus. "To the credit of the Worcester Police Department, they showed tremendous restraint. I look at that group much different than the protesters that held themselves very appropriately and admirably during the rally at City Hall.”
A one-to-one with Candy Mero-Carlson in 2025, who said in a statement:
“The footage released today confirms this: Worcester Police officers did not aid ICE in any detainment. Instead, they responded with professionalism, compassion, and restraint in a complex and challenging situation.”
And then, just as in 2020, there’s the zealots taking it further. And they’re the same zealots! Kate Toomey, for one, adopting the completely novel argument that the people who were trying to help the children should have... helped the children. How? If they “stayed on the sidewalk.” Not kidding! Check it out:
Perspective is a powerful thing. When it is one-sided, it can skew reality, but when we objectively look at both sides, it enables us to make decisions based on facts. The videos I saw reinforced for me, that [sic] had the protesters stayed on the sidewalk and not interfered with Federal Officers [not a sic per se but big ‘lmao’ on the capitalization choice], we would be in a very different space. However, they exacerbated the situation, and instead of focusing their efforts supporting the daughters of the woman apprehended, they crossed the line by obstructing and physically assaulting both ICE and WPD officers, which is unacceptable.
As is typical, Kate Toomey finds herself adrift in the copaganda sea. Everything about this paragraph shows she will happily swallow and spit back out anything the police unions tell her—useful for them, completely useless for us.
Thomas Duffy continues to go more and more feral. His most recent statement, sent directly to The Worcester Guardian and nowhere else, yet again calls for punishing Councilor Etel Haxhiaj. But, this time, it’s for comments that “fuel division.” And wow, just like Father Slavinskas, Duffy tells the Guardian the group of mothers who showed up alongside Haxhiaj to do something about this immoral abduction “politically organized and hostile.” Resisting ICE: politics. Helping ICE: not politics. Got it!
(Related: This Week In Worcester | “Worcester’s Most Violent Cop Wants City Councilor Investigated”)
He also accused Khrystian King of “race baiting” for comments King made shortly after the incident that amounted to, “the WPD put a young girl in the system and it didn’t have to. That’s a shame.” To call that race baiting is to acknowledge “the system” has a certain racial dynamic, no?
Duffy’s the closest of any of them to saying what we know they all mean. Give it a few more weeks. In the meantime, this train of thought that it’s a political stunt to give a shit about a Brazilian family that you’re watching ICE rip apart rests on the assumption no one could, you know, actually give a shit about a Brazilian family. It has to be “for votes,” as Slavinskas said. All of it is shameful and stupid in a long Worcester tradition. Certainly just as shameful and stupid as it was in 2020.
And, of course, the local press is, on the whole, cozying to this shameful and stupid rhetoric, just as as they were in 2020, if not more so. The Guardian has been a particularly bad offender in this regard, which is weird because I remember Tim Murray saying it was going to be an independent outlet? Let’s all read this great media analysis submitted in our chat feature by a reader named Joe:
I did a little analysis of the Worcester Guardian's coverage of the Eureka St. Incident (and the related news stories). Looking purely at the numbers I found some interesting anomalies.
Across the 6 stories published May 11-18, four of them include extensive quotes from Thomas Duffy, and the most recent article (May 18th - Police union blasts councilors over ICE protest fallout) is almost a direct press release for the Union.
Indeed, across the 6 articles, Duffy or the Union is quoted a total of 28 times, with 448 words of direct quotation from him or his statements.
I thought this was quite a lot for an individual who is not a city official or an elected official, and who was not present at the incident. By means of comparison I thought it might be worth looking at some of the other individuals or entities to see how often they feature. Between Eric Batista, Chief Saucier, and any official City statements, there are 13 quotes, for a total of 275 words. A small portion of those attributed to Duffy and his union.
Combined, Worcester City Councilors (not including the Mayor) are quoted 21 times (one of which is a Facebook post and three of which are provided as context for Duffy's complaints) for a total of 323 words. While more than the chief or city manager, this still lags behind Mr. Duffy’s extensive coverage.
Now let’s all take a deep inhale and repeat after me: independent of what, Tim?
The key difference between 2020 and 2025 is the percentage of people willing to swallow all this above-board corruption. There’s considerably fewer of them now, it seems. There’s even a petition circling nice liberal circles that calls for the resignation of Eric Batista...
Residents should not feel compelled to write to City Hall to admonish the WPD or the City Manager's behavior. The City Manager should not need reminding that he reports to the 200,000+ diverse residents of Worcester, not to the WPD and its 400 employees. The question now becomes whether the City Manager is compelled by the concerns of Worcester's residents or whether he is acting as an agent of the WPD and/or recent federal administrative policy.
We are calling for a vote for immediate resignation, removal, suspension, and/or vote of no confidence by the City Council regarding the City Manager, Eric Batista, for failing to remediate immediate and future harm to the residents of the City of Worcester.
As of writing, it’s netted a few more than 300 signatures. Sign on like I did!
If only there was one to get rid of Thomas Duffy. What I wrote a few weeks ago, in “The Backlash Blues,” stands:
The only person it would do any good to fire is Thomas Duffy by the way. You can get rid of the manager you can get rid of the police chief if Worcester Vic Mackey is still there this stuff is going to keep happening.
Let’s take a look around and see why a guy like Duffy has total job security, a blank check at the collective bargaining table, and an extreme amount of power that no one voted to give him. And why people like Joe Petty and Tim Murray never ever ever ever go away. And why people like Eric Batista have long lofty careers in government ahead of them. Fun!
Maura Healey on Tuesday said she mostly agrees with Trump’s immigration policies, she just thinks ICE in the streets making arrests without due process is a little gauche. She made comments to that effect a day after announcing a massive rollback of family shelter space, in keeping with a narrative that deliberately scapegoats migrants for a failure to adequately invest in shelter space amid a housing crisis.
On Wednesday, AGO Andrea Campbell said “welp nothing we can do,” on Boston Public Radio. Per the Globe, she said “They have tremendous power to enforce immigration law so you almost have to see something so egregious to possibly hold ICE accountable.” What is the so egregious thing we haven’t already seen? Summary executions?
On the same day, local elected leaders across the state, including in Worcester, sent a joint letter to Maura Healey demanding the governor declare ICE a rogue federal agency and terminate state contracts that support ICE and its actions, per MassLive.
“These actions do not follow law enforcement regulations and protocols; rather, they share characteristics that appear intended to create shock and fear: Racial profiling, no verbal identification as law enforcement, faces masked, rapid escalation to unnecessary force without use of de-escalation tactics, and no evidence of a federal warrant. ICE’s militant and unlawful actions must be stopped.”
On Thursday we learned that the abducted mother, Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira, got hurt in ICE custody, contrary to the mayor’s ludicrous claim that “no one got hurt.” Further:
“Wyatt Detention is a very depressing detention center,” Toland said. “With barbed wire everywhere. She’s not even getting pain medication in there for her pain.”
The lawyer also said they move Ferreira-De Oliveira around the facility “so she would not see or hear those expressing support for her outside of the detention center.”
Then we learned on Friday that ICE is denying any allegation of the like, issuing a statement full of some of the most bald-faced lies imaginable.
“The allegations about Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira’s treatment in detainment are unequivocally false,” the statement reads. “ICE has provided Ferreira with prompt medical care and services, and she has not filed any grievances or complaints regarding delayed medical care.”
As we here in Worcester stay myopically focused on this one Eureka Street case—even the Globe, dedicating its Sunday Ideas section lead editorial space to the matter—we need to keep in mind that Ferreira-De Oliveira is just one of thousands across the country going through the meat grinder of the same forced removal machine.
Remember Rümeysa Öztürk and the way ICE denied her inhalers as her asthma worsened in their custody. Then the less prominent but no less horrific story of green card holder Fabian Schmidt’s two month detention. He collapsed on the way to the toilet after days of being denied medical treatment. He woke up in the hospital, handcuffed to his bed. Doctors told him he had the flu and a dangerously high fever. He told GBH: "It was degrading, it's dehumanizing. It is horrendous. People shouldn't be treated like that, especially when they're in distress."
Most cases will receive far less scrutiny than even these. Like this one…
A trespassing charge… that’s all it takes to get you on ICE’s list these days. They’re so desperate to kick up good numbers to the big man they’ll call anyone at all a violent criminal. It’s a very very dark situation when this surveillance dragnet considers every criminal charge cause for removal and local police slap any old criminal charge on anyone they come into contact with… all the trespassings, the drunk and disorderlies, the resisting arrests, the assaulting a police officer…. The routine busy work for the local punishment bureaucracy, keeping everyone well fed and busy, now being used as the raised bed on which to nurture a whole new administrative bloat tasked with solving a fictional problem. People handsomely paid from the federal coffers to look busy solving the insolvable as they create untold new very real problems in every community across the country. I’m not talking in abstractions here. There’s $160 billion in the Big Beautiful Bill the House just passed for the expansion of this forced removal machine.
The bill sets aside $45 billion for new detention centers alone. And $30 billion for more of the masked gunmen we saw on Eureka Street doing more of what those gunmen did, per a WOLA breakdown.
A certain kind of accelerationist is salivating. Time to buy stock in Palantir is what I say. We’re all forced to play a game that’s fundamentally sick in order to survive in this world. Best, I think, to bet on the sickest horse.
While the Trump administration is building a Death Star, prominent Democrats like Maura Healey across the country are saying they agree with the Death Star in principle but could it be slightly less Death Star-ish in appearance?
It’s hard to not feel hopeless and of course that’s the point. Here’s a very relevant section from Copaganda, a book I referenced in the last newsletter and likely will reference in every other one for the foreseeable future, written by the guy I just quoted above, Alex Karakatsanis. It’s about how the liberal media, political class and academic establishment have for decades colluded to launder a far-right punishment bureaucracy as some normal and unavoidable fact of life.
“Any solution—especially those that would require organizing, building power, political education, changing hearts and minds, reshaping institutions, and mobilizing marginalized people to shift the balance of power in our society—is treated as so inconceivable that it does not even merit discussion. Even immediately implementable alternatives that are currently working well in many places are not mentioned. Copaganda requires this sense of hopelessness to thrive.”
For instance, the sense of hopelessness produced by the irrefutable fact that Thomas Duffy is here to stay as long as he personally pleases. Recently, he was on WBUR for a second time, illustrating yet again his raw contempt for the public.
“Confronting the police and demanding a warrant on the scene — it's not something the public has a right to demand,” Duffy said. “If I'm arresting an individual for a warrant or have a charge for them, and another random resident comes up to me and asks me why am I arresting so-and-so, I have no obligation to tell them.”
I just finished the second season of Andor the other day and while I’m saving most of my thoughts on this brilliant piece of television for a vacation filler essay coming up, there’s one moment I want to pull out for readers who may be feeling the way I’m feeling…
In a flashback that comes late in the season (no crazy spoilers incoming), Luthen Rael, a spymaster who set the whole rebellion in motion, is traveling with his assistant Kleya, at this point a young girl. They stumble upon an Imperial firing squad about to execute some peasants in a village square. Luthen walks away but Kleya stays to watch. She sees a boy her age, chained to the others in the firing line, meet his fate with steely, hateful resolve. Kleya watches him die in hate and horror. She catches up with Luthen and demands to know when they’re going to start fighting back. Luthen responds, “We have.”
Kleya: “By walking away?”
Luthen: “We fight to win. That means we lose and lose and lose and lose until we are ready. All you know now is how much you hate. You bank that, that you hide that, that you keep it alive until you know what to do with it. And when I tell you to move, you move.”
He gets back to walking away. “Move.”
I found myself needing the advice dispensed here. Maybe you do too. How to keep it alive and how to build. How to recognize you can’t do anything right now but one day you will. How to hang on to the hate until you know what to do with it. To not let it burn you down, or force you to do something stupid...
The thing we have and they don’t is that we give a shit. That we’re willing to lose and lose and lose and stay in the fight. Your average cop is not going to do that for the side he’s currently on. Once that side starts losing he’s running. He doesn’t believe in it. How could you? There will come a point in our lifetimes when a great many cops find their hearts unshackled from the all-consuming fiction currently enclosing their world. They will become winable, or they will become broken. It’s on us to avoid becoming either of those things in the interim. We stay in this fight knowing it’s one we may not live to see our side win, but ahhhhh nevertheless we have to be sure of it. We have to.
Meanwhile, dear reader, keep it alive until you know what to do with it.
“Don’t make faces at me”
At least the Election Commission is cool right? Ha ha just kidding.
On Tuesday they voted 4-0 to kick Ashley Spring off the November ballot, leaving Molly McCullough to run unopposed for her District A School Committee seat. Because Crank Staff Sergeant Steve Quist filed a “contest” of Spring’s candidacy—which City Clerk Niko Vangjeli dutifully investigated—the commission put Spring through a half hour humiliation ritual. It culminated in having to disclose to the cameras it was a divorce that saw Spring splitting time between a house in Bolton and a house in Worcester.
The chairwoman Kimberley Vanderspek talked to Spring’s kid extremely rudely also. Spring’s son sat next to them, a bit impatiently at times—to be expected at an extremely boring meeting. Vanderspek was visibly frustrated by this show of disrespect.
“Excuse me. Excuse me. To your daughter?” said Vanderspek.
Spring: “My son.”
“Your son. I'm sorry. Excuse me. You talking in class when your teachers are talking special?” She paused a beat. “Well here you need to be quiet. Okay?” Another beat. “Don't make faces at me, you just need to be quiet.”
Jesus, lady.
By the least forgiving interpretation of the city’s rules, Spring missed the year-long residency requirement by a few days, or so the commission rules. A more generous interpretation was not afforded Spring, of course. Rules are rules all of a sudden when they can be used against someone not in the club. They could have voted otherwise. But no, because an aggrieved townie white weaponized the bureaucracy against Spring, the election commission had to make sure that one of the new district seats—created to encourage greater participation in local government—gets handed back to an entrenched Petty loyalist sure to never not once rock that boat, who now gets an uncontested election that denies the public even the baseline involvement of a single candidate forum.
Embarrassing!
Spring’s response was great though.
“I went out with my children and collected more than a hundred signatures, which was quite a feat only to hear back several months later that I was still in question. I find that unacceptable. I think that is gross. This is not fair to me as a parent.”
Why does no one participate in local elections, they ask, then they turn around and do this to you. Embarrassing. More from Spring on this soon!
Odds and ends
One more time: please help this outlet keep doing what it does!!
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I have a planned vacation coming up June 1-8 so now would be a great time for people to pitch me some stories they want to write! billshaner at substack dot com
To stay sane I’ve had Fish DoorBell going in the apartment 24/7. It rocks. Gotta press the fish button when you see the little fishy. It’s not any more complicated-er than that. Where my apartment is I could easily set one up for the sky above Indian Lake for the bald eagles... tech heads get after me! Let’s do it.
Oh yeah the city is getting sued by the Globe lol. Guess why. One guess.
Let’s end on a good note: The city’s poet laureate Oliver De La Paz read an original poem about Worcester early in the State of the City. It was really good. My favorite part:
...city of the rusted hush of dawn where asphalt whispers in 50 tongues, Spanish lullabies in kitchens, the prayers in Farsi rising from rooftops where each consonant stirs in mouths as kids trade verses on Green Hill like they're swapping family secrets, city of journeys who carries countries in its lungs, city who bends light into stove top steam turning cumin into compasses…
Mmmmmhm. That-there’s sim rull wraightin’, I tell y’whit.
Talk soon!
Aaaand possibly Public Safety Standing Committee Chairwoman Kate Toomey’s primary care theologian? I haven’t been able to confirm it, even after a couple phone calls. But the question of why she recused herself for the agenda item about his appointment remains a good one. Could be she is a parishioner.
Thanks for covering that bit with Father Slavinskas and his BIG SUSPICION. That one really took me aback.
Fortunately, vile swine Tom Homan's 2-year consulting history for GEO Group is getting coverage.