What a drag!
That Candy has not already been jettisoned into a political black hole is an indictment of this entire community.
Folks, I regret to inform you that things just keep happening, and at such a blistering pace it becomes difficult to give any individual thing the attention it deserves. So I’m taking a pragmatic approach to today’s post: gather up all the things and touch on each as quickly as possible. Maybe next week, the Pace of Happenings will slow and we can start to pull at certain threads. Inshallah. Today, we settle on merely acknowledging that the threads are there.
In 1971 Fanny Lou Hamer gave a speech after a failed run for Mississippi State Senate titled “The Name Of The Game Is Survive, Survive”
The survival of all men, not just the Black man, must begin at the local, county, and state levels of governments. While politics will not cure all of our ills, it is the first step toward erecting a representative and a responsive government that will deal with the basic needs.
It’s a quote that serves as an epigraph for a chapter in Jackson Rising, a book I’m currently reading about a model of cooperative labor power and land management under development in that city since about 2014. The way they talk about real estate speculators, and what they’ve done to protect their community against them, is a wellspring of inspiration.
There is so much more we could be doing here. Smashing the cranks’ hold on the city council is only a first of many steps. But this wretched thing can be remade. We do not have to stay stuck in this perpetual mediocrity forever.
Just a thought to guide us.
It’s a slur—TrumpWatch—how to talk about ICE—election update—vision zero draft plan—odds and ends
It. Is. A. Slur. Call it a slur.
We need to re-center a very simple fact in the way we’re talking about the bigotry in city hall: there is a massive difference between accidentally misgendering someone and using a slur. Candy Mero-Carlson used a slur. When she used “it,” she was using a slur. Everyone else now using “it” gleefully is also throwing around a. slur.
That it’s a gender-based slur and not a racial one perhaps accounts for the apparent failure of a wide swath of the local population to grasp this. The net effect is that Candy has been allowed to skate on the conflation of letting a “she” slip by accident and using “it” on purpose, to be purposefully hurtful. Sometimes this conflation is willful but many times it is also itself accidental.
The boundary lines on race are fairly well settled. Using the n-word as a white person gets you automatically jettisoned from public life. The idea of using the n-word by accident is ridiculous.
Gender is different. It is the vanguard issue of our times, analogous to race in the 1960s, and the lines are far from settled. In fact if you haven’t noticed, there’s a war on.
To accidentally misgender a non-binary person is not an evil act. You can be on the right side and easily do it. Khrystian King misgendered Thu twice at city council while loudly stating that he has their back. That’s fine. There is no contradiction there. If you don’t get weird and defensive and just say sorry and earnestly try not to do it again, you are not evil. Kate Toomey and Joe Petty are not made evil by the fact they misgendered someone. They’re made evil by what came after—how they responded, and who they ran cover for.
Calling someone “it” is never an accident. It is not a slip of the tongue. Not a whoopsies! It would be just as ridiculous to claim as accidentally using the n-word. Candy has not outright denied using it, saying only that she “can’t recall.” Meanwhile it’s been confirmed (confidentially, for well-deserved fear of retribution) by several people.
Perhaps because gender is such uncertain terrain, even well-meaning people have taken to labeling Candy’s malicious use of a slur as a “misgendering.” This plays directly into the hands of people who do not mean well. Candy, of course, benefits tremendously from our overall failure to call a slur a slur. But so do Joe Petty and Kate Toomey. They both had opportunities to draw a distinction between what they did and what Mero-Carlson did at the city council meeting Tuesday. They declined.
It’s in that moment—not when they let a “she” fly some years ago—that they mark themselves as opponents. In fact they made it more clear than they likely understand on Tuesday night that they’re on the other side of this war over gender. It would have been very easy for them to save face with the city’s queer community by condemning Candy directly. Had they done so, their apologies may have read as less half-hearted. But they got their backs up. They protected one of their own, and in doing so sent the tacit message that they’re willing to tolerate bigotry.
Candy had the gall to get up herself and say this:
“The hate mail isn't in just one direction. So I would say to my colleagues, and again, we talk about being open and we talk about being inclusionary... Again, I hope that tonight we move our city forward in a much more productive way for all of us.”
Could you imagine the outcry if Candy was caught using a racial slur for Nguyen—one of the myriad terms in the American lexicon for Southeast Asians—then painted herself as a victim of hate in such a way? Because people were mad at her for the vile thing she did? And yet, because the slur is gender-based, we’re failing en masse to even see the problem. And so she gets away with it.
Radical Ray Mariano is about as good a bellwether as you can get on where the lumpentownie stands on a given issue. Here’s how he described it in his latest:
Nguyen, the state’s first nonbinary elected official, charged Petty and councilors Kate Toomey and Candy Mero-Carlson with hate speech. Nguyen said they felt unsafe and, as a result of “dealing with transphobia and a discriminatory and toxic council culture,” was going to take a month off from their duties as a city councilor.
. . .
Both Toomey and Petty said that they inadvertently used the wrong pronoun once (Petty) or two or three times (Toomey) in addressing Nguyen and that the incidents happened at council meetings two or three years ago. They also said that they immediately apologized.
Mero-Carlson said that she didn’t recall making any hateful comments and that reports that she referred to Nguyen as “it” was not consistent with her behavior or beliefs.
Other councilors immediately began taking sides with both King and councilor Etel Haxhiaj calling out their colleagues. Interestingly, other councilors have pointed out that both King and Haxhiaj have used the wrong pronoun at least once when addressing Nguyen.
In this portrayal, Candy appears as an afterthought. The “misgendering” is centered and the use of a slur isn’t even named.
That Candy has not already been jettisoned into a political black hole is an indictment of this entire community. We are desperately desperately desperately backwards on the gender front, as Mariano shows us. It’s unclear whether it’s out of malice or genuine ignorance. Likely a combination. But it has never been so obvious, nor so unsettling. The moment we’re in demands that we catch up. Now. Right now.
If Candy walks on this, we all failed. She must be made to suffer consequences. Ideally, it’s the end of her public life. The use of a slur has firmly cemented herself as enemy of progress number one. Joe Petty, in his use of the mayorship to defend her, has made himself enemy number two. Thing 1 and Thing 2, if you will. (Would make a great protest bit at a certain upcoming event that may or may not involve some drag performances hint hint)
The only thing Petty can do to get himself out from under this is to publicly ask for Candy’s resignation. And yet, Candy’s own crank constituency is more primed to dispense with her than Petty appears to be. In that world she’s getting eaten alive for her (befuddling) vote in support of a public apology from the council to Nguyen on Tuesday.
If they think the pressure will ease up any time soon, they don’t get it yet. Next Tuesday, there’s another rally planned—this one introducing some much needed levity.
From the description on Pride Worcester’s Instagram:
Come serving legislative body for our 2nd Queers & Community Rally. Join us this Tuesday, January 28th at City Hall for a pre-Council Meeting gathering where we’re centering queer joy, civics education, and art as collective power building.
🗳️ If our legislative branch is broken, maybe it’s time to start growing new trees! This is your moment to show up, show out, and let your voice be heard in the civic process. Local elections are coming up in November, and they have a real impact on our very queer lives.
Starts at 5:30 p.m.! See you there.
The reason notwithstanding, I absolutely love to see this group so motivated. The rallies continue!! Let’s do it every single week. Why not?
On the most recent episode of Outdoor Cats, we discussed this and many other things with Etel Haxhiaj. It was a great interview.
On the agenda Tuesday are two sensible public petitions from Noah Rose:
Create an action plan to address safety concerns around transphobia in city hall. (8i)
Allocate $500,000 annual to a Queer and Trans Resilience Fund (8j)
That might sound like a lot of money, but consider the fact that Discover Central Massachusetts, a front for the Chamber of Commerce, gets that exact amount of money every year to do um.... uh..... tourism?
Sustained pressure from the public becomes necessary to make sure the city administration is taking its investigation into Candy’s use of “it” seriously.
But over and above the existing investigation, I think it would be smart for the council itself to contract a separate one. In an email to councilors the other day, Batista said the current investigation is limited to an unnamed city employee. He cannot investigate councilors. “The Administration does not have the authority to investigate complaints between elected officials, such as City Councilors, who are not municipal employees.”
At the very least, asking the city council to open its own investigation puts them in a position to explain why they won’t.
Meanwhile, the municipal operations subcommittee is also meeting on Tuesday night. While the LGBTQ coalition’s drag show brightens the hallway outside the chamber, Moe Bergman and friends will be discussing two items that may open the door for charter change. What a world.
TrumpWatch
Where in Worcester the things are mostly happening to us, on the national level, the blistering pace of The Happenings comes off as tactical. A shock and awe strategy, and one we can expect to continue for a good long while.
So this is first in what will likely be a recurring series of sections I’m calling…
The idea is to take a conscious step back from the noise, and pull out the actions that stand to have a concrete, material effect on our city.
The Intercept has a really useful list of all of Trump’s executive orders and the stated timelines for following through on them.
—The anti-trans order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” contains a lot of culture war gobbledygook. There’s one piece that’s worth our attention locally: Within 120 days, the heads of all agencies, like the Department of Education, must report back on new “agency-imposed requirements on federally funded entities” to adopt the president’s preferred “sex based definitions.” Almost every department in the city gets some sort of federal funding, so we may be put in a position to adopt official policy language that reads like a meme Jose Rivera would share on Facebook.
—The anti-DEI order appears limited to the federal government, with no hard power to instruct other government agencies to do away with their DEI initiatives, but plenty of soft power. In an email to staff on Thursday, City Manager Eric Batista reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to DEI:
In light of recent events, I want to reaffirm the municipality's unwavering commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as the administration's strong support for all employees, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender identity (including non-binary and gender-diverse identities), sexual orientation, age, ability, or any other aspect of intersectionality.
As seen in the earlier recap of Bigot-Gate, “unwavering” is not the word I’d use to describe DEI in Worcester pre-Trump, and certainly not post.
—The order also mandates that in “government-funded single-sex facilities” like prisons and homeless shelters, trans people are to be relocated based on biological sex. This is a death sentence. Similarly, it contains the vague threat to remove funding from institutions that take federal money if they’re found to “promote gender ideology.” Whatever that means. Marco Rubio ordered on Thursday that passports no longer have a third option for gender, an X marker that was introduced in 2022.
—Trump’s pitch to end birthright citizenship would have massive ramifications in our city of immigrants. It appears to be unlikely to pass. It has already been challenged by a federal judge, tying it up in court for the time being. A good line-by-line breakdown of everything wrong with it.
—Tom Holman, Trump’s “border czar,” said ICE raids will be aimed at the “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate. As we’ll get to in a section farther down, Worcester fits the definition. Superintendent Rachel Monárrez has already signaled the district’s refusal to comply with a new rule change that allows ICE to target schools and places of worship, spaces that were previously off limits. Meanwhile our Democratic governor Maura Healey has promised to look the other way, saying “we are not a sanctuary state.” A sharp reversal from her lionizing of sanctuary cities during Trump Round One. Those of us paying attention saw this coming a mile away.
—The Justice Department has halted all new civil rights cases. This has no immediate bearing on existing cases, like the 2016 mandate Aislinn Doyle recently wrote about in the schools. As for the DOJ report on the WPD, we don’t know yet but it’s not looking good. Per the new DOJ order, recent consent decrees with other police departments have been ripped up. The fate of the investigation will be decided by whoever Trump appoints to serve as the state’s U.S. Attorney. No word on who that might be yet, but Brian T. Kelly, the lawyer we hired to discredit the DOJ report, is in the running. By the way—news broke Friday that we’ve already spent $250,000 on that lawyer. Our money, lit on fire by Batista and Petty right in front of us. An obvious grift on Brian Kelly’s part. One he should have paid us for, if you ask me.
—One order eliminates “equity action plans,” affecting agencies like FEMA. We can say goodbye to any federal support for rectifying local equity issues like food deserts and heat islands.
—Trump’s war on working from home extends only to federal employees. Locally, those employees are already pushing back. Here, our mayor and president find themselves in alignment. On Tuesday, Petty explained that his order obviously targeting Nguyen—the move that set off Bigot-Gate—was not targeting Nguyen but rather emerged from a sense that Zoom participation is bad for council business. In an obvious lie to obscure his real, punitive motivations, Petty aligned himself with Trump. A truly brilliant mind.
—Worcester County Sheriff and gubernatorial hopeful (?) Lew Evangelidis has signed on to a state bill filed by Republicans in Bellingham (of course) and Pembroke (obviously) to increase the amount of time local police can hold someone ICE has identified for deportation. At this point we should be asking ourselves what if any difference there is between Evangelidis and Healey.
—Of note: The Trump coalition is already eating itself alive over the H1B visa program. Tech wing versus Christian nationalist wing. Dropsite News reports: “Musk tweeted last month that he would ‘go to war’ for the H1B program. So far, it's a fight Musk appears to be winning.”
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How to talk about ICE
A sensible precautionary move from Superintendent Rachel Monárrez made headlines as everyone scrambles for something to gawk at and do nothing about vis-a-vis the newly re-emboldened ICE.
What she did: instruct the district’s bus drivers to keep kids on the bus if there are ICE agents at bus stops.
What the story became: ICE agents are staking out bus stops.
We’re already in a climate of fear, and it’s absolutely irresponsible to spread rumors and shoddy tips about ICE because it feels urgent to do so. The way the more salacious story took hold forced the district to share a clarification that there are no reported sightings of ICE agents at bus stops.
Monárrez was doing her due diligence, providing guidance to bus drivers that was not intended for public consumption, and people looking for something to panic about seized on it.
We need to be more careful about how we spread information about ICE raids.
Before doing so, ask yourself: Am I helping? And, a follow up, do I want to help, or do I want to be part of the spectacle?
Friday morning I spent (read: wasted) an hour tracking down shoddy tips of ICE actions at Union Station and the RMV posted to Reddit. At the former, someone had mistaken U.S. marshals there for regularly scheduled trainings. They saw people who looked a little like an ICE agent might, and because it fit with the panicked narrative of the moment, initiated a game of telephone. In the latter case, who knows. I asked the front desk guy and a security guard about any ICE agents in the building and they both responded in “Where the hell did you hear that?” fashion. Complete dead ends, both of them. But for those who indulged them, it made scrolling a little more spicy. Things Were Happening.
As I was tracking down these leads, I found myself thinking about why. All I can really do is take a picture. I sat with the thought: All I really can do is take a picture, and what good would that do?
It helps no one but ICE to indulge in the mythology of ICE—some looming phantom, lurking around every corner. The real fear is enough without the online panic grafted onto it.
In other words, we need to be clear-eyed about the need for a real underground railroad while disabusing ourselves of the notion we’re building one by reposting screenshots, pictures, or rumors.
The net effect of it is propagandizing. Your own moral panic aside, it serves the same end as the more obvious propaganda, like the local Fox station’s “ride along” with ICE agents, as Jason Pramas over at HorizonMass deftly wrote about.
But nothing that the Fox hosts, a field reporter, and his video crew did in the seven-minute segment could be called journalism in my estimation. They gleefully cheerled multiple raids on immigrants that ICE told them (and viewers) were “bad guys”—dealers, rapists, and murderers—while offering no proof of any kind for those assertions.
Whether gleeful or worried, it’s still indulgence.
A more useful but decidedly less fun thing to be sharing are “know your rights” flyers, like this one from the Immigrant Defense Project, in English and in Spanish. The IDP has a whole page dedicated to various resources for communities to meaningfully oppose ICE.
On the council agenda Tuesday, there’s two competing orders from Petty and King about ICE. Petty’s is feckless, asking for a blanket report on city policies. King’s asks more pointed questions, most importantly about the WPD. Are they going to be assisting ICE agents? For a future post, a breakdown of the myriad ways local police and ICE collaborate would be beneficial. Just because local police aren’t detaining people on ICE’s behalf, as is illegal in Massachusetts, it doesn’t mean they aren’t helping in other ways.
State of the council race
On top of everything else… lots of election news.
In D1, Jenny’s out, Economou’s in. For those who weren’t around, Tony Ecnonomou used to hold Jenny’s seat, back before Sean Rose even. Not that Jenny was all that good, but an Economou would be much worse. A chamber stooge. We desperately need a progressive to step up to the plate in this district.
In D3, Mr. Indecent Exposure John Fresolo is hopping in to fill the hole left by George Russell’s announced retirement. Again: we need a progressive to step up here!
In at-large, Dr. Satya Mitra, the Chamber’s Chosen One, is spending and raising insane amounts of money already. And most of it is coming in from the towns surrounding Worcester, as Kevin Ksen has pointed out.
One of the things we discussed with Etel on the podcast is the need for financial support of our progressive candidates, who are going to be up against opponents with access to mountains of cash, as we see with Mitra. Etel told us:
For folks that are probably new to this or not, I would say that us being confined to our social media circles will never, will never, ever, ever lead to a successful campaign. We really truly, and I truly mean this, we really need people to get out of our circles that we talk to.
And you need to do concrete things. And those concrete things for me are, What end days do I want to sign up to volunteer? What recurrent donations or one-time donations can I make? Can I write... friend letters to 10, 15 of my neighbors to say, I need you to vote for such and such.
Can I show up on Sunday after I'm really tired and knock on 25 doors? Can I pick up three shifts? Can I show up to register people, call them? There's a lot of unsexy stuff that happens behind the scenes in campaigns and posting has never led to any progressive candidates winning elections. It just doesn't. Yeah.
Small, recurring donations—much like the ones many of you make to this outlet!—help tremendously. Today I’m signing up for recurring donations to Etel, Rob Bilotta, and Khrystian King. I’d encourage you to do the same. Rob Bilotta’s campaign, Etel’s campaign, Khrystian’s campaign.
Vision Zero Draft Plan
And one more thing! The draft plan for the city’s Vision Zero initiative was released this week. Along with a feedback form. Found it very encouraging to see city officials talk about adopting best practices from other cities in the executive summary:
Changes in transportation policy can be slow, but some cities roughly of Worcester’s size have actually achieved zero traffic fatalities. These include Hoboken, NJ which has not had a fatality since 2015 and Alexandria, VA, which has not had a fatality since 2022. Their success has been driven, in part, by an all-of-city approach and by a relentless pursuit of quick-build street design interventions at high crash locations. No two municipalities are the same. But Worcester can learn from the best practices used in these communities and others that have made progress in reducing road deaths and severe injuries in recent years.
The city council can be relied on to fight each of these best practices every step of the way.
The plan also includes several heat maps for crashes. You’ll notice the similarities between the income map, the racial makeup map, the Shotspotter location map, the redlining map...
It’s All The Same Map.
Odds and ends
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Anyone wanna go in on copying some activists in Denver and buy a mansion to convert it to worker housing?
Beyond Wrestling is moving from the White Eagle to Electric Haze. Seems to be renovation-related and unclear whether it’s permanent.
Great article in The Nation on the decision down in Providence to open the council chambers up as an emergency winter shelter—going against the mayor to do so. An inspiration for meaningful resistance.
The weird crypto scam aspect of the Trump administration is fascinating. I enjoyed this piece by Jacob Silverman in The Baffler.
You love to see it: Worcester Dual Language Magnet School opening a bilingual library, per MassLive. And oh look at who’s quoted! None other than this outlet’s Aislinn Doyle.
Jenn Gaskin with another heater: America’s Dark New Era.
The United States has a long history of creating the very crises it claims to solve. The influx of immigrants fleeing Central and South America is no accident; it’s the consequence of decades of U.S. interventionism. During the Reagan era, anti-communist policies fueled invasions and coups, toppling governments that sought to empower Black and brown working-class people. Time and again, the U.S. has undermined these communities, leaving behind poverty, violence, and instability. Now, as families flee the ruins America helped create, they are met with walls, prisons, and xenophobic rhetoric. This is a level of hypocrisy that should shock the conscience of any rational person, but it is lost on the MAGA base.
Seems someone in Paxton has brutally tortured a hawk? A very weird one. Straight out of a true crime story.
Anyway that’s all for today I believe... We’ll be back again after the council meeting Tuesday. Come down and join the fun!
If I were Candy and I were being blamed for trans teens' suicidality and condemned by the Worcester branch of the NAACP, I would simply never show my face in public again. The speakers last week were brutal (in a good way), yet she still doesn't get the message.
Thanks for offering us rewards if we get our friends to sign up, but to me, the person signing up and supporting you is all the reward I need. I want you to be doing this forever. Your hard work, intelligence and way with words are top-notch, and that is over and above the level and volume of information you are providing to the readers. It's awesome and I learn so much. My drives around town are also made tolerable by your podcasts. I hope to meet you (and Chris) one of these days. Maybe Tuesday night; I'm bringing my family and will be on the lookout.