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VOL 18 + ISSUE 38

SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 - SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 EDITORIAL PUBLISHER + EDITOR Jeff lawrence NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COPY EDITOR Mitchell Dewar CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Emily Hopkins, Jason Pramas CONTRIBUTORS Nate Boroyan, Renan Fontes, Bill Hayduke, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Jason Pramas, Dave Wedge INTERNS Becca DeGregorio, Anna Marketti

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HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

DEAR READER Where do we go from here? Hillary is a progressive nightmare and Donald is progressively insane.

Gary doesn’t know what Aleppo is and Jill is… well, Jill. Every time I have a conversation with someone about the political landscape, the song remains the same: No one seems to be voting for anyone they truly believe in. It’s the lesser of two evils, the anticandidate, or the third party mantra. It’s never about an undeniable conviction.

That says a lot about where we’re at politically and personally. We’re a fractured, confused, despondent populace. We don’t have faith in our politicians nor our government, and while we may be committed to voting, we’re all leaving the option open to that last moment because anything can change at any moment. That’s an unfortunate conclusion to our ever-degrading confidence in American democracy, and the end result is that we’re at the point of voting simply out of spite. The founding fathers would be proud of that. Not. Over the next six weeks, we’ll be covering more and more politics, as is the norm, but we’ll be doing so with a serious indignation toward the options before us—but only on a national level. On the local level, however, it’s not nearly as dire. In fact, it’s quite optimistic, considering we have the ability to advance progressive thinking and meaningful change. So please don’t despair over the three stooges we’re facing nationally. The local stooges deserve so much more attention.

Robert Kelly

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NEWS US AUTONOMOUS PROFITEERING NEWS TO US

Corporate networks enlist Mayor Walsh to help them sell self-driving cars ... and eliminate jobs

When seemingly random things happen in city government, they’re always worth a second look. Which was certainly the case last week when Mayor Marty Walsh announced a new partnership between the City of Boston, the World Economic Forum, and the Boston Consulting Group to test self-driving cars—aka autonomous vehicles—on city streets.

The stated goal is “a year-long engagement focused on creating policy recommendations and supporting on-street testing of autonomous vehicles … to advance the safety, access and sustainability goals identified by the public during the Go Boston 2030 transportation planning process.”

The rationale—“building on prior World Economic Forum research into Personal Mobility and Self-Driving Vehicles, conducted in partnership with The Boston Consulting Group, and the Future of Cities”—is framed primarily in terms of ending urban traffic congestion, reducing carbon emissions linked to global warming, and reducing poverty.

Sounds like a worthy endeavor, right? Perhaps in a better world. But not the way this technology is being rolled out. Or, more precisely, the way it’s being shoved down the public’s throat. Despite being one of the leastmentioned transit options by residents participating in the aforementioned Go Boston 2030 process—appearing with similar frequency to waggish questions like, “When can I fly around the city like the Jetsons?”—it’s suddenly a policy priority.

Put bluntly, this plan has all the makings of yet another corporate boondoggle. This time on an international scale with profound implications at the local level. Think Boston 2024 on steroids. A passing glance at the players tells the tale.

The World Economic Forum is an extremely powerful network of the global capitalist elite. They work handin-glove with the leaders of every major industry to ensure that the rich and powerful get ever more rich and powerful—and democracy be damned. The Boston Consulting Group is a multinational “management consulting firm” that is one of the architects of the “race to the bottom.” Where companies are encouraged to move jobs to countries with the cheapest labor costs and worst human rights standards in the quest for ever larger profits. Its recent accomplishments include flacking for charter schools and the privatization of public education worldwide. Then there’s the junior partner, the City of Boston, that takes virtually all of its major policy cues from corporate think tanks and foundations. A pattern established by a series of mayors since the 1950s. Most notably, the late Tom Menino.

Such corporate networks and organizations have the money and connections to turn their priorities into the priorities of hapless government officials like Mayor Walsh—who always seems to be chasing after bragging rights for Boston being a “global city,” or a “city of innovators” or whatever—even when the resulting policy prescriptions directly attack his core grassroots constituencies. As we’ve seen with the GE Boston Deal debacle.

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For example, Walsh is known as a labor mayor.

Someone who was put into power by local unions. Yet when considering this particular policy issue—self-driving cars—in that light, a number of serious potential problems for Boston area workers immediately present themselves.

To focus on the most obvious one, switching over from our existing fleet of cars and trucks to self-driving cars and trucks—in the service of expected mega profits to the auto, energy, and technology industries—will likely result in massive job loss to a huge number of professional drivers. Many of whom are taxi drivers and limo drivers whose jobs are already under threat of destruction by mostly unregulated “online transportation network companies” like Uber and Lyft.

And many people who hold those professional driving jobs—like truck drivers or MBTA bus and train drivers— are members of labor unions like the Teamsters and the Boston Carmen’s Union that are already threatened by technologies being developed for private interests. Not for the public good.

What are the plans to help workers displaced by self-driving cars? Apparently the usual corporate nonplans. A September 2015 report by the Boston Consulting Group put it this way: “Rather than wage a doomed battle against progress, affected incumbents might be better advised to use the current ‘calm before the storm’ to adapt their business models to this new technology and position their businesses to profit from a new era of mobility. That is the key message that [vehicle manufacturers], dealers, and suppliers must convey while they work with governments on good-faith efforts to mitigate the impacts on those most negatively affected.”

The report’s most specific suggestion is that governments should provide: “job-retraining and placement services and compensation for income losses from unemployment.”

Anyone who has ever seen what actually happens in instances of mass layoff knows exactly what will follow in practice. In the best possible scenario, some affected workers—not all—will qualify for extended unemployment, and receive some training for job markets that don’t have enough openings to make up for the jobs being destroyed. After unemployment runs out—and even extended unemployment typically runs out in one-to-two years depending on the program—the displaced workers who have not managed to find new jobs are screwed.

And as shown above, the industries and “consultants” doing the damage to the affected workers will not have to pay a cent for any of the havoc they wreak. The burden of such “externalities” as the immiseration and dislocation of thousands of professional drivers in Boston alone is to be borne by already overwhelmed and underfunded public programs—where they have not already been eliminated by the ongoing corporate onslaught against the public sector led by those same industries and consultants.

On those grounds, the city should pull out of this incipient arrangement and pursue only those future transit options purpose-built to help working people rather than harm them. Self-driving vehicles could be of great benefit to humanity depending on how they’re produced and deployed. But shadowy corporate networks like the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group—given their long history of looting public goods for private profit—are absolutely the wrong institutions for municipal governments to be partnering with on such a critical project as the introduction of a major new technology.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

COPYRIGHT 2016 JASON PRAMAS. LICENSED FOR USE BY THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM AND MEDIA OUTLETS IN ITS NETWORK.

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

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TOKIN’ TRUTH

FOR DOWNING, JUSTICE DRAGS ON An update on the persecution of a beloved Mass cannabis activist

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It’s been an interesting month to be Bill Downing. A longtime Massachusetts cannabis activist, he spent the better part of September laboring under two double standards of justice at once, making for a quadruple standard of justice for a very special guy.

First, as a representative of MassCann/NORML, he endured the City of Boston’s dueling permitting standards for use of Boston Common: For most events, there is a smooth and simple process, with permits issued in a timely manner. For the annual Freedom Rally, however, permits were still being withheld a week before the event, with new requirements being introduced at every stage. The afternoon before the wildly successful two-day rally, Downing was in court filing suit against the City of Boston in order to force it to issue the permits—for the sixth time in the rally’s 27-year history. All previous suits have been decided in MassCann’s favor; naturally, this one went MassCann’s way too.

More acutely, Downing continues to endure the state’s double standard of criminal justice. Though a number of vendors sell CBD products—nonpsychoactive cannabinoids used as antiinflammatories and for several other medicinal purposes—in the Boston area with the blessing of the Department of Public Health and without interference from authorities, for Downing, selling CBD has already resulted in police raids on his shop and home, confiscation of his personal assets, and criminal charges (supposedly for selling CBD products tainted with THC). At a preliminary hearing last week, the Commonwealth declined to dismiss those charges, with state attorneys saying they’ll proceed to trial.

One of the biggest reasons to legalize marijuana is to take away the power of the police to bust down any door, saying there’s marijuana inside. The unrelenting persecution of Bill Downing shows just how dear that power is to the police and the state, and that they will never give it up until we wrest it from their hands.

For most events, there is a smooth and simple process, with permits issued in a timely manner. For the annual Freedom Rally, however, permits were still being withheld a week before the event, with new requirements being introduced at every stage.

Andy Gaus is a Massachusetts-based cannabis advocate and a member of MassCann-NORML. 6

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NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION

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There was a time when coverage of the annual MassCann/NORML Freedom Rally—even in the alternative press—focused on the obscene number of heads who were arrested for smoking pot on Boston Common. And on the peaceful attendees who were dragged out of the festival like wild hogs. Though some intellectually cloistered straights still hate on marijuana (for more on that, check out the new installment of The Tokin’ Truth about the persecution of Freedom Rally organizer Bill Downing), otherwise there’s endless edibles and sunshine up ahead, as was evident at this year’s rally. Chew on these select pics from day two with Termanology, Redman, and Method Man, and don’t forget that if you want to see a lot more partying of this sort, you need to register by October 19 in order to vote affirmative on Question 4 in November.

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APPEALS NONSENSE BROKEN RECORDS

Galvin attempts to rewrite law in order to dodge it

BY ANDREW QUEMERE AND MAYA SHAFFER An update to the Massachusetts public records law is set to go into effect in January, and with it a new set of regulations drafted by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office. To those unfamiliar with the quagmire that is Massachusetts records access, this might sound like a “Victory!” for transparency, but it isn’t.

Unfortunately, Galvin’s office has sought to undermine the new law by proposing regulations that would exempt the office from several important responsibilities.

Under both the old and new records law, the Secretary of the Commonwealth is responsible for ruling on appeals from people who are denied access to public records.

Journalists, lawyers, activists, and others file hundreds of these appeals every year; in fact, using the appeals process is a fairly routine part of requesting records in Mass because of the comic regularity with which government agencies break the law. Last year, a massive audit by Northeastern University journalism students, WCVB, and the Boston Globe found that 58 percent—the majority—of the Commonwealth’s 351 municipalities did not even meet the low bar of responding to records requests on time. Recently, Globe reporter Todd Wallack found that nearly half of appeals filed this year were submitted simply because an agency did not respond to a request.

Despite the importance of the appeals process, the old law gave Galvin’s office discretion on whether to rule on appeals, leaving requesters at its mercy.

Sometimes it declines to do so or simply does not respond to them at all. In the update, however, state legislators made it mandatory, writing that the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office “shall issue a written determination regarding any” appeal, according to the new law that was passed unanimously by House and Senate lawmakers (emphasis added).

Instead of accepting the new law as written, Galvin’s office has decided to reinterpret it to mean the same thing as the old one. According to the proposed 10

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regulations, which were released last week, “it shall be within the discretion of [Galvin’s office] whether to open an appeal concerning a request for public records.” The regulations state that Galvin’s office may decline to rule on an appeal for one of several listed reasons—or for no reason at all.

State lawmakers limited the time allowable for Galvin’s office to rule on appeals after the media criticized Galvin for dragging out the appeals process for months, but in his proposed regulations Galvin would exempt his office from this time limit. The new law states that Galvin’s office must rule on all appeals “not later than 10 business days following [their] receipt.” That’s two weeks—still a fairly generous amount of time—but Galvin’s office came up with a neat trick for dodging the new deadline: It simply redefined what it means to “receive” an appeal. The proposed regulations state that Galvin’s office must review and assign a number to each appeal it receives. Only then does the appeal count as being “received,” and only then do the 10 business days begin. This delay only applies to members of the public who file appeals. When an agency petitions the Secretary of the Commonwealth under the new law, Galvin’s office uses a definition of “receiving” that an English speaker would recognize.

That may not sound like a big deal—after all, how long should it take to review a letter and assign it a number?

But there’s little doubt it will significantly delay the appeals process. When we examined our own appeals for a column published earlier this year, we found it took Galvin’s office an average of about 11 days to assign a number. And if Galvin’s office decides it wants to continue taking months to issue rulings, all it needs to do is wait even longer.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s employees don’t always count in business days, either. When it comes to narrowing the window of time for a requester to file an appeal, the regulations switch to calendar days—

specifically, a 90-calendar-day deadline, which is arbitrary and not specified anywhere in the law.

Drafting these regulations was an opportunity to clarify vague and troubling language, but Galvin’s office has failed to address several issues left by state lawmakers. For instance, the new measure allows an agency to petition Galvin’s office to be relieved of its duty to provide records if a request is “part of a series of contemporaneous requests that are frivolous or designed to intimidate or harass”—but none of these terms are defined within the law. They aren’t defined in the regulations either, and to top it off, Galvin’s office plans to use them as reasons to refuse to open appeals.

The regulations also double down on a nonsensical rule that allows agencies to refuse to provide more records to anyone “who has failed to compensate the agency or municipality for previously produced public records.” The regulations say an agency can deny records on this basis as long as the agency “prepared a fee estimate” for the previously produced records. However, the regulations do not state that the requester has to have agreed to pay the fee, which is very troubling considering fees can sometimes be thousands or even millions of dollars—making them impossible for most requesters, even profitable news organizations, to afford.

The old system, where agencies simply collected fees before providing records, was much more logical.

Galvin’s proposed regulations are subject to a public hearing and a written comment period before they become official and hold the weight of law. The hearing will be on Thursday, Oct 6, at 11 am in the 17th floor conference room of the Office of the Secretary, 1 Ashburton Place, in Boston. We hope our readers will attend or send in written testimony calling on Galvin to clean up these regulations—especially the exemptions he gave his office from the law. The Massachusetts Municipal Association, a taxpayer-funded lobbyist group that has been fighting against public records reform, will be testifying, so it’s important that transparency advocates counter its effort.

Broken Records is a biweekly column produced in partnership between the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, DigBoston, and the Bay State Examiner.

Follow BINJ on Twitter @BINJreports for upcoming installments of Maya and Andrew’s ongoing reporting on public information.

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QUESTIONABLE PAST

THROWBACK

A history of ballot initiatives in Mass, from capital punishment to cannabis

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 The logic behind the Massachusetts ballot initiative process is as simple now as it was 100 years ago: Sometimes, when our elected officials refuse to do their jobs and move on important—well, not always important, at least not to everyone, but more often than not—issues that warrant attention, the people of the Commonwealth are able to take it upon themselves to act through referenda. This November, for example, voters will make critical decisions about slot parlor additions (Question 1), charter school expansion (Question 2), farm animal containment (Question 3), and marijuana legalization (Question 4).

But it wasn’t always like this. To quote a 2007 faculty paper out of the UMass Dartmouth School of Law: “The kernels for initiatives and referendums were planted early … Massachusetts, with some puffery, claims to be the first state to use a public referendum as the proposed first Massachusetts constitution was offered to and then rejected by voters in 1778.” For the following century and then some, however, “those early seeds lay dormant … until the fourth constitutional convention of 1917, when labor unions and Progressives joined to push for greater control over the legislature.”

With that convention voting “to deliver the amendment for initiatives and referendums to the electorate for ratification,” next it was left up to the press to sell the idea to the people. From a 1918 edition of the Boston Post published a day before the historic vote that gave the public legitimate lawmaking muscle: The agitation for the Initiative and Referendum has gone on in Massachusetts for 20 years with gradually increasing power—until during the last ten years it has become apparent by many tests that a great majority of our voters favor it … In five out of the last eight State elections the Governor elected publicly advocated the Initiative and Referendum in his campaign before the voters, and in six out of eight of the last elections the candidates for Governor who received a majority of votes were advocates of the Initiative and Referendum.

From that point forward, binding initiatives were used to push and legislate through popular procedure everything from suffrage, to social welfare, to rules regarding lobbyists, to the rights of corporations. One fight over smoking was settled by a 1992 referendum which raised the excise tax on butts to 25 cents per pack, while one seemingly constant battle on this field over the decades related to lawmaker compensation. We found an Associated Press clip from 1963 in which the public attempted to stop state legislators from upping their own salaries—a major 12

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bone of contention at the time, unlike these days, when people remain relatively silent—but learned that “under the [Massachusetts] constitution, appropriation bills are not subject to public referendum.” (Another thing we learned from this particular clip: Until 1963, though the law forbade “requiring lie tests as a condition of employment,” it was still legal for bosses to force workers to take a polygraph.)

Then there’s state-sanctioned murder. Prior to being invalidated by the Mass Supreme Judicial Court in 1984— more than half a century after the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—the electric chair was still buzzing here, leading to several hotpotato initiatives. Politicians often turned to death penalty boosting after token slayings, rather than devising meaningful criminal justice reforms, and for years the public sided with them.

In a nonbinding 1968 referendum—long before the ’80s and ’90s, when the public at large began to learn how many innocent people had been executed nationwide—Bay State voters overwhelmingly backed the continued use of capital punishment by a margin of 49 to 31.

The accompanying clip, from a United Press Associations (UP) wire story in the Berkshire Eagle, features thenAttorney General George Fingold supporting “legislation calling for a public referendum on whether to retain the death penalty in

Massachusetts,” but also agreeing to “press for the death penalty for four men awaiting execution ... who slew a lawyer in Newton.”

Advocates have blown big bucks on several causes.

Though spending on initiatives and referenda has made headlines of late—this year’s charter school spat alone is hovering around the $20 million mark in total—serious money has been spilled on major questions for a while.

In 1988, $9 million was spent as developers and laborers brawled over the state’s prevailing-wage law, while in 2006, nearly $8 million was spent in a joust over wine sales in grocery stores.

As for why we need ballot initiatives, here’s an editorial we found from the eve of the big vote nearly 100 years ago. Written by James C. White, the Boston Herald’s esteemed State House reporter at the time, in retrospect it suggests that not even a century of popular initiatives can save us from our state and local leaders: The Republican State organization for the past twenty years has been run chiefly as a business adjunct of big business. The State offices have been sold in its ante-rooms to the highest bidder, and, even more to be regretted, it has also conducted a steady traffic in immunity for some interests and favorable laws for others. Public service corporations bought reservations from attack, insurance companies bought lenient legislation and the veto power on certain nominations, and the manufacturers bought jokers in the labor laws. There was no cash consideration piled across the counter at the time, as in some of the cruder States, but inasmuch as at the beginning of each year these trafficking gentlemen representing big business contributed almost all the money used by the organization for its maintenance, they were in the position of men who, having paid in advance, were simply awaiting delivery.

This throwback was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. For posts connecting old headlines with contemporary news stories, check out medium.com/binj-reports/tagged/throwbacks.

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Live Music!

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FIRST HOUSE PUB A guy walks into a bar in Winchester...

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Whitherward Saturday

all of the animals 9:30pm - 11:30pm

The northern suburb of Winchester may only be a ten-minute drive from the Boston line, but it feels like a world away, with its narrow, twisting lanes; its Victorian homes and mansions overlooking lakes, hills, and valleys; and its placid town center that looks like something out of the 1950s. And to no one’s surprise, until recently it was not a town you went to if you wanted to belly up to a bar and have a shot of whiskey and/or a beer. That started to change with the opening of Winchester’s first real bar in 2010 (the Black Horse Tavern), and with last year’s opening of First House Pub on Main Street, Winchester has actually become a not-so-bad place to enjoy some pub grub and adult beverages.

First House Pub has ownership connections with Conley’s, a very underrated neighborhood joint in Watertown, and much like that bar, First House feels like a place frequented by locals who may be looking to watch some sports, hang out with friends, or enjoy a meal without having to spend too much. The interior of the place is mostly broken up into dining on one side and drinking on the other, with a bar zigzagging its way along the right side of the space and a mix of high-top and low-top tables set up along the left side (the front part of the bar area also has some seating for diners). Because of its hard floor, high ceiling, and relatively tight space, the place can get loud when it is crowded, but the seats toward the back heading toward the kitchen are a bit quieter even on the busiest of nights.

Because it is Winchester, some may assume that First House Pub is an upscale tavern with inventive takes on comfort food, an endless beer list, and exotic cocktails. This is really more of a basic meat-and-potatoes type place, though— much like its sister spot Conley’s—and its food menu reflect this, with solid takes on wings, nachos, burgers, steak tips, fish tacos, and pizza (the thin-crust pizza is outstanding, by the way). The always-changing specials list is where the First House gets a bit creative with its pub food, including highlights such as a moderately spicy and tremendously delicious plate of buffalo potato skins (and why don’t more restaurants offer this?), heart-stoppingly good bacon and cheddar tater tots, charbroiled marinated swordfish tips, and lobster rolls that hover right around the $20 mark. The beer list is adequate for most, though true beer geeks may be wishing for more options from the local microbreweries, while a full bar offers decent options for shots and mixed drinks, though again, this is not a place to go for swank cocktails that include the use of such ingredients as egg whites, miso, or green apple shrub. Prices are quite reasonable at First House Pub, with most meals being well under $20 (and some being under $10).

Is First House Pub a game changer or a destination spot? No, but it isn’t really meant to be. What it is, however, is a sorely needed casual dining and drinking place in a town that used to have few options for the former and almost no options for the latter. And because Winchester Center is five minutes west of Route 93 and also happens to be on a commuter rail line from Boston, if you live in the city and want to do a quick trip to a quiet community for a bite and a beer, First House is easily doable. >> FIRST HOUSE PUB. 528 MAIN ST., WINCHESTER. FIRSTHOUSEPUB.COM

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PHOTO BY MARC HURWITZ

9/26 The Spearmint Sea, Corin Ashley 9/28 JEFF the Brotherhood, Music Band, CreaturoS 9/29 Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, Diablogato

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

MUSIC

FITZ FEST

Regional rock gets loud

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Every month, Boston sees a low-key music festival pop up, often donning the “festival” tag even if it’s two regular concerts at a venue.

It may seem trivial, but don’t overlook the trend. Our city focuses on supporting the artists it churns out, and with that comes an appreciation of the arts and an appreciation of everyone’s ability to create art.

The little festivals matter. That’s why the return of Fitz Fest will make you grin. Nonprofit production corporation Fitz Ross brings a three-day lineup of various styles of rock to Cambridge and Allston this weekend. Thursday the 22nd kicks things off with Daephne, Rye Pines, Wydyde, and Twen Furs performing at Great Scott. Friday sees Funeral Advantage, Steep Leans, Saccharine, and Du Vide perform at O’Briens Pub. Saturday closes things out with Black Beach, Dirty Dishes, Leaner, and Big Boy Club at the Middle East Upstairs. While the first two evenings are 21+, Fitz Ross made sure to provide all-ages access to Saturday’s show, bridging the gap so that garage rock, indie rock, and more can reach a wider group of people.

Acting as a bridge is key here. The goal isn’t to snag Boston’s biggest acts. The goal is to create a local showcase intertwining circles.

“Lots of these bands are staples in the regional scene who haven’t played a bill together,” says Community Relations Manager Jamie VadalaDoran. “This was a good opportunity to make that happen.”

“This year we wanted to make this a festival that would stage both veteran Boston bands and newcomers to the community,” adds Executive Director Brandon Hafetz. “Though we have a relatively small crop of bands, I think we’ve given bands on every level a chance to play in front of audiences that are bound to enjoy their music, as well as play with bands that they love and look up to. This is very much in line with how we approach our live session series, Spare Room Sessions, where we invite bands all over the spectrum to participate.”

Fitz Fest carries that positivity across past showcases and will do so this weekend.

As Hafetz explains best: “When you’ve got a brand-new band like Twen Furs—who is truly awesome, and nearly no one has gotten to hear them yet—and a weekend that surely won’t break the bank, why not come out?”

MUSIC

CEASE FIRE

Vapors of Morphine, Marissa Nadler, and Hallelujah the Hills on ending gun violence

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Sept 25 is the Day of Remembrance of Murder Victims. Congress set the day aside back in 2007 to honor the countless Americans taken too early from our planet, but over time, that day has turned into something far more symbolic. As each year passes with new rememberance hashtags and visibly corrupt court cases, our country fails to act on simple laws that could enact powerful change. Concert Across America to End Gun Violence aims to change that.

This Sunday, over 200 concerts across our country will take place to raise money, awareness, and change toward ending gun-related deaths and violence. Brighton Music Hall invites viewers of all ages to see Vapors of Morphine, Bill Janovitz with Mike Gent and Tanya Donelly, Hallelujah the Hills, and Marissa Nadler take the stage to tackle the issue.

For most artists performing, this isn’t just about advocacy. It’s a response to frustration, too, to a wave of acts that seem to never end. Among the collective numbness and flood of statistics, there’s still an urge to speak up, to voice outrage until it’s loud enough to halt the violence.

“It’s beyond parody; the gun manufacturers have a direct, financial influence over the lawmakers, and the argument is muddied by receipts,” says Ryan Walsh, the frontman of Hallelujah the Hills. “Sometimes you can feel helpless and the urge to just give into that helplessness is magnetic. But it’s always better to do something: small acts, local actions, symbolic acts, even. I really believe when a lot of people merely resist staying on the couch, good things start to happen.”

In her neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, Marissa Nadler saw people go about their day as if nothing happened shortly after a man was murdered outside a local 7-11. “A few years ago, there was a quadruple homicide at the pizza place in Jamaica Plain on Center Street, and eerily, the place was business as usual the next week,” she recalls as well. “I think we all need to be a little less numb to the idea that it’s normal to shoot people and unify as a country to try to fix it.”

That’s where their profession kicks in. Songs are one of the easiest forms of protest to rally behind, unify strangers, and jumpstart change that has a long trail ahead of it.

“Music is the antithesis of violence,” says Vapors of Morphine frontman Dana Colley. “It is cathartic, and in being a catharsis gives expression to emotions that can otherwise be difficult to articulate. It can give voice to frustration and desperation, a way to vent other than taking up violent means. So much of gun violence comes from frustration, alienation, and a sense of hopelessness combined with a disregard for human life. Music reminds us that we are capable of greatness and there is hope, especially when there seems to be none.”

This isn’t singsongs and patriotic flags. As the event draws closer, several musicians, like Nadler, need time to reflect.

As she zooms out to inspect the multiple issues tied to gun violence—from mental illness to support systems—she can’t help but recall the way semiautomatic assault weapons have altered moments of her own life. “I was teaching at a special needs high school at the time of Sandy Hook, and I remember how scared all of my students were, as well as all of the teachers,” says Nadler. “I thought at the time that Sandy Hook was the last straw, that our country would see some change, but we haven’t, and the incidents keep intensifying. The MCX that was used in the Orlando shooting fired 24 shots in nine seconds, and all of those deaths could have been prevented.”

Like most of us, these musicians have solutions on their minds: closing loopholes in internet ammunition sales, tightening automatic weapon availability, mandatory meditation classes in public schools and police academies. We can bring an end to the violence as soon as we choose to end it. We just need to take that action.

“If we can insist that people wear seat belts, we can insist that we want a country where people are held to a standard of responsibility when dealing with what are, essentially, killing machines,” says Colley. “We have been told that the debate is off the table. I refuse to accept that.” >> VAPORS OF MORPHINE, BILL JANOVITZ, HALLELUJAH THE HILLS, MARISSA NADLER. SUN 9.25.

BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, 158 BRIGHTON AVE., ALLSTON. 6PM/ALL AGES/$20. CROSSROADSPRESENTS.COM

MUSIC EVENTS FRI 9.23

FRI 9.23

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$12. mideastoffers.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

10pm/21+/$16.50. greatscottboston.com]

GO SEE YOUR PSYCH MORGAN DELT + DOUG TUTTLE + MASS GOTHIC + BEACH TOYS

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SPEEDY SPOKEN WORD GROOVES ASTRONAUTALIS + OXYMORRONS + ADAM & THE FLOOD

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FRI 9.23

RUB A DUB DUB LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY + THE VOID UNION + DJ CARBO + DUB APOCALYPSE

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$25. crossroadspresents.com]

>> FITZ FEST. THU-SAT 9.22-9.24. GREAT SCOTT, O’BRIENS PUB, MIDDLE EAST UPSTAIRS. 9PM/21+/$10-12. FITZROSSPRODUCTIONS.ORG

SUN 9.25

TUE 9.27

[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 7pm/18+/$23. royaleboston.com]

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$10. mideastoffers.com]

SWEDISH INDIE JOLLY-POPS PETER BJORN AND JOHN + CITY OF THE SUN + CLEOPOLD

AFROPOP NIGHT LIVE KINA ZORE + OPPOSITE PEOPLE + DJ AFRO MARC + SCHOOL OF HONK

WED 9.28

POST-METAL PRIDE RUSSIAN CIRCLES + HELMS ALEE

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

FILM

REPORT FROM THE SOMERVILLE THEATRE’S 70MM FILM FESTIVAL On the films screened from day one through day three

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN In last week’s preview of the Somerville Theatre’s 70mm & Widescreen Film Festival, I wrote about the old canard that the big screen is inherently better suited for large-canvas movies. Within the narrow viewpoint of my own personal experience, that line of thinking is demonstrably false—“so often it’s the textural details of cinema that remain in our mind’s eye the longest, even in those [70mm] epics,” was how I put it in that preview, “the grains of sand, or the wind that whips them, rather than the desert itself.” Having spent the weekend at the Somerville festival’s opening screenings—Lawrence of Arabia [1962], Lord Jim [1965], Tron [1982], and Sleeping Beauty [1959], all projected from relatively pristine 70mm prints—there’s one big thing I’d alter about that sentence.

Instead of invoking the desert, I would’ve written about water instead. Both Lawrence and Jim stare into it, both with the same gaze. They stare beyond the wakes, with the ripples of the water refracting the faraway sun’s reflection, light bouncing as far as the frame can see.

Some films exhibited on 70mm wear such a fine layer of photographic grain that viewers can barely even perceive it. It can appear as though the depth of the images have no limit. Your gaze seems to carry forward infinitely.

That was the lasting impression of 70mm imparted by those first two movies, though it’s one that’s sure to be augmented throughout the remainder of the 10-day program. Lawrence of Arabia opened the festivities on Friday and was presented in a manner that would recur throughout the coming days. Director of Operations Ian Judge welcomes audiences to the screening, speaks briefly about the upcoming films, and rightfully warns the crowd to turn off their cell phones. On that opening night, he also explained the long process required to facilitate and curate this festival. “It took us 12 years to get to this place,” he noted, in reference to the time spent improving the general presentation of the theater (which was running second-run releases at discounted

prices as recently as the early 2000s) as well as to the time spent procuring the equipment required to project 70mm prints in all their vagaries (sound, for instance— the Somerville boasts the ability to exhibit from most of the varying magnetic soundtracks formats contained on older 70mm release prints). Traditionally following Judge is head projectionist David Kornfeld, who gives history on the given film (in one case, speaking about the process used to create Tron’s optical effects), offers specifics regarding the sound format (in another case, capably explaining the historical reason that Lord Jim had three-track audio), boasts about the high quality of the Somerville’s projection booth (many of these screenings may be last-chance opportunities, he implies, given that the prints might “go to some other theater, where I’m not there, and they’re going to screw it up”), then lastly describes the provenance of the 70mm print itself (in the case of Lawrence, the distributor’s own copy failed to meet his standards—we saw a print struck during the film’s 1989 rerelease, sourced from a restoration overseen by preservationist Richard Harris, which was tracked down by the theater instead).

This leads us to another oft-repeated statement about 70mm, although this one has truth behind it: The format legitimately represents the best possible way to experience Lawrence of Arabia. It is not merely the clear visions of the sand and the sea that are best served by the format, but also the pacing and structure of the piece, which require the level of concentration generated by an immersive theatrical experience. The film’s editing moves continually in the same cycle, rotating from faraway long shots into more intimate medium shots and close-ups.

And that cycle moves at a rigorously metered pace, one masterfully set to Maurice Jarre’s score—the sort of pace that effects a trance on the viewer, the kind of trance enhanced by the sensual clarity that 70mm affords the film’s hyperdense photography. The production design,

lived-in locations, and detail-intensive performances all help to amplify this power—not just the famous sights of distant figures within overwhelming landscapes, but also the small gestures and occurrences seen legibly within the film’s many long shots. Like the playful gestures displayed by Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) during his earlier days in the British service, which are worn out and evaporated by the commencement of the film’s second half (the intermission has a double function as a particularly vexing ellipsis, another quality best experienced within the theatrical setting). Or the rare use of close-up shots for both Lawrence and Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), another technique that’s most effective when paired with the wide-gauge format’s extraordinary resolution—that composition is typically employed only at the character’s greatest moments of trauma, and its jarring details serve as the high notes within the film’s calculated tempo.

Daytime exterior shots tended to exhibit the most striking level of clarity, with innumerable layers of roaming extras and wandering animals stretching back so far that they threaten to vanish. All this textural detail brings further character to Lean’s historical piece. The contrast between the rare close-ups and the overbearing landscapes connect to the film’s interest in the inextricability of inner lives and outer personas.

Like the other films in the program—regardless of their strengths or weaknesses—Lawrence of Arabia uses 70mm to its own characteristic means. What Tron accomplishes most beautifully is a feat of visual rhyming: the animated layers of neon lights and circuit boards vanish into the 70mm frame, and these images are evocatively doubled by the nighttime cityscape shots taken in the “real world,” where all those stacks of windows and lights appear like their own sets of circuit boards. In Sleeping Beauty, it is the surprisingly weathered appearance of the backgrounds, like the peeling bark on the trees during “Once Upon a Dream,” that creates its own transfixing contrast, standing against the immaculate coloring and delineated angles of the animation seen in the foreground. And in the two live-action films, it is the way that the sharpness of the projection leads your eyes toward the sort of elements you’d never otherwise notice in a film—the beads of sweat on an actor’s face, or the scrounges of dirt hanging off their toes, or the threads that make up their jacket. You see through a shadow to the surface resting behind it, or realize that you can’t discern where the ocean’s ripples end and where the sun’s light begins. In every case, it’s the depth of the film image itself that astonishes you. In last week’s preview feature, I wrote about the way that 70mm can help to emphasize the most subtle aspects of filmmaking. My conclusion was that “it’s for this very reason that every worthy film deserves the expanse of the theatrical experience, regardless of the size of its scope. And within the contemporary moviegoing experience, there is nothing more expansive than 70mm.” After experiencing the first round of 70mm screenings at the Somerville, I’d make a slight alteration to that sentence as well—it’s not just a matter of expansion, but also one of immersion.

For more reports from the 70mm & Widescreen Film Festival, visit DigBoston.com throughout the week.

THE 70MM & WIDESCREEN FILM FESTIVAL. SOMERVILLE THEATRE. 55 DAVIS SQUARE, SOMERVILLE. SCREENINGS RUN THROUGH SUN 9.25. $15 PER TICKET. SEE SOMERVILLETHEATRE.COM FOR MORE.

FILM EVENTS THU 9.22

FRI 9.23

FRI 9.23

SAT 9.24

SAT 9.24

[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville.

8pm/NR/$15. 70mm. somervilletheatre.com]

[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville.

7pm/G/$15. 70mm.]

[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville.

10:15pm/PG/$15. 70mm.]

[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville.

Noon/NR/$15. 35mm.]

[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville.

3pm/NR/$15. 70mm.]

NATALIE WOOD IN WEST SIDE STORY [1961]

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STANLEY KUBRICK’S 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY [1968]

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DIRECTOR LEONARD NIMOY’S STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME [1986]

KIRK DOUGLAS IN RICHARD FLEISCHER’S THE VIKINGS [1958]

STANLEY KRAMER’S IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD [1963]

SUN 9.25

TWO BIBLICAL EPICS THE TEN COMMANDMENTS [1956] and BEN-HUR [1959 [Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville. 2 and 7pm, respectively/NR and G/$15 each. 35mm.]

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

ARTS

FIDDLEHEAD GETS FABULOUS A look inside the costumes of Priscilla Queen of the Desert

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS Three-foot-wide headdresses, hundreds of feathers, millions of sequins, and a 24-foot-long bus named Priscilla. This is only a taste of what to expect in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, a fabulous, feel-good journey through the Australian Outback set to a hit parade of infectious pop hits.

“When planning for our 2016 season, Meg Fofonoff, Fiddlehead’s founder, and I were looking for a production that had a message,” said Stacey Stephens, co-director and costume designer. “In addition to presenting highest-quality theater art, we always strive to push the audience in some way—to think about society in a new way. Priscilla was a perfect choice. Underneath the glittery costumes and disco tunes this show has a real, poignant message about finding yourself and embracing who you are.”

Here, in his own words, Stephens gives us a look inside at his fabulous designs.

“One of the things audiences loved about the original 1994 film were the fabulous drag queen costumes, which won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. I wanted the same wow factor, but I never want to copy another designer’s work. I went on my own experience of having seen many drag shows and performing drag as well. I also took inspiration from avant-garde designers like Alexander McQueen and Jean Paul Gaultier.”

“One of the iconic dresses in the original film is a hilarious frock made of flip-flops. I made my own riff on this dress by using plastic googly eyes. It was a crazy challenge connecting over 150 plastic eyes together, but the result is definitely a wow. I had enough left over to even make a matching purse and sunglasses.”

“We created 11 three-foot-wide headdresses that are covered with crazy, colorful found objects: flowers, bananas, feathers, you name it. They’re quite heavy, and to keep them in place on the actors we used baseball helmets and traffic cones as a base!”

“A lot of the drag queens I’ve seen make their own costumes with ‘found’ items. I wanted to work with this idea of found items, also, so the costumes would appear homemade, not 100 percent polished. It stays true to the main characters in the show, who would have created their own designs on a shoestring budget.”

>> PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT. 9.30–10.9 AT FIDDLEHEAD THEATRE COMPANY AT CITI SHUBERT THEATRE, 265 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. FIDDLEHEADTHEATRE.COM

ARTS EVENTS EXQUISITE FAMILY DRAMA REGULAR SINGING

[New Repertory Theatre, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown. Through 9.25. newrep.org]

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PRE-BROADWAY ENGAGEMENT SIGNIFICANT OTHER

[SpeakEasy Stage, 527 Tremont St., Boston. Through 10.8. speakeasystage.com]

MUST-SEE GAME CHANGER COMPANY

[The Lyric Stage, 140 Clarendon St., Boston. Through 10.9. lyricstage.com]

SONDHEIM MASTERPIECE SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE

[Huntington Theatre Company, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston. Through 10.16 huntingtontheatre.org]

INCREDIBLE RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE DELLA ROBBIA

[Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston.

Through 12.4. mfa.org]

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

QUICKIES

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I’m a 27-year-old straight male and a high-school teacher held to a strict code. I left my fiancée in June and haven’t had sex since. Needless to say, I’m really horny. I’m also in that weird inbetween age where I’m not comfortable hanging out at college bars but I’m also a bit younger than most of the women in other bars. But when I scour dating apps, I see profiles of women ages 18 to 22—women who, for all I know, could have been students at my school. I would never fuck a former student, of course, but I’m worried that I could get my license revoked if my supervisors discovered I was online trolling for sex. So what am I supposed to do? My cock is making sad faces at me right now.

Teacher Evidently Needs Sexual Encounter If you live in a college town, TENSE, there’s at least one bar where grad students hang out— look for the bar where women are grading papers, not pounding shots, and hang out there.

And with more than one in three new marriages beginning with an online meeting these days, and with Pew Research telling us that 60 percent of Americans approve of online dating, I don’t see how your supervisors could possibly object to staffers scouring dating apps and the interwebs for age-appropriate partners. Unless we’re talking about a Catholic school staffed entirely by nuns, which isn’t what we’re talking about.

I’m male, 30, and newly single. I’ve been using my newfound freedom to sleep around, and last week I had sex with a married woman. Yes, she was cheating. Yes, I was aware. There won’t be any future sexual encounters with this woman, but here’s the thing I was wondering about: I don’t feel guilty, not one bit. This fuck was a strong contender for best fuck of my life. Does that make me a bad person? And if so, do I just accept the fact that I’m a bad person?

Basically A Dastardly Dick, Yes? Fucking someone you know to be cheating implicates you in an infidelity, of course, and that’s usually bad—but not always. In some cases, cheating is the least worst option for all involved (the cheater, the cheated, their dependents); in others, cheating saves marriages that needed saving; in still others, cheating ends marriages that needed ending.

Absent more info about this woman’s particular circumstances, BADDY, I can’t make a definite ruling about her badness for cheating or your badness for aiding and abetting.

THE STRANGERER

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

BOWERY BOSTON

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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

KRISTIN HERSH W/ DENA AMY, LUKE MILLION

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29

W/ OXYMORRONS, ADAM & THE FLOOR FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

1222 Comm. Ave. Allston, MA greatscottboston.com

FRIDAYS AT 7PM!

‘s THE GAS

tacocat W/ DUDE YORK

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

Jak Langston Knight Kerman W/ LILLIAN DEVANE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7 (EARLY)

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12

W/ CEREUS BRIGHTS

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18

w/ Shallou

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

JENNY HVAL & THE YARRA BENDERS

W/ OLGA BELL

W/ JULIA JACKLIN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2

DANCIN’ RANDY’S W/ PUBLIC MEMORY

SKA PUNK TIME MACHINE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7 (LATE)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12

≠ 9/23 & 9/24 JORDAN HANDREN-SEAVEY ALBUM RECORDING ≠ 9/28 GOBLIN COCK ≠ 10/5 THE MARCUS KING BAND ≠ 10/13 FROM INDIAN LAKES ≠ 10/15 THROWBACK THROWDOWN ≠ 10/16 TOLD SLANT

OTHER SHOWS AROUND TOWN:

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

Kyle Morton W/ JIM-E STACK

FRI. SEPTEMBER 23 MIDDLE EAST DOWN

(of Typhoon)

W/ DESTROYING ANGEL

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 MIDDLE EAST UPSTAIRS

MON. NOVEMBER 28 MIDDLE EAST DOWN

Tickets for Royale, The Sinclair, and Great Scott can be purchased online at Ticketmaster.com or by phone at (800) 745-3000.

No fee tickets available at The Sinclair box office Wednesdays - Saturdays 12:00 - 7:00PM

SAT. JANUARY 21 RED ROOM AT CAFE 939

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST OF SHOWS, VISIT BOWERYBOSTON.COM