"The very serious function of racism is distraction"
It will be remembered as The Great 2024 Savaging Of The Slop-Brains
All right all right, Worcester Sucksters—the assignment today is to keep it fast and punchy. I’m currently writing to you from about 9 p.m. last night. I’ve got a vodka drink on the desk, Hank Wood and the Hammer Heads on the headphones, and a fuck ton of notes to string together into a digestible email newsletter.
You can’t tell of course but I’m pretty manic right now—I spent all day working on a grant application for a very cool potential project (shhhh I don’t want to jinx it) but the act of writing grants tends to leave me feeling like Grotesque Hand-Drawn Spongebob. I am forcing myself to rally because today’s main topic is something I don’t want to write about at all. I simply can’t afford to spend another day thinking about it, and neither should you. Letting this assignment bleed over into a Thursday I could spend working on any number of more worthwhile pieces... that’s a crime.
I’m reminded now of something Councilor Thu Nguyen said on Tuesday night, “To be quite honest, I wasn’t going to waste my breath on this petition,” Nguyen said. “It is completely ridiculous and unworthy of our time and effort.”
Then they read a quote from Toni Morrison:
The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
“I will not explain my reason for being. Not to anyone.”
The toughest thing a Worcester city councilor has ever said? In the running, at least.
It was tiresome, stupid bullshit on Tuesday. But, luckily, there’s a happy ending. So, with Toni Morrison and Thu Nguyen in our hearts, let’s get to business:
Savaging the Slop-Brains—new candidate for Jan. 6er’s seat—how did this get on the agenda anyway?—odds and ends
The Great 2024 Savaging Of The Slop-Brains
Worcester Republican City Committee (WRCC) Chairwoman and local adoption lawyer Mary Ann Carroll stood amid a sea of people who did not look like her when she took the podium Tuesday night to defend her big new idea.
Though many of you will know all this by now, her idea was to make city council candidates who are naturalized citizens show their papers to the city clerk in order to run. It was transparently targeted at councilors Etel Haxhiaj and Thu Nguyen and offered a solution to a problem that does not exist except in the imagination of the miserable townie whites that comprise the WRCC, or the Slop-Brains for short.
“This is not a cumbersome step, this is just a simple...” Carroll stumbled over her words a bit “...showing of proper identification.”
When she finished her four-minute spiel—during which she cleared her dry throat with a dramatic, uncomfortable ahhurmph seven times—a lone clap rang out in an otherwise silent chamber.
A week prior, on Facebook, the chatter in the Seven Hills Political Dialogue group (a crank enclave) was that the city was trying to stop this petition from getting on the agenda, and that, if it got on, it would be “widely supported by the people of Worcester,” as one anonymous group member put it.
There was supposed to be a rally in support of it, also advertised in the same cranky group.
Neither of those things—the rally or the wide support—happened.
Instead, a young boy named Manolo got up to the podium as Carroll walked back to her seat. He spoke for some 20 seconds: “My grandmother is an immigrant. She deserves the same rights as any other American. Thank you.” Unlike Carroll’s lone clap, this was met with thunderous applause and cheers.
Carroll sat amid a small coterie of cranks, who laughed, mocked, jeered, and whispered over some 54 speakers who came out to tell them that they’re not welcome here, nor are their terrible ideas. It took over two hours to get through all of them.
On the other side, in Carroll’s defense, there were just two speakers. A total of 3-54. It was obvious where the public stood, and it wasn’t with the Seven Hills Political Dialogue commenters.
Not even Donna Colorio, the resident Republican on the city council, spoke in Carroll’s favor. A member of the WRCC herself, she voted against it after a terse statement.
“I will keep this very short and sweet,” said Colorio. “I will let my vote be witness to support my colleagues and support the mayor’s motion to file.”
With Colorio in surprising agreement, the council voted 10-0 (Toomey absent) to throw the petition in the garbage. Every councilor in attendance had something to say about it. Even Moe Bergman spoke candidly in opposition. Kate Toomey… picked an interesting night to stay home.
The two speakers who backed up Carroll were Pam Barnes and John Rogers. We saw Barnes last year when she got up to the mic to say that the endless homeless encampment sweeps should never end and repeated the myth that “other towns” “drop off” unhoused people at Kelley Square. It was so grotesque I clipped it at the time.
But I digress.
All three of them are WRCC members and all three have donated to Colorio’s campaign, a total of $1,700 among them.
Rogers, wearing a Wormtown Brewery sweatshirt (amazing), made a little oopsies. “I feel it is xenophobic... oh, poor choice of words...” People in the crowd openly laughed at him.
“I feel it is disingenuous to allow non-citizens to spend the city of Worcester’s money.” There, that fixed it.
Pam Barnes’ comments were too stupid to bother transcribing. But she stole the show with her childish mockery of other speakers. An incomplete list: she made a crybaby face when a speaker said they didn’t want to live in a police state, she rolled her eyes at “fascist authoritarian” like any fascist authoritarian would, rolled her eyes at things having to be constitutional, her eyes went cartoonishly wide when a speaker said “this is not what we should be teaching in our schools.”
That right there is what it looks like when a Fox News Manchurian candidate hears the trigger phrase and awakens.
It was subtle, but one of Barnes’ goofs gave up the whole ruse that this petition was anything but an attack on Haxhiaj specifically. A commenter asked if they know any “illegal immigrant” who’s tried to run for office. Barnes, on camera, mouthed “I do,” giving the beturtlenecked lady next to her a knowing glance.
Later in the night, Haxhiaj cited some of the social media comments she gets regularly about her “papers.” She read off her phone, quoting them:
—“When are you going to release your naturalization papers proving you are an American citizen? You keep saying you are but you haven’t shown proof.”
—”Haxhiah has never posted her naturalization papers or photos of a ceremony. All you have to do is post where and when, with documents and photos of you becoming an American citizen.”
—”You should prove you are an actual citizen.”
—“She just might be a citizen, kind of like a former president from Kenya might be a citizen.”
Haxhiaj looked out at the gallery, where Carroll and Barnes and Rogers were sitting.
“I am here to stay and I have nothing to prove to those of you who seek to divide us.”
Hmmm I think we can put two and two together here. This petition and those comments Haxhiaj read are from this same general group of people.
After Haxhiaj spoke, Carroll tried to get back up on the podium but the mayor shut that down real quick. As Petty tried to give Councilor George Russell the floor, Carroll interrupted.
“Mayor Petty,” she said, expectantly.
“You’ve had your chance to speak,” said Petty. “No.”
“But I suspect it will help.”
“No.”
And that was that for ol’ Mary Ann.
Zooming out for a second, this all seems connected to a trend Ryan Broderick wrote about in Garbage Day yesterday about this election cycle and how entirely limp the right-wing agitprop has felt. He writes:
The biggest op of the summer was the racist swarm around Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and even with a big debate night signal boost from former President Donald Trump, it still never really reached the point where it felt like real people actually believed it. Nor did it ever fully connect back to the election. The most it really amounted to, at least on a national level, was a series of debunks and a TikTok dance dunking on Trump for ranting about it. (Though, it did lead to some genuinely very scary activity on the ground in Springfield.)
During public comment, Maydee Morales referenced Springfield, Ohio. She said the petition amounted to weaponizing immigration in the same way.
“We all saw what happened in Ohio and how quickly people’s lives came at risk,” said Morales. “Is this really what we want for our city?”
Morales said the petition should have never been allowed on the floor (we’ll get to that).
But back to Broderick. He throws out a hypothesis for this new limpness that, I think, applies in this Worcester situation:
After living a decade-plus inside their own filter bubble, most right-wing influencers have lost touch with reality in a profound way. The last real place they could influence some kind of political middle ground was Twitter and their favorite billionaire turned it into 4chan. Meanwhile, every other digital space has finally given up and is, like in the case of Instagram, quite literally disappearing political content. They just don't want to deal with it anymore. And it turns out if you don't have at least one foot in the real world, you aren't very good at crafting a psyop.
When asking yourself ‘who in 2024 would think it’s a good idea to try to do birtherism on a city councilor in Worcester MA?’ the answer lies somewhere in the fact that people like Barnes and Carroll are very much stuck in 2015.
And they didn’t just get dunked on for that stuck-in-time bit of poor judgement, they got fucking savaged.
That beyond-the-pale bludgeoning culminated in a moment between District 4 Councilor Luis Ojeda and Carroll that, while it happened in public, was about as personal as you can get. He started by saying his mother, a naturalized citizen, would have been deeply hurt by this. But then he turned to a very specific story.
“I remember an incident that took place, I won’t use that person’s name but they know exactly what I am talking about,” Ojeda began.
“The people you’re talking about are the ones that came to your defense in that moment, when your husband wasn’t around. Those young men stood up for you. Those young men made sure nothing happened to you. And I was there to witness it firsthand.”
He looked over at Carroll, by that point sitting alone in the gallery.
“So let’s remember that. Because you’re not coming to their defense now.”
“You’re right,” said Carroll.
“Let’s remember that.”
“You’re right and I apologize.”
He kept looking at her, deadly serious. Then, after a beat, he nodded. “Thank you,” he said.
Ojeda, as we’ve covered recently, is not some lion for progressive causes. But, in the context of this agreed-upon dunking on the feckless WRCC, he pulled the big gun out. He went there. Where exactly is that? Only he and Carroll seem to know.
But it’s out in the ether now, and only because Carroll tried to do something objectively stupid, and Worcester just simply did not allow it. Ojeda was so offended he had to put her all the way on blast.
To end on a positive note, one of the dozens of speakers was Haxhiaj’s son Danny. Wearing a Megadeath shirt (so sick) he said his mom’s the strongest person in the world, as both a mother and a councilor. Every day, she does something to help the city, he said. And not once has her being an immigrant prevented her from doing so.
"I'm young but I'm sensible enough to see you don't have to show a piece of paper to do what you love."
Noelia Chafoya for District E!
Noelia Chafoya has announced her campaign to run for School Committee District E, the seat currently held by WRCC member and alleged Jan. 6 bus trip organizer Kathi Roy.
In an announcement video on Instagram, Chafoya says, “I aim to create an inclusive environment that empowers all of our students.”
Her three priorities: educational equity, community engagement, and collaboration.
Roy, on the other hand, is one of three school committee members that make up a belligerent minority bloc bent on exacting revenge for Maureen Binienda’s firing.
During public comment Tuesday, Nelly Medina put Kathi Roy on notice.
“It is concerning to me that a sitting school committee member making decisions about our children’s education in a city welcoming immigrant children into our schools is affiliated with this idea,” Medina said.
She requested a formal inquiry into whether Roy supports the item, as she’s a donor, member, and former chairwoman of the WRCC. I’d call Roy for comment but she’d just lie to me.
Last year, Roy beat Medina for the District E seat in a squeaker: just 100-odd votes. Now Chafoya is the first challenger to announce,1 and Roy is forever tethered to this “show me your papers” stunt, no matter what she says about it. Let’s go!
How did it get on the agenda anyway?
Right before the conversation on the birtherism petition was about to wrap up, Khrystian King asked for someone from the administration to explain how it was allowed on the agenda.
City Clerk Niko Vangjeli said they run these things by City Solicitor Mike Traynor. Vangjeli explained that Traynor said it was appropriate given it was framed as a request for a charter change.
Traynor got on the mic and elaborated. The petition is “asking for a charter change and that’s within the scope of the council’s authority.”
It’s not up to him, he said, to decide on the content of the request. “It wasn’t for me to say it was an acceptable request or an unacceptable request and I don’t agree that on its face it’s unconstitutional.”
So basically there’s a massive loophole here: If you frame it as a request for a charter change, you can make a petition about anything at all and they have to put it on the agenda. Like this, for instance:
Someone put that on a council agenda. Why not.
But on a serious note, there does seem to be some selective enforcement going on regarding what items the law department allows on agendas. During public comment, Tom Marino of This Week In Worcester homed in on that. He said the petition violates the constitution in several ways, but that it wasn’t the first time such an illegal order has gotten through. In June, two councilors proposed an order that there be public hearings for road design review. That made it on the agenda.
“This is not a power the council has. You have four instances where you can have public hearings, specifically delegated in the charter. So, weird!”
Other speakers commented on public petitions that were summarily denied by the law department. Out of curiosity, I put in a records request this morning for denied public petitions. We’ll see if I ever get it.
Odds and ends
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Some stray thoughts...
Deep in the council meeting Tuesday, Candy Mero-Carlson was upset with Spectrum and let rip a turn of phrase I have never heard in my life: “I feel like at this point the cable company is trying to snow the snow lady.”
Whaaaat does that mean?! If you know, I need to know.
In any case I think we should all start saying it.
The Worcester Police Department has hired a new LGBTQ+ Liaison Officer. In a statement announcing it, the new officer, Jesse Bonardi, made a pretty weird remark:
“Many members of the LGBTQ+ community are reluctant or flat out refuse to report victimization to the police due to the anonymity that the community uniquely embodies.”
Folks, the gays are embodying anonymity!
Speaking of moral panics, the evangelical protest that occurred at Ralph’s Rock Diner Sunday (“BREAKING: Ralph’s haunted attraction sparks religious protests”) has ignited the Worcester Subreddit—not one thread, but two. The Redditors have thoughts and they do not like open questions regarding satire.
Many people are still wondering if that was a real protest. Click here to find out.
Also, might have to make up some GOD HATES RALPHS merch.
The new school that combines Chandler Magnet and La Familia Dual Language School has a new name, after much fuss: The Worcester Dual Language Magnet School. The school committee decided as much recently, but, as new Telegram education reporter Jesse Collings pointed out, they went against the recommendation of students and the superintendent.
Worcester Superintendent Rachel Monárrez recommended that the name of the school be Nuestra Dual Language Magnet School, saying that was the preference of students at the school who had voted.
Monárrez said that in previous surveys, the top response was that the new name should reflect the core values of the school and that it should bring students together. Monárrez pointed out that Nuestra Dual Language School was the only name to get 60% of support from one group of voters: The school's students.
Strange.
Highly suggest reading the big feature in Vanity Fair about a real life Oceans 11 character who cracked the cold case of 1978 art heist at the home of Worcester industrialist and John Birch Society founder Robert Stoddard. Brimfield Market factors heavily, as well.
Another rec (thanks for sending Seanie D!): “ShotSpotter Routinely Missed Reported Shootings, City Data Shows” in Southside Weekly, a Chicago outlet.
An analysis of public data by the Weekly and Type Investigations indicates that ShotSpotter did not alert Chicago police to more than 20% of the shootings and reckless firearm discharges that occurred within its coverage area between January 2023 and August 2024, however, which raises questions about how well the company fulfilled its contractual obligations.
It’s the exact same tech here in Worcester, remember.
Shout out to Demilitarize WPI, a cool new group of students putting pressure on the administration to stop being party to the weapons manufacturers who profit off genocide.
Give em a follow and sign that petition!
Another Canal District restaurant, Russo, closed—one more piece of evidence for the case that Polar Park is destroying the closest approximation we had to a cool neighborhood there for a couple years and it just simply has no shot of survival. Oh well I guess we’ll try again somewhere else in a different decade.
Lastly, we gotta give a shout out to the family of black bears spotted in Worcester recently. Certified love it material.
Ok talk on Sunday!
The first version of this post, which went out to inboxes, read “Now Chafoya is picking up where Medina left off…” After posting, I realized this carries the implication that Medina is not planning to run again—not what I intended! It’s very early in the election season, and Medina hasn’t yet announced either way.
Also yay for Danny and everyone else who bravely spoke up for themselves, their moms, our friends, our neighbors, and against racism.
I'm clearly old as the hills but does the new LGBTQI liaison at the police mean that one trans woman police officer who was the liaison for a long time has retired? (Other oldies can surely help remember her name)
It would be so interesting to track her down and talk to her about her experiences now that she's off of active duty.