The Backlash Blues

Catching up on the surreal fallout of the ICE/WPD brutality collab Thursday

Welp if you haven't read this yet just go read it now.

Happy Mothers Day

“They don’t need a warrant” by me in Welcome To Hell World. Thank you so so so much to Luke O’Neil for giving me a space to write something quick and urgent about Thursday, while it was still fresh and raw. Thank you also to the hundreds of people who've reached out to say it mattered to them in some way. Also Mother Jones for republishing it yesterday. Very honored!

To the overwhelming amount of new subscribers reading this: buckle up baby you’re about to learn about the singularly weird city of Worcester, Massachusetts. A place where native son John Lurie once said there’s a dome over so god is not allowed in.

One more thing on that note: buddy you got a dollar?

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So yeah read the Hell World piece if you haven't then come back because I'm not spending any time rehashing it. I’ll skip straight to the sentiment: This is fucked. What happened was fucked. What's happening is fucked. The city is coming unglued. City Hall is giving up pretenses it has any control whatsoever over the police department.

The police are fabricating stories about how a woman in elected office assaulted them so they can cry to ~the media~ about having been hit by a woman. Mommy she hit me. Literally. Lying in the smarmy way a brother would to get his kid sister in trouble. This Boston 25 article is a top-to-bottom embarrassment.

Local 911 President Thomas Duffy is a leader of the gang unit and he has a long and well documented history of let’s just say... hitting people.

I was there. I saw what Etel was doing. None of it came close to assault. They were assaulting a woman. Etel was saying hey don’t do that. That is “assault” now to these little cry babies we give guns.

Just look at the screengrab Boston 25 pulled to back up their boys in blue.

Hunting through the hundreds of available videos for evidence of assault and this is what you pull? Embarrassing.

Here's the full statement from Duffy by the way, which Boston 25 prints pretty much word for word of course.

No one has the right to act in such a reckless manner towards police officers, and we demand accountability for all criminal and ethically deplorable behavior.

This is how the police describe sticking up for your neighbor in the face of a forced removal regime senselessly ripping families apart across the country to push good numbers up to the big man in Washington. Un-reformable and irredeemable and our city police department now deeply complicit. So lost in that complicity they look around for someone to blame and can see only the two dozen people brave enough to stand in the way of it.

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.

Not going to happen, though. Already, City Manager Eric Batista is showing deference and fealty to these crybabies. In a public statement Thursday Batista made sure to praise the police officers, against all available evidence.

Unfortunately, two individuals were arrested after several attempts by WPD officers to deescalate the chaotic situation, which included the endangerment of an infant.

He then repeats the now-obvious lie, seeking to "reaffirm that the City of Worcester and Worcester Police Department does not assist with ICE civil detainments, according to Massachusetts State Law, but may not interfere with it."

It's the same thing he told the city council in January: "It's important for people to hear the Worcester Police Department ... will never target individuals based on their immigration status." He's just updated to plug new holes in the story. That’s what the "may not interfere with it" clause is doing. He expects us to swallow the poison pill that "may not interfere" means "have to actively help." And with a straight face he maintains the WPD "does not assist" ICE.

How can you look at what happened Thursday and not see it as assisting—as interfering on ICE's behalf? The WPD actively ensured the unmarked SUV containing a warrantless deportee was allowed to pull away. They arrested the daughter because she ran after it. From my piece:

As the car pulls away, nudging into the thick crowd, the daughter shrieks another horrible horrible horrible shriek, communicating the non-communicable as the disappearers take another step toward disappearing her mother. As the car breaks from the crowd she runs after it. A Worcester police officer, his voice frothing with anger, shouts "Arrest her right now. You are under arrest." And then four cops swarm her, grab her, throw her to the ground. All the while she's crying crying crying. Her hair's caught in her mouth and matted to her face, wet with spit and tears. Four cops hold her pinned to the ground.

I will never not ever forget that the officer’s first instinct was to bark at, tackle, arrest this desperate little girl.

On the infant front, here's what I witnessed:

In the background, a Worcester police officer looks at the desperate woman holding her baby trying to stop the agents from taking her mother and says "Do you want to stay with your baby?" The tacit threat of separation for her protestation of another separation. Later he would complain "She's putting the baby in harm's way." A classic move: "harm" goes undefined because the harm is him.

Much more investigation needed into this “reckless child endangerment” charge. Too much for today.

Also yesterday, a statement from ICE on the situation and it’s... spurious. In full, courtesy Spectrum News:

“The target of this ICE operation was a violent criminal illegal alien, Ferreira de Oliveira. She was arrested by local police for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and assault and battery on a pregnant victim. District Councilor for the City of Worcester Haxhiaj pulled a political stunt and incited chaos by trying to obstruct law enforcement. ICE officers and local police regained control of the situation and ICE arrest [sic] Ferreira de Oliveira.

"The previous administration's open border policies, allowed [sic] this criminal to illegally enter our country in August of 2022. Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem this criminal is off our streets.

"Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure. Through the CBP Home App- the Trump Administration is giving parents illegally in the country a chance to take full control of their departure and self-deport, with the potential ability to return the legal, right way and come back to live the American dream."

Ending the statement with a commercial for your Self-Deportation App. Cue “Fortunate Son.”

The feds, like our local police unions, looking around for someone they can blame and all they can find is a woman who dared to stand in the way. In pretending she was successful they have forfeited their manhood: There’s hitting a woman with your fist and then there’s trying to get the state to hit her for you. The same surrendering of your masculinity, somehow twice as cowardly.

On the matter of the woman deported and the “local” charges, no one has been able to find any of that. I’ve spoken to two people who searched court databases and I searched every district court in the state myself. Nothing. I emailed ICE too, futile as that may be. Then Telemundo New England is quoting an attorney for the family who says there’s no criminal history at all. Translated to English by Firefox so excuse any errors but:

“She didn't commit any crime, she has no deportation order, so there's no reason, why immigration wants to stop the mother," says lawyer Andrés Latarulo.

Should be said: ICE routinely lies and makes mistakes in these releases. It is an incredibly sloppy operation. But, again, more on that in a future post. We’re just catching up today.

The narrative emerging from the cops and city hall is so so so so at odds with the reality of the situation. It is gross and it is only going to get grosser. We must not in any way entertain or engage in good faith with this obvious pandering to people who don't know what happened, don't want to know, and are looking for any lie they can grab onto. Those are the people that win in this city. The Kate Toomeys and the Moe Bergmans. That needs to change.

Unfortunately in this insane day-after news dump of a Friday, we got two items from Batista that show he's doubling down on his submission to the police. One, he appointed Jonathan Slavinskas, the police chaplain, to replace Ellen Shemitz on the Human Rights Commission, after earlier in this week firing her for trying to do police accountability (that's why the board was created in the 1970s and that remains its primary function). From Tom Marino at This Week In Worcester:

Sources also tell This Week in Worcester that Fr. Slavinskas has a close personal relationship with Worcester Police Sgt. Anthony Petrone, who served as vice president of the union that represents police officials for several years until recently. Petrone has consistently demanded that the US Department of Justice release identifiable information about the cases it cited in its pattern and practice investigation report, despite federal law explicitly prohibiting such disclosure. Petrone has also promoted a range of conspiracy theories about the report, including that interns wrote the report, not the DOJ attorneys who signed and are responsible for its contents.

He got rid of Shemitz, a talented attorney and dedicated advocate for police reform and he put in her place the close personal friend of a police union official—one who naturally fights reform at every turn. (You’ll be hearing from her soon by the way wink wink)

Then in an all staff email blast Friday night, Batista unveiled grand plans for turning city hall into a fortress: Metal detectors, security guards, locked doors and access badges and other interesting stuff in the fine print. The stated reason is that there was an unruly person running around the building on Friday. This is something the library deals with all the time on a shoestring security budget, but is somehow unacceptable for City Hall, after one incident, in this specific moment when he's decided to defend the cops for their assisting ICE. On top of those cops we'll now be paying for a contracted private security firm at City Hall. Per Batista:

Beginning May 27th, Security Compliance Officers are being added into City Hall during all hours that the facility is open. Security Compliance Officers (branded as Worcester Municipal Security) will help open and close the building, screen visitors, patrol the facility, and respond to incidents in the building.

You can read the full thing here. "Several other significant changes are planned to occur over the coming 60 days." Great! One of them seems pretty much designed to make protesting outside city hall harder: the big area outside the front entrance is getting turned into a parking lot.

The email ends with a link to a therapy service contracted by the city. Three free sessions!

Coming unglued, man. The whole thing. All of that happened on Friday night. A truly cursed couple days.

Like I said, buckle up we’re in Worcester. Please help support this outlet if you can! Paid subs are best, tips are great, merch orders are super.

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Also happy Mothers Day to all the mothers reading this!!

UPDATE: Kicking myself I forgot to share this in the original version that went out to inboxes: there’s a GoFundMe for Ashley Spring, the courageous community organizer and school committee candidate who caught charges for defending the young girl the cops threw to the ground and arrested. I donated $50 and so can you!

Here's a song that might hit for some of you the way it's been hitting for me.

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just what do you think I got to lose?
I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues

No one has ever been able to convey the hate in their heart for this world as delicately and gracefully as Nina Simone.

Back to business…

Now that I've laid out the people in power don't care or are too scared to care, let's look at the other side: what about the community that showed up to confront ICE in the first place? The ones who forced the cops to behave monstrously on behalf of the state because they dared to act on the idea that community means something.

That side of the equation held a press conference yesterday afternoon at the YWCA and lit the WPD up.

By far the most impactful was Dálida Rocha, the director of Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts, a group organizing to protect immigrant communities. “Let's be very clear, yesterday there was a real collaboration between police and ICE, which means the question that you should be asking is who's going to reimburse the city for the resources that the city put into the incident?”

She ended her address with a call to action. "We are coming to bear witness to the violations of human rights. We are coming to bear witness to make sure that there is due process and to show up for the members of the communities that are being ripped apart on the week that we supposed to celebrate Mother's Day. So please, mothers, everybody stand up with those mothers that you heard their cries."

Hit the website for more information on how to sign up, support the organization, get involved and get the tip line number.

Debbie Hall of the YWCA called the WPD response disproportionate and unacceptable. “Law enforcement must protect, not provoke. They must serve and not scare.” She demanded real structural change.

Fred Taylor of the local NAACP said the police responded with overwhelming numbers and force. He commented on the masked nature of the ICE agents, how they refused to identify themselves. "What were they doing? Where are we headed? And not only in Worcester, in this country, where are we headed?”

Councilor Khrystian King made the great point that now this 16-year-old girl is lodged into the system. It clicked for me couple nights ago that that system includes the shadowy, AI-driven, Palantir-built database that ICE uses to decide—or rather allows machine intelligence to decide—who they deport and when.

King pointed to flaws in police training that manifested at the scene. “I believe that the police department responded the way they were trained. It might've been a couple of folks that stepped out of line, but they were following their training. So there's a flaw there.”

State Sen. Robyn Kennedy focused her remarks on the community members that showed up to resist ICE. “Take this message. This is Worcester. That is Worcester. A community that showed up, to protect each other, to care for our residents, whether they've been here their whole lives or have just joined our community.” Huge applause. I welled up with pride, eyes wet from the combination of soul-restorative appreciation and exhaustion. I choked the lump in my throat and avoided faces, looking out the window at the grey rain blanketing the parking lot below. A distant police siren rippled through the otherwise tranquil scene.

Etel Haxhiaj’s remarks were straight to the point: “Somebody asked, what's the message for ice? The message for ICE is get out of our city.”

Watch the whole thing on the Worcester Sucks Instagram page.

And then there are the hundreds who came out in the cold bitter pouring rain to chant and make speeches and march from city hall to the courthouse. A few hundred people gathered there despite the heavy, cold rain for a round of speeches delivered by megaphone off the balcony. Most notable, to me at least, was Gordon T. Davis, a longtime community activist who’s been made to suffer the unique indignity of seeing his council agenda item on addressing systemic racism in policing relegated to the “tabled” section of every single city council agenda for the past year. It was Kate Toomey, chair of the public safety subcommittee, that put it there, and did so with a weird, flimsy lie.

From the balcony, Davis shouted into the megaphone for about two minutes. He pointed to the “de-escalation” rhetoric employed by the mayor and the city manager. “What a bunch of crap.” Big applause line.

Gordon Davis at the mic

“Imma say something about ICE. What has started in Worcester is that there's going to be a national movement where people come out and block ICE with their buddies. We're not going to hit them. We're just not going to allow them to arrest people without a warrant.” Another roar of applause. He led the crowd in a chant: no justice, no peace, no ICE, no police.

After, the organizers led some 300 demonstrators from City Hall past the courthouse to the police station, then back. All the while, of course, they were trailed and hemmed in by squad cars. When we approached the police station a new-to-me siren and light combo went off in the parking lot, the top of it just barely within sight, what it was connected to behind a concrete wall. Whatever this device was, it had a chilling effect. The crowd turned around without incident, thankfully. (If David Webb tries to get you to march through the police department parking lot you say no every single time. Unreal.)

The amount of cheering and honking from the throng of cars at the busy Lincoln Street intersection felt good, and surely produced the opposite sensation for the cops playing sheep dog to the demonstration. You have to wonder how much of their warped worldview comes from simply being unable to understand, even at an academic distance, why they’re so widely loathed. I like me so why they no like me?

In any case... We define this community. Not them. It's the people who stood up to ICE who deserve—who even want—community. The apologists and the cops and the cop apologists do not.

We do not have to entertain the bad faith narratives coming from city hall and from the cops. We can see four police officers shoving a 16-year-old girls face in the gravel and call it what it is. We do not have to call it "deescalation," like Batista did. His soul rots away every time he carries that water for the police. We don't have to see it as anything but that. And we let him know how disappointed we are. We can ask who controls who—the city manager or the cops. We need not be bothered with whether such questions are "respectable" because they're the only ones worth asking.

Are you laying down for them because you want to, Mr. Batista, or because you're afraid of what will happen if you don't? Do you hold the leash the law and the charter and our democratic principles say you do? If not, better to stop lying about it. The soul rots, remember.

So what to do now? We inflict the backlash blues on Mr. Backlash.

There’s a Mothers Day rally today outside City Hall at 2 p.m.

There’s a rally ahead of the council meeting Tuesday night.

There are jobs that need losing, city charters that need tearing up, an upcoming city election with which to inflict punishment on this necrotic political class keeping this city a backwater.

In the parlance of our fair city, Let’s fucking go, kid.

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One more subscriber pitch for the road.

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Do not have it in me to touch on anything else today. And there’s sooooo many other things to touch on!

Oh one quick thing though: Thanks to reader Brian Keaney this newsletter got linked to in The New York Times, right next to the esteemed How Stuff Works. Buy that man a beer if you see him out and about!

I need a day off and then another day off for sleeping. The post I had written before Thursday morning can come out some other time in some other form. Gotta make sure we recharge.

See you at City Hall on Tuesday.

PS: couldn’t get a copy edit for this one so if you caught any typos that’s great good for you!