The endemic inability to get out of one’s own way

Applies to the WPD, the arts festival, the governor and of course Donna Colorio

Hello hello! Back from camping. What a nice party. Did everyone like the Holy Cross CIA essay? I thought that stuff was neat. I’ll have a little update on Sunday.

Today we got a lot to get into so I’ll spare the preamble. These new Thursday editions are supposed to be brief (well, brief-er). So please subscribe and share this newsletter with anyone you think might like it :-)

Also on Sunday we’ll get into some notes from the superintendent evaluation tonight—sure to be a rollicking good time as our six normal school committee members and three crazy ones bash heads, using the superintendent as a stand-in for all manner of petty grievances. (We’ll be streaming it on Twitch. Starts at 4 p.m. tonight.)

Oh and: See you at the Hot Dog Safari this Saturday! The best event in Worcester I swear. Read all about it in Shaun’s last Bad Advice column. 

Anyway. Today’s post starts with some quick hits then transitions to more substantial updates on our city’s myriad ongoing miseries.

stOP On The Street—the WPD in action—the only place where this regularly happens—Gruesome Gavin, Malicious Maura—odds and ends

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stOP On The Street 

The big arts festival on Park Ave has bitten the proverbial dust. stART on the Street will have one last go of it in September then bye bye. 

In a statement, the group said it was just too difficult to keep doing it: "orchestrating an event of this scale has become increasingly daunting." 

The reaction online has been understandably dramatic, ranging from ”noooooooo” to “noooooooo.” I get it! The festival is one of the best things that happens in the city and we’re worse off without it. It’s a shame, but if you want these things, someone has to do the work. That’s no longer the original organizers and it’s not me—but maybe it’s you?  

The final stART festival will take place on Sept. 20, 11 a.m., Park Ave. I believe Shaun Connolly of Bad Advice is doing a Bad Advice Booth but I’m not sure about that and don’t feel like asking him right now. 

Also, before it was “stART On The Street”—difficult to read, annoying to type—it was, apparently, “Worcester Artists Really Trying (WART)”. Easy to read, fun, fine to type, wonderful. An unserious name that exudes serious personality.

Whoever changed it from WART to stART deserves to be held responsible for the downfall and is also (I don’t say this lightly, folks) part of this city’s overall problem. Symptom of a sickness I’ve dubbed The Endemic Inability To Get Out Of One’s Own Way (TEIT-GOOOOW).

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The WPD in action

There’s a viral video going around of a recent “police interaction” downtown, right by the Turtleboy statue. It’s straight out of Looney Tunes. I touched it up for a reel on the Worcester Sucks IG (put the sound on for full effect): 

(Didn’t expect it to take off on Twitter more than it did on the Instagram, but I suppose it says something about appetite to laugh at cops on the two platforms.) 

Here’s a play-by-play: 

A police SUV pulls around the Turtleboy statue and the camera trails, until panning left to two men on the ground. One is standing over the other, strangling him. The police SUV parks next to them. The officer gets out of the SUV, closing the door behind him. He finds the car is still in drive, and reacts by running out in front of it, trying to stop its slow advance. The person behind the camera whispers “what the fuck” as the SUV sandwiches the officer between its front bumper and the rear bumper of the small black hatchback in front of it. Once he’s fully pinned, two bystanders run to his aid. Two other officers, who appear from out of the black depths of the Worcester Common, run to the cruiser as well. 

The pinned officer pulls his car keys out of his Kevlar vest and hands them to one of the bystanders, who jumps into the cruiser and throws it in reverse. The two other cops watch the bystander throw the car, then they jog over to break up the fight. 

Before the two officers could touch him, the man on top stands up. He points off and says something. The other one remains on the ground, corpselike, as the two officers take the pointing man and throw him to the ground, smashing his head fully into a garbage can lid. An officer rips the garbage can lid out from under his head, so he can be pressed more fully to the ground. “He’s drunk,” the man says. “He’s drunk. He threw another knife in the woods over there.”

In a Facebook post with extended video, we see the two men had been dueling previous to the police’s arrival. The man we would later see on top was smashing the other with the garbage bin lid, making his eventual fall into the lid a cosmic twist of fate. In another, the camera slowly pans from the fight to a bystander stoically watching the brawl from a safe distance. 

The camerawoman bursts into laughter. You just gotta laugh with her. What’s that saying about Worcester and the dome over it? 

Link

Credit to Alma Martinez who recorded the original video. Reached out on IG for a quick comment and Martinez said “I don’t have much to say, just it was pretty chaotic but a good time.” Amen.

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“Only place where this regularly happens”

Another driver hit another pedestrian—a woman was sent to a hospital on Sunday after a driver rammed into her on Greenwood Street. She’s in critical condition, according to Worcester police.  

The crash comes two weeks after city leaders declared a road safety crisis. She is at least the fifth pedestrian since June to suffer severe injury or die as the result of a car crash. 

So far this year, 51 crashes have resulted in serious injuries or deaths, and 90 have involved pedestrians and cyclists, according to City Manager Eric Batista. 

In the Shrewsbury Street crash that put a 13-year-old girl in a coma, news broke a few days ago that the driver got a citation. Per The Telegram: 

Van Nguyen, 18, has been cited for operating to endanger, speeding and failure to yield to a pedestrian in the roadway, according to the Police Department. Nguyen, who remained at the scene of the crash, was cited August 5.

Investigators determined speed caused the crash. Ayuen Leet, the victim, remains in a coma, according to the Telegram. (There’s a fundraiser for her here).

That excessive speed was the cause is made obvious reading the firsthand account of the crash we published last week:

There were no skid marks, she didn't even slow down, she was about 50 feet from where she hit the girl when she stopped. It was so loud David thought it was a car hitting another car...

“Operating to endanger” feels like an insufficient charge for the driver. A child was put in a coma, found guilty in the court of our city’s infrastructure for trying to walk on it. Harshly punished. The driver has a fine to pay. 

As we’ve covered, pedestrians who are killed and seriously injured are subject to a certain form of violence—a social violence—that we’ve tolerated in America for far, far, far too long (and, as we’ll get to, it’s a uniquely American problem). 

That toleration grotesquely manifests in City Councilor Donna Colorio’s apparent refusal to advance a proposal to lower the speed limit citywide. As the chair of the traffic and parking subcommittee, she can essentially hold the proposal hostage—and she has, since last December (I wrote an extensive breakdown on how and why a few weeks ago). 

The police are saying it was vehicle speed that put a 13-year-old girl in a coma. It’s one of five especially garish pedestrian car crashes since June. The mayor and city manager have declared a road safety crisis, and explicitly said the proposal for 25 mph is part of their solution. But Colorio is still refusing to schedule a committee meeting. 

She only needs 48 hours notice to schedule a meeting. She could do it Monday. But she won’t. The next Traffic and Parking meeting is still slotted for late September. 

Since the most recent hospitalized pedestrian on Sunday, there have been renewed calls for Colorio to simply get the proposal out of her committee. 

“I am pleading with Councilor Colorio to schedule a meeting soon,” tweeted City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj. 

Transportation advocate Oliver Chadwick urged people to email Colorio (coloriod@worcesterma.gov) to ask she call a meeting before the council’s next session, Aug. 27.

“This policy isn't a panacea but a month delay to a policy that will help when we're having tragedies at this rate is unconscionable.”

It’s going to pass her committee 2-1, even if she’s opposed, and on the full council it will likely pass by at least 7-4. All she has the power to do is delay, and the transparent fact she’s exercising it—while kids are literally dying—is absolutely insane, irresponsible, and irrational behavior. 

Only in America, and on top of that only in a city like Worcester, would this fly. None of it is normal. 

After a recent piece on the matter, I got a great email from a reader illustrating traffic violence, much like gun violence, is very much an American thing: 

With all the Worcester Sucks stories recently about car accidents in Worcester, I got a bit of perspective recently that you might find interesting. For context, I used to live in Worcester- I was there when Worcester Sucks started- but I now live in Belgium. In a city both larger and more populous than Worcester, mind- there are in fact also plenty of cars here.

One of the lines that I found really interesting from one of the recent posts (I can't remember which it was), was the idea that car accidents are used so commonly in films and whatnot as a universally accepted, perfectly realistic way to kill people off. It's definitely true from an American perspective. But then... later in the week after I had read that, one of my coworkers got a call that her mother was hit by a car while on her bike. (Luckily she will be okay- a broken bone if I remember correctly but nothing she won't make a full recovery from with time.) My friend was obviously very upset, but it struck me in particular that one of the first things she said was something along the lines of, "I can't believe it! Hit by a car? That's ridiculous! I mean, that's something that happens in movies, you know? Not in real life!" All the other native Belgians agreed. So I guess your point about it being an accepted thing in movies still stands over here... except for them it's more like how it's accepted that the white person in the horror movie will go into the haunted basement than it is a fact of real life.

And it's not just Belgians, either. I also remember, months ago, sitting in a class with a French woman and a Greek man, and having to answer the question "Have you ever seen a car accident?". My response, of course, was "???Obviously???". The other two were immediately horrified and started asking me for details. I said, "Yes, of course, I've seen car accidents... yes, lots... wait you guys haven't?... NOT EVEN ONCE??". 

They had not.

Only place where this regularly happens, indeed.

Shame on Donna Colorio. Shame on Worcester. 

Two quick related things: 

—Yesterday, the Worcester Regional Research Bureau released a report titled “Toward Safer Streets.” The standout point for me was the analysis of financial cost for one year of crashes (2019): $493,644,552. Also for “arguing with cranks” purposes, the WRRB points out that Complete Streets infrastructure changes (like Mill Street) raise property value, create jobs, and create more parking. 

—There’s a nationwide Week Without Driving Challenge coming up (Sept. 30-Oct. 6). A reader sent it along to me, saying the following:

Given the recent tragic crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists, it’s important that Worcester residents and public officials participate in this campaign. Participants will gain firsthand experience that will help advocate for better services, resources, and a more accessible community for people of all ages and abilities. 

It would be nice to see some local organizers put together a concerted campaign around this, and I’d happily participate. As is evidenced by the 4,000 words I wrote recently about the one day I didn’t have a car for a little while, there’s a lot to learn by forgoing the family automobile. 

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Gruesome Gavin, Malicious Maura

There was another recent viral video I want to touch on: a six-second clip of California Governor Gavin Newsome pulling a shopping cart full of someone’s belongings out of a homeless encampment in LA.

Posted to Twitter by a local news anchor, obviously more sympathetic to Newsome than any unhoused person, the caption read: 

@GavinNewsom is in Mission Hills cleaning up a homeless encampment near the freeway. 

He’s frustrated L.A. County leaders aren’t doing more to remove encampments.

A few weeks ago, the California governor ordered the mass clearing of homeless encampments, the largest and most direct example to date of an official taking advantage of the Supreme Court’s blessing via the Grants Pass ruling.

Nicholas Slayton put it best in an American Prospect piece on Newsome’s new policy of mass sweeps. 

It is Kafkaesque cruelty to legally prohibit people from simply existing outside when the same government has not taken sufficient action to ensure they have somewhere to go. More practically, it’s also not going to work.

The Newsom video was posted Thursday, alongside articles with headlines like “Newsom slams LA County supervisors on lack of homeless action.” In what will sound familiar to a Worcester audience, Newsom’s press person told the local news the 11 people removed from the camp were “offered services.” What services? That goes unanswered. The longstanding agreement between the local news and local officials is that “offered services” is enough. No further questions. 

The clip has since gone viral by nature of a bunch of people calling Newsom a piece of shit. Which he is! 

Like this… 

In the American Prospect piece, Slayton elaborates on another point that will sound familiar to Worcester Sucks readers: 

Sweeps also don’t work. A study by the Rand Corporation—published in July before Newsom’s executive order—showed that although displacing residents and clearing encampments might remove tents from public spaces for a month or two, they generally return. In fact, the Rand study found that when sweeps occur, it leaves more people without any form of physical shelter, such as tents or cars, in which to sleep.

Now, zip on over to our neck of the woods, and our governor isn’t posting any videos like Newsom, but she did post this… 

Link

…while executing one of the most senselessly cruel shelter policy changes I’ve ever seen. 

Best place to live for whom, Maura? The desperate families you’re deliberately putting on the street, directly violating a state law in doing so?

As a result of Healey’s recent policy changes, the first 11 families were evicted from state-run shelters last Friday. The Healey administration had initially outlined a plan to evict 57 families, but walked that back, granting the remaining 46 families one-time extensions. 

Here’s a quote in a GBH article from a worker at a shelter in Norfolk that should break your heart if you still have one: 

“They cry and we just assure them we’re going to work as intensely as possible,” she said. “We’ve increased staffing to work more intensely each day, longer periods each day, to try to make sure that we’re finding safe locations or identifying near future safe locations.” 

That Healey walked back the original plan is cold comfort considering these evictions will happen weekly in perpetuity as the homelessness crisis worsens and the state refuses to invest more money in adding shelter capacity. 

While claiming “budget strain” as the need for austerity, the Healey administration is also hiding information from the public.

“Governor Maura Healey’s administration has broken with government accountability norms by withholding key information about some contractors and has shuttered the shelters from public view,” the Globe reported on Tuesday.

Media has only been allowed at the shelters on certain days at certain times, and the contractors are barred from speaking to the press, referring all inquiries to state agencies, according to the Globe. 

The stuff that comes back from state agencies is then heavily redacted. Here’s a particularly crazy example:

So we have a governor who just recently gave a $1 billion tax break to mostly wealthy people claiming the $1 billion emergency shelter system is too expensive to run. But if you try to find out whether or not the emergency shelter system costs $1 billion, you can’t. You just have to take her word for it. 

At the same time, federal immigration authorities are on pace for a record number of deportation case filings in Massachusetts this year. Since last October, there’s been 44,000. By the end of September, it could be 59,000, according to the Globe. 

In Worcester, we have our third straight year of homeless population increase. I have it on good authority that on top of the routine sweeps that happen all around the city all the time, there are new targeted sweeps of the common and the library for “special events.” More on that as I have it. The common is, of course, in the Downtown BID (business improvement district; i.e. businesses pooling money for third party city services). That means private security guards can do the sweeps without the cops ever having to hear about it, and that’s fine. BIDs almost always end up in areas with heavy homeless presence, Worcester being totally normal in that regard.

Kinda thing that makes you go hmmmm. (Substantial breakdown of the BID problem in a post of mine from April: What does the SCOTUS homelessness case mean for Worcester?)

New shelters are being fought tooth and nail by NIMBYs around the state. On Cape Cod, officials from multiple towns are fighting a new, 79-family shelter, as residents are turning real reactionary about it. 

In Quincy, officials shut down a small family homeless shelter at a church over "neighborhood complaints of unsanitary and potentially unsafe activity on the Church grounds.” Apparently, according to WBUR, Healey said her whole plan relies on “churches and community groups to step forward with philanthropy.” But:

None of the city or state officials contacted by WBUR would say how Quincy's cease-and-desist action squared with that edict.

Gonna go ahead and say Healey doesn’t quite care whether the churches and community groups do more philanthropy. Is it really a money matter at all? Or is she claiming so because her constituency—voters in the majority white, affluent towns that ring Boston, like Quincy—won’t abide living among the poors?

That’s the constituency she’s talking to when she posts stuff like that tweet I screenshot above. Using a Fox News writeup of a bullshit Wallethub survey to claim we’re already in the best state to live and our elected leaders are working hard to make it better. While at the same time she’s actively making the state less hospitable on purpose to the most vulnerable people trying to come here. 

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Odds and ends 

Thank you for reading! And see you for more on Sunday!

Did something happen at the library? I think everyone needs to calm down just a little bit. 

The Boston Globe did a third advertisement-masked-as-news-story, this time on the Canal District. Still sponsored by Rockland Trust, like the first two I wrote about last week.

There’s a design competition for Worcester’s ‘I Voted’ sticker and it pays $300 if you win. Sort of a ripoff if they use it in perpetuity but hey three bills is three bills. 

In Jamaica Plain they’re testing out birth control for rats, which would be a hell of a thing to put on the agenda for a city council like Worcester’s, which is in favor of crisis pregnancy centers. 

The Pommel Horse Guy was on Fallon and it’s pretty funny. Gotta hand it to the kid: He’s getting a lot of legs out of the way as he spins his legs. 

The city has restored its data portal after taking it down over weird, overblown ‘privacy concerns.’ Will dig into this a bit more for the Sunday post.

And lastly, here’s a great song my buddy Scott introduced me to while we were camping last weekend. 

This is the mountains

This is the lightning

This is the man pulling on his iron chains

This is the light that shines and I can see the pines are dancing

Ok bye bye!