Not even close to paying for itself

Plus, can we graft Worcester Twitter onto Bluesky?

Hey, everyone! My personal plans and the news in this city changed rapidly over the weekend, producing an edition of this newsletter that’s in parts luxuriously paced and in others hurried. See if you can guess which is which!

This particular thought is hurried. Please subscribe and share the work! Thank you. 

I made a Ko-Fi account (easy way to tip) and there’s lots of good stuff in the merch store. Our first story today deserves considerably more attention than I can give it right now. I copy-pasted about 3,000 words of notes over to the working doc for Thursday. Looking forward to digging in once I have the time to sit with the material.

Polar Park draws from the general fund—can we graft Worcester Twitter onto Bluesky?—A deeper look at last week’s city common arrest—WPI, city reach “deal”—odds and ends 

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Polar Park not even close to paying for itself 

Polar Park is officially no longer paying for itself, folks. The city’s general fund is making up a $792,000 shortfall in the FY24 “DIF”—the wonky tax district around Polar Park on which the whole “pay for itself” myth hinges. It’s complicated stuff, and the report announcing this shortfall takes pains to muddy it further. But the upshot is simple: The city’s plan ain’t working out, and it’s out of the reserve funding it has used in past years to cover up that fact. 

That report, which you can read here, is headed to the city council Tuesday as an “informational item,” meaning they don’t need to vote on it and have no authority over the decisions made within. This raises a major question, because just last year, City Manager Eric Batista told the council, “We would be required to come to you with an appropriation of additional tax levy from anywhere in the general fund to move into this DIF reserve to cover any cost.” Translation: The council would have to vote to move money from the general fund to the DIF.

But now, there’s no mention of needing a council vote. Instead, Batista and his Chief Financial Officer Tim McGourthy have adopted the framing that the $792,000 is a loan—from the general fund to the DIF fund. The DIF will “carry a balance” that is “owed back” to the general fund, writes McGourthy. Over the 30-year lifespan of the DIF, the city will be made whole. Translation: We’ll pay you back when we have the money. Brother, I’ve heard that one before. 

Why is this transfer allowed to happen without sign-off from the city council, when last year the manager said it would need one?

“Our DIF budgets are necessarily based on future development projections,” Batista writes in the report. And those projections are increasingly grim. 

For instance, slipped into the report is the detail that Madison Holdings, the primary developer of the DIF, is “terminating” its TIF agreement with the city, and has not done nearly any of the work promised. 

I had much more written about this but I need to run. Got a family thing. So I’ll save it for Thursday. 

It’s gunna be a long, strange trip watching Batista and McGourthy explain this one away on Tuesday. Come watch with us on the Twitch stream.

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Can we graft Worcester Twitter onto Bluesky?

A highly connected and engaged network of locals has never been more essential. For years, Twitter served as a key platform for nurturing that network—what I mean when I say “Worcester Twitter.” So much of what happens on that site is banal and counter-productive, a sort of voluntary soul-suck machine truly coming into itself as such since the Musk takeover. But Worcester Twitter was always different. It was a place where we could come together to stake out a new set of local issues, priorities, and villains in the way of progress. It was (and still is) an effective way to contest the overall Official Line of the local growth machine. 

But people are rightly leaving Twitter en masse, choosing mostly, it seems, to go over to Bluesky—while not quite a better app, it’s run by better people. So the question becomes: Can we fully transport Worcester Twitter over to Bluesky?

I’m trying to get more active on there (for the second time). Give me a follow. It feels bad to double post on Twitter and Bluesky but it is interesting to gauge what does well with what audience. Platforms exist in the context of everything that came before it, after all (Bluesky didn’t fall out of a coconut tree), and as such has an inherent culture. 

Take this one for instance: 

Lots of engagement for a stupid shitpost on Twitter, not so much on Bluesky. However, my post about MLK and zoning, as articulated in the last edition of the newsletter, was a hit over there. Saturday morning, I posted the same thing to Twitter. Complete dud. 

So the way I’m thinking about it now is Bluesky=serious concerns, Twitter=shitposting. This take sums up how I feel about the site on the whole:

Link

It’s the shitposting that makes microblogging fun, in my opinion, so in order for Bluesky to succeed, I think that sort of culture needs to emerge. We’ll see!

Max Read has a good post up in Read Max on the matter, “Does Bluesky have the juice?” He offers a similar assessment. A real Twitter replacement “should have teenagers, and normies (or “locals,” in Twitter parlance), and millions of other people who are completely uninterested in the preoccupations of the Politically Engaged Email Job Blob, and yet who are fearlessly posting their own bullshit alongside them, every single day.”

And then there’s something more intangible that Bluesky will struggle to replace, I think. Joanne McNeil put it nicely.

The culture of Twitter, defined in its earliest days, can’t be neatly grafted onto a new platform. And, speaking personally, it feels absolutely exhausting to participate in a do-over of that sort of social media culture creation.

But, at the same time, we need to remember there’s Twitter and then there’s Worcester Twitter. The latter may be much more easily transposed, as the cast of characters is considerably smaller and the community more inherently connected by the shared identity of the city (real “bodies and spaces” heads will know). It’s also a decidedly more useful, engaging, and necessary online community than any of the more abstracted Twitter subcultures (the dreaded Twitter YIMBYs, for instance).

So remaking Worcester Twitter on Bluesky feels like a good experiment. But, like Read wrote, it’s gunna need some normies for it to truly thrive. For us, that means the cranks. Microblogging is about having something to be mad at. So we unfortunately gotta get some local loonies over on Bluesky. But, like sharks with their lifeless eyes, the local cranks aren’t going to come over on their own accord: We need to throw some chum in the water (i.e. our communistic and antifa-funded designs for the city). 

Once the trolls start showing up, we can call the transposition of Worcester Twitter onto Bluesky successful. Until then, we try. We post in two places despite it being both time consuming and corny.  

I think it would be productive for someone to put together a Worcester Twitter list on Bluesky. I suppose I am well-suited to the task but like I said—exhausting…Ahhh, okay. I did it. Here’s the list: Worcester Twitter.

Between first draft and posting, I’ve added a bunch of people. Just following the whole list is a good way to get started. 

If you’re on the app, respond to this call-out post and I’ll add you. If you’re not on the app, you can sign up at will now (used to be invite only).

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“He was a part of the function, not a disturbance to it”

In last Monday’s post, “It is the very nature of the state that is putrid,” I depicted in detail the arrest of an unhoused man on the city common. I was there to see it, as were a dozen or so other people, many of them with Worcester Food Not Bombs. We watched as the man was cuffed for the crime of mouthing off at the cops then thrown in the back of a paddy wagon. 

A small moment comes to mind. One of the bystanders, who could have just as easily been the man currently under arrest if the afternoon had played out differently, stood next to me as we peeked for glimpses around the police van door obscuring the arrest. He leaned toward my ear. “And this is what they do,” he told me. “All day, every day.”

We also saw, earlier, that the cops had told him and the woman he was with that they couldn’t be on the common. I interviewed them after the interaction, as they walked away in frustration. The Food Not Bombs folks fed them. I spoke to four other people on the common who confirmed what this man and woman told me: that the cops were kicking people out of the common for smoking or for having shopping carts, that it had been going on for months, but in the past week or so the enforcement was especially frequent. They were all, to a person, frustrated. When Dennis Frazier was arrested, he was expressing that frustration. In cuffs, he said, “People are allowed to be in the park, bro. You guys have been throwing us out of here for three fuckin’ days.”

The cops charged Frazier with two counts of assault and battery on a police officer, (as well as the customary disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct “package”), according to the arrest report, a charge that carries a minimum 90-day jail sentence. In his report, Officer Patrick Donahue said Frazier tried to bite and headbutt one officer and spat on two others. But, as we’ll get to, Donahue said... a lot of things. The report is starkly at odds with the reality I and many others witnessed, making it an especially clear example of the way cops lie.   

So let’s break down the “statement of facts” that Donahue submitted to the courthouse. 

The narrative, outlining why Frazier deserves to spend between 90 days and two-and-a-half years in prison, begins this way: 

At approximately 1228 hours Officer Leavitt and I were sitting in fully marked Worcester Police Cruiser 66 with our overhead emergence (sic) lights activated. We were pulled into the common located behind City Hall. The common has had an increase in police presence due to a shooting incident and many other incidents that have taken place on the common, on and around 11/06/2024. 

All of this is factually accurate, but contains a glaring omission: what they were there to do. And the fact they’d done that thing to Frazier not a half hour earlier. They were kicking people out of the common, seemingly at random. Every once in a while they’d get out of their cruiser, parked right next to the skating rink, and tell people to move. The unhoused people I spoke to said they do this every day, and the enforcement of who gets asked to move when is scattershot. 

While sitting and observing the area a crowd formed by the Front St side of the common. It was immediate apparent (sic) that the group was passing out food to the homeless. While observing the group I heard a male later identified as Dennis Frazier scream at us from across the common "leave the fucking homeless alone." We ignored Mr. Frazier's out burst (sic) in hopes that he got his anger out of his system. 

Again, a lie by omission. They didn’t mention why someone would be yelling at them to leave the homeless alone. They didn’t say they actually weren’t leaving the homeless alone at all. They allow the uncritical reader to assume they were sitting in their cruiser, minding their own business. 

However, he continued to yell at us. He was screaming at us "you fucking guys are sitting here making sixty dollars an hour to harass the homeless.” I stated to Mr. Frazier that he should mind his business and that we are not bothering him. 

Absent from the report is that the officer had already kicked him out of the common shortly before the events in this “statement of facts.”

Mr. Frazier continued to yell at us and use profanity while creating a disturbance. It should be noted Mr. Frazier's behavior served no legitimate purpose.

When you’re upset about the cops routinely kicking you out of a public park, the cops reduce that to “no legitimate purpose.”

As I mentioned previously A group was holding a lunch function and there were many other individuals on the common enjoying the day. It was Immediately apparent that Mr. Frazier was going to continue to disturb the function that was taking place, and something needed to be done.

Frazier was not disturbing the function in any way. At the time of his arrest, he was in the middle of the common and the “function” was on the Front Street sidewalk, at least 100 feet away. His yelling at the cops had nothing at all to do with Food Not Bombs, and when the cops initiated the arrest, the Food Not Bombs people came over and did what they could to help him. They filmed the cops, they asked for their names and the charges. They made sure his belongings were gathered. As I said above, they’d fed him earlier. I sent a message to the group’s Instagram with the relevant clip of the report. I asked if they’d say in their opinion the guy was disturbing their “lunch function.” 

Their response: “No not at all. Fuck that. He was a part of the function, not a disturbance to it.”

The officer wrote that it was on this group’s behalf that “something needed to be done.” A complete lie—the result of scrambling to retrospectively graft a justification onto a situation that had none. What’s the reason this arrest is in the interest of public safety? ‘Uhhhhhh. Well. There was a group serving lunch.’ To an uncritical eye—like, say, that of the assistant district attorney reading this report—there is now a victim in the narrative, justifying the punishment. But the only victim in real life was the cops, and the only hardship they endured was having to listen to someone express an opinion about what they were doing.  

At that time Officer Leavitt and I exited the cruiser and began to walk towards Mr. Frazier. Mr. Frazier stood and continued to yell at us. I took a hold of Mr. Frazier's right arm and Officer Leavitt took a hold of his left arm. I advised Mr. Frazier that he was under arrest. Mr. Frazier began to tens (sic) his arms and would not allow us to place him in handcuffs. I asked dispatch for additional units to my location. While the additional units were on the way and after a brief struggle, we were able to place Mr. Frazier into two sets of handcuffs due to the fact that Mr. Frazier was complaining of shoulder pain (from a past incident). 

Wasn’t his shoulder. He was complaining about his elbow, which the cops grabbed repeatedly, as if purposefully agitating him. He was very clear about it being his elbow, saying it multiple times, and here the cops are saying “shoulder.”

It should also be noted that while in handcuffs Mr. Frazier continued to scream and yell and carrying on (sic) the disturbance. At this point a crowd of approximately 20 to 30 people had formed to see the disturbance that Mr. Frazier had created and continued to carry on. 

So much deceit going on in the sentence structure here. The crowd had gathered to watch the cops arrest someone. The cops were creating the disturbance. There was no crowd until the cops decided to cuff Frazier. 

Once additional units arrived, I was able to pass Mr. Frazier off to Officer Jafet Ortiz and begin my paperwork. While I was doing so Mr. Frazier attempted to bite and headbutt Officer Ortiz. While Mr. Frazier was in the back of the patrol wagon, he spit through the mettle (sic) mesh onto Officer Nicholas Kalil and Officer Randy Rodriguez. 

When the paddy wagon arrived, the cops opened the back doors wide, pulling Frazier in behind them, away from the prying eyes and phone cameras. 

Watch the video here.

It’s in this moment, finally away from the public eye, that the alleged spitting—the part of the narrative that means jail time for Frazier—occurred. Awfully convenient.  

I should be noted (sic) Mr: Frazier had a what (sic) appeared to be a Home Depot bag that was picked up by a bystander. I would have picked that bag up. 

What a hero! 

However, due to Mr. Frazier actions (sic), the commotion he created at the back of the wagon, the large crowd. (sic) I forgot all about the bag. It is unknow (sic) what was in the bag, it is also unknown of its current where abouts (sic).

“It is also unknown of its current where abouts.” Jesus.

Veterans Day pushed Frazier’s arraignment to Tuesday. In court, an assistant district attorney, having read the narrative written by Officer Donahue and knowing nothing else about the incident, filed a formal motion to revoke Frazier’s bail, meaning he’d have to stay in jail for the duration of a trial which could take months. Judge David Despotopulos denied the motion, but that doesn’t change the fact that District Attorney Joe Early wanted this guy locked up as a danger to the public.

Frazier is a “danger to the safety of any other person or the community.” Check. 

The real crime Frazier committed here is back talk. He’s facing jail time because he told the cops how frustrated he was with the way they were treating him. That was the unacceptable line for the arresting officers. To all the other unhoused people there to witness it, the message was obvious: This is what happens when you challenge our authority to do what we want to you. The assistant district attorney who signed off on the above form read what the cops wrote and thought it was enough to claim Frazier was a community safety risk for which there are “no conditions of release” that will prevent him from causing further harm. 

Now, an unhoused man, found guilty of the crime of getting upset, is burdened by the possibility of a costly, time-intensive trial, and all that could come with it—the threat of jail time, warrants issued if he misses a court date, bail revoked if he’s caught talking back again. Conditions of release. Parole officers and case workers. An exclusion order for the city common. The charges stick or they drop, it doesn’t matter. The damage is already done. 

It’s almost like they want to keep these people as trapped as possible in their present situation. It’s almost like that’s the intention, over and above the obvious outcome. A feature, not a bug. After all, it’s these sorts of low-level arrests that make up the bulk of cases going through the court on a given day. They keep everyone looking busy and looking busy is job security. 

Could be the cops and the district attorneys are just looking for something to do, some way to justify their role in the institution. And while they’re sitting there looking, along comes a guy who’s angry enough to raise his voice at them. They arrest him, put him through the courts. Their supervisor gets a report. It goes up the chain, converted to data in the process. The data demonstrate that the beat is worth assigning. The cops stay on it. Meanwhile, the ADA adds a case to his load. Endless caseload, endless job security. For everyone involved, there’s a return on investment. 

And, on top of that, you necessarily ensure with the bureaucratic hassle inflicted after the fact that this man will at some future point be just as broke and desperate and frustrated, thereby arrestable. Planting the seeds for future work. A good way to create some job security. 

Just spitballing here. I’m willing to accept the theory may have some holes. But what’s true beyond doubt is that not a person on the city common Saturday afternoon was put in danger by Dennis Frazier. There was no victim. No protection needed. No real claim there was a threat to public safety. No grounds for arrest. And they knew that. But they made the claim anyway. They invented a victim after the fact to justify the punishment they administered. And they did that on purpose. Did it easily. And it worked. And once an arrest like this gets absorbed into the bureaucracy, all the lies that went into it become invisible. And these sorts of arrests never get the attention I just gave this one. They happen all the time. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. 

The subtle beast feasts in darkness. Satiated, it turns to the light. The blood, still fresh, drips from its chin as it smiles in assurance of another day’s protection. The less it bothers to wipe its face, the more we deny ourselves glances. We nod, our eyes to the floor, and say thank you. We shudder as it retreats toward its unknown dominion. 

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Lend Worcester Sucks a helping hand!

I can guarantee that the section you just read is unpublishable at the Telegram, MassLive, The Patch, etc. The freedom to do the work we feel is most urgent, for the sole sake of it being that—urgent—is due alone to the paying subscribers who allow me to make a living off this thing, with money left over for contributors. 

Speaking of, Aislinn Doyle has a new school committee preview up. In her own way, with her own style, she’s doing vital work you won’t find at the legacy outlets. She engages with the nuts and bolts of school governance deeply, always looking to learn more and taking the reader with her down that road. Proud to have her on board. 

Tips and merch orders are also helpful! Got some cool shirts, one more beanie (for now), as well as restocked stickers and new fridge magnets. 

Venmo a tip / Paypal a Tip / Order some merch! / Send me a tip on Ko-Fi

I’ll be bringing my wares down to the Worcester Punk Rock Flea Market on Dec. 14! (Hotel Vernon 1-7 p.m.) 

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WPI and the city reach a “deal”

WPI has promised in a statement that it has “come to an agreement” with the city on the Gateway Park hotel purchases. They will continue to pay taxes on both hotel properties until 2030, then after that, half the tax bill pre-conversion until 2034. That’s a little more than they were planning on doing initially, and lot more than they needed to do. 

As a reminder, one of the hotels is getting converted to student housing in 2026, the other in 2030. Until then they remain operational and tax-paying. That was always the plan. The Chamber of Commerce’s spurious little public-private partnership of a tourism industry has years to figure out how to get hotel capacity enough for the college hockey tournament. (For instance maybe it can get Madison Holdings to build the Polar Park-adjacent hotel it promised?) 

The reason WPI spent the money on the hotels in the first place is the housing situation in Worcester—a crisis brought on in many ways by the city/chamber blob. In the statement, WPI explains: 

The Worcester housing market is extremely tight, with ever-increasing apartment rents and a vacancy rate of 1.7%, one of the lowest in the country. This situation puts considerable strain on our students’ ability to find affordable housing and adds pressure to the city’s housing crunch.

It is insane that we have a college taking the housing crisis more seriously than city hall. Meanwhile, it’s crickets after a recent city report showed that it’s Holy Cross actually that’s scooping up the most taxable properties. 

And our shining college on the hill also pays laughably less than any other college in PILOT contributions, despite having the largest endowment by a mile. The political class that promulgated this controversy over WPI’s hotel purchases is just so deeply unserious. I could go on, but I’m running out of time and space. So here’s a short reading list on the WPI issue:

Aug. 22 | The growth machine goes to war with WPI

Aug. 25 | A brief history of the EDCC

Sept. 1 | A willing party to the hedge fund beneath the gown

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Odds and ends 

Again please help out if you can.

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The city got the state approval it needs to exempt the police chief from civil service. So I guess Paul Saucier will be changing his email signature soon. 

Educational yard signs about the incoming 25 mph speed limit are going up around the city! You can get one yourself. Per the speed limit section of the city’s site:

Educational Yard Signs (image at right) may be obtained at the Department of Transportation & Mobility at 76 E. Worcester Street, the 311 Customer Service Center at 799 Main Street or at City Hall in the first-floor information center for a limited time. The City can also deliver them to your residence, subject to availability. Please email mobility@worcesterma.gov or call 508-929-1300 ext. 49500 to request one.

Couple of national takes I found illuminating: 

— “Dealignment” by Tim Barker in New Left Review Dealignment

Perhaps the safest thing to say is that the working class, as a class, didn’t do anything. The vote is evidence of dealignment, not realignment: voters below $100,000 split basically down the middle.

— “Time to clean house” by Eoin Higgins in TruthDig 

But the iron law of institutions — Jon Schwarz’s idea that people in power within institutions will act primarily to protect their position at the expense of the institution — is the exact type of loser mentality that got us here. You can see it in how Democratic thought leaders are flailing around to attack whatever marginalized group they can rather than face up to internal failures, and how they would rather blame powerless political factions like the Green Party instead of looking at the sclerotic party leadership that brought us to this point.

— “Choose your words” by Joshua Hill in New Means

If we want to win we have to persuade, we have to be kind, we have to be thoughtful. I know that isn’t everyone’s first instinct right now, and that’s fair. But I see a frightening number of people focused on who they can tell to eat shit, when we urgently need to focus on bringing millions of people into a coalition that can beat fascism and ultimately build something infinitely better. I myself don’t just want to be right, I don’t just want to fleetingly feel better, or better than. I want to win. And winning requires bringing people with us.

— On the most recent episode of Chapo Trap House, Alexander Aviña gives a clear explanation of Mexico-US relations and the dumb, sinister ways that migration factors in U.S. elections. The phrase that sticks out to me is that migration is the “harvest of empire,” which is upon further inspection is the title of a whole ass book I’ll be adding to my reading list. 

Ah I see the state legislature is conspiring to rat fuck the audit of the state legislature that won by a landslide. Should be good for a state party already losing cities like Fall River. 

Southbridge is reporting an unusual spike in “diseased raccoons” so make sure your restaurants and grocers are sourcing them elsewhere. Otherwise we’re looking at a Wuhan II type situation.  

Ok talk on Thursday!