Rejoice for the wicked is disappeared
The "crimen exceptum" of our time
Hello everyone, especially the clip of new folks here this week! Welcome to the jungle.
Kicking it off today with everyone’s favorite addition to the form...
Week-in-graf:
Big week for pop punk: Joe Petty gave Four Year Strong a key to the city. Brand New announced a show at the DCU Center as part of their ‘Woke’s Over’ tour. Councilor Moe Bergman’s push to dock Thu Nguyen’s pay failed. Worcester joined several other districts and organizations in the state in a lawsuit against Trump cuts to the Department of Education. School committee member Kathi Roy voted against it and called the cops because Sue Mailman asked her why. Gordon Ramsey paid a visit to… Whitinsville? For local restaurateur, campaign donor, and Spray Paint Bandit John Piccolo, no jail time. Flying Rhino announced its imminent closure. Sabrosa Venezuela became one of the first restaurants in the state—and the first food truck in the country—to take EBT for hot meals. Clark University announced plans to shutter arts programs. Area unemployment climbed above 2021 level. The city refused to release new public health director Tamara Lundi’s resume to the Telegram; state appeal in the works. Thousands came out to a Hands Off rally behind city hall Saturday.
Legacy of the witch hunt—WPS Strikes Back—a candy ass move—sprinkler ordinance, please—a letter from Chairman Chris—odds and ends
Rejoice for the wicked is disappeared
In her 2004 book Caliban & The Witch Silvia Federici argues that the witch hunt was the tool by which capitalism accomplished a disciplining of the peasantry necessary for its nascent period of growth. Hundreds of thousands of women were murdered and tortured so as to make the rest amenable subjects of domination. The practice only fell out of vogue when it was no longer useful—the social order already rendered compliant—but its legacy has survived. To this day, the witch hunt ripples quietly through history. Echoes from the cave. Wherever capital goes the witch hunt goes with it.
Here’s a passage that made me go ‘ohhhhhhhh’ the other morning:
“The witch-hunt was also the first persecution in Europe that made use of a multimedia propaganda to generate a mass psychosis among the population. Alerting the public to the dangers posed by the witches, through pamphlets publicizing the most famous trials and the details of their atrocious deeds, was one of the first tasks of the printing press.”
Hmmmm... use of a new media form to engender a mass psychosis among a population? You don’t say! What immediately came to mind was the White House Twitter’s Ghiblification of a deportee—using tacky AI art to make a meme of a woman’s ruination, posting it on a platform where people are encouraged to gleefully participate in the cruelty with the “like” button. As of my writing at least 161,000 people have done so.
Federici draws a line from the 16th century ‘witch’ to the 21st century ‘terrorist.’ In both, it’s the “vagueness of the charge” that ties the whole room together, Federici argues. Both charges are at once impossible to prove and evoke images of widely understood horror—a dynamic that allows a ruler so inclined to “punish any form of protest and to generate suspicion even towards the most ordinary aspects of daily life.” Find a better explanation of this than the disappearing of visa holders like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk for merely speaking in favor of Palestinian humanity. You can’t.
Öztürk Khalil, and a growing number of others have been found guilty of a crimen exceptum, as Federici describes:
...witchcraft was made a crimen exceptum, that is, a crime to be investigated by special means, torture included, and it was punishable even in the absence of any proven damage to persons and things — all these factors indicate that the target of the witch-hunt — (as it is often true with political repression in times of intense social change and conflict) — were not socially recognized crimes, but previously accepted practices and groups of individuals that had to be eradicated from the community, through terror and criminalization.
It’s like Federici was writing specifically about Öztürk and her harmless (and morally correct) student paper op-ed. She was punished to turn writing such op-eds into a socially recognized crime, when it was once an accepted practice.
We’d be fools to think this is some Trump 1.0 bungling overreach to be corrected in short order, like, say, the Muslim Ban. This is more serious by magnitudes. And it is just the beginning. In a recent essay for The Nation headlined “You Don’t Get Trump Without Gaza,” Ben Ehrenreich makes the case pointedly. On the disappearing of these graduate students, he writes:
In the time-honored practice of predatory bullies everywhere, Trump’s minions went after the defenseless first, and specifically those made vulnerable not only by their immigration status but by a 15-month-and-running bipartisan campaign to repress opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, an effort in which nearly every political, educational, and cultural institution in American society has taken part.
He uses the metaphor of a door pushed open... really held open, for Trump, for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, for Betar US and Canary Mission, all to walk on through. It’s been 15 months since that door opened, and during that time, Ehrenreich writes, the repression holding it open “was nearly universal.”
Journalists, cable news commentators, and editors lost their jobs, but so did staffers at synagogues and Jewish organizations, nurses, school teachers, baristas, museum workers, the editor in chief of Artforum, the star of Scream 7. Events were canceled, awards rescinded, contracts broken. For 15 long months before Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia’s journalism school, advised his students not to say anything about the Middle East on social media, Americans from all walks of life were getting tuition-free lessons in the tricks of survival in an authoritarian state: silence, self-censorship, submission. All that matters is how the little man sees his master.
Now here we are! “The obscene weaponization of antisemitism helped bring actual Nazis to power,” he writes.
When, eventually, they take you to Guantanamo (make sure to say hi! I’ll be down the hall), they’ll also photograph you, run the photo through an AI, and post it on the Internet. A glib advertisement for the sake of the peasants with their manufactured fears and real blood lust. A cartoon visage of your face in front of them, on their screens, demonstrating that once again the benevolent lords have rooted out a witch, sent them on their way to the stakes. And the peasants will rejoice, for the wicked witch is disappeared. Grist for the technofascist content mill. Like, comment, subscribe.
That’s what makes it so important that, at the rally yesterday behind City Hall, Etel Haxhiaj said the following:
“It's a necessity, an obligation that we call for and speak out for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident and talk about Rümeysa Öztürk who was targeted, abducted and kidnapped by the Trump administration for exercising their constitutional right to protest and free speech.”
The comments were met with massive cheers from the roughly 4,000 person crowd. But a look at official Hands Off! Literature shows the Gaza issue is curiously absent. At other rallies, apparently, it was hardly mentioned. It was the largest liberal response to the Trump administration’s excesses so far, and most found the modern witch hunt he’s administering too dicey to mention. So that’s why it matters that we have someone like Etel here who’s willing to mention it. She continued:
“Lemme tell you this, this is not just a punishment for those who are speaking out against oppression and genocide. It is another step towards targeting other leaders, other fighters, other movement leaders in our communities who are organizing to defend our people.”
Thank you, Etel, for using your platform in a way precious few will.
I put up a quick O.C. Dispatch post about the rally last night—text and NPR-style audio! Check it out if you haven’t yet. More information and clips from other speakers over there. Here’s a taste.
And some more clips and pics on the Instagram too!
Support us, and the homies too!
Rally aside it was still a packed week. Two or three more things to hit on and also a letter from Worcester Arts Council Chair Chris Michelotti.
But a few quick plugs while I have you:
The good folks at Cordella’s Coffee have launched a capital campaign on NuMarket for some exciting expansions.
This NuMarket campaign will help us expand our cafe into adjacent spaces—which will ultimately give us more seating, a bigger kitchen, and help us build out our bar (for the evening hours).
We chose to partner with NuMarket because, in lieu of donations, contributions by our patrons allow us to give 120% back in credits.
Head over to the NuMarket page and throw em a few bucks if you can.
Also! New T shirt design up in the merch store! It’s so sick. There’s only like 12 left after the Flea Market last weekend, where this debuted. Gotta act fast!
Travis Duda did the design of course. But the real show stopper here is the printing—four-color hand screenprints by Ryan Pitz down at Negative Press. These bad boys really pop.
If you’re looking at it going wuhhhh lightning hitting Union Station? The whole concept (my good pal Dan Anderson’s idea) is a tongue-and-cheek Bad Brains rip off based on the ‘yellow tape’ artwork of the band’s first release. As for the I&I Love It, band has a record called I & I Survived and more generally "I & I" is a Rastafarian concept loosely meaning oneness... so it's just another fun little wrinkle in the design.
We, as one, love it. Dumb joke but also sorta wholesome if you think about it!
Oh and I also restocked the Eye of Sauron longsleeves.
This newsletter is reader supported. If that’s you, thank you! If not… I’ll let recent subscriber Jess do the pitching for me actually.
What a nice note! Thank you, Jess!
Tips are also a treat every time.
Really anything is good. I’ve got other writers to pay here people! Mouths to feed!
Lastly, a benefit show for Isaac Pineau is in the works, slated for the 24th at Ralph’s Rock Diner! Lineup TBA but it’s good already.
WPS Strikes Back
The Worcester School Committee voted last Friday to sign onto a Democracy Forward-sponsored lawsuit against the Trump administration. The Somerville and Easthampton districts are plaintiffs. Worcester is what’s called a declarant, meaning they’ll serve a supporting role, lending data and other information when needed. Only two members voted against: Kathi Roy and Dianna Biancheria. We’ll get back to that in a bit.
In a release from the district, Superintendent Rachel Monárrez said:
“The U.S. Department of Education provides invaluable resources and technical assistance that have a direct impact on educational outcomes for scholars. From instructional assistance, to wraparound supports to working with students with special needs — these are not luxuries, they are necessities.”
Specifically the lawsuit targets a Trump executive order from March 20 seeking to dismantle the Department of Education. Massive cuts already impact Massachusetts to the tune of $106 million. There have also been mass layoffs. The DOE is down from 4,133 employees to just 2,183, per Democracy Forward. WPS receives about $53 million annually, or 9 percent of the overall budget, from the federal government, per the district’s release.
Here’s a video of Monárrez and Mayor Joe Petty talking about the cuts.
So yeah. Good on the superintendent and school committee for doing something about this.
Shame shame shame on Kathi Roy and Dianna Biancheria for failing to meet the moment. Quadruple shame on Roy, who called the actual cops on Sue Mailman after Sue went up to her and asked her how she felt about all these cuts. We have that pretty well covered in the most recent Outdoor Cats. Mailman came on to talk about the whole mess and she pulled no punches.
I don't understand how you can serve on a school committee and be like, are you happy that all these potential cuts might be happening to our kids? Are you nervous? Are you, what's your, like, how do you make this make sense in your head? And so I decided after the mayor had a big discussion about federal cuts and speaking up, which I think is totally important. I was thinking about, you know, saying something at the moment and it was a long meeting and I said, ah, settle down, Sue, settle down. And at the end of the meeting, I just grabbed my coat, my jacket, and I went over to my colleague and I asked her, what her thoughts about the insurrection were now. And she didn’t like the question.
Oh and there’s body camera footage of Roy’s call that’s... interesting.
“A candyass move”
Moe Bergman and Johanna Hampton-Dance’s team effort to dock Thu Nguyen’s pay did two things: it failed miserably, and it showed us what kind of “work” the council is engaged in... the type of stuff people are so eager to see Nguyen punished for abstaining from.
You can sum it all up with this one brilliant moment from the tail end of the meeting. Forever thanking WCT3k compatriot Bryan O’Donnell for catching it. He misses the recycle bin and all the papers go thwap and he does the little office chair scoot to pick up the mess he made.
Earlier, his order to create a new rule that would dock pay for councilors who miss three meetings in a row, Bergman failed to get the eight votes he needed. Defecting from the cranks were Jenny Pacillo and Luis Ojeda, who, while careful, made it clear they thought it was a step too far.
Haxhiaj was more direct, referencing the fact Batista told her and Nguyen they weren’t employees and as such he could not investigate workplace harassment.
“Well, I'm deeply dismayed and uncomfortable that on the one hand, we’re saying that city councilors aren't city employees for filing a complaint with a Diversity Equity office or the Human Right Resources,” she said. “But we are employees for the purposes of these new rules.”
As were many people at public comment. Kirsten Frazier had my favorite line of the evening: “Frankly, these items stink. They reek of pettiness and sad attempts at control under the cover of correctness. And it's a candy ass move that is more laughable than anything.”
As laid out in my last post on the matter, the intent of this order was obvious.
Bergman, fellow committee member Donna Colorio, and Hampton-Dance clearly want to punish Nguyen for their decision to abstain from meetings indefinitely—a protest over the lack of accountability for Candy Mero-Carlson’s use of a transphobic slur.
But, weirdly enough, Bergman kept denying that on Tuesday. “I somewhere resent the fact that this was designed to somehow hurt one particular councilor.”
Only one councilor had his back on the floor: George Russell. He said hate has no place in the council chambers. “I'll do my best to fight that no matter what.” Of course he hasn’t done his best at all. If you’ll remember he voted against an outside investigation of Candy Mero-Carlson’s hateful remarks.
And one more reminder: Russell saying that constitutes the “work” these councilors are supposedly doing. That and not much else for the bulk of them.
“There is no reason why we shouldn’t be adopting this”
Relatedly, the fire chief has been all but begging the council to do some actual work on a sprinkler ordinance. Russell, along with Mero-Carlson, is responsible for interfering with that work.
Haxhiaj has been pushing the sprinkler ordinance for weeks and the council keeps voting to put it on the table. Candy Mero-Carlson personally held it twice.
On the floor Tuesday, Fire Chief Martin Dyer spoke on a report he submitted to try to push the thing along:
“It has never been more dangerous to be caught in a house fire or a residential building fire than it is today. With the amount of petroleum-based plastics and the amount of stuff in houses today, the fires take off at great intensity and they grow exponentially very quickly.”
Automatic sprinkler systems greatly mitigate the risk, and the ordinance would ensure more buildings have them.
Haxhiaj said 193 communities in the state have such an ordinance. Worcester is one of the few outliers. She pleaded that Kate Toomey take the order into her public safety subcommittee.
“There is no reason why we shouldn't be adopting this for the sake of our residents, for the sake and the lives of our first responders, firefighters, police officers who, as I said, run towards danger when the rest of us are safe at home.”
Russell spoke, at last, on his concerns. They were diffuse and hard to make out, but he used the word “costly.” And he’s in the real estate game, remember. How that’s not a conflict of interest here is beyond me.
Toomey grudgingly accepted taking the proposal. No word on how she’d act on it. But she gave us a hint: “I think Council Russell brought up some good questions.” Telegraphed it!
Shameful, the whole lot of them.
Here’s what we could have instead of Candy, though. And we can pretty easily get rid of Candy. This is how her opponent, Rob Bilotta, talked about the same proposal at public comment.
“Worcester’s housing stock, the majority of it, 40 percent is built before 1939. We've had a lot of structural fires in the past decade. We've lost three firefighters ... We lost four residents on Gage Street. So automatic fire sprinklers save lives. They minimize injuries, they control fires, give residents time to escape, and really help reducing the risk to firefighters as well.”
Vote Bilotta, everyone. Donate too! In fact, here’s a handy linktree for all the good ones to donate to and none of the bad ones.
Let’s fill some boards!
Chris Michelotti is the chairman of the Worcester Arts Council and an artist in his own right. He feels strongly that more good people need to get involved at the boards and commissions level (if they can get past a Batista veto, I’ll add, though I do cosign the thought generally).
A few weeks ago he sent me this open letter on the matter. It’s advice any of the 4,000 people who showed up to the city common yesterday would do well to consider!
I was wondering who this should be addressed to, and if you are reading this then this is probably definitely for you. However, you might be reading this now because you follow Bill’s work to see what he says or supports in hopes that you can get him in a “gotcha” moment or perhaps you just want to know what a different group of people is saying in your city… so maybe I should focus on a group. While I am not a fan of boxes - perhaps the group I am hoping to speak with right now happens to be “left of center” in their political views. Maybe they are in their 20’s to 40’s and care about their community. Maybe they have been watching the city council and asking how they can get involved to make an impact on the city they call home. Here is the thing - if any of that applies to you then please take my next words to heart.
Getting people voted in or trying to run for city council is just one of many ways to make an impact. For those who get voted into council, I know they appreciate the support but I also know that they feel very much alone in doing the work. We work hard to get them into a seat and expect change. We need to do better - and part of doing better is acknowledging that we need to put in the energy to see the change we want. So I ask that you consider volunteering on a board, commission, council, or committee. Currently, I am the chair of the Worcester Arts Council and responsible for leading a group of 8 other volunteers to get the message out to different people in the city that make Worcester great that we have grants available. We manage incoming grants and this last grant cycle was about a quarter million dollars. Each grant is upwards of $5000, and we awarded 51 different projects including 4 fellowships.
This money represents a lot of cool stuff happening and has happened in the city that many of you will actually go to. Whenever you see the WAC logo and or the #WACfunded type on an IG post or flyer… that means we were lucky enough to award that person money to make their dreams come true. Currently, we have two open seats on the council and we have a bunch of spaces in our subcommittees. Volunteering to help out within a subcommittee is a great way to cut your teeth in volunteerism without putting in too much time and effort per month.
That said there are so many other great groups that have vacant positions. Each group has its own select meeting day. While WAC meets monthly some groups meet 4 times a year. The subjects the groups focus on range from the arts, to urban planning, to health, to cable television to the Woosox ballpark. Each group has varying levels of impact but each of them is an important piece of a much larger puzzle. To my more leftist friends… this is something I feel like we can suck at. We are good at finding out what doesn’t work, but I don’t see a lot of work into crafting a narrative that helps people see a different way of life. To the more online crowd… I am talking about “praxis.”
Here are some examples of groups with vacancies: Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board of Trustees, The Citizen Advisory Council, Conservation Commission, Zoning Board of Appeals, Worcester Ballpark Commission, Urban Forestry Tree Commission, Historical Commission, Commission on Latino Affairs, Community Development Advisory Committee, and so on. There are even defunct boards that need fresh life breathed into them… because we still need leaders to at least be in the rooms advocating for regular people. Check out all the vacancies here.
If you have gotten this far, thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and you show the kind of patience it takes to be part of these boards. The work can feel thankless but there are a lot of great things you can take part in. It feels good when you put in time… even if you deal with things above your pay grade. The work reminds you that we are much more connected than we let on. So a gentle reminder: there are so many ways that you can give back to your community in volunteering and you don’t have to jump straight into running for office. You can actually take part in the Worcester project and build solid skills that if you still want to be on council you can take with you to better your ability.
We have to take a multi-prong approach to change the world. Holding an office or getting in the streets are two examples of taking part in the American experiment, but there are still so many other ways. The goal is to make sure that your voice is in the mix.
Much love and peace!
Chris Michelotti
I suppose I should start a proper Letters To The Editor section. If you have a letter, send it to billshaner@substack.com. Maybe I’ll get a PO Box….
Odds and ends
The customary second round of begging for small amounts of money transmitted digitally through various means:
The Boston Globe had a good story on the Clark strike, surprisingly. Also, a good op-ed in the Telegram from striking student workers, rebuking the dean.
Given the current state of the NLRB under the anti-labor Trump administration, Clark’s stated intent to challenge the Columbia decision was a threat we took very seriously. Faced with this ultimatum, we were forced to withdraw our petition to protect the rights of student workers nationwide. Dean Kiem’s claim that we withdrew our petition voluntarily is a complete mischaracterization; Clark’s legal strategy left us no choice. To say Clark supports our “right to explore union representation” while actively working to dismantle that right is disingenuous at best and an outright falsehood at worst.
Had a good time doing a little media panel at the STRIKE conference last weekend (feels like a month ago lol) thank you to the folks at the Labor Center for inviting me!
The Worcester native who played Dewey in Malcolm In The Middle has come out of the decades-long solitude that I... definitely knew he was in? For sure.
Think I got it all covered. Long week. Woof.
Been on a massive Thin Lizzy kick all weekend and I want to get this made as a bumper sticker.
Also the new S.G. Goodman track bangs. Great artwork too.
‘Til next time!
This is a good one. I don't think it is sharable, but I will definitely check out these links, especially the committee openings. This is a great way to try to push back against the cuts that are starting to come to our local educational and cultural organizations.