Do back politicians calling for immediate national living wage checks and Medicare for All
Jason Pramas
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Protest
A NOTE ON THE CURRENT ANTI-WAR PROTESTS
Following the US assassination of a high-ranking Iranian commander
MARCHING SEASON: JOIN THE RALLY FOR RENT CONTROL
Mass State House, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm
Twenty-five years after the real estate industry destroyed rent control in Massachusetts, marching season is upon us. A call to arms has been raised by tenant organizations across the land and real estate interests are being pushed back for the first time in decades. So, it’s past time that renters around the Bay State join the fight for housing justice in great numbers.
As we do, we will be in good company. In New York, according to the New York Times, a new Democratic majority in the state legislature recently expanded existing rent control protections that “would allow cities and towns statewide to fashion their own regulations, which are meant to keep apartments affordable by limiting rent increases.” And would also “make the changes permanent—a major victory for tenant activists who have had to lobby Albany every few years when the old laws expired.”
In California, the Times reports that its lawmakers approved a bill in September that “limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation and offers new barriers to eviction.” Following Oregon, which “became the first [state] to pass statewide rent control, limiting increases to 7 percent annually plus inflation.”
And on the presidential campaign trail, Bernie Sanders is calling for a national rent control standard.
Now political support is growing for a bill (H.3924, the Tenant Protection Act) introduced by State Reps. Mike Connolly and Nika Elugardo and aimed at effectively reversing the real estate industry-funded referendum of 1994—Question 9—that banned rent control statewide. Providing “municipalities with the authority to implement rent-stabilizing regulations, just cause eviction protections, stronger condominium conversion and foreclosure protections, anti-displacement zones, and options to help tenants manage the upfront costs of leasing an apartment,” according to a post on Connolly’s blog.
This in a period when Democrats are starting to see renters as an important voting bloc in the upcoming 2020 presidential election, and real estate industry propaganda about the virtues of ever-skyrocketing rents are sounding increasingly hollow to tens of millions of beleaguered renters nationwide. Many of whom are hemmed in economically—stuck in unstable, low-paying contingent jobs without benefits, slammed by credit card debt accrued in a desperate attempt to make ends meet, and terribly burdened with student loan debt. Seemingly as punishment for attempting to better themselves with the advanced education society has traditionally said is the path to a better life. While being only one significant accident or illness away from crushing debt for health care—including debt for dental care that is rarely properly covered by public or private health plans.
So, many candidates for local office in Bay State cities that had rent control between 1970 and 1994 are going on record in support of its reinstitution this year. Including a majority of at-large city council candidates in Boston—in a hotly contested race. A majority of city council candidates in Cambridge… notably democratic socialist Ben Simon, whose family lost rent control and got evicted when he was a child, according to the Cambridge Day. Both mayoral candidates and a majority of sitting city councilors in Somerville (which had rent control until 1979, when it was eliminated by fiat of the old Board of Aldermen).
But, in a sign of the times, they are being joined by politicians in municipalities that never had rent control… most recently Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera—who is talking publicly about the need to stabilize rents and has just appointed a rent control task force in his city. Even as legislators from across the Commonwealth have signed onto Connolly’s and Elugardo’s bill.
None of this groundswell is powerful enough to push such a bill—and several other renter-friendly housing bills Connolly, Elugardo, and their allies have filed—to passage while real estate industry friendly pols like House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Gov. Charlie Baker run state government. But the mere fact of the suite of pro-tenant housing bills reaching their first committees as the zeitgeist waxes populist marks the start of what looks to be one of the toughest political battles in recent memory hereabouts.
The perspicacious pair of legislators clearly know this and have worked with tenant-friendly organizations and select local politicians to call a Rally for Rent Control and Tenant Protections, next Tuesday, Oct 29, noon-1:30 pm at the Massachusetts State House. As of this writing, the action is co-sponsored by City Life/Vida Urbana, Chinese Progressive Association, Lynn United for Change, Mass Coalition for the Homeless, Boston Democratic Socialists of America, Socialist Alternative, Cambridge Residents Alliance, A Better Cambridge, Our Revolution Cambridge, Right to the City—Boston, Our Revolution Somerville, and Progressive Massachusetts. Elected officials confirmed to attend include Brookline Select Board Member Raul Fernandez (representing a town that also had rent control until 1994); Cambridge City Councilor Quinton Zondervan; Chelsea City Council President Damali Vidot; Somerville City Councilors Matt McLaughlin, JT Scott, and Ben Ewen-Campen; and Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone.
Yes, it’s just one rally. The first of many, to be sure. And naturally, any bill calling for rent control faces a steep uphill slog through a still-hostile legislature. But every tenant who knows that the rent is “too damn high”—to quote a famously zany New York political candidate who won eternal fame thanks to a Saturday Night Live sketch based on his timely slogan—needs to go to this rally. And bring all your friends. If you do, this can be the start of the [M]ass movement that will change everything.
I will be there. Earlier this year, I wrote about how I lost my rent-controlled apartment after Question 9 passed by a thin margin in 1994—and how that loss made my life, and the lives of thousands of fellow working people who also got screwed by the real estate industry across in Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge, much more difficult economically and politically over the years that followed than they would have otherwise been.
A quarter century later, I am still struggling with stratospherically high rent that burns through about 50% of my income monthly.
Even though I get a better deal as an older long-term tenant than younger people in my building get. In the same Cambridge neighborhood where I once paid under 20% of my income for rent. And even though I co-own a metro newspaper.
I’m supposed to have finally made it to the middle class—my six-figure higher education debt and other very standard debt taken as given in this era of runaway capitalism. But I haven’t. I have no savings. My marriage to a person with a somewhat better job doesn’t save me and doesn’t make it any more possible for the two of us to buy even a small condo anywhere near where either of us work. Nor can we afford extra rent for a less miniature apartment.
So I’m going to the Rally for Rent Control and Tenant Protections. And I’m telling all my friends—including all of you, my reading audience—to join me there.
It won’t be an easy fight. But it’s marching season. And as I fought against the destruction of rent control a quarter century back, I’m damned well going to join with renters all over the state to force its reinstatement—together with a host of new housing reforms—this time. And we’re going to win. Because we have to win. More homelessness, economic insecurity, and deepening human misery is simply not an option. Not if this nation is going to remain a democracy.
Apparent Horizon—recipient of 2018 and 2019 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Political Column Awards—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s executive director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.
TOO MANY COPS
Some thoughts about last Saturday’s counterprotest
EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON JOINS MOVEMENT TO SLOW GLOBAL WARMING
Calls for regional consortium of news outlets to improve and expand climate change coverage
Last month, during the fearsome heat wave that saw Boston temperatures soar to 98 degrees Fahrenheit for two days in a row, 400 chickens died in New Hampshire.
According to the Boston Globe, they succumbed to “heatstroke at Vernon Family Farm in Newfields, N.H., around 5 p.m. Saturday when the temperature peaked and the farm could not save them…” The article went on to explain that temperatures got up to 90 degrees in Newfields that day. But chickens cannot take heat over 106 degrees. And, despite the best efforts of the farm staff to keep them cool, the birds expired.
A New Hampshire Union Leader article provided more detail. Farm owner Jeremiah Vernon said that the heat index (a measure of how hot it really feels when relative humidity is factored in with the actual air temperature) on his farm just after 5 p.m. on July 20 when the chickens died was over 110 degrees—and added that another southern NH farm lost 300 chickens the same day. He also mentioned that “the farm has spent about $2,000 to buy generators and circulation fans to help prevent illness in the event of another summer heat wave.” Something he had obviously never had to consider over the farm’s previous 10 years of operation. Several of which were each the hottest years on record in turn worldwide.
As 2018 was. And 2019 may be. June was the hottest month on record. And then July was, too. Global average temperatures are continuing to climb. Month by month. Year by year. There is some fluctuation. Some cooler months and years. But only cooler relative to the ever-hotter new normal. The general trend is upward. And the speed of that climb is accelerating.
Even so, the death of hundreds of chickens from overheating was an unusual enough occurrence to be worth reporting in major New England newspapers. But apparently not alarming enough to mention the role that global warming is playing in increasing the number and severity of hot days summer by summer. Despite happening in the same month that the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report, “Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of Dangerously Hot Days.” Which used the best available scientific data to make the following predictions for New Hampshire:
Historically, there have been three days per year on average with a heat index above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This would increase to 23 days per year on average by midcentury and 49 by the century’s end. Limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit] above pre-industrial levels could reduce the frequency of such days to 17 per year on average.
By the end of the century, an estimated 970,000 people would be exposed to a heat index above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the equivalent of two months or more per year. By limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius, all residents would avoid such days of extreme conditions.
Historically, there have been zero days per year on average with a heat index above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This would increase to six days per year on average by midcentury and 19 by the century’s end. Of the cities with a population of 50,000 or more in the state, Dover and Nashua would experience the highest frequency of these days. Limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would cap the frequency of such days at two per year on average.
Both the Globe and the Union Leader wrote articles highlighting the report’s findings, to their credit. But neither article echoed the Union of Concerned Scientists’ oft-repeated point that only limiting temperature rise 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels can prevent such calamitous outcomes. And neither publication mentioned global warming as a likely causal factor in the death of the chickens—given that the heat index got up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit the day the doomed birds perished—in their coverage of that story. Even though the UCS report states that the historic average number of days with a heat index over 100 in New Hampshire is “zero.”
This year there was at least one such day. So that isn’t normal. And although it’s difficult to peg particular weather events to global warming, it is thus definitely worth mentioning the strong possibility of a connection in this case. For a very good reason beyond the importance of keeping the societal discussion of global warming going hereabouts: The birds’ deaths add to a growing mountain of evidence that global warming is already beginning to threaten food production.
Like it or not, chickens are an important part of our food supply. But increasingly severe weather caused by a swiftly-heating planet is triggering major floods, major droughts, devastating wind storms, vast wildfires, and the spread of once-tropical insects and diseases—all of which harm crops and food animals, and put our future food security at risk. As sea level rise is starting to impinge on growing lands in low-lying areas. Making the NH chickens the equivalent of canaries in a coal mine when it comes to warning us of the looming danger to planetary food supplies—and highlighting a major problem with allowing average temperatures to continue spiraling skyward.
However, the planet is not getting hotter on its own. It is heating up because governments and major corporations are allowing the amount of carbon that human civilization is burning in the form of oil, gas, and coal to continue to increase. Putting more and more carbon dioxide—the main greenhouse gas—into the atmosphere every year. Despite those same governments and corporations paying lip service to the importance of decreasing the amount of carbon we burn. While the scientific consensus is now agreeing that the only way for our civilization—and perhaps humanity itself—to survive the rolling apocalypse that is human-induced global warming is to bring the net amount of carbon emissions (after somehow deploying carbon capture technologies on an industrial scale) to zero by 2030. A mere decade hence.
Yet in June, Bloomberg reported that “Global carbon emissions jumped the most in seven years in 2018 as energy demand surged, according to BP’s annual review of world energy…” So even huge climate criminal multinationals are aware that carbon emissions have continued to climb unabated—except for a short period after the 2008 financial collapse when manufacturing and transport slowed for a time across the globe.
All of which is to say that journalists need to do a much better job of covering global warming and its many dangerous effects. Too many stories like the sad premature death of the NH chickens do relate to climate change. But that critical angle too often goes unmentioned. And people then go about their daily lives thinking that global warming is something that will only affect humans in the far future or not at all.
WBUR just ran an interesting story on a network of major news outlets in Florida—a traditionally conservative state gradually coming to a political consensus that climate change is real—that have committed to collaborative coverage of the very obvious and constant effects of global warming in that low-lying subtropical farm state. Reporters and editors at those operations have decided that it’s their responsibility to work together to give this most dangerous of crises the constant attention it deserves.
And that’s clearly something that we need to do here in New England.
Especially in the Bay State, where the Union of Concerned Scientists projections are even more dire: “Historically, the heat index has topped 90 degrees in Massachusetts seven days a year, on average.” But if there is no global action to significantly lower carbon emissions, that number would increase to “an average of 33 days per year by mid-century and 62 by century’s end.” Furthermore, the Commonwealth “currently averages no days when the heat index tops 100 degrees,” but without changes to global emissions that figure would rise to “10 days by mid-century and 26 days by century’s end.”
So I’m writing to commit DigBoston to three things.
First, this publication is going on record in joining the environmental movement aimed at slowing human-induced global warming—stopping it no longer being possible. My colleagues and I accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is a terminal threat to Earth’s biosphere and to our species.
Second, we will strive to run more and better coverage of global warming in our own pages. And we will do everything we can to provide regular information on ways people can join together to build the movement to mitigate it.
Third, we are declaring our desire to help start a consortium of news outlets interested in working collectively to improve and expand coverage of global warming in New England. Alternatively, we will happily join an existing effort along those lines, should one we’re unaware of be underway.
Environmental journalists interested in writing for us—and environmental activists and organizations that wish to submit op-eds—are invited to email Chris Faraone and me with pitches at editorial@digboston.com.
And editors, publishers, and producers of news outlets interested in starting talks aimed at creating a reporting consortium on global warming in New England are strongly encouraged to contact us at the same email address.
We’re all overdue to take such steps. But journalists in the northeastern US can help change a lot more hearts and minds about the need to make slowing climate change a societal priority, if we work together.
Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.
A WORD ABOUT RICH KIDS IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
(And in oppositional politics in general) For Earth Day, I’d like to write in brief about an internal dilemma the environmental movement is facing. Because if activist campaigns […]
FAIR HOUSING WHACKED: TUFTS STUDENTS FIGHT ADMIN PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH “CLASSIST” DORM SYSTEM
December 5, 2018 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS More than 200 Tufts University students, faculty, and allies from surrounding communities held a march and demonstration last week to protest […]
AFTER PITTSBURGH: HOW WE DEFEAT THE HARD RIGHT
![Photo by Brad Fagan (IMG_0119) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://digboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Boston_2017_Womens_MarchIMG_0119_32389345611-1024x683.jpg)
October 31, 2018
BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS
In August 2017, over 40,000 Bostonians marched on Boston Common to tell a small gaggle of nearly incoherent hard-right louts that they were not welcome in our city. Especially in the wake of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the murder of a left-wing counterdemonstrator by a young Nazi. At the time, I was concerned that by drawing too much attention to the tiny affair, protestors risked giving the local hard right more power than they deserved—and helping them grow their numbers in the process. But I understood why so many people reacted so viscerally to it, and supported their decision to call what turned out to be one of the largest political actions of any kind in Hub history against it.
With Saturday’s slaughter of 11 older parishioners at a Jewish house of worship in Pittsburgh by a heavily armed, raving anti-Semite—literally screaming for the death of all Jews—we’re not precisely entering a new era. After all, we’ve seen a number of mass shootings by the same kind of white guy in the brief period since Boston’s big protest against hate. Including the killing of two African-Americans in a Louisville, Kentucky Kroger supermarket just three days before the Steel City incident. But events are starting to look increasingly similar to the dawn of an earlier era. The Nazi era. And any moderately well-educated adult that failed to hear the shattering glass of Kristallnacht in the bullet casings that hit the floor of the Tree of Life synagogue as the killer pumped lead into the bodies of innocents has learned precisely nothing from history.
So, I think it would have been appropriate for Bostonians from all walks of life to call an even larger rally this week than last year’s to take up an old slogan, “Never Again,” in memory of the honored dead of Pittsburgh. And to put all latter-day Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists on warning that we will not allow them to take control of Boston, or Massachusetts, or the United States.
However, the Red Sox won the World Series the day after the attack. Making it less likely that the kind of rally we need—a show of force that would inspire people around the nation—will happen here in this critical moment.
Which is a pity. Since this is one killing spree that we can absolutely blame President Donald Trump for instigating with his disgusting and completely fallacious attacks on the caravan of asylum-seeking refugees fleeing government persecution in countries like Honduras and poverty in general.
As Adam Serwer put it in an excellent Atlantic piece (“Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This”), “The Tree of Life shooter criticized Trump for not being racist or anti-Semitic enough. But with respect to the caravan, the shooter merely followed the logic of the president and his allies: He was willing to do whatever was necessary to prevent an ‘invasion’ of Latinos planned by perfidious Jews, a treasonous attempt to seek ‘the destruction of American society and culture.’
“The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election.”
So Trump needs to pay a political price for his propagandizing in the service of increasing the right-wing turnout on the sixth of November. And a lot of big protest rallies—perhaps galvanized by a successful Boston action—right before one of the most important elections in decades would have gone a long way toward exacting that price where it hurts him the most.
But it was not to be this time around. Which is OK. As there is a lot more that people of good conscience can do to deflect the rise of the hard right before they become strong enough to take more direct and long-term control of significant American political institutions… and start legally murdering their opponents in great numbers. Because if there’s one attribute that Nazis and fascists and white supremacists have in common, it’s a thirst for the blood of their many enemies. As such, they must be defeated politically—and defeated definitively—by people from across the compassionate political spectrum to forestall that possibility from ever becoming a reality. While they are still a small force relative to the population.
Before I continue, though, let me just lay out a couple of ideas that are important to any discussion of defeating the hard right.
First, the perpetrators of the recent wave of deadly attacks on African-Americans and now Jews (and other targeted groups) aren’t crazy. Sure, they have psychiatric issues. Lots of people do. But they’re generally quite clear about what they’re doing and why. And they are not lone nuts. They are soldiers. Even if they’re not members of a hard-right organization.
Second, the attacks these killers are carrying out are not random. Even if, as with the recent massacre, some of them seem to be done on the spur of the moment. They are part of a strategy. The killers are not generally the authors of that strategy. Hard-right leaders are. The strategy and the tactics that comprise it are laid out every day across thousands of channels of communication—most obviously social media discussions. The basic directive of the strategy is to attack “soft targets”—unarmed people who are members of groups deemed enemies by Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists. To kill as many of those people as possible. To spread fear in those enemy communities and beyond. And, most importantly, to encourage an armed response from those communities and/or their allies.
Allies like young left-wing activists who sometimes put on on masks and try to defend vulnerable communities. Often called “antifa” rightly or wrongly. And demonized by right-wing pundits up to and including Trump as some kind of massive army ready to undermine the very foundations of our republic. Which is purest fantasy. But absolutely a truism in current right-wing circles… be they hard or soft.
The goal of the strategy is to trigger a civil war. Which the hard right—being armed and trained and having infiltrated the military and many police forces for decades—fully expects to win. Once it’s won, democracy can be replaced with dictatorship. And the bloodbath they so desire can begin.
To stop that strategy from succeeding, the overwhelming majority of Americans and immigrant residents that are not on the hard right must out-organize them politically. And here we arrive at the work that everyone can do. Whatever walk of life you come from. Whatever your background is. Whatever age you are.
Study. If you don’t have a basic grounding in history and politics relevant to the fight at hand, get one. If you’re rusty, brush up. We have lots of great public libraries and bookstores in the Boston area. Use them. Look for works by academics and researchers recognized as experts in their fields. If you need suggestions, ask librarians and bookstore clerks. If you need formal instruction, and you’re not a student, enroll in courses at adult education centers and community colleges. If that’s too expensive—or as an adjunct to coursework—form study groups with friends, read key texts together, and discuss them.
Organize. Either start or join political groups that are committed to democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and tolerance for the broad array of political, economic, religious, social, and cultural views that don’t involve slaughtering other people. If you’re launching one in your community, and you already started a study group, you can build your organization out of that. It’s also great to start chapters of existing organizations. Definitely don’t “reinvent the wheel” unless you have to. Whether you decide to work with an existing political party or start your own is purely up to you. Political groups can do a lot of useful work outside of political parties. You can also both join or start a political party and join or start extraparliamentary political organizations. Just don’t spread yourself too thin.
Educate. You’ve got some knowledge. You’re doing political organizing. Now get out there and talk to as many people as you can. Hold public educational events on important issues of the day. In election years, hold candidate forums and panel discussions on referendum questions. The important thing is that you don’t just do this in neighborhoods already friendly to your core ideas. Go to places that the harder edge of the right wing is known to dominate. Talk up your positions. Spread the word that there is more than one way to think about the world. Also, work with democracy-friendly media outlets (like BINJ and DigBoston). Write opinion pieces for publication. Get on talk shows. Start your own news outlets if necessary. At least a blog and a podcast can be a great start. Use social media judiciously. Build an audience carefully, and encourage its members to join your organization.
Debate. This is key. Constantly engage in debate with the broad right wing. You may not exactly win hearts and minds every time. But you may very well stop run-of-the-mill conservatives from turning into hard-right fanatics. You will also learn more about their ideas in conversation than most anything you could glean from your readings. And you will learn to better express your own ideas through practice under some duress.
Mobilize. Defend and expand democracy through direct political action. Hold rallies, marches, and pickets against the hard right. Don’t let vulnerable communities struggle alone. Join with them. Work with them. Meet the threat of violence with determined nonviolence. Then beat politicians that support the hard right at the ballot box.
Build. Establish small- and large-scale institutions that enshrine democratic values and make them part of everyday life. Social clubs. Sports facilities. Cultural centers. Institutes. For the long haul.
In short, create the more democratic society that you want to live in. Run the hard right to ground with the force of your ideas and the people you mobilize politically. Not with guns. Make it impossible for Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists to find significant audiences for their rhetoric of hate for the foreseeable future. And you will have won.
We will all have won.
NOTE: Since this article went to press, a rally has been called for tomorrow (Thursday, November 1) at 6pm at the New England Holocaust Memorial next to Faneuil Hall. Boston Shiva: Rally Against Antisemitism and White Supremacy. Full info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/330051917546731/. Check it out!
Apparent Horizon—winner of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2018 Best Political Column award—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.
HERALD READERS RESPOND TO ANTIFA COVERAGE
August 21, 2018
BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS
Spoiler alert: anti-nazis are somehow nazis
On Saturday, a few hundred left-wing activists showed up to protest a tiny ultra-right wing protest held on City Hall Plaza around the anniversary of last year’s tiny ultra-right wing protest on Boston Common. That earlier action being completely dwarfed by the tens of thousands of people that turned out in opposition to the racist and fascist views of its organizers. This year, many counterprotestors hailed from Black Lives Matter, Stand Against Hate-Boston, and the Boston Democratic Socialists of America. And their mobilization was just as successful as the previous one in putting the wannabe master race to flight (to the suitably distant summit of Breed’s Hill where they briefly screamed at the stone monument patriotically named for an adjacent hill… dogged by some of their antagonists).
There are certainly times when people need to stand up against the ultra right. This demo was one of them. So the counterprotestors are to be commended. Although I still stand by my column of last year in which I explained why I’d like to see left activists focus more on positive political organizing than reactive street actions.
To my point, however, I have long made a habit of reading comments on online articles. From which I often glean a good deal of useful information. And I naturally expect a certain amount of gonzo earthiness from the often anonymous wags who weigh in on issues of the day. But whenever anti-fascist activists are in the news, I note that the insanity ratchets up by an order of magnitude. And responses to such coverage contain more than the usual share of genuinely disturbing views. Nowhere is this more true in the local press than in the comment sections of Boston Herald articles.
So I thought it would be… um… let’s call it educational to choose the best of the worst online comments made on the Herald’s quite reasonable piece on the weekend’s protest and counterprotest, and dissect them in the public interest. The authors’ names—real or otherwise—have been changed to initials so as not to further embarrass the clueless.
“PC”
Clowns? No..Patriots standing against Leftist Anti-Free Speech… Anti-Constitution… Anti-Life… Anti-Freedom… Anti-Constitutional Republic Useful Idiot Communists.. look at the Soviet Flags in the Photos…..who act like Racist Brown Shirt Nazis crushing free speech… attacking those who disagree with them violently… That is what the Nazi SA (Brown Shirts) did in the 1930s Germany…as they call the oposition Nazis…
So, the ultra-right wingers who are happy to exercise their free speech rights against freedom are for freedom? And the left-wingers who exercise their free speech rights to protest people against freedom are anti-freedom? And left-wingers’ willingness to physically defend communities under threat from the ultra-right makes them the violent ones? As opposed to the ultra-right networks that are the only one of the two sides racking up death counts in the US in recent memory? And the left-wingers are the nazis?! Okely dokely…
“MF”
Boston: once young Patriots met under a huge pine tree – to plot a course of Freedom from the tyranny of an English King – and his Parliament,…Saturday young fools with no concept of God, History, or world events think they marched to squash and shut down “Hate Speech”… They are Soros’s expendable cannon fodder, acting EXACTLY like Hitler’s Sturmabteilung!
First, the Liberty Tree that this post is definitely referencing was an elm. Second… what?!
“RC”
Until we redefine the terms ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’, white people will not have free speech in this country. This is obvious from multiple news articles.
Well, it’s obvious from multiple online ravings anyway.
“BD”
Awful reporting. Conveniently left out the part where free speech activists averted violence by marching to Bunker Hill Monument where we held a very successsful rally, opposed only by a tiny handful of screechy Black Lives Matter activists.
This is apparently a post from one of the ultra-right protest organizers referencing the out-of-the-way location that said protestors scurried off to after being heavily outnumbered by counterprotestors at their original rally site. And trying to make lemonade out of the lemons of abject failure. Pobrecito…
“SM”
Haha so CLEVER Alexi! Poor thing, you’re one of those that paid to be brainwashed by a “professor-former screw the man 60’s hippie” weren’t you? Trumps free speech group. Haha.
That’s liberalism/socialism today. Just like Kristallnacht In Germany circa the1930’s , scream and yell and intimidate those who don’t agree with you. Same as the Nazis, like I said. Look at that red headed idiot all worked up in the photo. Here’s what the hippy professors and mommy never told you; you CAN lose in life. You did in 2016, will this year and so will the former Boston Herald, which is now a pop up ad space barely readable online and the Globe’s “Fredo Corleone”
An attack on the Herald reporter. And on college education in general. Conflates liberalism (which in both its original meaning, and in today’s parlance, generally indicates support for capitalism) with socialism (which indicates support for workers owning the means of production). Compares counterprotestors to nazis (sense a theme?). Concludes with amusing shot at the Herald. C+ for effort.
“FC”
The antifa aholes use the same tactics as the pre-war German socialists did. Their brilliant propaganda minister felt they had to “control the streets”. This kind of violence was new then, and effective. Devious manipulation got a certain demented leader in power, but it’s not going to work now. We’ve seen this crappy movie before. Also, next Free Speech Rally, I’m gonna be there.
Assuming this poster means pre-WWII here. He seems to think that the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) had a propaganda minister who wanted to control the streets during the two brief periods when it led the Weimar Republic. Sounds a lot more like a certain nazi propaganda chief of the same period—who only became Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in 1933. Which might explain why he’s blaming “socialists” for the rise of the nazis. Perhaps he means “national socialists.” Whatever. Anyhow, while it is true that SPD members controlled a fighting group catchily dubbed the Black, Red, Gold Banner of the Reich with as many as three million members by the 1930s to combat the Nazi Party’s SA on their right (with two million members by 1933) and the Communist Party’s Red Front Fighters’ League on their left (with 130,000 members at the time of their banning in 1929), neither they nor the communists actually mobilized their troops against the ascension of the nazis to power. Therefore, don’t think we’re watching the same “crappy movie” at all. Also doubt the poster will be at the next sad little “rally” for herp and also derp.
“DO”
Wonder how much money Soros spent funding these miscreants
None. Arch-capitalist George Soros doesn’t typically give money to anti-capitalists, and doesn’t fund every smallish American rally to the left of Trump in either this or alternate dimensions.
“LA”
You forgot “Pravda”, the fake news in this country engages in this Nazi style “reporting” daily.
And they are proud of it. Both sides are allowed by our Constitution to have their say in the public square, one side does so peacefully, the other side wearing masks and weiding weapons taunts them and attacks them. All the violence at these rallies is innitiated by one side and the fake media villifies the peaceful protestors. It’s all “Alice in Wonderland” stuff. Engals would be so proud of them.
This poster starts by comparing the American press of today with the Soviet Union’s main state propaganda organ. Not entirely false equivalence considering the frequently submissive behavior of the top echelons of that press—especially the New York Times and the Washington Post—in the service of the billionaires that effectively control the US government. But not true of all journalists or of independent news outlets like this one. The rest of the post infers that the left-wing counterprotestors are the violent side and that local news media is being unfair to the ultra-right wing protestors in not reporting that imaginary. We’re certainly through the looking glass with this one; so the Alice in Wonderland reference is unintentionally apt. Not sure who this “Engals” person is, though. But I’d like to buy them a vowel.
“AS”
The lack of press coverage of the Communists is really horrifying. That a regime that murdered many more people in support of an evil ideology than the Nazis did is openly supported on the streets of Boston, and is treated by the press and the left as the good guys, is outrageous & scary.
This poster is rehashing the roundly refuted figures promulgated by the anti-communist lead author of The Black Book of Communism a couple decades back. A person so desperate to make the total number of deaths supposedly caused by communism between 1917 and the book’s publication in 1997 reach 100 million people—and outnumber the death toll from capitalism (and, not coincidentally, nazism) in the same period—that he made a bunch of highly questionable editorial decisions. Like including the estimated death tolls of famines in communist nations in his total, but ignoring the much larger estimated death tolls of famines in capitalist nations—notably India, as famed left scholar Noam Chomsky subsequently pointed out using economist Amartya Sen’s numbers as that nation dropped its socialist pretensions. Communist governments certainly killed many innocent people during the period in question, but the thrust of this comment seems to be that nazism isn’t so bad after all. Right? Yikes.
MEMORIAL DAY NOTES
Peace actions, Harvest Co-op needs help
May 31, 2018
BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS
So I’m writing on a holiday weekend that began with my joining DigBoston and Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism colleague Chris Faraone in having some fairly nasty dental work. What better excuse, then, for doing some brief dispatches this time out instead of the single topic I typically focus on with an Apparent Horizon column?
Peace activists arrested at Hanscom AFB
After allowing the planet to breathe a collective sigh of relief for a few weeks on the Armageddon front, President Donald Trump just tossed away his Nobel prize prospects by cancelling a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over some nonsense or other. [No wait, maybe it’s back on now! Or not. Whatever. Moving on to my point …] But it turns out Bostonians had little reason to relax anyway. Because nearby Hanscom Air Force Base is now the home to the Program Executive Office for Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3).
According to the Hanscom website, the NC3 unit “executes a portfolio of 17 programs valued at $1.2B over the FYDP that provide survivable and endurable communications for the nuclear enterprise. Additionally, the directorate is responsible for integrating over 60 individual nuclear command and control communications systems that underpin and enable nuclear deterrent operations.”
Clever though it may be that the military can develop communications systems that can survive nuclear attacks, humanity cannot. Since there are very few plausible scenarios in which “limited” nuclear strikes of the type that the Trump administration has spoken casually about will not escalate into an all-out conflagration. And with NC3 in such close proximity to Boston, we can now expect at least one more nuclear warhead to be added to the several with which our city will be hit in the event of World War III.
Which is why six peace activists got arrested protesting it over the weekend, according to the Lowell Sun. John Back, of Arlington and the Cambridge Friends Meeting; Laura Evans, of Unitarian Universalist Society of Rockport; Pat Ferrone, of St. Susanna Parish in Dedham; and Dan McLaughlin, of Cambridge; Jerald Ross of Chelmsford, and Massachusetts Peace Action; John Schuchardt, of the House of Peace in Ipswich, and Veterans for Peace were busted for attempting to deliver a critical letter to the Hanscom base commander.
In an op-ed in the Metrowest Daily News, Mass Peace Action leader Cole Harrison points out that “the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Hanscom area Congressional Reps. Seth Moulton, Katherine Clark, and Niki Tsongas, have expressed support for the DoD’s decision to house the NC3 program in the heart of residential Massachusetts.”
Not cool.
To join Mass Peace Action and affiliated organizations in putting heat on such feckless congresspeople, and the military-industrial complex that convinces them to support the suicidal expansion of America’s nuclear “warfighting” capability, plug in at masspeaceaction.org/act/.
Protest links war economy and homeless vets
In a related action, the Poor People’s Campaign took to the Boston Common on Monday to protest a federal government that increases spending for war while cutting money for social programs—resulting in, ironically, more veterans becoming homeless.
The event featured 30 red tents that symbolized the situation, and speakers addressing topics ranging from gun violence to racism, according to the Boston Globe.
A full slate of oppositional activities is underway. To get involved, go to the campaign’s national website at poorpeoplescampaign.org or connect to its eastern Massachusetts chapter at facebook.com/pg/emappc.
Member-run markets in trouble
The Harvest Co-op grocery stores have been losing money for years and are now in danger of closing, according to the Cambridge Day and the Jamaica Plain News. Like other cooperative markets, members pay with investment and sweat equity to provide groceries for themselves at a discount. Shoppers who are not members pay full freight. But membership in Harvest, which was founded in 1974, has been trending downward for some time—from 4,000 in 2012 to 3,200 this spring.
In a recent email, Harvest leadership urged members “to take some obvious steps such as using the co-op for more shopping, especially by buying more bulk items, prepared foods, supplements and body care items; urging more people to switch to Co-op shopping; and paying cash.” They also asked them to buy a $200 gift card and not use it for two years.
It remains to be seen if such measures can help close a $300,000 funding gap before the cooperative is expected to start closing its stores in August. But now would be a good time for new folks interested in helping out to consider becoming members. Interested readers can join Harvest at harvestcoop.com/membership.
Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.
DigBoston has gone on record joining the movement to abolish nuclear weapons.
Editorial Note: Op-eds wanted. A quick reminder to DigBoston fans. We’re always looking for 500-700 word opinion articles from those of you who work with local organizations trying to make life better for Bostonians in tangible ways. Either politically, socially, artistically, or culturally. If there’s some important doing that you think the Dig audience should know about, then send finished drafts to editorial@digboston.com. Hate groups, naturally, need not apply. And fair warning that public relations and marketing hacks who think this is an invitation to send us more bullshit than they already do daily will be mercilessly mocked. And bottom feeders who try to get us to run “articles” that are really ads will be invited to to pay us $10,000 for each “placement”—and informed that we’ll surround their copy with “THIS IS A FUCKING AD” legends in some giant ugly font should they ever be stupid enough to pony up that much lucre.
—Jason