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Dear Reader, Having been in the newspaper business for nearly 15 years at this point, trust me, I would like it if I had some kind of ergonomic chair and secretary, perhaps someone to make my tired ass a cup of coffee if I drank the stuff. But I don’t have any of that; as small-business people, every single one of us at DigBoston does just about everything, from writers who take photographs to photographers who write and editors who vaccuum to co-publishers who take the trash out. Which is one reason that I found myself hanging out on the South Boston waterfront last Friday, waiting for the winners of our Daily Dig Harpoon Octoberfest giveaway (quick shameless plug: If you’re not getting the Daily Dig, you are missing out big time). It’s not merely out of necessity that I perform such tasks, though; over the course of the two hours I waited for people, I had the pleasure of getting to hang with a few readers. In real life! It’s something that we used to do more frequently and that, starting in 2018, we will be doing at least once a month. The steady stream of social media and emails that I volley back and forth with readers is a start, but it’s about time that we open up for even more engagement. In the next couple of weeks, we will also be circulating short surveys and questionnaires that will help guide our reporting moving forward, on everything from hard news to the arts. As for what this all means relative to content in this issue… for starters, it’s thanks to readers that I have been warming up to the idea of publishing more national and even international stories. Don’t get me wrong, DigBoston has always been, is, and will remain a dedicated local news shop; we are proud to be one of the few outlets in town that recently covered primary elections in multiple municipalities, and moving forward will be ramping up coverage of Somerville, Medford, Malden, Cambridge, and Quincy, for starters. At the same time, the response from readers about pieces we ran out of Washington, DC, and in one case from across the Canadian border has been positive, with several people saying that without the Dig, they wouldn’t have known about things like the Inauguration Day protesters being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law or the increased risk that Haitian families face under the Trump administration. On that note, please dig into this year’s mindboggling Project Censored feature from our friends at Random Lengths News, along with all the other gems we worked so hard to bring you this week. CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig
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NEWS US
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS FREE SAFETY DEVIN MCCOURTY IN THE ‘TAKE THE LEAD’ PSA. ROBERT PATTON-SPRUILL INTHE THESPOT: FOYERHIS OFTEAMMATE 88 LAMBERT AVE. PHOTO BY TRE TIMBERS NOTICEABLY ABSENT FROM TOM BRADY.
PUBLIC SERVICE DENOUNCEMENT NEWS TO US
Boston teams begin addressing racism, but have a lot of hard work and practice ahead of them BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ @BRITNIDLC Though the news has been overshadowed by diversionary gimmicks like Pats jersey-burning in Swansea, something big happened at Fenway Park last week. In the home of the Red Sox, still working to shake the legacy of Tom Yawkey’s racist ownership practices, the Boston baseball team, along with the Patriots, Celtics, Bruins, and Revolution, debuted its Take the Lead initiative with the intended goal of standing up to racism and hate speech. Red Sox president Tom Kennedy introduced the event by saying it came about following two “appalling” incidents of racist verbal attacks that occurred at Fenway earlier this year. According to Kennedy— whose organization acknowledged just two months ago to DigBoston that they sometimes found the views of their radio broadcast partner, WEEI, to be “offensive and out of line,” setting off a firestorm of media controversy—the team
Though these issues are often given mere lip service or ignored entirely, Boston decided to deal with them in a groundbreaking way.
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saw the incidents as an opportunity to begin to talk more openly about race. Though these issues are often given mere lip service or ignored entirely, Boston decided to deal with them in a groundbreaking way. With an assist from Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry and NAACP Boston chapter President Tanisha Sullivan, New England’s professional sports teams have launched an initiative that strives to tackle head-on the institutional and casual racism for which the city is known. In some ways, this lofty and commendable goal has been successfully achieved, while other parts of Take the Lead’s debut programming seemed intended to communicate the message that, while racism exists, Boston still isn’t quite as bad as people like to say it is. And it managed to never mention the very visible racial dynamics at play within the organizations themselves. The event, which took place on a stage set up in the seats behind the Red Sox dugout, featured a panel of former players and current team executives, along with the debut of a PSA to be played in all the teams’ stadiums. The PSA is impressive in its directness; it uses the words “racism,” “hate speech,” “discrimination,” “inequality,” and “injustice.” It asks fans to “stand for our teams, but don’t stand for racism.” It doesn’t shy away from the explicit message about what the PSA is addressing, which is more than can be said for the majority of the statements released by NFL teams in the wake of Trump’s most recent comments, statements that are awash in words like “unity” and “division” but conspicuously absent of words
like “racism” and “police brutality,” the very issues that taking a knee during the anthem was meant to protest. High-profile Boston athletes including Mookie Betts, Devin McCourty, Marcus Smart, and Jackie Bradley Jr. are featured in the spot. Red Sox veteran and clubhouse leader Dustin Pedroia appears, but his counterpart on the Pats does not—Tom Brady’s absence from the video is conspicuous. It’s worth noting, particularly as Brady has displayed a Make America Great hat in his locker in the past and has indicated that he and President Trump are friendly. Also visibly missing from the event was David Ortiz, who recently signed a “forever” contract to be involved with the direction the Red Sox take postretirement. The statement Red Sox owner John Henry released in the aftermath is on-target and unafraid, too, and Kennedy remains great at saying the right thing. But where the event seemed to fall apart was during the panel discussion. It was afraid to go to the places the PSA and related statements have gone, and was almost an attempt to walk back the language, lest (white) people think the intention was to criticize Boston or its sports fans. The panel that promised to have the biggest impact featured Red Sox Hall of Famer Tommy Harper, who famously won an out-of-court settlement after being fired by the team for calling out a racist institutional practice in 1986; Cedric Maxwell, Boston Celtics alumni and radio broadcaster; Bob Sweeney, former Bruin and executive director of the Boston Bruins Foundation; and
Andre Tippett, executive director of community affairs for the New England Patriots and Hall of Famer. However, the panel never went where it could and should have gone. The moderator, longtime WBZ sports reporter Steve Burton, seemed instructed to cater to any white fragility in the audience. Instead of allowing for discomfort, as there will and must be in conversations about race, his role seemed to be designed to soothe any defensive white people who might have been watching. Whenever Harper spoke about his treatment by the Red Sox, Burton interjected loudly with positive reassurances that things have changed. Maxwell recounted the time someone called him the “Professor of Ebonics,” yet he also said that “racism is alive and well” but that it “goes both ways,” giving the example of when he doubted Larry Bird’s skills because Bird was white. And Tippett assured the crowd that Boston has “been good to” him because he’s had “a great career here.” Perhaps most troublingly, Sweeney, the lone white member of the panel, fell into two of the most well-worn tropes in conversations about race. He trumpeted the notion of colorblindness, as he mentioned seeing Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr as “one of the best goalies of all time, not African-American.” Later in the conversation, he pulled the “Black friend” card when he mentioned his African-American neighbor, whom he sees as a friend. When executives for all five of the teams joined the conversation, no one mentioned the elephant in the ballpark: that the people with the power on the stage were all white men. When, at one point, moderator Burton pointedly asked Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs about the fact that the team only has one Black player, he made sure to quickly assure Jacobs that this wasn’t his fault, that Jacobs wasn’t to blame. Much time was spent talking about changing fan culture and encouraging people in the crowd to speak out if they witness racism, with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh saying that the reaction to racism at a Red Sox game should be “100 times stronger” than when a Yankees fan talks trash at a game. Never discussed, however, was the clubhouse culture of the teams. How will the actions of executives trickle down to the players and coaches? Racism doesn’t just thrive in the stands; it exists within the teams, too. On a Red Sox team that is overwhelmingly Black and brown this season, it’s notable that none of the players have felt comfortable saying anything explicit about race and racism beyond platitudes about how there’s “no place” for that kind of behavior. In Tampa Bay, after Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell became the first MLB player to take a knee during the anthem, Rays pitcher Chris Archer spoke to press earlier this week saying that, though he agrees with the message of the protest, “from the feedback that I’ve gotten from my teammates, I don’t think [kneeling during the anthem] would be the best thing to do for me, at this time.” Archer’s experience in an MLB clubhouse is not unique, and it’s one the Red Sox should be asking themselves if their own players are having. Other things that were not addressed but that deserve answers from teams that have pledged to stand up to racism: Does “standing up to racism” mean the Red Sox will hold their broadcast partner WEEI accountable for the racist views they allow to remain on air? Will Pats owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and other people among the organization openly condemn Donald Trump and address the money they donated to his campaign? Will the teams speak out against and condemn the racial profiling and police violence that their players of color no doubt experience when they are out of uniform? Will the Patriots advocate for Colin Kaepernick to have a job and
Tom Brady’s absence from the video is conspicuous.
actively stand behind Seattle Seahawks player Michael Bennett in his pursuit of justice from the Las Vegas Police Department, who he alleges used excessive force with him? When Brian Bilello, New England Revolution president, mentioned that in his locker room, many of his players were not born in the US and so it’s not just about race but also culture, the question became whether doing right by players and fans will include openly supporting Boston’s status as a sanctuary city and condemning the Trump administration’s ICE raids and travel bans. These questions are not meant to take away from the important work beginning in Boston, nor to discourage it from continuing. To give credit where credit is due, this was a Black-led event, and led by Black women at that. There are plans for initiatives to help diversify the front offices and clubhouses. It’s a hard conversation that the teams are asking their organizations and fans to step into. And there was reassurance that there are plans to move forward with renaming Yawkey Way, as well as acknowledgment from Kennedy that they recognize that
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the renaming is largely symbolic and requires more action behind it. What seems to be missing, at least right now, is an acknowledgment that racism goes beyond words and not having enough people of color on your staff, that it is political and systemic. If you commit to standing up to it, it needs to be about not just punishing people who use the “n-word” in your facility but examining all of the ways in which your organization participates in racist systems. This initiative is a good first step. What matters more is what happens next. In order to truly have this discussion, the ways that teams uphold and remain complicit with racist systems also need to be addressed. And if this is meant to be an introduction to a conversation, what does it say that the people having it still can’t let the Black folks on stage talk openly about racism and injustice without couching it in reassurances that it’s not really that bad? If it wasn’t that bad, we wouldn’t be having to launch this initiative in the first place.
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STRANGE TIMES DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS
All things point toward an even more racist Republican future BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS
Last week, the populist theocratic authoritarian former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore beat Luther Strange in a special election to fulfil the rest of Jeff Sessions’ term in the Senate. Strange, who had been filling the seat, was endorsed by President Trump, even though Moore, who pulled a gun out at a rally right before the special election, is far more Trumpian than Strange. In some ways, he is even more Trumpian than Trump. Moore’s closest analogue may be fascist former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom the president recently pardoned. Like Arpaio and Trump, Moore was a dedicated “birther,” who believed Barack Obama was not really an American. He was booted from the bench, twice, for defying the ruling of a higher court. In one of those cases, he refused to remove the 10 Commandments from his courthouse, arguing that they are the foundation of the law. Strange is no progressive—the race was for Jeff Sessions’ Alabama seat after all—and still carries the stink of having been appointed by then-governor Robert Bentley, who later resigned after pleading guilty on two misdemeanor charges. Strange’s successor recused himself
The attacks on black athletes seems so deliberate that it appears as if he is doing the same thing again. Trump wants to identify himself as much as possible with America itself so that his critics will come off as unpatriotic.
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from the investigation of the governor and allegations that Strange made a deal not to investigate him in exchange for the appointment, are rampant. “There is the question of how Strange got his appointment from a governor who is on his way to jail anyway, the guy who he is supposed to be investigating. Did he horse trade for the appointment?” asked Roger Stone, the often vile and reactionary weed-smoking, swinging, long-time Trump-adviser with a tattoo of Nixon on his back. Stone testified before the House Intelligence Committee about his role in any possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia on the same day as the special election in Alabama and had been making the rounds with the press. But, the inveterate electioneer and establishment-hater was still happy to dish on Republican infighting. “Moore has run statewide several times previously and has always had a hard ceiling in terms of getting about 25 percent of the vote. The fact that he was able to win this primary with the incredibly popular president of the United States—popular in Alabama, popular among Republican primary voters—supporting his opponent, really speaks to the disgust of the base of Republicans with the Republican party leadership,” Stone said. “I think they were voting against Mitch McConnell, voting against an establishment candidate. I mean it’s a pretty stunning victory.” Still, Stone thinks that by not endorsing the populist Moore, who was heavily supported by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and his Breitbart website, the president had missed an opportunity. “He could have sent [Republican Senators] a very strong signal of what will happen when you cross your president and instead he got conned into supporting Luther Strange,” Stone said. “Roy Moore will be a more loyal supporter of Trump’s reforms than Luther Strange would be. That’s what’s so Kafkaesque about this whole thing.
It’s why so many people who like Donald Trump voted for Roy Moore and not Luther Strange. I think they recognized that Strange was the establishment candidate.” The moral of the story, according to Stone: “Don’t take Republican political advice from Jared Kushner. He doesn’t know anything about that politics. He’s a liberal Democrat. He doesn’t know anything about this. Why would you follow his advice?” “I don’t think Sessions was involved in the Strange endorsement,” said Stone, a noted libertine, who is no fan of the puritanical A.G., crushing any hopes that Strange’s defeat might lead Trump to finally can the virulent racist drug warrior Sessions. If there is a single Trumpian ideology becoming clear after a chaotic nine months in office, it is white supremacy. And there is no way that will not color an election in the Deep South. It was at his Huntsville, Alabama speech that was supposed to be bringing support to Strange that Trump called football players who kneel during the national anthem “sons of bitches.” He said that athletes, like Colin Kaepernick, who began “taking a knee” in 2016 to protest police violence against African Americans were a “total disrespect of our heritage, a total disrespect of everything that we stand for. Everything that we stand for.” Trump also spoke of “our heritage” when he talked about taking confederate monuments down, making it clear exactly what heritage he means. But it seems that Trump is trying—and perhaps— succeeding in subverting Kaepernick’s protest against white supremacy into something more about “unity” and Americanness than about police violence against African Americans. “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences—perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!,” Trump tweeted shortly after the election, but before he took office. It was a strategic move intended to paint his enemies as enemies of America. The attacks on black athletes seems so deliberate that it appears as if he is doing the same thing again. Trump wants to identify himself as much as possible with America itself so that his critics will come off as unpatriotic. But the Alabama special election shows the political danger of that for an anti-government demagogue like Trump: How does he identify himself with the nation and the flag, while remaining free from the taint of the government and the “swamp” he is supposed to be draining. This is why, for people like Stone, Trump’s support of the establishment candidate was a disaster—and why Trump increasingly relies on racism to reach his base. If Trump continues to appeal to whiteness, he may actually be able to keep working class and middle class white people on his side and keep them fighting against working and middle class black people, with whom they share obvious economic interests. That is the only way the Republicans can win. Things will get worse.
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The struggle that experienced cannabis growers in Mass are familiar with is coming to an end. Since the beginning of this year, and as a result of last year’s successful ballot initiative, Commonwealth residents are permitted to cultivate at home—and like that, many of yesterday’s outlaws became today’s authorities. As for tomorrow’s first-time growers… they won’t ever know the culture of illegal growing, but they’ll probably have to learn from someone who did, one of the cavalier green thumbs from the generations of activists who did all the heavy lifting already. The future of legal cannabis here in Boston is shaped by both kinds of growers and where their journeys intertwine and branch apart. THE ROOKIE “I’ve never grown… anything, really.” Jeff is a first-time grower, and he’s breaking the law. He has two mature cannabis plants strapped in the back seat of his car, and he’s crossing over the Massachusetts border into New Hampshire, prompting worry that he might get caught using his phone in this handsfree state. Despite being in the middle of his first grow, Jeff doesn’t even smoke weed. He says he is experimenting for the same reasons folks have vegetable gardens, and I only half-believe him at first. “It’s an amazing experience. You see them pop up after three weeks of watering just dirt. You see it pop through, and you think, ‘This is life, happening right before my eyes.’” In addition to his inexperience, so far Jeff has had some setbacks in a musty basement and dry winter air, both of which have worked against him. At the same time, he did have the advantage of a helpful brother-in-law who set him up with an LED light and the basics and, when the time came, tech support. “After three or four weeks of watering and not seeing much of anything—a millimeter at a time—I asked lots of questions,” Jeff says. His setup is amateur hour, just a pair of plants in two pots, something you might see in a kindergarten classroom. “About lighting, how high, how low. About the temperature, about the environment, how much air flow, setting up fans, creating the max exposure to LEDs overhead.” All this for two plants. Jeff is four months in when we first speak, and the female plants buckled into his backseat are “full-on” in flower stage. He has stopped asking for constant assistance and estimates he is about ready to harvest. He’s getting confident. “I might be the only person who has killed multiple cacti; it’s a pretty resilient plant,” Jeff says. As for his trial with cannabis, he says the plants grew from two seeds of the same strain, Purple Haze, but look very different. “One is a beanstalk, twice the height of the stocky one,” he says. “The shorter one has more leaves and less flowers [buds]. At the top of the other one, the buds are morphing together.” Now Jeff is getting really excited. “Especially at the very top, the ‘cola,’” he says. “The best one’s the size of my palm. I’m not sure how that translates to THC content or weight, but I should get maybe one or two ounces.” As for the reason behind his plants’ road trip—Jeff is having a friend babysit them while he goes on vacation. “I feel like I’m missing their first T-ball game!” he confesses. “It’s such a pivotal point in these flowers’ lives.” For someone who doesn’t use the product, Jeff is emotionally attached. He’s also eager to gift some buds and get feedback. “Can you really taste the difference?” Jeff wonders, flying blind and enjoying it.
It has nothing to do with patients, PTSD, cancer, or anxiety. It’s all about how much money can they make...
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THE PRO There are bigger, better-funded commercial growers than Kevin. Nonetheless, he’s one of the few guys dropping 20 years of underground culture and experience into the lap of post-Prohibition Massachusetts. He does this through two distinct vehicles: a cannabis culture/lifestyle/grow operation called Beantown Greentown and the IVXX Growers Club. I’m at Kevin’s house to see the differences between the bare-bones setup of a firsttimer like Jeff and the high-end hobby grow of a master. Kevin is just getting back from a IVXX Club meeting, where he serves as the organizer, coach, and mentor to the new growers in the area. It speaks to his philosophy of growing (and living, too, for that matter), that as a top area grower he feels responsible to send the “elevator” back down for the next generation. “The club is all new growers,” he says. “I didn’t have that. If they go online, the best they can do is get advice from someone like me.” Kevin gestures at himself as if to say he is an open book, in the flesh. We finish a tour of Kevin’s intense basement grow-op and have settled on some folding chairs that are mellowed by orange grow lights and the white noise of ventilators. We’re discussing the state of cannabis in Boston, as well as the quality of his bud. “A dispensary tested a bunch of my strains,” he says. “The Gorilla Bomb tested in the high twenties [percent of THC].” For those just now tuning in to recent advances in cannabis tech, labs can now gauge more than just THC potency. It’s now possible to quantify a sample’s aroma through the presence of fragrant oils called “terpenes,” as well as more than 400 chemicals that affect the mind and body. That the Greater Boston Area boasts two high-tech testing facilities for cannabis speaks to the brave new world of cannabis science and metrics. Based on the commercial success of states like Colorado and Washington, the expectations for cannabis entrepreneurship in Massachusetts are already very high, and despite ominous warnings from Washington, DC, and the crippling regulations on banking and insurance, there are many wheels already in motion to cash in on the green rush. And then there’s Beantown Greentown. Beantown Greentown’s motto, “More Weed, Less Greed,” might blow your mind: They don’t sell any weed. Ever. They are a half-dozen growers, activists, advocates, caregivers, and teachers who have given away millions of dollars’ worth of cannabis to epilepsy patients, veterans, club members, and each other at events like the annual Freedom Rally in Boston. Aside from shunning money, their unwritten code includes sharing medicine, raising awareness, and fighting for social justice. Shocking, perhaps, to anyone who learned about drugs and dealers through anti-weed propaganda, but much less surprising if you understand the feeling of righteousness common among growers. They may step into the commercial grow someday, but Kevin says that there would have to be some stipulations. At their current hobby level, Beantown Greentown is in this thing on principle. I ask about how Kevin could possibly turn his noble, non-profit avocation into a vocation. He has clearly thought about it and about how to keep this movement from turning into Big Pharma or Big Tobacco. “The pressure to perform and produce is insane,” Kevin says. “It has nothing to do with patients, PTSD, cancer, or anxiety. It’s all about how much money can they make … it’s kinda disgusting. Most dispensaries are rip-off artists, shit herb for top dollar. They should be developing and keeping relationships with people like us, otherwise they buy 3,000 clones and they turn out shitty. But the top digs see those rooms as money per square inch. I hear it all the time: They take all the fun out of growing. Pricks.” Kevin snaps out of his rant against Big Cannabis and mentions that he’s actually pumped to work with one dispensary that promised to give him creative license and free reign over the operation. They “get it,” he says. It’s getting late, and one of Kevin’s kids comes in to say goodnight. Following their lead, I say goodbye myself, and am half out the door when he stops me. Kevin’s sitting under a military flag, tattoos across his forearms, very much a king in his castle. He requests, “Don’t make us look bad?” Like Jeff, the amateur, the next generation will never know an illegal grow op, or the taboo surrounding a certain green houseplant. Like modern people who take maps for granted, the next generation’s safe passage in this new territory was bought with the daring of a few early explorers. Where it goes from here depends on what they take away and what they give back to those who are just starting out. “Now,” Kevin says, Mass residents are “basically living in Amsterdam.”
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BEFORE THEY WERE ANTI-HEROES MUSIC FEATURE
A vaulted dispatch from the first time Termanology and Slaine recorded together BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1
Few people were surprised when Termanology and Slaine announced that they were finally collaborating on a full LP. Two of the undisputed kings of New England hip-hop for some time, they’ve rocked innumerable songs and shows together, always bringing out the best in each other. Before they beasted cuts in tandem, however, Slaine and Term were rivals of some note—whose crews nearly went at it a few times. So when they met up at a studio in Lowell in 2008 to tag-team a track, it was a pivotal event in Boston hip-hop, and one that’s led to limitless inspired beats and rhymes in the time since. I happened to have been there on that snowy evening nearly nine years ago. The story I produced, published in part below for the first time ever, was slated for a book about regional underground hip-hop that never came out. So when I heard that Slaine and Term were dropping Anti-Hero, I pulled the following out of the vault and dusted off my dispatch. Before getting to the archives, it’s critical to acknowledge how some things have changed since the piece featured below was first written. Term and Slaine are both internationally known artists now, and they have careers that up-and-coming MCs only dream about. I’ll also note that Slaine has been sober for years and would probably be dead if he kept partying like he did back in 2008. And with that, let’s hop in the time machine… I must have been insane to let Slaine pick me up. He’s Boston hip-hop’s prize villainous goon, and he appears to be in the middle of some kind of drug-addled rampage. The more he swerves, the more I wonder just how much of a difference there is between Slaine, the rapper who reps South Boston and Roslindale, and Bubba Rogowski, the gun-toting Escalade-driving animal he played in the Ben Affleck film Gone Baby Gone. “If that role wasn’t written for me, it was written about me,” he jokes. For all his fights, drinking, and controversy, Slaine makes a point to bridge gaps on the local scene. Tonight we’re driving 40 minutes in the snow to a studio in Lowell to link with Termanology—another top area artist with
whom he’s had negative rapport for years. Despite their both having success that reaches far outside of Mass, they have never collaborated on a track. On New Year’s Eve 2006, Slaine and Termanology nearly came to blows at a pub show in North Station. For hours leading up to the near clash, some overzealous rap DVD paparazzi pitted them against each other, telling Slaine that Term’s ST. Da Squad crew popped shit and vice versa. When Slaine finally approached Term outside—with his crew of tattooed gangsters in tow to rival Term’s army from Lawrence—both parties noticed the instigator setting up to film the clash. In hip-hop, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown—whether you’re the king of New York, Boston, or Scranton for that matter. Instead of biting at the bait, Slaine turned his knuckles on the cameraman who nearly caused a rumble for some footage. Within seconds, his comrade smashed the camcorder on the ground just as Slaine parked his fist inside the kid’s jaw. Tonight—more than two years later—these two joke about the story. Term confirms: “He knocked that kid out mad fast.” It’s a perfect segue, and for the next hour they swap tale after tale about everything from crimes to rhymes. The initial plan is for Slaine to add a verse on “Welcome to the Machine,” a track that Term first wrote about getting politically rejected by hip-hop’s elite star circle. For Term this is a major issue; despite his close ties to the influential likes of Statik Selektah and work with beat icon DJ Premier, he has yet to see a jackpot payday. This month alone he’s featured in XXL magazine and the tabloid Hip-Hop Weekly, and is even mentioned on the cover of the UK glossy Hip-Hop Connection, but major labels have yet to come knocking. Though Slaine is sympathetic to the whole “Machine” angle, the pair decides that the occasion calls for something fresh. Term throws in a disc with possible beats, and a second round of drinks gets mixed. Then a third. After another two hours, they agree on a beat by Toronto producer Moss, and with another pair of cocktails poured Slaine grabs his pen and pad. Term rolls a blunt, asks his friend to make a Burger King run, and heads downstairs to polish up another track he started earlier. “I used to do sessions like this for four days straight,” Slaine says as he rips a bump off his hand. “It would just be me and my producer with a bunch of coke and a case of beer. I haven’t gone that hard in a minute, but when I do, the verses just come to me one right after another.” The track is a heavy East Coast-style jam with obscene horns and bass lines—familiar territory for both MCs. Brainstorming, Slaine designs a hook that interpolates a bar from Slick Rick’s “The Ruler’s Back.” His epiphany is
inspired by one classic line in particular: “For jealousy and envy are dumb ones’ tools / So Ricky says nothing, he keeps his cool.” Term agrees on the premise, and it’s on. The baseline for the chorus is simple: They each repeat the original rhyme but substitute their own names for “Ricky.” The jealousy angle fits; if either one of them reacted to a fraction of the frauds who tried to knock their hustles, they’d have to spend every day assaulting cameramen and wannabes. Neither one enjoys the luxuries that major label artists enjoy, but between album sales, tour money, and the loot that aspiring rappers pay them for guest verses, Slaine and Term are better off than most MCs. Slaine’s verse begins with familiar material: personal struggle, addiction, pugnacity. The resounding theme, however, is the most classic topic hip-hop knows: blowing up and subsequently getting hated on. Term mixes up another vodka cranberry and starts to write; unlike Slaine, though, who at this point is polluted and repeating his verse loudly while occasionally stepping out into the snow to cool down, Term keeps relatively quiet and writes in a corner until they both decide to hit the lab downstairs. This is Term’s turf, so Slaine goes first. From the jump, it’s clear their beef is squashed. “You sounded drunk and lazy on that one,” Term says on the monitor. They both laugh loudly. “Bring it back to the top then,” Slaine replies. As the verse ends, the camaraderie registers: “Term and Slaine are the future, you’re all back in the past / It’s undeniable how we carry Mass on the crack of our backs / It doesn’t matter if you’re a cracker or you’re Latin or black.” In his turn, Term relays a similar message: “Everybody that paid us for a verse or a show got exactly what they paid fo’ / So tell me what you gotta hate fo’.” In the end, it’s apparent why these two are making moves—separately, and, if tonight is any indication, also together moving forward. They’re both pragmatic workhorses; so while they’re here to show each other up—it wouldn’t be rap if they weren’t—their priority is to churn out the tightest track possible. You might say that this union happened just in time. Both guys are beyond the verge of blowing up; next week Slaine leaves for a three-month tour with Ill Bill and indie rap behemoth Tech N9ne, while Term has a gig over the weekend at the Knitting Factory in New York, where he’ll be jumping on a track with DJ Premier and Houston legend Bun B. Seven hours after Slaine and I arrive, the song is finished, and all parties agree that any past problems they had were better off resulting in a banger than a blood bath. Clubs, bars, and raucous venues are hardly the place for feuds to flourish into friendships; there’s too much booze and far too many fans to impress. Studios, on the other hand, are rap sanctuaries. So long as Slaine (and I) get back to Boston in one piece, it’s highly possible that these
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The jealousy angle fits; if either one of them reacted to a fraction of the frauds who tried to knock their hustles, they’d have to spend every day assaulting cameramen and wannabes.
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PROJECT CENSORED SPECIAL FEATURE
The missing stories—and exposing patterns of what’s missed BY PAUL ROSENBERG
These patterns don’t just connect problems and issues, they connect people, communities and potential solutions as well.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
By highlighting the right to receive information and ideas, Article 19 makes it clear that press freedom is about everyone in society, not just the press, and that government censorship is only one potential way of thwarting that right. That’s the perspective that has informed Project Censored from the beginning, more than 40 years ago. Even though Project Censored’s annual list focuses on
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stories often involve different overlapping patterns— environmental destruction and an out-of-control military in No. 7, for example, or public health and infrastructure concerns in No. 1. These patterns don’t just connect problems and issues, they connect people, communities and potential solutions as well. A shared understanding of the patterns that hold us down and divide us is the key to developing better patterns to live by together. With that thought in mind, here is Project Censored’s Top 10 List for 2016-17: 1––Widespread Lead Contamination Threatens Children’s Health and Could Triple Household Water Bills After President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint, Mich based on lead contamination of the city’s water supply in January 2016, Reuters reporters M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer began an investigation of lead contamination nationwide with shocking results. In June 2016, they reported that although many states and Medicaid rules require blood lead tests for young children, millions of children were not being tested. In December 2016, they reported on the highly decentralized data they had been able to assemble from 21 states, showing that 2,606 census tracts and 278 zip codes across the United States had levels of lead poisoning more than double the rates found in Flint at the peak of its contamination crisis. Of those, 1,100 communities had lead contamination rates “at least four times higher” than Flint. In Flint, 5 percent of the children screened high blood lead levels. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 2.5 percent of all US children younger than six—about 500,000 children—have elevated blood lead levels. But Pell and Schneyer’s neighborhood focus allowed them to identify local hotspots “whose lead poisoning problems may be obscured in broader surveys,” such as those focused on statewide or countywide rates. They found them in communities that “stretch from Warren, Pennsylvania ... where 36 percent of children tested had high lead levels, to ... Goat Island, Texas, where a quarter of tests showed poisoning.” What’s more, “In some pockets of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning has spanned generations, the rate of elevated tests over the last decade was 40 to 50 percent.” In January 2017, Schneyer and Pell reported that, based on their previous investigation, “From California to Pennsylvania, local leaders, health officials and researchers are advancing measures to protect children from the toxic threat. They include more blood-lead screening, property inspections, hazard abatement and community outreach programs.” But there’s a deeper infrastructure problem involved, as Farron Cousins reported for DeSmogBlog in January 2017. “Lead pipes are time bombs” and water contamination is to be expected, Cousins wrote. The US relies on an estimated 1.2 million miles of lead pipes for municipal delivery of drinking water, and much of this aging infrastructure is reaching or has exceeded its lifespan. In 2012 the American Water Works Association estimated that a complete overhaul of the nation’s aging water systems would require an investment of $1 trillion over the next 25 years, which could triple household water bills. As Cousins reported, a January 2017 Michigan State University study found that, “while water rates are currently unaffordable for an estimated 11.9 percent of households, the conservative estimates of rising rates used in this study highlight that this number could grow to 35.6 percent in the next five years.”
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In America, we commonly think of press freedom and censorship in terms of the First Amendment, which focuses attention on the press itself and limits on the power of government to restrict it. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted in the aftermath of World War II, presents a broader framework. Article 19 reads:
specific censored stories, the underlying issue has never been isolated examples. They serve to highlight how far short we fall from the fully-informed public that a healthy democracy requires—and that we all require in order to live healthy, safe, productive, satisfying lives. It’s the larger patterns of missing information, hidden problems and threats that should really concern us. Each Project Censored story provides some of that information, but the annual list helps shed light on these broader patterns of what’s missing, as well as on the specifics of the stories themselves. During the 1972 election, Woodward and Bernstein were reporting on the earliest developments in the Watergate Scandal, but their work was largely isolated, despite running in the Washington Post. They were covering it as a developing criminal case; it never crossed over into a political story until after the election. That’s a striking example of a missing pattern. It helped contribute to the founding of Project Censored by Carl Jensen, who defined censorship as “the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method—including bias, omission, underreporting or self-censorship—that prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in its society.” In the current edition’s introduction to the list of stories, Andy Lee Roth writes, “Finding common themes across news stories helps to contextualize each item as a part of the larger narratives shaping our times.” He goes on to cite several examples spanning the top 25 list: four stories on climate change, six involving racial inequalities, four on issues involving courts, three on health issues, “at least two stories” involving the Pentagon, three on government surveillance and two involving documentary films produced by the Shell Oil Co. Roth goes on to say, “There are more connections to be identified. As we have noted in previous Censored volumes, the task of identifying common topical themes, within each year’s story list and across multiple years transforms the reader from a passive recipient of information into an active, engaged interpreter. We invite you to engage with this year’s story list in this way.” It’s excellent advice. But to get things started on the more limited scope of the top 10 stories, three main themes clearly seem evident: first, threats to public health; second, threats to democracy, both at home and abroad; and third, an out-of-control military. But don’t let this overview pattern blind you to other patterns you may see for yourself. Even individual
As Cousins concluded, “While the water contamination crisis will occasionally steal a headline or two, virtually no attention has been paid to the fact that we’re pricing a third of United States citizens out of the water market.” 2––Over Six Trillion Dollars in Unaccountable Army Spending In 1996, Congress passed legislation requiring all government agencies to undergo annual audits, but a July 2016 report by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that the Army alone has accumulated $6.5 trillion in expenditures that can’t be accounted for over the past two decades. As Dave Lindorff reported for This Can’t Be Happening!, the DoD “has not been tracking or recording or auditing all of the taxpayer money allocated by Congress—what it was spent on, how well it was spent, or where the money actually ended up.” But the Army wasn’t alone. “Things aren’t any better at the Navy, Air Force and Marines,” he added. The report appeared at a time when, “politicians of both major political parties are demanding accountability for every penny spent on welfare.... Ditto for people receiving unemployment compensation,” Lindorff wrote. Politicians have also engaged in pervasive efforts “to make teachers accountable for student ‘performance,’” he added. Yet, he observed, “the military doesn’t have to account for any of its trillions of dollars of spending ... even though Congress fully a generation ago passed a law requiring such accountability.” In March 2017, after Trump proposed a $52 billion increase in military spending, Thomas Hedges reported for The Guardian that, “the Pentagon has exempted itself without consequence for 20 years now, telling the Government Accountability Office that collecting and organizing the required information for a full audit is too costly and time-consuming.” The most recent DoD audit deadline was September 2017, yet neither the Pentagon, Congress, nor the media seem to have paid any attention. 3––Pentagon Paid PR Firm the United Kingdom for Fake Al-Qaeda Videos Concern over Russian involvement in promoting fake news during the 2016 election is a justified hot topic in the news. But what about our own involvement in similar operations? In October 2016, Crofton Black and Abigail Fielding-Smith reported for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on one such very expensive—and questionable—operation. The Pentagon paid a British PR firm, Bell Pottinger, more than $660 million to run a top-secret propaganda program in Iraq from at least 2006 to December 2011. The work consisted of three types of products: TV commercials portraying al-Qaeda in a negative light, news items intended to look like Arabic TV, and—most disturbing—fake al-Qaeda propaganda films. A former Bell Pottinger video editor, Martin Wells, told the Bureau that he was given precise instructions for production of fake al-Qaeda films, and that the firm’s output was approved by former General David Petraeus— the commander of the coalition forces in Iraq—and on occasion by the White House. They reported that the United States used contractors because “the military didn’t have the in-house expertise and was operating in a legal ‘grey area.’” The reporters “traced the firm’s Iraq work through US army contracting censuses, federal procurement transaction records and reports by the Defense Department’s inspector general, as well as Bell Pottinger’s corporate filings and specialist publications on military propaganda.” Black and Fielding-Smith also interviewed former officials and contractors involved in information operations in Iraq. Documents show that Bell Pottinger employed as many as three hundred British and Iraqi staff at one point; and its media operations in Iraq cost more than $100 million per year on average. It’s remarkable that an operation on this scale has been totally ignored in midst of so much focus on “fake news” here in the United States.
4––Voter Suppression in the 2016 Presidential Election The 2016 election was the first election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), a 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court struck down a key provision requiring jurisdictions with a history of violations to “pre-clear” changes. As a result, changes to voting laws in nine states and parts of six others with long histories of racial discrimination in voting were no longer subject to federal government approval in advance. Since Shelby, 14 states, including many southern states and key swing states, implemented new voting restrictions, in many cases just in time for the election. These included restrictive voter-identification laws in Texas and North Carolina, English-only elections in many Florida counties, as well as last-minute changes of poll locations, and changes in Arizona voting laws that had previously been rejected by the Department of Justice before the Shelby decision. Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, was foremost among a small number of non-mainstream journalists to cover the suppression efforts and their results. In May 2017, he reported on an analysis of the effects of voter suppression by Priorities USA, which showed that strict voter-ID laws in Wisconsin and other states resulted in a “significant reduction” in voter turnout in 2016 with “a disproportionate impact on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters.” Berman noted that turnout was reduced by 200,000 votes in Wisconsin, while Donald Trump won the state by just over 22,000 votes. Nationwide, the study found that the change in voter turnout from 2012 to 2016 was significantly impacted by new voter-ID laws. In counties that were more than 40 percent African-American, turnout dropped 5 percent with new voter-ID laws, compared to 2.2 percent without. In counties that were less than 10 percent African-American, turnout decreased 0.7 percent with new voter-ID laws, compared to a 1.9 percent increase without. As Berman concluded, “This study provides more evidence for the claim that voter-ID laws are designed not to stop voter impersonation fraud, which is virtually nonexistent, but to make it harder for certain communities to vote.” As Berman noted in an article published by Moyers & Co. in December 2016, the topic of “gutting” the Voting Rights Act did not arise once during the 26 presidential debates prior to the election, and “[c]able news devoted hours and hours to Trump’s absurd claim that the election was rigged against him while spending precious little time on the real threat that voters faced.” 5––Big Data and Dark Money behind the 2016 Election When Richard Nixon first ran for Congress in 1946, he and his supporters used a wide range of dirty tricks aimed
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at smearing his opponent as pro-Communist, including a boiler-room operation generating phone calls to registered Democrats, which simply said, “This is a friend of yours, but I can’t tell you who I am. Did you know that Jerry Voorhis is a Communist?” Then the caller would hang up. In 2016, the same basic strategy was employed but with decades of refinement, technological advances, and massively more money behind it. A key player in this was right-wing computer scientist and hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who contributed $13.5 million to Trump’s campaign and also funded Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics company that specializes in “election management strategies” and using “psychographic” microtargeting—based on thousands of pieces of data for some 220 million American voters—as Carole Cadwalladr reported for the Guardian in February 2017. After Trump’s victory, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix said, “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to datadriven communication has played such an integral part in President-elect Trump’s extraordinary win.” Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories, was more old-school until recently in elections across Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. In Trinidad, it paid for the painting of graffiti slogans purporting to be from grassroots youth. In Nigeria, it advised its client party to suppress the vote of their opposition “by organizing anti-poll rallies on the day of the election.” But now they’re able to micro-target their deceptive, disruptive messaging. “Pretty much every message that Trump put out was data-driven” after they joined the campaign, Nix said in September 2016. On the day of the third presidential debate, Trump’s team “tested 175,000 different ad variations for his arguments” via Facebook. This messaging had everything to do with how those targeted would respond, not with Trump’s or Mercer’s views. In a New Yorker profile, Jane Mayer noted that Mercer argued that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a major mistake, a subject not remotely hinted at during the campaign. “Suddenly, a random billionaire can change politics and public policy—to sweep everything else off the table—even if they don’t speak publicly, and even if there’s almost no public awareness of his or her views,” Trevor Potter, former chair of the Federal Election Commission, told Mayer. With the real patterns of influence, ideology, money, power and belief hidden from view, the very concept of democratic self-governance is now fundamentally at risk. Check digboston.com for the full list Paul Rosenberg is the senior editor at Random Lengths News
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DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
13
RAISING UP RESTAURANT WORKERS TERMS OF SERVICE
What tipped workers should know about the Fight for $15 BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT
FIGHT FOR $15 ADVOCATES RALLY AT THE MASS STATE HOUSE | PHOTO BY CHRIS FARAONE
Whenever I see people marching with Fight for $15 advocates who are advancing the platform for increasing the Mass minimum wage, I smile and hold up a fist. Absolutely, I think. Nobody can get by in this town on $11 an hour. And then I remember that, as a bartender, I make $3.75 an hour, and that every single conversation about raising the state minimum wage has excluded people who work for tips. Every. Single. One. (We went from $3.35 to $3.75 last year, but come now, 40 cents?) Until now. The latest step being taken by Raise Up Massachusetts, a grassroots coalition of community organizations dedicated to ensuring that the Commonwealth’s economy works for all residents, is battling not only to increase the state minimum wage but folding increased wages for tipped workers into the measure they hope to land on ballots in the 2018 November elections. “Tipped workers have been left out of this equation too many times,” says Rachel Collins, a member of Raise Up Massachusetts, the Boston chapter of the Restaurant Opportunity Center, and a chef at Juliet in Somerville. “Enough is enough.” Hear, hear. Political allegiances aside, it’s impossible to ignore that the malodorous cloud surrounding the issues of minimum wage (tipped or otherwise) and cost of living in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville has become toxic: Huge portions of the city populations are struggling to breathe. “Wages stopped keeping up with job productivity in 1973,” said Pablo Ruiz, director of SEIU Community Action and state field director for Raise Up’s last ballot campaign in 2014, which effectively pushed the state minimum wage from $7.25 to its current $11/hour. Ruiz continued: “Had wages kept up with productivity, with the expectations of the job, minimum wage would today be $18.19 [an hour]. Had we seen the same kind of wage increase as the top earners in the country, if wages had kept up with CEO compensation, minimum wage would be $119 an hour.” I won’t beat you over the head with stats about the 1 percent. But here is what you need to know about the relevant petitions for which activists and organizers are currently gathering signatures—from what they support, to why they matter, to where you can sign and how to get involved. The first two major worker equality measures that Raise Up is advocating for: 14
10.05.17 - 10.12.17 |
DIGBOSTON.COM
Increase the state minimum wage to $15 from $11 by raising it $1 a year for four years. Increase the state tipped minimum wage from $3.75 (33 percent of the state minimum) until it reaches 60 percent of the state minimum in 2022. This will increase the tipped minimum wage in Massachusetts to $9 an hour. Increasing minimum wage, even the tipped minimum wage, ought to be a no-brainer. The biggest opponents to such increases are, obviously, businesses, small businesses, and in relation to the tipped minimum specifically, restaurants. Not all of them, though. To combat some of that initial pushback, Katrina Jazayeri, co-owner of Juliet— one of the only local restaurants that operates without gratuity and therefore without a tipped minimum wage— is one of the lead signatories (along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren). “We’re the group of people, business owners, who should be against this,” Jazayeri said. “But it never crossed our minds. We’re excited to be proof of concept of a new way of doing things. This benefits all of us, employees, ownership, going out to our vendors.” She continued: “This isn’t an imposition, this is the way business should be done.” According to Ruiz, increasing base pay reduces turnover and training time, increases productivity and morale, and can be covered by increasing menu prices by a measly two percent. Remember that story about how Delta Airlines saved $40,000 by eliminating a single olive from every salad they served during in-flight meals? Yeah, it’s like that. The second and third biggest arguments against raising the minimum wage are that minimum wage jobs are held by people with minimal skills—teenagers new to the workforce, college students simply working part time to help cover rent—and that the fight to raise the minimum wage has nothing to do with you unless, in fact, you yourself make minimum wage. Both of these, according to Ruiz and Raise Up, are equally bogus. “Over 60 percent of people earning minimum wage work full time, most of them are adults, and 41 percent of them have families,” Ruiz said. As for people who are not making minimum wage… If you’re making $15 an hour right now as an EMT (as many in Mass are), and minimum wage goes up to $15, guess what?
There is also a third measure that Raise Up is pushing: a paid family medical leave provision that, like Social Security and Medicaid, will be funded through small percentages of employee wages and matched by employers. Such a measure would allow all workers to take off up to 16 weeks a year, and be paid for it, in order to care for someone, like an aging relative or a new child (by birth or adoption). The medical leave fund would pay for up to 26 paid weeks off per year for individuals to deal with personal sickness or injury. Right now, only 13 percent of the workforce has access to paid time off for medical leave— and not all of those people can afford to use it. “Six years ago my wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer,” Ruiz said. “At that time, I couldn’t afford to take any amount of time to be with her. I could only take a few days off to be with her in surgery, and when she started radiation. This would allow for that time we needed to happen.” How would it work? Just like Social Security: A state fund would be created and fed by a state tax, like Social Security is paid by federal taxes. That reserve would be funded by employers and employees, 50-50, and when an employee needed to take time off, they’d be paid directly by the state. But what about the cost? “Our proposal says that out of your paycheck you will contribute .0063 percent of your weekly pay,” Ruiz said. “For [a minimum] wage worker [making] $11 an hour, that’s $2.77 a week.” With the other half coming from the business, that makes the out-of-pocket expenses $1.39 a week on minimum wage. (On a $15 an hour minimum wage, that contribution would only increase to $1.89 a week.) But how much would you be paid? You would receive up to 90 percent of your income, or a max of $1,000 a week during leave time. Because it’s up to 90 percent of your wages, this fund is available for all workers—part-time as well as full-time. And your job would be there for you when you got back. “We hear all the time about people being one illness away from bankruptcy,” Ruiz said. “This is why, because we don’t have this kind of protection.” As someone who works in a restaurant, I’m constantly on my feet. I need the use of both of my arms and hands, I can’t work from home, and taking a half day is utterly impractical. I’ve had friends and co-workers who have been out of work for months due to injuries not incurred on the job (so no worker’s comp), and their resulting work options hovered between bleak and non-existent. For tipped employees, the proposed fund would cover up to 90 percent of their expected weekly pay, based on recorded tips. And whether their teammates absorb their shifts until they are well, or the restaurant hires someone else, no one gets fired. Or evicted, as those things tend to go. Volunteers hit streets with the aforementioned petitions last month and will be out gathering signatures until Nov 18. If quotas are met and the state approves the measures, they will appear on the ballot in 2018. “I think we all know what’s at stake,” Ruiz said.
For info about signature gathering events, or to become a volunteer to gather signatures, check out @raiseupma on social media.
PHOTO BY CHRIS FARAONE
You’re entitled to a raise. As organizers for various causes have noted, everybody wins when you lift up the bottom.
necann.com NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
15
WHEEL OF TUNES MUSIC
Broken Social Scene talk swimming in oceans, standing up for love, and singing along to Gil Scott Heron BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Being a collective isn’t easy. Neither is changing with the times. Yet Canadian indie rock icons Broken Social Scene have managed to uphold their brand and unity over nearly two decades. If you don’t know them by name, you certainly know several of their members—Feist, Emily Haines of Metric, Amy Millan of Stars, Charles Spearin of Do Make Say Think, or any of the other 19 members could ring a bell. In 2010, the band released its fourth album, Forgiveness Rock Record, and took over the House of Blues for a remarkable show. Now, nearly seven years later, they’re back with their fifth album in tow and an even stronger sense of life running underneath it all. Hug of Thunder is exactly as it sounds: a bold record that sees the supergroup embracing one another as well as their listeners, offering comfort imbued with strength, arguably at a time when the world needs it most. Broken Social Scene wanted to highlight the different members of the band from various incarnations over the years. Not only did they succeed in that angle, but they saw an outpouring of inspiration as a unit. According to Ariel Engle, one of the newest singers to join the group, it was nonstop happiness that erased whatever anxieties could have bubbled up in the wake of a highly anticipated return. “I don’t think we were nervous, because everyone in the band is actually friends,” she says over the phone. “We’re the most un-broken social scene. We all stay limber by making music outside of Broken Social Scene. But the members of Broken Social Scene get together just to hang out. I think the music from the outside world has changed in seven years, but we didn’t necessarily feel it, and in turn it became a time to highlight the different people that have been a part of the band.” To dig deeper into the band’s hyperlayered personality, we interviewed Engle for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask bands questions inspired by their song titles. Like the enigmatic collective they are, Broken Social Scene came up with entertaining, story-driven answers that hold your attention the same way their songs do, all while placing an emphasis on good over evil in the most genuine of ways. 1. “Sol Luna” In your opinion, which casts a better light: the sun or the moon? The moon! It’s so melancholy. 2. “Halfway Home” What do you consider your second home? Where is it? Can you describe it to me? My friend Adrian’s house in Toronto. I live in Montreal, unlike the rest of the band. If you knew Adrian, you’d realize how exciting that is. She’s born in Zimbabwe but she’s a white Jew, so she’s extremely interesting just from that perspective. She’s a total lover of music. She champions people and women and her daughter—a great drummer in an all-girl band. She has concerts in her home and backyard. She’s a life force, one of the most incredible people. I met Andrew [Whiteman], who’s my husband, and he wanted me to meet his best friend, this incredibly warm, hilarious woman. So when I go to her house, I’m at home.
3. “Protest Song” Name one song that revs you up and motivates you but may not be considered a “classic” protest song. The first song that came to mind was Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” One of the best concerts I ever saw. It was in ’90s. I was underage, but it was around the corner from my house in Montreal. It was transforming. 4. “Skyline” What skyline took your breath away when you weren’t expecting it to? I would say it was when I went to Hong Kong in 1983. I was very little. It just took my breath away. It was like Blade Runner, but I hadn’t seen Blade Runner yet. I was living in Beijing with my parents, and that was before there was much car traffic. It was lots of bicycles and horse-drawn carts. Then we went to Hong Kong and the skyline blew me away. 5. “Stay Happy” Have you found an activity, event, talking point, or action that helps you stay happy for a long period of time? Yes, swimming in an ocean. I think I go back to some kind of early evolutionary stage, before my brain developed anxiety, and I feel some protowomb feeling out in the ocean. It just feels right. Just the salt water, the waves, getting to swim around a thing that’s powerful but doesn’t know it is. It’s the wild ocean. It’s like a baptism for a nonreligious person for me. The ocean doesn’t even know it’s the ocean. That’s incredible. It’s constantly moving and heaving, and it follows the moon. When you sit in it for a while, you feel how small you are, but in the most embracing way. 6. “Vanity Pail Kids” Who is the epitome of vanity, and do you think they could ever grow out of that? Ooh, this is spicy. It’s an element of culture that’s become prevalent, and I don’t think we can grow out of it. It’s a sign of crisis. I can’t point at anyone in particular, but there’s a trend that’s beyond shame. It’s beyond engrossment or self-promotion. I think it’s unbridled now. There were things and decorum that would keep those things in check, but now when you have someone like Trump in power, the bar is so low, you know? I think there’s a hollowness when people are so enamored with their own reflection. It’s as if people forget they’re going to die … and age. It’s a world culture, too, in that it’s become pop culture. 7. “Hug of Thunder” Who gave you the best hug you’ve ever received and what did it feel like? My dad. It feels like home.
8. “Towers and Masons” If you had to do a mason job, which would you do and why? I would be a little piggy. I would help out those two piggies [in The Three Little Pigs] that couldn’t build their first houses correctly. I have two kids and I don’t eat pigs, so that answer makes sense. 9. “Victim Lover” How do you know when you’re a victim of good/positive love and when you’re a victim of bad/negative love? One makes you feel good and one makes you feel like shit. People can confuse the two because you can be wrapped up in it. I think we only understand in hindsight. You can be really into someone who makes you feel like shit, and that can be an addiction in itself. You have such reverence for that person. You want to live up to a notion they have of you. It’s like that negging concept. The thing is, when you fall in love, you fall. We have expressions for how you kind of go crazy, because it’s true. You don’t come from a place of control or balance. 10. “Please Take Me With You” Where have you always wanted to visit? It’s a bit of a cliche, but I’d really love to go to southern India. I find southern India Carnatic singing really wonderful. In a fantasy world, I would go study that singing there for while. 11. “Gonna Get Better” What advice would you give to someone who’s feeling defeated and hopeless? I would say, “Treat yourself with the utmost compassion.” Don’t add insult to injury by beating yourself up about feeling bad. Honor the feeling of feeling sad. Imagine you are someone that you love, like your best friend or a child, and treat yourself that way. Show yourself true, true compassion. 12. “Mouth Guards of the Apocalypse” What’s one apocalyptic event that you think would actually be cool to live through? There’s a few. I don’t know if I want to erase ecology or class disparity, something that would equalize it all. I don’t even know if I can answer because it’s like being in an amazing buffet of apocalyptic options! The one thing Kevin [Drew] has been saying a lot on this tour is that we’re living in a time of profound position. People are entrenched. We have to band together and find unity. So some kind of unifying apocalypse. I don’t want anyone to die, but I’d love to see us help other people.
>> BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, FRIGHTENED RABBIT. SAT 10.7. HOUSE OF BLUES, 15 LANSDOWNE ST., BOSTON. 7PM/ALL AGES/$30.50. HOUSEOFBLUES.COM
MUSIC EVENTS THU 10.05
WATERMELON MAN FROM THE BANDSTAND HERBIE HANCOCK
[Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Pl., Boston. 6:30pm/all ages/$45. crossroadspresents.com]
16
10.05.17 - 10.12.17 |
THU 10.05
MELLOW SYNTH POP WITH SUBTLER DROPS HUNDRED WATERS + KELSEY LU [Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 7pm/all ages/$16. crossroadspresents.com]
DIGBOSTON.COM
SAT 10.07
MIX A LITTLE FUNK INTO YOUR PSYCH-Y CHICANO BATMAN + KHRUANGBIN + THE SHACKS
[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$18. crossroadspresents.com]
MON 10.09
MESMERIZING FOLK FROM THE SINGERSONGWRITER’S SOUL MOSES SUMNEY + XENIA RUBINOS [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]
TUE 10.10
FROM BRAIN DISEASE TO DANCE DJ TOKIMONSTA + KINGDOM + KAMI
[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]
WED 10.11
R&B STRAIGHT OFF THE INTERNET SYD
[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 8pm/18+/$25. royaleboston.com]
HONK! FESTIVAL MUSIC
opening this month
The sociopolitical music festival will make this year’s parade its loudest yet
boston’s urban winery, intimate concert venue, private event space & restaurant
BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN
Upcoming SHOWS
10.30
10.26-27
craig finn
art garfunkel
11.3-4
11.5
shawn colvin
11.7
the weepies
11.8
talib kweli
los lonely boys
11.9
11.13
leftover salmon david crosby
11.14
paul thorn
PHOTO OF DAMAS DE FERRO COURTESY OF DAMAS DE FERRO
Sound the horns and part the streets. Actually, scratch that. Charge the streets. HONK! Festival is back, and it wants you to march alongside it. This weekend, the sociopolitical music festival returns for its 12th year of rousing brass, percussive spectacles, and challenging complacency in Somerville and beyond. Those unfamiliar with the festival may recall that one year they saw people twirling hoops in the middle of the street while attired in circus costumes. Others may recall the year they heard loud marching band music through their windows. Some may remember seeing lanterns floating in the skies of Somerville. All of those memories can become more vivid if you scurry on down to HONK! Festival, because it plans on bringing back the features that have drawn thousands to the streets to join in on the family-friendly, grassroots fun. After all, it’s completely free to anyone and everyone. It kicks off on Friday at 4 pm with the lantern making workshops at Hodgkins Park in Davis Square, where people of all ages are invited to make DIY lanterns for free. Come 7 pm, attendees can light their lanterns with bike lights, safe candles, flashlights, and more along the sidewalks of Davis Square. Once 8:30 pm hits, a handful of the HONK! bands will perform at ONCE Somerville with beer served by Aeronaut Brewing Company. On Saturday, the festivities reach their peak with the official HONK! Festival in Davis Square. From noon until 9 pm, more than 25 activist street bands from around the world will perform outdoors for free. On Sunday, the HONK! Parade will descend down Mass Ave from Davis Square to Harvard Square to “reclaim the streets for horns, bikes, and feet,” which is more celebratory and giddy than you can imagine. Once they reach Harvard Square, the HONK! bands will perform on the main stage of the square’s Oktoberfest until 6 pm. If you’re still hungry for more, pregame it all by heading over to Lowell on Thursday for the pre-HONK! Brass n’ Bike show where a bike ride at 5 pm will preface a 7:30 pm concert organized by the Party Band. It’s a lot to take in. We get it. So let’s break HONK! Festival down into the three things that make it unique. First is the fact that everything is free, from Friday night’s performance at ONCE Ballroom all the way down to the street performances. Second is that it’s noncommercial. It doesn’t charge vendors to use space at the events, a decision that most nonprofits lean heavily on. Third is the fact that the festival is aiming to create change beyond music. According to the organizers, it’s about bands who are in it to make positive change in their communities, and that shines through. “These combine to give it a different vibe, so it really is about the music,” says Ken Field, a member of the HONK! committee and musician in Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band. “There’s a passion behind the music that drives these people playing it. Not that other bands play music for other, wrong reasons, but that the reason behind these community-based groups is deeper. They’re often diverse in things like age or gender. They aren’t dependent upon musical background. There’s a freedom to it. Because of that, it winds up being different from most other music festivals.” There are plenty of acts representing this vibe. Boycott, aNova Brazil, Dirty Water Brass Band, Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band, Rara Bel Poze, School of HONK, and Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band will represent the greater Boston brass scene at the festival. But it’s some of the traveling acts, like Yes Ma’am Brass Band from Austin or Brass Liberation Orchestra from San Francisco, that make the festivities so thrilling. We’ve got our sight set on Damas de Ferro in particular. The all-female band hails from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Damas de Farro believe in the empowerment of women through feminist protest and infusing their musical identity with a lively repertoire brings their name—which literally translates to Iron Ladies in English—to its full metal potential. Boston streets turn into a multicultural activist platform in their hands, and witnessing that live should be a reminder of what we can all do with what we are given—and what we want to fight for. “Part of the concept of the HONK! Bands is that they’re performing in public space,” says Field. “We’re encouraging people to make use of public space. Go outside. Make noise. When that public space happens to be a street for a parade, we phrase it in those ‘reclaiming’ terms to remind people to take advantage of resources.”
11.16-17
Marc Broussard
and Much More! city winery Presents 10.10
EILEN JEWELL W/ MISS TESS AT LAUGH BOSTON
10.10 eilen jewell at laugh boston
&
10.21 BOSTON WINE CLASS SERIES | WINE 101 INTRO TO WINE 10.30 NAPA VALLEY THEN AND NOW WITH AUTHOR KELLI WHITE 10.31 ESPORAO WINE DINNER 11.8 BOTANICAL GIN LAB 11.10 RIDGE WINE DINNER 11.11 BOSTON WINE CLASS SERIES | WINE 102 SPARKLING TO STILL TO SWEET 11.14 CITY WINERY AND AMERICAN AIRLINES PRESENT: GREEK WINE DINNER 12.2 BOSTON WINE CLASS SERIES | WINE 103 WINE AND FOOD PAIRINGS
email eventsboston@citywinery.com for more info
Become a City Winery
VinoFile Member!
Buy tickets before the public, avoid service fees, attend members-only events & much more!
1 canal St. Boston Ma 02114 | (617) 933-8047
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>> HONK! FESTIVAL. FRI 10.6–SUN 10.8. VARIOUS LOCATIONS. CAMBRIDGE, SOMERVILLE, AND BOSTON. 12PM/ALL AGES/FREE. HONKFEST.ORG
NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
17
RESEARCH CENTER FILM
On the latest record of American history from director Frederick Wiseman BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN
For reasons that are entirely understandable, the films of Frederick Wiseman are most often spoken or written about in terms of their shooting location. The filmmaker has completed 43 movies, pretty much all of which are nonfiction features that document a particular kind of workplace, institution, or community. For a handful of random examples, I’ll point to Basic Training [1971] (a US Army training facility in Fort Knox, Tennessee), Deaf [1986] (the School for the Deaf at the Alabama Institute), Near Death [1989] (the ICU at the Beth Israel Hospital), Domestic Violence [2001] (filmed in women’s shelters and among police in Tampa, Florida), and Boxing Gym [2010] (Lord’s Gym in Austin, Texas). And so the Wiseman project, as one might call it, is often described—including by this writer—with an emphasis given to the places it has been: “He’s chronicling American life by documenting specific regional, occupational, and physical experiences,” you might hear me ramble. “He’s made films about high schools, about police forces, about court systems, about state legislatures, about Belfast, Maine, about everything.” But this description of his body of work overlooks an exceedingly obvious quality: As much as Wiseman has been documenting particular locations, he’s also been documenting particular moments in history. In Jackson Heights [2015], for instance, ostensibly sets out to survey the most statistically diverse neighborhood in the United States—but more specifically, it becomes a thoroughly organized demonstration of the 21st-century institutional practices which threaten minority-owned businesses, as well as a demonstration of the the practices used by community organizers to combat those prejudices. And Wiseman’s latest film, Ex Libris: New York Public Library [2017], is of course a movie depicting the public services and inner workings of that particular library system—but it is also a highly specific depiction of the practical and philosophical challenges that face any public-serving institution in the back half of the 2010s, where the transition to digital technology seems to be outpacing our own ability to understand that transition. To say that Wiseman has made films about neighborhoods and libraries is to undercut what those films truly accomplish. They’re also records of their respective moment in time,
ones more specific than any other American films I can recall. Ex Libris was filmed between September and December of 2015, at more than 10 NYPL branches, with Wiseman credited for its direction, production, sound, and editing. It was created in the manner utilized throughout the filmmaker’s career: Wiseman was given the right to film virtually anywhere in the institution during the time allotted; he then fashioned that footage into discrete scenes and organized those scenes into a structure that attempts to give an impression of the totality of the institution. “My technique is one that’s similar to writing and similar to a novel,” Wiseman recently told Vanity Fair, before describing his aesthetic with a brevity I cannot hope to match. “It’s just the way I approach it. Because it’s more indirect: I’m asking you, the viewer, to think about what it is you’re seeing and my choice of sequences and the order in which I present them. [That’s] the way I present my point of view.” As in most Wiseman films, numerous sequences in Ex Libris are dedicated to people and spaces that we see only once—waiters preparing a dinner for trustees, older women having a book club discussion, a live talk with Elvis Costello, a lecture delivered by Richard Dawkins. But as is also often true in Wiseman’s movies, there are a group of people who recur throughout the film’s running time (197 minutes), often enough that we begin to recognize them. In the case of Ex Libris we spend the most time with library system president Anthony W. Marx and chief library officer Mary Lee Kennedy, who are seen in staff meetings held at the main branch on 5th Ave, as well as in sequences where they work in collaboration with staff at one of the smaller branches. The very first staff meetings seen lay out the concerns that will recur in dialogue for the next three hours—the concerns that so decisively tie Ex Libris to the American culture of 2017. We hear the executives discussing questions regarding the divide between those online and those still in the “digital dark”; they discuss how an institution can fulfill the needs of one such demographic without disregarding the other; they discuss to what extent libraries must become more generalized “education centers” in light of the fact that many of their prior materials-based services are being rendered obsolete
by new technology; and they discuss the shifting balance of the public organization’s funding, which is relying increasingly on the wealth of private donors. That last concern relates directly to our current administration, given the cuts being made to public arts funding. And on that note, it connects the concerns of Ex Libris to the larger existence of Wiseman’s films: He too is a recipient of the state funding that’s currently on the chopping block—for decades, his films have received financial support from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. Wiseman is not typically one to offer interpretations of his own work, but in an interview with the American Prospect, even he acknowledged that the current state of national politics serves as an obvious subtext below the surface of Ex Libris. “Obviously, when I made the movie, I didn’t have Trump in mind,” Wiseman said. “But I mean, the library is the anti-Trump, because everything in Trump’s Darwinian views—not that he knows who Darwin is—reflects a lack of knowledge, a lack of curiosity. His effort to cut the endowments and his wish to get rid of PBS, his indifferent attitude to all the programs that are meant to help immigrants and poor people, it’s just against everything the library is trying to do. So inadvertently, it becomes a very political film.” The cloud of the looming Trump administration does obviously hang over the numerous sequences where museum employees discuss matters of diminishing state funding. But that cloud also necessarily looms over any conversation related to the matter of inequality in this country. On that note, Ex Libris—which was locked down in the editing room just two days after the 2016 election— quite pointedly documents the way that libraries and archives can and have been used to address systemic injustices and historical mistruths. This is most commonly discussed within sequences featuring Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the recently retired former director of the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—in one such sequence, he moderates a conversation with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and in another, he leads a group discussion at the Macomb’s Bridge library branch. In the group discussion, there are references made to a matter involving McGraw-Hill textbooks and their oft-egregious depictions of the history of American slavery. That is an injustice, Muhammad impassionately argues, which may be rectified by the existence of institutions like the Schomburg Center—and given the integral placement of this scene within Ex Libris’ structure, Wiseman’s sympathy for that sentiment feels all but certain. Along with his prior films At Berkeley [2013] and National Gallery [2014], Ex Libris completes a loose trilogy of works concerning the practices of educational institutions in the mid-2010s. And along with In Jackson Heights, Ex Libris completes an ever more specific diptych—two works of true New Yorker cinema, both depicting the methods by which marginalized communities may defend themselves against threatening state actions. They are films about resistance, made right before it became a buzzword.
>> EX LIBRIS: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. PLAYING THROUGH WED 10.18 AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, 465 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON. SHOWS ON 10.6 @ 4PM, 10.8 @ 1:30PM, 10.15 @ 1:30PM, AND 10.18 @ 4PM. NOT RATED. $9-11. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON SCREENINGS, VISIT MFA.ORG
FILM EVENTS FRI 10.06
FRI 10.06
[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 9:30pm/R/$11. 35mm. Late shows continue daily through 10.12 (but none on 10.10). brattlefilm.org]
[Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston. 8pm/R/$11. 35mm. mfa.org]
NEW 35MM PRINT OF EDGAR WRIGHT’S BABY DRIVER [2017]
18
10.05.17 - 10.12.17 |
NICOLAS CAGE IN ROBERT BIERMAN’S VAMPIRE’S KISS [1989]
DIGBOSTON.COM
FRI 10.06
COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS LUCIO FULCI’S THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY [1981] [Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline. Midnight/NR/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]
SAT 10.07
SUN 10.08
TUE 10.10
Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline. Midnight/NR/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]
[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 4:30pm/ NR/$7-9. 16mm. hcl. harvard.edu/hfa]
[Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. 8pm/R/$10. 35mm. somervilletheatre.com]
ANOTHER BY FULCI AT COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT THE GATES OF HELL (aka CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD) [1980] [Coolidge
TWO FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY HOURS FOR JEROME [1982] AND LOVE’S REFRAIN [2001]
AT THE SOMERVILLE, ANOTHER BY WRIGHT IN 35MM SHAUN OF THE DEAD [2004]
Peace
Boston
Edutainment & Production Co.
Joh
nH anc 180 Ber ock Ba keley SHall
ck B ay 1.20 1
11.1
t.
7@ 6pm
Presents…
HIP-HOP 9.1.1
BLACK SPOTS on my SOUL An Original Play
Come take a journey with Ebony and the Ghosts of Hip-Hop Past, Present and Future!
Proceeds benefit the Peace Boston Youth Arts Scholarship
GET YOUR TIXX TODAY AT: peaceboston.eventbrite.com NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
19
KEN URBAN’S BIG MOMENT ARTS
With a new post at MIT and a world premiere play at the Huntington, everything’s coming up Urban BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS
Who would ever have thought that a field trip to an engineering firm would be responsible for giving the American theater one of its most potent and exciting new voices? But that’s kind of how it happened for Ken Urban, who recently began his new post as head of MIT’s playwriting program and is currently in the throes of gearing up for the world premiere of A Guide for the Homesick, his new play that will open at the Huntington Theatre Company on Oct 6. The extraordinary Colman Domingo, a Tony and Olivier Award-nominated actor (currently on Fear the Walking Dead), will direct. In addition to Guide and MIT, adding to Urban’s big year is the recent publication of his latest play, Nibbler, which premiered off-Broadway last year. In May, the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, will premiere The Remains, a play that explores gay marriage 10 years after it first became legal. Urban excelled in math and science to the point where it was just assumed—by him, his parents, and his teachers—that he would go on to study similar fields in college. After high school, he entered into the school of engineering at Bucknell University where he started to feel that it wasn’t totally for him. The aforementioned field trip cemented these thoughts for Urban, who calls the engineering firm he visited one of the most
depressing things he’s ever seen. And while Urban had always done a lot of writing, his high school English classes left a bad taste in his mouth. It wasn’t until one of his peers suggested a class on 20th-century AfricanAmerican drama that he knew the theater was where he needed to be. (He would eventually get a PhD in English from Rutgers University.) There is wonderful symmetry, then, to the fact that Urban recently began a new chapter at MIT, bringing his engineering past and his theater present full circle. “It’s really strange,” said Urban. “Some of my students tell me what their majors are and I’m like, ‘I don’t even know what that is.’ I can barely do basic arithmetic these days.” Having a world-premiere play in rehearsals and a major new teaching gig has been an intense experience so far for Urban, especially because of the constant rewriting he has been doing throughout the rehearsal process for Guide, a powerful drama about two strangers, both from Boston and with a ton of baggage, who become friends during one night spent together at a hotel in Amsterdam. Urban has learned a lot about his play—which was commissioned by Epic Theatre Ensemble in 2011—in the rehearsal room; he estimates that he’s rewritten close to 70 pages at this point, some changes tiny and others fairly
major. Adding to the symmetry of Urban’s journey is that a decade ago he was one of the Huntington’s Playwriting Fellows, a two-year program that provided him with institutional support and—according to Urban, more importantly—a way into the Boston theater scene. “It was the first time I had ever gotten any recognition from a major regional theater, so it was good to have that support,” said Urban. Nibblers, in fact, was something that he worked on during his time as a Huntington Playwriting Fellow. Guide, too, was given a workshop by the Huntington in 2015. When Epic Theatre Ensemble commissioned Urban to write a play, they asked him to write about human aid workers, a subject that he knew very little about. He did extensive research, interviewing a number of Doctors Without Borders volunteers as well as people who worked for the UN. “Just hearing their stories and reading some memoirs of people who worked in the field, I became acutely aware that there’s a ton of training for going out into the fields but there’s very little to prepare these men and women for when they come back home and how much of a struggle that is,” said Urban. “They have these intensive experiences and then they go back to, like, New York, and they just couldn’t readjust.” This notion of homecoming and the feeling that only people who had gone through a similar experience could understand what they were going through is what triggered the play for Urban. “The first draft of the play came really fast,” he said. “I just knew it was in a hotel room [and that] there are two actors and four characters. I always feel like hotel rooms are a little bit haunted by the people that were there before you.” Although Urban has been working on Guide in some respect for over five years, it turns out that it feels more right to tell this story now than when the play was initially written. “It does feel like it’s taken on new urgency right at this particular moment, about the idea of trying to help in the world and what do you do when the world has become so complicated and situations are so beyond our comprehension,” he said. “I feel like a lot of us are experiencing grief on a daily basis, so in some ways it feels like the right play to tell right now. I hope audiences go on its journey because it’s a pretty emotional experience.” “It’s really brave of [Huntington artistic director] Peter [DuBois] and everyone at the Huntington to take a risk on a world premiere and a play that is so challenging,” said Urban, “which I’m sure marketing does not want me to say, but it is, it’s a play that’s going to really ask you to go somewhere and to really grapple with some big questions about America’s role in the world, what it means to be a friend, and how we grieve.” But it isn’t all serious. For all its intensity and power, there are moments of levity, too. “There are lots of moments of unexpected humor,” Urban said. “And it’s pretty sexy. Sometimes I forget about that. It’s a really intense time to come together and have this emotional experience.”
>> A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK. 10.6–11.4 AT THE HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY, 264 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON. HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG
ARTS EVENTS
FINAL WEEKEND! CONSTELLATIONS
[Underground Railway Theater at Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. Through 10.8. centralsquaretheater.org] 20
10.05.17 - 10.12.17 |
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FINAL WEEKEND! EXIT THE KING
[Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Emerson Paramount, 559 Washington St., Boston. Through 10.8. actorsshakespeareproject. org]
FINAL WEEKEND! GYPSY
[Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon St., Boston. Through 10.8. lyricstage.org]
NOT TO BE MISSED WARHOLCAPOTE
[American Repertory Theater, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge. Through 10.13. americanrepertorytheater. org]
LEGENDARY SONDHEIM MUSICAL MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
[Huntington Theatre Company, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston. Through 10.15. huntingtontheatre.org]
GALLERY REVIEWS VISUAL ART
Three current shows to check out BY DAVID CURCIO AND FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
Berman and Anne Lilly: Stillness—Room 83 Spring Phyllis Berman and Anne Lilly take polar-opposite approaches in their exhibition at Room 83 Spring, yet their dual showing is surprisingly fluid in its move from one artist to the next. Contrast Berman’s quasi-trompe l’oeils of pendulous plumb bobs to Lilly’s sometimes mind-bending kinetic sculpture and you might expect a vibe of two shows shoved together. But no, the transformation is fluid, mercurial, and bizarrely unsettling. Both artists share an affinity for movement and stillness and the dynamic that they create. A nudge to Lilly’s Lacemaker sends the piece into rotation. Rods of steel seemingly wrap around each other, portending a collision that never happens and never will, yet one seems ever imminent. Berman’s polished oils carry the tension of stillness. The more time spent with them, the more nerve-wracking they become. One sneeze may snap the painted wire, and the bob will come crashing to the floor. Show runs until 10.28. Room 83 Spring, 83 Spring St., Watertown. Room83spring.com —David Curcio Anthony Palocci Jr.: It Can’t Rain All The Time—How’s Howard? Snooze, a tight painting of an alarm clock reading 6:03, commences Anthony Palocci’s group of thirteen paintings. Is that 6:03 am or pm? It feels either too early or too late. This bit of agita followed me as I wended around the walls of How’s Howard?’s show of Palocci’s 11x15 gouaches. Stand with a piece for a minute, and an attachment can develop quickly. There’s a private, mutual understanding between the viewer and what we know is just an object. But is it a bond with painting as object, or is it with the object that’s painted? It’s tense. am or pm? A car door. A gun, clip and ammo. A stay-tab on a beer. An autobiographical bar of soap. How about the gun? Do we care? Each painting is a question, but the answer doesn’t matter. We can recognize them as familiar. We don’t pretend to know just what they mean, but we’re already pals. I finally found myself lost in a domed landscape of pointed metal pyramids surrounding a cylinder glowing like an oracle. What is it? Show runs until 10.15. How’s Howard?, 450 Harrison Ave., Suite 309c, Boston. howshoward.com —David Curcio Writhe & Resolve: Aspects of Arcadia—Matter & Light Aristotle Forrester’s churning canvases take an abstract-expressionist attitude to an effort to depict Arcadia, the pastoral vision of harmony that has been a mainstay of the Western imagination since the Renaissance. This is an apt way to go about it in 2017, given that the details of such a place only ever seem to get fuzzier. Forrester builds up his pictures with vivacious WITHIN THE GATES: WHERE TITANS SLEEP, 2017 strokes of oil. They coalesce ARISTOTLE FORRESTER, COURTESY OF MATTER & LIGHT into landscapes, vague but filled with burning light. The Course of Things (2017) features a standing figure in coal-hued silhouette and what may be a fallen tree among an assault of broad marks. The immediate impression of Within the Gates: Where Titans Sleep (2017) is that of a circus under an air show, though the scene is implied entirely by frenzy of lines and intense colors. The artist’s borrowings from ab-ex and futurist masters are not debts so much as invested leverage. He is painting with a maturity all out of proportion to his age, with honesty and guts. Show runs until 10.12. Matter & Light, 63 Thayer St., Boston. matterlightfineart.com —Franklin Einspruch These shorts are being simultaneously published at Delicious Line, deliciousline.org. Franklin Einspruch is the editor in chief of Delicious Line. David Curcio is an artist who lives and works in Watertown, MA. His work can be viewed at davidcurcio.com.
NEWS TO US
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SAVAGE LOVE
ROOMMATES
BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET
I’m a 22-year-old straight male dating a 23-year-old woman. This is by far the most sexual relationship I’ve been in, which is great, except one part is freaking me out: I recently “caught” my girlfriend masturbating with her roommate’s panties. (She knew I was coming over and wanted me to catch her.) It turns out she has a habit of sneaking her roommate’s worn underwear, masturbating while smelling them (or putting them in her mouth), and then sneaking them back into her roommate’s laundry basket. She has also used her roommate’s vibrator and dry-humped her pillow to orgasm. I got turned on hearing about all this, and she jerked me off with her roommate’s panties. My girlfriend says she gets turned on being “naughty” and most of her fantasies involve being her roommate’s sex slave, me fucking the roommate while my GF is tied up, etc. Our sex life now revolves around the roommate—my GF has stolen a few more pairs of panties and even worn them while I fucked her, and her dirty talk is now almost entirely about her roommate. This turns me on, so I don’t really want it to stop, but my questions are: (1) Is this bad? (2) Is this normal? There’s No Acronym For This 1. It’s bad. 2. When it comes to human sexuality, TNAFT, variance is the norm. Which means freakiness/ naughtiness/kinkiness is normal—science backs me up on this—and, yes, lots of women have high libidos and lots are kinky. Your e-mail came sandwiched between a question from a woman who needs sex daily (and foolishly married a man with a very low libido*) and a question from a woman who is into BDSM (and wisely held out for a GGG guy who’s getting better at bondage but can’t bring himself to inflict the erotic/consensual pain she craves**). But “variance is the norm” doesn’t get your girlfriend off the hook—or you, TNAFT. You and your girlfriend are both violating this poor woman’s privacy, potentially her health, and—perhaps most importantly—her trust. Honoring each other’s privacy and showing mutual respect for each other’s belongings are the social norms that make it possible for unrelated/unfucking adults to share a living space. We trust our roommates not to steal money out of our purses, eat our peanut butter, use our toothbrushes, etc. And even if your roommate never catches you, it’s still not okay to use their fucking toothbrush. Your girlfriend should make an honest, respectful, naughty pass at her roommate. And who knows? Maybe her roommate is just as pervy as you two are and would jump at the chance to have a sex slave and full use of her roommate/sex slave’s boyfriend in exchange for a few dirty panties. * Divorce and start over. ** Keep talking, baby steps. But if he can’t, he can’t. Tops get to have limits, too. On the Lovecast, sex-toy review with Erika Moen: savagelovecast.com
COMEDY EVENTS THU 10.05
STAND UP @ THE GREEN ROOM
Featuring: Dan Boulger, Xazmin Garza , Erin Spencer, Ben Quick, Sam Ike, Alex Giampapa & Kathleen DeMarle Hosted by Carolyn Riley & Gloria Rose
62 BOW ST, SOMERVILLE | 830PM | $10 SUGG DONATION THU 10.05
THE RIOT SHUFFLE: COVERS @ THE RIOT THEATER
Featuring: Rick Canava, Anjan Biswas, Nate Davis, Zenobia Del Mar, Rich Dembowski, Lisa Lang, Scott McLaughlin, Valeria Dikovitskaya & Nick Ortolani Hosted by Angela Sawyer
146A SOUTH ST, JP | 9PM | $5 FRI 10.06
COMEDY @ ONSTAGE DANCE COMPANY
Featuring: Dave McLaughlin, Emily Ruskowski & Dan Boulger Hosted by Alex Giampapa
665 SALEM ST., MALDEN | 8PM | $20 FRI 10.06
THE GAS! @ GREAT SCOTT
featuring: Vally D, Jeff Smith, Jake Fromm, Courtney Reynolds & Alex JustAlex Hosted by Rob Crean
1222 COMMONWEALTH AVE., ALLSTON | 7PM | $5 FRI 10.06
JOE MACHI @ LAUGH BOSTON
Since taking 4th place on Last Comic Standing’s 8th season, Joe Machi has been busy touring the United States as a headlining stand-up comedian. He has performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and has become a regular on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News. (Also, 2 shows Sat)
425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $29 SAT 10.08
BOB MARLEY @ THE WILBUR
Bob Marley is one of the hottest and most sought-after comedians in the country. He has been featured in his own special on Comedy Central, and is one of the few comics to do the complete late- night TV circuit: “The Late Show” with David Letterman, “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, “Late Night” with Conan O’Brien and “The Late Late Show” with Craig Ferguson and Craig Kilborn.
246 TREMONT ST., BOSTON | 7PM | $29 SUN 10.08
LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW
Featuring Boston Comedy Festival Winner Drew Dunn & more
15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 TUE 10.10
COMEDY NIGHT @ CAPO SUPPER CLUB Hosted by Will Noonan
443 W. BROADWAY, SOUTH BOSTON | 8PM | FREE MON 10.09
FREE COMEDY @ CITYSIDE
Featuring: Nick Vatterott (Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Comedy Central), Amber Nelson (Tru TV, Netflix, Girl Code) & more Hosted by Sam Ike and Anjan Biswas
1960 BEACON ST., BRIGHTON | 8PM | FREE TUE 10.10
COMEDY NIGHT @ MCGREEVY’S
Hosted by Luke Touma and Brian Higginbottom
911 BOYLSTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | FREE
CHECK BOSTONCOMEDYSHOWS.COM FOR MORE LISTINGS 22
10.05.17 - 10.12.17 |
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WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM
HEADLINING THIS WEEK!
Joe Machi
Comedy Central Friday + Saturday
COMING SOON Gotch Yer Nose Comedy Benefit
Featuring: Steven Wright + many others Special Engagement: Sun, Oct 8
City Winery Presents: Eilen Jewell Special Engagement: Tues, Oct 10
THE WAY WE WEREN’T BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM
John Heffron
Winner of Last Comic Standing Oct 12-14
Andy Gross
Comedian, magician + ventriloquist Special Engagement: Sun, Oct 15
OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET
Dan Soder Sirius XM’s The Bonfire, Showtime’s Billions Oct 19-21 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US
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