Protecting Their Own Over Protecting A Child
When's this accountability free zone going to cave in already?
Woof I’m a little overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I feel compelled to catch you all up on at the moment. I know I can’t “get to it all” but it should be said that in the span of a week, we’ve seen three pretty dramatic additions to the Worcester Discourse: the WRRB recommending a civilian review board, and the city’s financial staff deciding that two weeks out from the election is the best time to tell us that Polar Park is coming up short almost a million this year—and the rosiest projection for next year is another $400,000. And then Heather Prunier, an incredibly brave woman and survivor of harrowing child abuse at the hands of still-connected Worcester politico John Monfredo, has put the whole political elite on notice in a new video.
Let’s start with that third thing.
Protecting Their Own Over Protecting A Child
Very proud of Heather Prunier, who just the other day released a video about the ongoing nightmare that is the accountability-free zone Worcester’s political class has carved out for John Monfredo.
This story is mine and I waited 25 years to tell it, but it’s also about the political elite in the city of Worcester who protected their own over protecting a child.
Readers who are new here may not remember that this time in October 2023, we released a full accounting of Jon Monfredo’s rape of a then nine-year-old Heather Prunier. It remains the single best piece of work I’ve personally put out in the world, and it corrected a second-order injustice inflicted on Prunier by the local press. She’d never before been able to trust anyone with the story. She had no reason to believe anyone would tell it well, with the care, attention to detail, and craft it deserved. I will forever take it as the highest badge of honor that she trusted me with it. From October ‘23: “John Monfredo’s Teenage Accuser Takes Her Power Back.”
That’s why I’m very pleased to see Tom Marino at This Week in Worcester come through with a follow-up story released alongside the video that builds on much of the work we laid down in 2023. It is the follow-up Heather’s story deserves, and I highly suggest you head over there and read the whole thing before coming back here. “Worcester Woman to Voters: Reject Candidates that Protected Alleged Child Rapist.”
It needs to be stressed that almost everyone involved in the subsequent suppression of Heather’s experience and the laundering of John Monfredo as a non-pedophilic entity... they’re all still around. The cast of characters never changes around here. They have yet to answer for the egregious crime they committed against an abused child when they circled the wagons, attacked her character, and tamped down on the news getting out.
Chief among them is Maureen Binienda. Marino provides a good summary in his piece.
Then-Worcester County District Attorney John Conte, a longtime friend of both then-Mayor Ray Mariano and Monfredo, declined to prosecute the case.
Monfredo later won election to the Worcester School Committee, where he served eight two-year terms before declining to run for a ninth time. His last term ended in 2021.
Binienda stood for election to the Worcester School Committee weeks after the article identifying Prunier was published.
Despite Prunier’s depictions of the abuse says she endured by Monfredo, Binienda continued to include him in her campaign.
When asked about the article, Binienda described it as “very political.”
Just as culpable is Ray Mariano, then the mayor and now the Telegram’s lead columnist. Here’s a new-to-me detail in Marino’s story:
Conte, Mariano, and Monfredo not only share the same faith, but were also all active within the local Catholic community in Worcester. The three also shared long-time friendships.
And then there are Mariano’s direct reports, Dianna Biancheria and Rob Pezzella, both now running for office.
And then there are the others who were around and said nothing—have continued to say nothing!—Joe Petty and Kate Toomey, for starters.
It would be worthwhile to put together a political family tree of sorts with a triangle in the middle: Conte, Monfredo, Mariano. How many of the people currently in power owe something to them, directly or indirectly?
That’s more than I can put together today. (If someone has this institutional knowledge or knows a person who does and would talk to me, hit me up!)
Friendly reminder, there is absolutely no way I could have written the Heather story under the editorial auspices of the Telegram or MassLive. The independence afforded by the direct reader support model allowed me to take the project on without placating anyone, and to very consciously center Heather. To flip the shitty media paradigm that makes shitty men the protagonists in tales of their villainry.
Anyone who has supported this outlet, past or present, shares ownership of that project. That’s the beauty of the direct support model, when done properly. You are paying for someone in your community—ideally a team of people—to have full and unabashed editorial freedom. In the hands of someone who knows what to do with it, that freedom is a bit like a crowbar. I like to think I’ve popped a few nails out in my time, and I plan to do so as long as the thing is in my hands.
So please, if you have a bit of money to spare and you’re nodding along to what I’m saying here, ask yourself if you’ve ever bought something dumb with $5 and was it dumber than a subscription to this newsletter.
Also, I’m just going to say this to will it into being (I have not spoken to Tom or anyone at TWIW so don’t go asking em what I meant or whatever), but imagine the return on investment for progressive-minded funders and/or benefactors and/or scions if TWIW and Worcester Sucks were given the resources of, say, a six-person editorial staff. And a little freelance budget? Overnight, that would be the new paper of record. So… think about it. Maybe do some quick math: What’s $70,000 times six?
Local journalism is a tough business for someone who feels any sort of shame about asking for money. Luckily I do not…
Bandcamp / Tip Jar / Merch Store
We have a tip jar and a merch store and a Bandcamp where you can pay what you want for hot tracks made with scraps of reporting work. Like “Water Lawnmower,” a song that would have gotten me signed to Subpop in 2007 if it had whiny vocals about doing cocaine on it instead of Vocoder City Manager going “water lawnmower” over and over. Lol.
Oh! Major announcement: Katie made a store for her new linocut obsession including these awesome little Worcester Sucks bundles. Very limited supply on these!
Anyway. More news…
Stuff Coming Up
There’s a city council meeting tomorrow. The new agenda system is still soooo bad. So yesterday, I rebuilt it (pay attention to this, Eric) with a simple folder of hosted PDFs with standalone links, labeled in a way that makes sense: Meeting packet 10.21 reconstructed.
It did not take very long. (The bookmark manager Raindrop is pretty cool if you can ignore the wack “AI tools” options. That’s what I used here. It’s better than Zotero for journalism at least, I think.)
There are a few reports worth a look:
—10.26a Polar Park report and the related but buried auditor report on the anticipated $390k deficit next year (more on both later)
—10.11 a - upcoming road redesigns
Within this one is an idea that’s way too good for the current city council, so maybe we wait until after the election to say much about it.
Municipally owned grocery stores are still rare, but cities are increasingly discussing the concept, including the City of Boston. Kansas City announced in August that it would be closing its city-owned grocery store, and would search for a new operator due to financial issues. While it is unlikely that the City ofWorcester would move forward with a full municipally- owned grocery store, we are committed to facilitating any public-private partnership that could assist in expanding retail food access in the community. As one example, we have had conversations regarding the municipally- controlled space at the Union Station garage for food retail use. The space has some advantages with its central location in proximity to the Worcester Regional Transit Authority bus hub along with significant residential growth nearby, but also has some logistical challenges for tractor trailer deliveries and similar considerations.
—10.7b Keep Worcester Clean Report
—10.7c - Winter Storm preparedness
An interesting spreadsheet to peruse! itemized list of special revenue .pdf
Otherwise, the agenda for tomorrow is fairly light.
The next day, however, is the mayoral debate, baby. 7 p.m., Mechanics Hall, Manny Jae Media streaming (I hope! Please please I love “not going”). Buckle up.
Suffocated by “Issues”
I’m sitting here on Sunday night as I write this sentence specifically having just finished Task, thinking about how my new main goal in this life is to write something even close to that good. If you have a way of watching that show, watch it (it’s on HBO or “Max” or whatever). I’m thinking about setting up an Emby right now just so I can say here, watch it right now actually. I’m listening to the soundtrack so I can stay wrapped up in that precious moment of genuine inspiration that only comes around so often, even less so lately. Usually after a book or a live show. Rarely after a TV show. God, it’s so special. When he looks out the window at the end...
How it ties a bow on everything while remaining nothing at all...
I won’t go on, though I do want to. One last thing: It’s nice to watch something that treats the viewer like an adult and makes no attempt whatsoever to pander to the “discourse.” There was not a whiff of writing for the aftermarket chatter in this show. And yet, here I am...
A note of inspiration, it so happens, is a good way to start a post that, for the most part, catches us up on an uninspiring week. There’s very little in the way of inspiration to be pulled from the current events of Worcester, MA. Aggravation abounds. And there’s plenty to laugh about. (Make sure you check out the most recent podcast episode and/or the fun District 3 forum recap video I made for it, also below.)
But longtime readers may have noticed the absence of a tone of optimism I’ve taken ahead of elections past. An “if we can pull off X, we’ll get Y” type appeal to take the risk of giving a shit, convincing others to do so.
After watching the district council debate Wednesday and the mayoral debate Thursday, I’m left with the sense there are bugs in the proverbial code that cannot, will not be fixed by even the rosiest outcome on November 4. And we may be insulting both the proverbial bugs and ourselves by believing otherwise. Follow-up thought, it’s hard enough to get people around here invested in one election. It feels ridiculous to make the case for a generational approach. To say ‘buckle up, folks, this ride is long and slow and the AC’s broken and there’s no aux cord and some of the people coming along are—no way around it—very annoying.’
What are we to do, for instance, about the general consensus that the split commercial/residential tax rate is an “issue” campaigns must address? What are we to do about the clever way the tax rate, as a “campaign issue,” discursively obscures like half of the real political questions of city governance? At least half! Whoever came up with it is a genius, even if it’s Tim Murray I’ll hand it to him. We have candidates pandering to residents about rounding errors in tax bills, while they tacitly support a machine, always just out of frame, that’s designed to maximally juice property values. Property value dictates tax obligation far more than the tax rate does. This value machine runs in perpetuity. Here’s how it works: It gives away as much resident tax money as it’s able, using those sums as bait to lure in speculators, who in turn inflate property values and thereby tax bills. Those speculators get your tax money. They pay little to nothing.
There is no democratic input in that process, and worse, the politicians who loudly proclaim they vote for the lowest tax rate will without irony also point to the byproducts of this engine that makes property tax obligations soar and say Mission Accomplished. Worcester is on the map. Among the press, the electorate, and the political class, there is a general consensus that the actual source of higher tax bills is also the one true measure of the city’s success.
That happens in Worcester and everywhere else, and it’s unlikely to stop happening anytime soon. As Harvey Molotch put it back in 1976, “The city is, for those who count, a growth machine.” At the same time, the “lowest residential tax rate” takes center stage in municipal elections every cycle, like clockwork. It is nonsensical, intellectually insulting, and creates false lines of division. Good on Etel Haxhiaj for saying so at the district forum: “I also want to say that it’s frustrating that every year we have the Chamber of Commerce come to our City Council and pit small businesses against homeowners. That’s not right.”
Worst of all it’s plain boring. It is not a way to bring new people into the fold. It does not pass the “idk who cares” test. Until we develop a vocabulary to reject it wholesale as an “issue,” we are doomed to have Rob Pezzellas and John Fresolos on the city council. We are doomed to work within the confines of an objectively corrupted form of city governance authored decades ago for corrupt purposes. The tax rate is just one of many such “issues” that suffocate good candidates with good instincts. They are made to speak on something that is, at the basic level of premise, pandering. And it makes them sound like they’re pandering. I strongly feel we need a vocabulary for attacking these “issues” at the point of premise. I think we need to say “I’m not interested in talking about that. It’s stupid.”
Only when the general consensus is challenged can we expect to get anywhere at all. I do not at the moment see that happening much, though we are making some good progress on the “issue” of “tensions.” It will take a long time and a much healthier independent local media ecosystem to get the collective consciousness where it needs to be. And we may well not have much time at all.
Consider a report on the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting, about yet another deficit in the Polar Park account. It starts with the bad news:
… actual DIF revenues continue to lag budget expectations, at 929K in FY25 for a total of $1.7M to date.
But then it offers a silver lining:
Since the start of the DIF in FY19, private, taxable1 assessed value in the district has grown tenfold to $117.8 million. The ballpark has been and will continue to be an integral catalyst to new investment.
And what you’re reading right there is a dry way of saying what the tax rate conversation conceals: We may have forfeited $1.7 million we could have spent on stronger city services, but we juiced the real estate market. Fair trade.
It’s not a fuckin fair trade! Me and you and everyone like us lost twice in the deal: We got shitty city services and our rents or tax bills got more expensive. Renters lost a third special time, handing over more money to someone else’s prospect of future liquidities. Fuck you, fair trade. Where is the democratic forum to say that’s not a fair trade? Where can I vote on the loan payments? Where are the people who sold the city on this obviously fraudulent scheme, and how do I hold them accountable?
Instead, Candy Mero-Carlson has given us perhaps the most condescending, insulting question possible to vote on. There’s a question on the ballot, folks! Did ya forget? It reads:
The strange syntax choice “support requiring” is there to obscure the fact the city can’t require colleges to do this. They can only ask nicely. Which they already did. And colleges already said yes. These are called PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) agreements. They’ve been in place for years. Every school besides Holy Cross (obviously—why would they pay into the city they de facto control?) gives a decent amount of money annually. No one brings up Holy Cross’s paltry PILOT, a tenth the size of the others. (Obviously—see above.)
Awfully rich proposal from Candy Mero-Carlson, who hasn’t spent a dollar out of the CSX Community Fund in eight years. Money she could well have used to fund the “housing, economic, and community development projects” she calls “needed” in this question that doesn’t have her name on it, despite it being her fault almost exclusively. She got too worked up about the hotels! And now the ballot itself is lying to residents because of her and a mayor who’s afraid of her.
At the Election Squad meetup Thursday, I was explaining the fallacy of this to a small group of people, and one woman in particular who’s very involved with what we might call the “old guard” was visibly shocked. She asked why it’s on the ballot if it won’t accomplish anything. She asked who allowed it onto the ballot. I said those are great questions to ask the people involved: Joe Petty and Candy Mero-Carlson and Joe Petty’s man in the clerk’s office, to start. Maybe you’ll get an answer! Myself, I’m positive they’d just lie to me in the event their Plan A: Ignore fails (hasn’t yet). I’ll spend my time more productively, thank you. I do not think any of them are all that in charge, anyway.
None of this is “objective” per the definition used by most of my colleagues in the local press. Repeating obvious bullshit uttered by people in positions of power is, however, objective. Like getting everyone’s position on the “tax rate,” which, as we all know, is a major issue of concern. And we may be fewer in numbers than we were a decade ago but we’re still plenty good at doing that one thing: laundering the “as we all know” part of the general consensus equation to keep would-be political talent stuck in a low-rent arena where reactionaries are handed M-4s and critical thinkers pick through a box of silverware for a steak knife.
If we weren’t doing that as the local press, we’d be doing activism. Which is de facto bad, as we all know.
Please subscribe to support my continued ability to counteract this gross perversion of the fourth estate, a shriveled mass served to a visibly unappetized public as “the news,” unchewable after so many decades in the dehydrator.
“You Have Civilians Looking at This Already.”
The Worcester Regional Research Bureau finally authored its report on a civilian review board! “Overdue for civilian oversight”. The intro:
Today, Worcester stands as the 114th largest city in the United States and the second largest in New England, yet it remains one of the few major cities in the nation without a civilian review board or comparable oversight structure. More than half of the 200 largest U.S. cities have adopted such mechanisms, and within the region, Boston, Providence, Cambridge, Hartford, and New Haven all operate oversight entities. Worcester’s absence is striking in this context—and even more so in light of the December 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings report, which identified systemic weaknesses in the city’s internal accountability systems.
Under the slug “A history of revisited but unrealized proposals,” the first key finding gives us a little taste of where the current proposal (the one supposedly forthcoming, which the city manager is definitely drafting as we speak) is destined to wind up.
Calls for oversight arose in the 1970s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, typically following incidents or investigations that drew public concern. Each effort generated discussion but ultimately did not result in permanent structures
But hey. Good on the WRRB. I was sure they were going to wait until after the election to release it. Was not expecting the famously nonpartisan entity to drop an October surprise that benefits... well, tough question, actually. In a sane world, it would benefit the candidate most in favor of a civilian review board. But have you looked around lately?
On Thursday, WGBH held a mayoral debate I’ve seen surprisingly little chatter about. The first question moderator (extraordinaire) Sam Turken asks is about the WRRB report because he’s a good reporter and he’s not there to let candidates blather on about the importance of “Coming Together,” you know, “In The Neighborhoods.” Rather than the parks, which would be what the kids call “cruising.”
Petty, going first, said he was going to put it on the agenda for Tuesday. (I don’t think it’s there?) Then he gave a long, winding, wishy-washy answer culminating in the line that guarantees he’s a “no.” “So you have civilians looking at this already.” He talks about how expensive they are. And how they “get in the way” of a good chief, and you know everyone agrees about that, our good chief. So all problems = fixed. He will vote no after delaying the vote as much as he can. We know how this goes.
By comparison, King looked like an actual leader in that moment—refreshing. With Petty such a constant for so long, a guy can forget that the mayor can actually be a leader if they so chose. King:
It’s important to note, this is a third independent entity that has determined that it would be in the best interest of the city to have a civilian review board. The Worcester Equity Audit of the police department recommend the same. That’s a group of former law enforcement folks that made that recommendation. The Department of Justice, and now the Worcester Research Bureau, and most importantly, the people. The people have been asking for a civilian review board for years.
And then Owura Sarkodieh? Our third and most entertaining mayoral candidate? Also a yes. “I am for the civilian review boards with, and I want to go a little further with subpoena powers.” Hell yeah, dude. “And I’m also for open transparency on all arrests.” Now we’re talking!
Gotta say, I like Owura. He’s grown a lot since the first time I saw him run, in 2019 or so. I think he should run for District A school committee next time. I think he has a good shot of winning that seat. I do think he should think very seriously about taking himself seriously. There’s a well trod trap he’s walking into if he keeps mounting no-chance mayoral campaigns... But any more political consultancy is gunna cost ya a fee, Owura. (District A, I mean it.)
I pulled a clip on the question. The whole debate is only an hour and worth a watch.
Last thought: King gets the line of the night, far as I’m concerned, coming soooo close to calling Petty a paper tiger. “Worcester deserves leadership that’s forward thinking and not reactive.”
I’m with you, Khrystian, on one being better than the other. But Worcester might actually deserve reactive. That might be part of our DNA here, in the city that banned fluoride from tap water decades before RFK and will without a doubt be a militant stronghold for the Pro-Life Italians Sectarian Faction (PLISF) if ever the Baby Wars fully break out.
Of course I want Worcester to deserve it. But Worcester has to prove Worcester wants it. And jury’s out.
Welp, I’m not gunna write a line better than that today, so—
Odds and Ends
One last call for support!
Tip Jar / Merch Store / Bandcamp
And the Worcester Sucks linocut prints on Katie’s site too!
Let’s see…
Worcester police received a donation in the form of a “comfort dog” ($4,500). Idk man. This after the LVT security trailer debacle... Glad it’s gone. Not a second too soon.
Good to see so many people out on Saturday for the No Kings demonstration, now please please please can even 100 more of you vote in city elections for candidates as progressive as your beloved congressman (hint: not Joe Petty).
Well with the news, it’s as good a time as ever to point you in the direction of this Charles P. Pierce essay on Polar Park in Defector, the only non-fash sports publication: “A Million Lives Lead Back To Worcester.”
Down on the street, then, while the poker and the plotting went on in the Vernon, Officer Patrick Pierce would begin his walk down Millbury Street, keeping order among saloons that he called “buckets of blood,” and protecting the small, family-owned businesses that had sprung up there. He would not recognize the place now, with its brew-pubs and coffee shops and, of all things, the ballpark that descended into the area like a piece of the future that skipped right past the present and dropped onto the past.
Another reminder to mark your calendars for November 8. I’ll be reading at the release party for Luke O’Neil’s great new book We Had It Coming.
Every time I hear new music that perks my ears up, it’s coming out of Louisville. What gives?
What are they smoking down there... and can they put some in the mail...
Emphasis mine. Buried even deeper in the subtext is that most of that developing land is tied to TIF or TIE agreements, so while $11.7 million might be taxable, it will not be taxed for another couple decades in most cases. A very misleading figure.
It’s such a violation to have Monfredo knocking on my door every election season hawking votes for Binienda. And I cannot describe his shock and appall when the door is closed in his face. He can’t comprehend that someone might not want anything to do with either of them.
Comfort dogs should be with social workers and not the police.