DigBoston 2.22.18

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WILL CANNABIS COMMISSIONERS CAVE?

COVER

ORAL HISTORY 50 YEARS OF ANTI-NUCLEAR PROTESTS IN MASS

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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 20 + ISSUE08

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FEB 22, 2018 - MAR 01, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Marc Sneider ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone John Loftus Jason Pramas SALES MANAGER Marc Sneider FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan THEATER EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COMEDY EDITOR Dennis Maler STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Britni de la Cretaz, Kori Feener, Eoin Higgins, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus JohnsonSmith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Kuresse Bolds, Victoria Botana, Rob Katz, Murray, Brynne Quinlan

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ON THE COVER PHOTO OF PILGRIM PROTESTERS BY PAUL RIFKIN. THANKS TO PAUL AND ALL THE OTHER PLYMOUTH AND CAPE COD ACTIVISTS WHO LENT THEIR TIME AND MEDIA FOR THIS WEEK’S FEATURE. READ MORE ABOUT ‘PILGRIMS’ IN THIS WEEK’S DEAR READER NOTE ON THE NEXT PAGE. ©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

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Dear Reader, During my time as a reporter and editor in New England, I have encountered several of the activists who regularly demonstrate against the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, a rickety reactor that’s existence, many argue, puts all of us in Greater Boston in harm’s way. In 2012, organizers from an Occupy Cape Cod faction brought me to Falmouth to speak about my experience visiting protest encampments across the country, and their volunteers left a lasting impression on me. Unlike the majority of younger occupiers I had met, the mostly senior squadron on the Cape had moved beyond rhetoric and general assemblies, with people spending several hours every week helping their neighbors wrestle with unscrupulous home mortgage lenders. With many of them having bonded through the struggle against Pilgrim over the preceding decades, they understood that it was their responsibility to help out where the government had failed.

When we first asked Miriam Wasser to consider documenting stories about nuclear protests for an oral history, part of which is excerpted in this week’s issue (you can find the rest next week at binjonline.org, and there will be a standalone print version as well), several things were different than they are today. For one, it was before an inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) accidentally forwarded a troubling report about the Plymouth plant to longtime crusader Diane Turco, executive director of the anti-Pilgrim group Cape Downwinders; among other damning statements, the email, sent on Dec 6, 2016, noted, “The plant seems overwhelmed by just trying to run the station.” In the time since, as Miriam has spent innumerable hours researching old documents and interviewing people who were openly concerned about such risks for generations before Pilgrim was downgraded to category 4 status, its track record of safety problems has continued. During this year’s early January “bomb cyclone” that flooded much of coastal Massachusetts, the plant was forced to shut down after losing one of two external power sources.

Though the NRC appears to be an even bigger joke under President Donald Trump than it was under his negligent predecessors, the intention of this work is not to frighten readers. Rather it is to further alert the public to the bankrupt nature of what passes for real oversight in the United States, even when the lives of millions are potentially in danger. On the strength of Miriam’s hard work and expertise, and of participants who lent their memories and photos to the effort, we hope the time capsule preserves the people’s history and informs this and other movements moving forward. As is explained in detail in the complete volume, if not for the actions of a dedicated core activist crew on the Cape over a 50-year span, there could be two or three reactors on the bay that may have operated long after the planned closing for next year.

On that note… Pilgrim may be slated to shut down in 2019, but as the struggle chugs along for those who will still live in close proximity to possible contamination from its remnants, there’s no doubt that the forces who have stood up for their health and safety for the past halfcentury will keep fighting.

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For recreational cannabis in Mass, it all comes down to this

Seating ran low and the clock ran into overtime last week as nearly 200 people filled the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s (CCC) final public hearing on draft regulations for the budding Commonwealth industry.

For more than two and a half hours, community and marijuana advocates, attorneys, concerned citizens, and others addressed CCC Chairman Steven J. Hoffman and Commissioner Shaleen Title at the Bolling Municipal Building in Roxbury. Their comments touched on topics ranging from temporary event and delivery licenses to public consumption areas and opportunities that could be opened up by the recreational cannabis industry in Mass.

Starting off the evening, former Boston City Council member and recent mayoral candidate Tito Jackson called out the proposed restrictions on employment.

“We don’t want the people who were locked up in the first place to be locked out of opportunities in this space,” Jackson said. “I know that there are others who only want this to be limited to previous cannabis offenses.

That is unacceptable.

We need to provide economic opportunity and economic justice in this space, and we must do a better job there. So we need to include rather than exclude all of those who have prior drug offenses and give them economic opportunities.”

Jeremy Thompson, a board member of Thrive Communities, which supports adults who are returning home after being incarcerated, added to Jackson’s remarks, focusing on heavy links between violent crime and the criminalization of cannabis.

“At times when people were getting arrested in urban communities, drugs and guns were hand in hand,” Thompson said. “When we talk about cutting people

We need to provide economic opportunity and economic justice in this space, and we must do a better job there.

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out because of violence, convictions, or weapon charges, or things like that, it’s effectively cutting them out of the industry. So when we talk about inclusion, we have to get to the details of why these people were in these situations. Once you do, I think on an individual basis we’ll be able to weed out the people who can participate in the program.”

There was also plenty of criticism of the CCC’s drafted restrictions on delivery services.

Jackson implored the commission to base its delivery guidelines on businesses that have already developed their own practices, rather than treating delivery as a public safety threat. “[With regard to] this mentality about delivery being something that is scary, we already have delivery services in place currently,” Jackson said. “The question is, what are the best practices? What types of rules, regulations, and standard operating procedures are the best way to go relative to that? What we should be doing is asking the people who are currently in business doing that.”

Kamani Jefferson, president and registered lobbyist of the Massachusetts Recreational Consumer Council, addressed the importance of delivery licenses as well as social consumption event licenses, which would provide a low barrier to entry for those who wish to participate in the cannabis market by renting a location for a short period of time.

“Allowing the illicit market to continue without providing a way for those conducting [consumption] events to transition into the legal market puts them at risk for police enforcement.

We should be creating pathways for experienced local residents instead of targeting them,” Jefferson

said. “Not everyone can afford to own a storefront location in Mass.”

According to Jackson and a chorus of others, it’s not simply ideal to mindfully allow the participation of Black and Latinx residents, but that’s the only way to keep the industry from getting dominated by venture capital.

“The defining question is, are we going to use this as a new economy that is going to lift all or just some who are already lifted?” Jackson asked.

Matt Allen, field director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, offered the ACLU’s recommendations regarding the CCC’s equity provisions for new marijuana businesses.

“In the long term, the commission should absolutely promote full participation by all groups that have faced discrimination, individually or institutionally, including women, the LGBT community, and veterans,” Allen said.

“In the short term, the focus should be on communities that bore the brunt of the drug war, and that should be determined geographically by looking at areas where there have been higher levels of arrests, but also by looking at race.”

Activist efforts continued into the morning of Feb 15, as the Marijuana Policy Project of Mass held a press conference on the State House steps, responding to statements on the draft regulations by Gov. Charlie Baker, as well as district attorneys from around the state and various lawmakers. The demonstration aimed to call out the Baker administration’s “coordinated campaign that threatens the independence of the CCC.” Shanel Lindsay, chairman of the Massachusetts Cannabis Advisory Board’s Market Participation Subcommittee and a drafter of Question 4, was among those who accused Baker’s administration of attempting to stifle the CCC’s efforts in a way that would only benefit “big marijuana.”

“The commission listened, they deliberated, and they voted in favor of small business,” Lindsay said. “So why are we gathered here today, in a fight against maintaining a broken system that prefers only the wealthy and wellconnected? It smacks of insider dealing at the expense of small business, and that we will not accept.”

Moving forward, the CCC is supposed to finalize its rules and regulations before July 1, when retail shops are slated open in the Commonwealth.

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BY ROB KATZ @ROBMKATZ

GET A GRIPPE DIRTY OLD BOSTON

The flu hit Boston extremely hard 100 years ago

AFRO FLOW YOGA

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BY PETER ROBERGE

BACKGROUND: PATIENTS IN UNIDENTIFIED WARD (COURTESY BOSTON CITY ARCHIVES); “QUININE’S FIGHT AGAINST THE GRIP” (BOSTON DAILY GLOBE, DEC. 28, 1889); MAYOR ANDREW PETERS RECEIVES THE FLU VACCINE (BOSTON DAILY GLOBE, OCT 2, 1918); “BOSTON GRIPPE RECORD” (BOSTON DAILY GLOBE, OCT 2, 1918) According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Commonwealth has recently seen as many as 1,700 new cases of the flu every week. The influenza scare has made national headlines for more than a month and stayed there even through the school shooting in Florida and various presidential insults, as flu-related hospitalizations have risen high enough to spur facilities in California to arrange overflow tents in parking lots to keep up with the influx of patients.

Flash back to 100 years ago, when the Spanish flu epidemic was similarly worrying Americans. With vaccine developments not nearly as ubiquitous as they are in 2018, many Boston-area doctors relied on pseudoscience and, out of both desperation and ignorance, said and did whatever they could to tame an ongoing public outrage about flu deaths. Countless citizens worried they could drop dead next. By the end of 1918, more than 1,000 people had died from the flu in Boston alone.

Dig Boston - Afro Flow Yoga.indd Doctors hurriedly dreamed up creative, if often ridiculous, cures, the whole time reassuring people that the outbreak was contained. Some imprudently advised their patients to inhale things like “acid gas” fumes, while others sought more modern remedies. At the dawn of the 1918 epidemic, Boston Mayor Andrew Peters publicly received a flu shot in an effort to spread awareness.

Of course, New Englanders have endured influenza for more than a century. Before the Spanish flu, people often suffered from what was commonly called the grippe.

Struggling to slow the rising death toll, people often relied on whiskey, which had long been advertised as an effective remedy against most sicknesses. In the late 1800s and even during Prohibition in the 1920s, Boston officials issued permits for doctors to prescribe whiskey to flu patients.

Another popular solution in the Boston area was quinine, a compound commonly used at the time to fight diseases, including malaria. The media played a significant role in the response effort, and in 1889 began pushing quinine as a better alternative to whiskey, leading to the drug seeing a five-times increase in sales. Quinine overdoses eventually became frequent; still, as reliable remedies continued to elude health officials, some pharmacists went rogue. One outlaw became notorious around the city for selling a home-brewed solution; his tagline: The only sure cure for the grippe.

Looking back, it seems like several outlets went to great lengths to blame anyone and everyone besides the government. In one instance, a writer at the Boston Daily Globe even accused the Chinese community of having and withholding the antidote, a statement based on the reporter’s personal observation that Chinatown residents had avoided the flu altogether.

The deaths confused even the most respected of doctors. Influential US Surgeon General Rupert Blue told the Boston Sunday Post in 1919 that the germ was “preparing for a mighty attack on the human race.”

After the dust settled in the early 1920s, details of the outbreaks slowly vanished from the popular narrative. But as the current nightmare mounts—Massachusetts has seen more than 100 flu deaths a week since the beginning of the year—it may be helpful to revisit our past and to see how political and healthcare leaders before us moved past hysterics to find solutions.

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This throwback is a collaboration between Dirty Old Boston, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and DigBoston. For more throwbacks visit facebook.com/ dirtyoldboston and binjonline.org.

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TOWNIE

MASS REGIONAL TRANSIT AUTHORITIES FACE MAJOR BUDGET CRISIS Gov. Baker’s proposed cuts throw gasoline on raging policy fire

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS A quarter-century ago, I lived in Lawrence for a few months. Because it was the closest place to Boston that I could find a cheap apartment on short notice.

Unfortunately, I had a low-paying job in the city and couldn’t afford a car. So I took the commuter rail over an hour each way back and forth whenever I had a shift.

Then at the end of the day, I was faced with getting to my apartment a couple of miles away from the station.

Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority (MVRTA) bus service ran near my place. But even in the early 1990s with a state budget that looks more humane in retrospect, it was infrequent at best. And my bus dropped me off a few blocks away from where I lived when it was running.

Now that was during rush hour on a weekday. If I got home later than early evening—especially on weekends—MVRTA buses had already stopped running.

I moved there in December. And until I moved back to Boston the following March, through what proved to be a very cold winter, I would often get off my train, watch all but a handful of people get into waiting cars and leave, and then begin the long, frozen slog home. Across the Merrimack River, on sidewalks that were mostly unshoveled and roads that were indifferently plowed.

Standing in the middle of Duck Bridge one Sunday night in mid-February during a fierce snowstorm, I experienced a moment of nearly perfect alienation. The scene was completely desolate. No vehicles were on the road. It was pitch black except for the occasional street light with the darker black of largely abandoned textile mills looming in the middle distance. Snow was piling up all around me. The brutal wind off the water cut through my coat. My sneakers were entirely insufficient to the task of keeping me consistently upright—let alone keeping my feet warm and dry. And I remember thinking that if I had slipped and fallen into the river, no one would have the slightest idea of where I’d gone until spring. Because in the era before ubiquitous cell phones or texters, I could not have typed “aaaaaaah” to my girlfriend as I fell. So who would be the wiser?

Fast-forward to this week, and that memory immediately sprang to mind when I read the transportation section of Gov. Charlie Baker’s annual state budget proposal. And discovered that he’s planning to level-fund the 15 regional transit authorities (RTAs) for $80.4 million, according to the Mass Budget and 6

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Policy Center, while most Bostonians are focusing on the ongoing fight to keep the MBTA solvent. Authorities like the Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority… which is already cutting back bus, van, and Boston commuter service and eliminating that Sunday service I kept missing in the early ’90s. Since level-funding means a budget cut, given annual cost increases. And it’s not looking like the legislature is likely to swoop in to save the RTAs later in our now-normalized austerity budget process.

After all, if the legions of working- and middle-class Bostonians that rely on public transit can’t yet force elected state officials to properly fund the MBTA, the smaller numbers of riders in outlying cities like Brockton, Fitchburg, Lowell, and Lawrence are in even worse straits.

Especially when many of them are immigrants who can’t vote.

Yet the need for public transit gets more dire the farther you get from Boston. If you don’t have a car in places like Athol, Greenfield, Holyoke, and Pittsfield, literally your only inexpensive transit option is bus service run by your regional transit authority. Which I’ve already made quite clear is of limited usefulness at the best of times. RTAs don’t go everywhere riders need to go and don’t run many of the times riders need to use them.

As I experienced during my brief, unpleasant Lawrence sojourn.

People without cars in the many parts of the state that aren’t reached by the MBTA’s main bus and subway lines are already at a major disadvantage in terms of their ability to access jobs, laundry, shopping, education, social services, daycare, and healthcare in the best of times. If RTA service continues to be whittled away year by year, eventually there will be no public transportation left in many locales. And taking an Uber or Lyft won’t be an option for people that can’t even afford a hike in bus fare. Even while those private transportation services are angling to replace public transit for those that can pay their largely unregulated fares.

That is no minor problem—lest readers think that only small numbers of people lack cars in Mass cities outside of the Boston metro area. It’s a major crisis. For example, according to a Governing magazine article looking at car ownership in US cities with a population over 100,000, 19.3 percent of Worcester households and 22.2 percent of Springfield households did not have a car

in 2016. Meanwhile, my colleague Bill Shaner at Worcester Magazine just reported that “[t]he Worcester Regional Transit Authority Advisory Board voted to send proposed service cuts to a public hearing after decrying the possible changes as a ‘death spiral’ for the bus system.

He continued, “WRTA officials unveiled several possible measures to bridge a $1.2 million budget gap, due mostly to budget cuts to the RTA system at the state level. The possible measures include routes cut wholesale, cut weekend service, and diminished routes, which would increase wait times between buses.”

Both WRTA Board Chairman William Lehtola and WRTA Administrator Jonathan Church agreed that the system would “cease to exist in a few years” if the funding crisis continues unabated.

Meanwhile, the Republican reported that Springfield RTA “the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority has proposed a 25 percent across-the-board increase in fares and pass prices and a slate of service cutbacks, all to take force July 1.”

So make no mistake, this is a significant escalation in the war on Mass working families by Baker and any legislators that back similar cuts to public transit around the state. Cuts that RTAs have already been struggling with for years. As with the battle to save the MBTA and other public services, the RTAs can only be defended with a concerted fight from their riders. Whose goal must be to increase taxes on corporations and the rich in the Commonwealth, and to change state and local budget priorities to better serve the needs of all Mass residents.

Failing that, you’ll see a lot more people walking long distances in inclement weather statewide. And all too many of them won’t be able to escape their “transit desert” like I did. They will simply become more and more isolated. Until they literally disappear. The way I feared doing on a lonely bridge in the depths of a Merrimack Valley winter half a lifetime agone.

Townie (a worm’s eye view of the Mass power structure) 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.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

REVISITING FREDERICK DOUGLASS Has Trump done his research on the abolitionist yet?

Gregory Csikos, CPA csikoscpa.com

BY REV. IRENE MONROE @REVIMONROE

TAXATION ACCOUNTING PLANNING I’m a Boston-based CPA here to provide a full spectrum of accounting and tax services to meet the needs of individuals, small businesses, start-ups, and non-profit organizations. My clients get more than an experienced and dedicated accountant, they get a problem solver. I thrive on breaking down complex issues into practical steps, allowing you to focus your energies on what matters most to you.

Frederick Douglass is dead. During Black History Month, Americans across the country commemorate his birthday (he was born 200 years ago this February).

Around this time last year, however, President Donald Trump appeared to not know any of this.

Kicking off Black History Month 2017, Trump hosted a “listening session” at the White House that left listeners scratching their heads, wondering if he knew that Douglass—a self-liberated former slave turned abolitionist—died in 1895. Instead of clarifying what Trump meant by his comment, then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made it clear that he, too, didn’t quite know if Douglass is dead.

“I think he [Trump] wants to highlight the contributions he has made. And I think through a lot of the actions and statements he’s going to make, I think that the contributions of Frederick Douglass will become more and more.”

The remarks from both Trump and Spicer could have passed for an episode of Drunk History, and illustrate why we not only need Black History Month, but also an intensive tutorial for the Trump administration.

With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, there was a question among some people about whether Black History Month is still needed. Millennials, whose ballots helped elect the country’s first African-American president, especially thought the concept seemed outdated, a relic tethered to an old defunct paradigm of the 1960s civil rights era.

But then Trump became president. And queries about the the continuation of Black History Month died down, as the POTUS has insulted every marginalized group in America. Since his first year in office, Trump’s display of xenophobic, misogynistic, LGBTQ-phobic, and racist remarks, to name just a few of his many bigotries, appears to have no cutoff. His embrace of white supremacy, the statement about “shithole countries”—all reveal what his followers mean by “Make America Great Again.”

Specifically, Trump’s repugnant “blame on both sides” comment about the Charlottesville mayhem that took place last summer depicted the perpetrators as victims. Such comments, and actions like condemning counterprotesters more than swastika-wielding thugs, have helped to further embolden his followers, some of whom are now contesting the celebration of Black History Month and in some cases even insisting on the celebration of white history. Boston-born white supremacist Richard Spencer, a Trump supporter, sees no need for Black History Month and has stated that “I would never say something like, ‘I don’t like black people,’ just that, ‘Africans have benefited from white supremacy.’”

If Spicer was telling the truth last year, and the Trump administration wants to highlight Douglass’s invaluable contribution to American history, they should start with his historic 1852 speech, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” In it Douglass stated, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence. … I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. … This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”

Douglass’s speech highlights the fight for Black independence and full citizenship, then and now. And it informs our understanding of race relations today, because it connects with contemporary themes of class and gender issues, economic disparity, and the prison industrial complex, to list a few.

Douglass’s indefatigable activism as an abolitionist helped end slavery. Still, it’s important to remember his remarks about the country moving forward after Congress passed the 13th Amendment: “Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.”

One year later, in 1866, Douglass, along with other national African-American leaders, met with President Andrew Jackson to advocate for Black voting rights, which remains part of the struggle today.

I hope Trump revisits Douglass.

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LAW ENFORCEMENT, ANTIFA, AND THE ALT-RIGHT DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

Pop culture embraces Trump’s “both sides” narrative as alt-right grows increasingly dangerous

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS A recent episode of the seemingly eternal crime drama Law & Order: SVU featured an Ann Coulter-like figure—she had a name in the show but let’s call her Ann Fauxlter— who was raped with a protest sign in a “riot” on a college campus in New York (the fictional Hudson University).

The “ripped from the headlines” show engaged in a bit of both-sides-ism worthy of Schrodinger’s cat. At first Fauxlter claims that an anti-fascist activist wearing all black and a mask raped her. Tracking down leads, the “liberal” cops and prosecutors come to suspect a small-handed alt-right troll whose advances she spurned the night before.

SPOILER ALERT: In the end, it never says who raped Fauxlter, but it pushed hard the general establishment consensus that “both sides”—antifa and the alt-right—are equally bad.

Recent events show, again, that this is bullshit— especially in the show’s depiction of police officers and prosecutors who are more sympathetic to antifa than the alt-right. Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the role of sheriffs in the “Anglo-American” tradition of law enforcement. As so often with Sessions, the phrase was a dog whistle. He could defend his position and note that the position of sheriff originated in England—think Sheriff of Nottingham—but the racists would hear that he supported them.

In contrast to Sessions, James Comey—the FBI director that Sessions fired over the Russia investigation—gave a speech in 2015 noting that “all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty.”

The Anglo-American tradition of law enforcement has been one of white supremacy for much of that history— and police departments and sheriff’s offices around the country are still trying to grapple with that.

When the CBS news show 60 Minutes interviewed a recovering racist a few months back, he talked about how skinheads made a conscious decision to clean up and join law enforcement.

“You know 30 years ago, we were skinheads,” he said.

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“We wore swastikas and shaved heads, and you could identify us pretty easily. So we decided at that time to grow our hair out, to trade in our boots for suits, and we encouraged people to get jobs in law enforcement, to go to the military and get training and to recruit there.”

A 2006 FBI report worried about white supremacists “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel” and leading to “to investigative breaches.”

But one of the first things the Trump administration floated upon coming into office was changing the name of the Countering Violent Extremism program to “Countering Islamic Extremism” and eliminating a focus on white supremacist terror groups. At the same time, they were ramping up a prosecution of 200 people arrested in an anti-capitalist anti-fascist protest of Trump’s inauguration.

More than a year later, 59 people, including a journalist, are still facing decades in prison for wearing black clothes near a “black bloc” action where a few windows were broken.

At the same time, right-wing terror is on the rise. The same week that Law & Order aired its “Info Wars” episode, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a new report showing that individuals who were associated with or influenced by the alt-right killed 17 people in 2017. That doubled the number from the previous year.

Nikolas Cruz killed that many people in one day when he went on a shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last week. More information about his motives will surely arise in coming days, but the leader of one white supremacist group told the Anti-Defamation League that Cruz had trained with them. The leader of said group soon started trying to distance himself from his earlier statement, blaming the “Jew media,” and the ADL posted an update saying that one member had called the claim an elaborate plot to troll the media. Police have so far found no evidence that Cruz was involved with the group.

But that doesn’t mean white supremacists aren’t a threat to our security. Last year, a different hatemonger

who frequently posted on sites like Daily Stormer killed two students at Aztec High School in New Mexico. When the FBI visited him in 2015 after he had posted about trying to find a weapon for a school shooting, they concluded that he wasn’t a threat.

The FBI had apparently been warned by a YouTube vlogger that someone with the name Nikolas Cruz posted “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” on his page.

The local sheriff’s office in Leon County, Florida, says it has not been able to find any concrete ties between Cruz and the group in question—and the other clown may have just been trying to gain attention by claiming the horrendous actions of the MAGA-hat-wearing murderer.

Still, it is clear that the racist, misogynist ideology of the alt-right is a serious threat, and that threat is enhanced when it is equated with anti-capitalist property destruction. The white supremacist violence in Charlottesville was able to reach the level it did because law enforcement stood around the mall across from Emancipation Park, protecting the windows of restaurants and stores from antifa protesters, instead of protecting people from the Nazis who, leaked communications show, were clearly set on violence.

But we know that the FBI and Homeland Security are actively monitoring people who are inspired by a “kind of an antifa ideology,” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, and are actively investigating “black identity extremists.” So when our popular culture starts to mimic Trump and right-wing memes, declaring “both sides” are bad and adding the layer that law enforcement somehow sympathizes with antifascists, it adds yet another dangerous layer to our already deeply toxic political discourse about violence, race, and law.

Baynard Woods is a reporter at the Real News Network.

Email baynard@therealnews. Twitter @baynardwoods.

Download the Democracy in Crisis podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud.

‘SELF AND OTHER’ OP-ED

The necessity of an intl. campaign to abolish nukes

BY E. MARTIN SCHOTZ, MD Recent comments by the leaders of the United States and North Korea have reignited public concern about the danger of nuclear war. The Nobel Peace Prize was given this past year to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

At the dawn of the nuclear age Albert Einstein warned, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything in the world except mankind’s mind, and so we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” What did Einstein mean? And what are the logical implications of Einstein’s insight? What changes must occur in our minds to avoid “unparalleled catastrophe”?

There are at least three ways that the existence of nuclear weapons compels us to change our thinking—the way we think about self and other, the way we think about war and peace, and the way we think about democracy.

Self and Other: Many think that our military protects us and only endangers others.

But with nuclear weapons this idea doesn’t hold. A malfunction on Russian radar could be catastrophic for the United States if it were to mistakenly register a US nuclear attack. We are left with the hope that there will be no problems with Russian radar.

Similarly everyone must hope that there are no problems with our radar systems. The vast destructive power of nuclear weapons has entangled us with our “enemies” such that the less secure they are, the less secure we are. Furthermore, the destructive power of nuclear weapons means that using a fraction of the nuclear bombs in the United States arsenal would kill and injure immeasurable numbers of people, seriously damage the environment, and disrupt agriculture on a worldwide scale. Nuclear weapons have turned the moral imperative “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” into a practical necessity, because what we do unto others will be done to us. Can we understand that only by seeing to the other’s security will we be truly secure?

Peace and War: People commonly think of war and peace as opposite states of being. Peace ends and wars begin when the weapons start going off. But with nuclear weapons such thinking is not permissible, because nuclear war doesn’t begin when the weapons go off. Nuclear war ends when the weapons go off. If this is how nuclear war ends, how does nuclear war begin? It begins by building nuclear weapons, testing them, amassing them, and preparing to use them. Any talk today of preventing a nuclear war misses the point that we are actually in a nuclear war right now. The question is not how can we prevent a nuclear war, but how will the nuclear war end? Will it end with the weapons abolishing mankind, or will mankind end this war by abolishing nuclear weapons? Just as war is a process, so is peace. Peace is a process of educating people about nuclear war, helping them organize against this war. Peace is a process of building institutions that can help people negotiate solutions to differences and conflicts without resorting to war.

Democracy: Could there be any condition more at odds with democracy than a situation in which a few individuals can make a decision that could destroy all of mankind? The most basic democratic right, the right to live, requires the abolition of nuclear weapons. Just as war and peace are processes, so is democracy. We must think of it as “the process of democratization,” a process that depends on large numbers of people informing themselves on issues and organizing to see that their views are truly represented. Ordinary people can and must seize the democratic right to live by joining together in a worldwide peace movement. Through this peace movement we can create the political will and power to compel the nuclear powers to negotiate a treaty monitored by the United Nations, which will abolish all nuclear weapons and safeguard the true security of all peoples. Everyone has a role in this process.

At present a call is is serving as a rallying cry for a new movement in the United States. It has been endorsed by a number of national as well as local religious, peace, and social justice organizations such as United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, Franciscans for Justice, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Union of Concerned Scientists, Federation of American Scientists, Women’s Action for New Directions, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Unitarian Universalist Association, and numerous others. Here’s the text: Back from the Brink: A Call to Prevent Nuclear War We call on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:

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• renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first • ending the president’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack • taking US nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert • cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons • actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals

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Learn more at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons website, icanw. org. Also, please share the following brief video on the danger of nuclear weapons, tiny. cc/preventnuclearwar, and seek out and support organizations in your area that are working to abolish nuclear weapons. E. Martin Schotz is a physician who has been working at South End Community Health Center in Boston for more than 30 years. He is also a member of the Northampton Working Group to Prevent Nuclear War and of the Peace Task Force of Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution.

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ANTI-PILGRIM ACTIVISTS ON THE SAGAMORE BRIDGE IN 2015. PHOTO BY PAUL RIFKIN.

PILGRIMS SPECIAL FEATURE

An excerpt from an oral history on 50 Years of Anti-Nuclear Mass

BY MIRIAM WASSER On a sunny morning last September, a small group of men and women met in the Christmas Tree Shops parking lot by the Sagamore Bridge. It was Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, and the line of cars heading over the bridge out of Cape Cod was steadily growing as the minutes went by.

Two women from Cape Downwinders, the local antinuclear group that organized the day’s rally, began to unpack signs and banners from a car. They carried them over to the metal guardrail that separates the parking lot from Route 6. Nearby, Diane Turco, director of Cape Downwinders, struggled with a white pop-up tent. As she fought against the wind to tape the banners to the lightweight metal frame, the two other women, Mary Conathan and Susan Carpenter, put down their banners on the grass and came to help her.

All three wore neon green T-shirts that read “Shut Down Pilgrim” and laughed as they tried to keep the tent from blowing away. After finally getting it strapped to the guardrail with bungee cords, they walked back to the car to get the rest of their signs and greet the latest arrivals.

In all, about a dozen people came to the rally—a smaller crowd than the organizers had hoped for—and they spread out along the road with their banners and signs. Cars began honking almost immediately.

Occasionally, someone rolled down a window and cheered.

“I am amazed now how many people are paying attention,” Carpenter said. Up until a few years ago, she explained, a lot of people in the area supported the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. “People were saying that we need the power and it keeps our rates down. Now people thank us.”

For those on the Cape, the Pilgrim question is hard to ignore—and not only because of regular public demonstrations like the annual Labor Day and Memorial Day rallies at the bridge. Massachusetts’ sole nuclear power plant has been in the news for several problems, including during the most recent winter storms.

In 2015, after a series of unplanned shutdowns, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission downgraded the 10

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Plymouth plant’s safety rating and deemed it one of the three worst-performing reactors in the country. Shortly thereafter, Pilgrim’s owner-operator, Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, announced that it would close the plant by June 2019.

For those at the bridge, the upcoming closure, while exciting, also presents a whole new host of safety concerns.

“What happens at Pilgrim could set precedent for the country, and we’re pushing for Pilgrim to be the poster child for public safety,” Turco said. “Unfortunately, we have a lot more work to do. We hope that we’ve provided a foundation for activism in our community, but this is going to be an ongoing issue.”

With the plant about to enter its final year of operation, and anti-Pilgrim activists planning the next stages of their campaign, it seemed a fitting time to look back at the 50year fight against one of the country’s most problematic nuclear power plants.

What follows is an oral history of the anti-Pilgrim movement, patched together from extensive interviews conducted with more than 20 experts and activists, many of whom have spent countless hours litigating in court, writing petitions, attending demonstrations, and even sitting in jail cells. The message, tactics, politics, and players have changed over the past half-century, but the underlying effort—to stand up for the health and safety of their families and neighbors—has been unrelenting.

PEACENIKS + PICNICS (1965-1980) In the mid-1960s, the Massachusetts utility Boston Edison Company began talking about building a nuclear power plant in Plymouth. The company sent representatives to the town to speak with residents and elected officials about the economic benefits such a plant could bring.

MEG SHEEHAN (environmental lawyer, former Plymouth resident): I remember being a kid and growing up in Plymouth. It was a very small town [between 15,000

and 18,000 residents, according to US Census records from the time] and it didn’t have a lot of industry. The local rope factory, Cordage Company … had closed, so the town selectmen were trying to attract new industries.

This was the time period when industry was taking the technology developed during the Manhattan Project and trying to find a commercial use for it. So Boston Edison was trying to convince everyone that nuclear power was clean and safe. I remember that Boston Edison came into town and they had a trailer parked outside of the elementary school. They went around telling people that nuclear power was green and clean and safe; the town selectmen bought it hook, line, and sinker. Meanwhile, we were learning to duck and cover in class.

In 1967, with the town of Plymouth on board, Boston Edison submitted a proposal to the US Atomic Energy Commission — the predecessor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC — to build the plant. The agency approved the request, and construction began the following year.

MEG SHEEHAN: That’s when I first got involved. I asked my mother if I could put a sign on our front lawn that said “No Nukes” or “Don’t Build Pilgrim.” I was 13 and my parents lived on Route 3A, so [the construction company] was driving all these trucks to Pilgrim past our house. The sign was very visible.

Lawn signs clearly didn’t stop construction, and Pilgrim began producing power in 1972. Shortly thereafter, Boston Edison announced plans to construct two more reactors — Pilgrim 2 and Pilgrim 3.

BILL ABBOTT (lawyer, co-founder of Plymouth County Nuclear Information Center): We moved to Plymouth in 1973. Pilgrim 1 had just opened a few years before we got PILGRIMS continued on pg. 12

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PILGRIMS continued from pg. 10 here, but we paid little attention to it initially. Then there was a story in the local paper that said Boston Edison was trying to get permits to build two additional reactors, and they were going to do it quickly. They thought the permitting for the next two would be simple. They stated that the second reactor, Pilgrim 2, would open in 1975, and Pilgrim 3 sometime in the late ’70s. The newspaper story concluded, I remember, by saying that there was no known opposition. So they thought these two additional units would be a slam-dunk and they’d have a real fast approval process.

I was living only four or five miles from the site, so I started looking into issues with nuclear power. The more I read, the more concerned I got. … I started reaching out, and I can’t remember how we got hooked up, but I started talking with the Union of Concerned Scientists [and other concerned citizens].

We formed a local group, Plymouth County Nuclear Information Center, called PICNIC, and we became the organization that for the next 10-15 years led the fight against Pilgrim 2 and 3, and then back against Pilgrim 1. …

I always thought it was important to have an organization that would be conducting this, and not just an individual.

In 1974 or ’75 we opened a storefront in downtown Plymouth. … It was right by the corner of Main Street and Court Street, on the block next to the fire station. It looked like a political campaign office: It had tables, some posters, and a lot of signage. It basically was a political campaign. It was staffed by one person, and people would walk in off the street and we’d give them literature, just like at a political campaign headquarters. … We’d prepare little pamphlets that we’d print and pass out. It was a black pamphlet and the big headline was “Do you know what plutonium is?”

And then a couple lines down it’d say: “You better find out.” Then the inside would be the whole story about how

Pilgrim produces plutonium as a byproduct and that it is incredibly deadly.

ED RUSSELL (lawyer, activist, Plymouth resident): I had some knowledge that there was a nuclear plant here, but I wasn’t really aware of the consequences of having that plant until I picked that up from Bill Abbott.

PINE DUBOIS (executive director of Jones River Watershed Association, president and executive director of Jones River Landing): I actually moved to the area [in 1975] because of Pilgrim — well, because of Gerry Studds [who died in 2006], the congressman at the time in Massachusetts in this area. He was one of the shining stars of the anti-nuclear warfare movement and cautioned about nuclear energy, and when I was in Chicago and going to school at the time, he stuck out as somebody that had real things to say and was honest and thoughtful. So I actually moved to the area because of him. … And that’s when Pilgrim 2 was looming on the horizon.

BILL ABBOTT: I am a lawyer, so we decided I would intervene at every single legal point. We filed cases with the NRC, we intervened in licensing proceedings and in environmental proceedings, and we filed suit in Plymouth to try to stop the site from being zoned for two more plants. …

Being in so many simultaneous proceedings at once actually paid off because we could use what Edison said at one proceeding in another proceeding. For example, one of the key arguments they had to make with the NRC [to get the permits for Pilgrim 2 and 3] was that they were in robust financial shape. But at the same time, they were making a case at the state Department of Public Utilities that they needed rate relief. So at the NRC meetings, we would enter testimony from the DPU [hearings]. It really worked.

ANTI-NUCLEAR DEMONSTRATORS ON BOSTON COMMON IN 1979. PHOTO BY JON CHASE.

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In 1975, Edison announced they were canceling Pilgrim 3 and that they would just try to get Pilgrim 2 licensed.

And they got really close; they were so sure that Pilgrim 2 would be approved that they went ahead and built major components of the plant off-site, spending $300 million.

But they couldn’t bring any of these things into Plymouth until they got the permit, which we were fighting [in the courts]. … Then the NRC issued what they called a limited work authorization program, which was something the NRC made up to let some of the building start at Pilgrim.

PICNIC challenged that [in court] and it was reversed.

ED RUSSELL: Bill Abbott filed administrative proceedings at every single thing that Boston Edison wanted to do.

They had to file a series of applications to do X or to do Y or to report each year on this or that. And he was dogged; he never let any one of them go without appealing. It just wore them down.

PINE DUBOIS: When I came down here, I was working with a non-profit dealing with battered women’s services and engaged in organic agriculture. Boston Edison was transporting pieces of the turbine through Kingston on the road we lived on, and since we didn’t want Pilgrim 2 to be built, we organized the kids that were working with us.

I had 23 kids working at the farm, and we started stalking the transport vehicles and [shouting at them], “We can heat with wood, we don’t need nuclear!” We also threw pieces of cordwood at the trucks. [No damage was done, but] the kids had fun and it got into the press. In other words, we tried to challenge them in any way we could to get more awareness about what was happening.

BILL ABBOTT: One of the other things we did during the Pilgrim 2 fight was to hold big public events. We had five or six public debates where I was on the opposition side and there was a spokesman from the plant.

PILGRIM 2 - ARCHITECT’S RENDERING SHOWS PROPOSED PILGRIM NUCLEAR GENERATING UNITS 2 AND 3 TO BE BUILT ADJACENT TO THE PRESENT BOSTON EDISON COMPANY’S 664,000 KILOWATT NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION (RIGHT) IN PLYMOUTH, MASS. CIRCA 1974.

PINE DUBOIS: There was a pretty reliable and active group of local residents that were concerned about Pilgrim and stayed motivated and exchanged ideas and rallied at those events. There wasn’t a single set of people at the time. It was wide ranging, with a lot of people from

Plymouth, Kingston, and Duxbury.

BILL ABBOTT: I remember that we had one rally where quite a few people came — about a thousand people. It was right at junction of the access road to the plant and

Route 3A. It was a typical 1960s-style rally with folk music and speakers. I remember Ralph Nader was one of our featured speakers.

BILL ABBOTT: By the end of the ’70s, Boston Edison decided they’d spent enough money and they were going to cancel Pilgrim 2. It was canceled in 1980; we were at it for six years. And after that, we began to focus on Pilgrim 1.

ED RUSSELL: Bill Abbott is a key to what’s happened in Massachusetts. We would have a Pilgrim 2 and maybe even Pilgrim 3 if it weren’t for his dogged litigation back in the day. He was very effective at just keeping Boston Edison at bay, which is why we only have one plant to deal with now.

BILL ABBOTT: We weren’t successful in closing Pilgrim 1, but we got a lot achieved. We got monitors that go on light poles to measure radiation all around the area, and we got the state to institute a real-time radiation-monitoring program.

PINE DUBOIS: After they announced Pilgrim 2 wasn’t going to happen, Reagan was elected and he took the solar panels off the White House and killed every incentive that Carter put in. It was a downhill landslide in terms of environmental protections from there, and we focused on other things — mostly land protection and river protection. We let it go, basically, at least I did. And we focused on things we could do rather than things we could not do.

BILL ABBOTT: This went on for a number of years until other groups sprung up in the late ’80s.

CONSTRUCTION: THE 525-TON, 65-FOOT TALL REACTOR VESSEL FOR THE BOSTON EDISON COMPANY’S PILGRIM NUCLEAR STATION TOOK A MONTH-LONG, 3,587-MILE VOYAGE TO GO FROM THE FABRICATION SHOPS AT COMBUSTION ENGINEERING ON THE TENNESSEE RIVER TO THE PLANT SITE BEFORE BEING NUDGED INTO A LANDING—ABOUT A MILE SOUTH OF WHERE THE PILGRIMS HAD LANDED 350 YEARS BEFORE.

This oral history was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Check digboston.com and binjonline.org for the whole story, and keep an eye out for a dedicated print version that will be distributed around Greater Boston and Cape Cod.

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Restaurant people live on coffee. We may not be morning people, but you can bet your boots we make a dash for java before clocking in, then refuel frequently throughout the evening.

We always bow to those capable of making a perfect cortado. Like baristas who come sit at our bars after a long day, hungry for a stiff cocktail, bartenders across the city depend on knowledgeable coffee people to get them through shifts.

So it’s interesting that the two worlds don’t often collide, that when we talk about hospitality we rarely pull cafes and coffee shops into the fold, especially when many of the critical issues—lack of diversity, sexual harassment, the need for more opportunities for advancement—look exactly the same in both industries.

The Jagermeister-sponsored Barista/Bartender Throwdown, which took place last week as part of a string of events organized by Boston’s bartending community to raise funds for the local chapter of Futures Without Violence (it’s all part of V-Day, a worldwide campaign in the fight to end violence against women), not only threw one helluva party but facilitated crucial conversations across these local hospitality strongholds.

There was caffeine, there was alcohol, there were cocktails and coffee drinks, and most importantly, there was a coming together of ideas and people. Without the Throwdown, I likely never would have met Kristina Jackson, founder of the Boston Intersectional Coffee Collective (BICC).

Jackson launched the BICC, currently a one-woman show, last fall not only in response to the Black Lives Matter movement but after witnessing the all too often co-opting of BLM meetings and rallies by white Bostonians.

“It was really frustrating and annoying,” Jackson said. “I was going to meetings, going to rallies and protests, and I was finding overwhelmingly that these meetings that were supposed to be centered around people of color were actually mostly white. … So I said this isn’t working, let’s see if I can find a way to connect this to my job.”

She continued: “The restaurant industry, the coffee industry, hospitality in general is inherently, I think, a social industry. People go to cafes to meet other people, to talk and connect, and I said that’s perfect.”

The hospitality industry is also, as I noted in a recent feature about the V-Day events organized by members of Boston’s bartending community, overwhelmingly comprised of people who get shit done. And that’s largely because from a dinner for two, to a cocktail competition, to a wedding reception, to a latte to get your day started, we—servers, bartenders, baristas—are in the business of bringing people together.

Still, while we may be skilled at bridging gaps between between diverse groups of people, we are, as an industry, struggling with issues of diversity and inclusivity. “When I brought my focus to starting conversations within the coffee community, I found the same problems,” Jackson said. “Coffee is a white male industry.”

“I wasn’t finding a social group I could identify with,” she continued. “I was finding people who had similar causes in terms of people wanting to fight violence, fight racism, fight sexism, but I wanted to find people who looked like me, and find people interested in fighting for things that are specific to Black people and Black communities.”

“So I said, ‘Fine. I’ll do something myself.’”

BICC, and Jackson as the face and voice of the organization, has participated in a handful of events focusing on coffee and social change, including the Barista/Bartender throwdown this month. Jackson has organized and participated in panels addressing sexism, racism, and sexual harassment, all as those issues are relevant in her work community. In November she organized an all-women’s latte throwdown (a latte art competition) and raised $600 for Rosie’s Place, Boston’s oldest (and America’s first) all-women’s shelter.

“I really just wanted to talk to people,” she said. “I made a lot of really good connections with people experiencing the same things and who were pissed about them.”

People interested in hearing more about and getting involved with BICC can contact Kristina at kjacksonbicc@gmail.com. For more information on the remaining V-Day events, including “an intersectionality-focused event and conversation” at the V-Day performance of Eve Ensler’s A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer on Feb 26, check out digboston.com or find the show on Eventbrite.

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Tree moves his art and punk rock ops to the ’burbs, throws enormous parties

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

512 Mass. Ave. Central Sq. Cambridge, MA 617-576-6260 phoenixlandingbar.com

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

If anyone is qualified say that Boston is at risk of becoming a cultural wasteland due to high rents and the yuppie invasion, it’s Dave Tree. As a beloved punk rock frontman, longtime DIY artist, and promoter of innumerable shows on Rugg Road in Allston, among other spots through the years, he has contributed more to the creative scene than most.

Plus, c’mon, the guy has a point.

With countless artists and musicians heading for the ’burbs, it only seemed sensible for Tree to move his own operation farther out after he was pushed out of his gallery in Watertown. So when Dave DePree, the owner of the massive Norwood Space Center, presented an opportunity to open an art and performance spot, Tree did what he always does: put his everything into the project.

Collaborating with DePree, his new neighbors at Norwood’s Percival Brewing, and the David Bieber Archives—an incredible collection of rock memorabilia housed in the same building—Tree set up the Launch Pad venue and Long Haul Gallery, and the rest will soon be history. We asked him all about the move and new digs…

You’re not the first person to step outside of the city’s boundaries to do something like this, largely as a result of how hard it is to live as a musician or artist in Boston.

Is there a great migration afoot? Where lots of people who would have ordinarily shunned the suburbs are making creative enclaves in new places?

I think there has to be a migration out of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville areas by artists and musicians in order to survive because of the rents and real estate madness.

It’s hard to find a space to work and show work in the city, so in order to keep working we have look for other alternatives.

I grew up bored as hell in Westwood, one town over from Norwood. There was nothing to do and nothing happening, so I started a band and people came out and supported us.

The suburbs is a great opportunity for art and music because there is nothing to do, and if you do something there people will be interested and come out.

Your last place was in Watertown. It was smaller, and a different setup, but when you first went there, was it the same kind of feeling—like a new frontier?

Absolutely a new frontier. I had just left behind a sweet underground loft space on Rugg Road (in Allston) so they could tear it down and build condos, to move into a storefront in Watertown. I had to play by the rules, which is a hassle and expensive, but I adapted and ran SweeTree Ink until they sold the building. Now I’m working with people that have a desire to promote art and culture and are giving me a chance to do it.

You’re collaborating with a lot of different people out there on this project—from the archives to the beer. What kind of conversations are you having about getting people to experience these new places, venues, and galleries?

It’s great to work with people on making good things happen, and I am working with some amazing people like Chuck White and David Bieber in the archives, Percival Brewing Co., Dave DePree, and Tricia White all working out of the Norwood Space Center to bring in all the incredible talents that need a space to show their work and perform.

I don’t see you as being a spokesperson for any company, let alone Uber, but do you think modern advances in transportation make something like this all the more feasible?

I don’t have the Uber app, but the 34E MBTA bus has a stop 100 feet away, and if you like trains, the commuter rail has a stop a 15-minute walk away.

What’s your vision for the Launch Pad—five months from now and five years from now?

I hope it has wings and flies. It’s OK to wipe out a few times, but I think it will fly. We all need art and culture, and we need places to do it. We need to be creative and have community, or they will replace us with robots.

Winter Nights, a group art show with live comedy and reggae, starts on Sat Feb 24 at the Norwood Space Center with the opening party and runs through April 7. There will be a series of events in the space in that time, including a show on Sat March 10 with Psychic Dog, one on Sat March 24 with Tree’s band See This World, and a closing party on Sat April 7. For more info check out norwoodspacecenter.com.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA LOFT / AUDREY HARRER

FAREWELL MAGNOLIA MUSIC

Saying goodbye to Jamaica Plain’s secret folk music hideout

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Like all of our city’s independent spaces and house venues, Magnolia Loft is experiencing a Boston tradition: choosing between shutting down or getting shut out.

Back in January of 2015, local harpist, singer, and composer Audrey Harrer was looking for a new practice space. She stumbled into a sun-filled Jamaica Plain studio at 128 Brookside where local artist Elizabeth Slayton, who had painted there for over 20 years, hung floral paintings around the room. When Slayton accepted Harrer’s proposal to host a studio-warming show there, their JP loft saw the first of what would become dozens of community-focused events. Indie band performances, chamber ensemble sets, psychedelic film nights, group improv sessions, Weird Folk fests, and more flooded the loft’s welcoming space. Hence, Magnolia Loft was born.

That all comes to an end this month. The venue’s landlord has asked everyone in the 128 Brookside artist spaces to leave, as he aims to sell the property in a vacant state.

A new Magnolia Loft won’t rise from the ashes, but Harrer, who spent hundreds of hours coordinating events for the local music scene, does plan to bring the venue’s magic into her live set moving forward. That sounds happier in text than in execution. It’s hard letting a communal art space close, especially in a city like Boston where never-ending rent raises make relocating nearly impossible. Given Harrer cared most about creative growth

and discovery for both the artists and audiences, as the informality of the setting fosters connections and ideas, it’s hard not to think of all the audiences who had yet to swing

by Magnolia Loft—and how much they could benefit from doing so. The events at Magnolia Loft aren’t just set times for artists to go through the motions. They educate, inspire, and enliven.

“There’s so many memories there. The John Cushing Big Band put on a fantastic show a few months ago—they actually released a tape of that performance. The place was packed, and enough people knew the words of his songs to sing along,” says Harrer. “Forró Zabumbeca’s Halloween dance party was pretty epic, too. They played for hours and made sure the whole crowd knew how to dance forró. The costumes were amazing: Vampires, flappers, and Benjamin Franklin all moving to Brazilian rhythms.”

So Harrer is doing what comes naturally: throwing one last party. At 8 pm this Saturday, Magnolia Loft will say farewell with a four-part event. It begins with a concert featuring an opening piece by humorist Jeannie Greeley, new work by Audrey Harrer and friends, and Hub New Music’s performance of “Soul House” by Robert Honstein.

The Magnolia Mixtape presentation follows, where guests will receive a free cassette compilation featuring artists who have performed at the loft. Next come micro sets, where artists who signed a spreadsheet in advance will play sets of 10 minute or less. Lastly, it ends with an

open session for guests to play music together one last time. The whole evening is free, though donations are accepted to fund a recording session for Hub New Music’s collaborations with Audrey Harrer and Robert Honstein.

If nothing else, that second quarter should pique your interest. The Magnolia Mixtape is limited to 50 copies and can only be received in person (though digital copies can be streamed online at her website). Harrer wanted to capture the expansive memories of the venue through a cassette tape, and she does so by showcasing the wide range of Boston’s talent. With recordings from Sam Moss, Sidney Gish, Anjimile, the Solars, Yousif Yaseen, Skinny Bones, Kingsley Flood, the Wrong Shapes, Guillermo Sexo, and more, it’s a stacked listen.

“I wanted it to be as inclusive as possible, so the list of artists is long, and the music diverse,” says Harrer. “It’s been about a month of emailing everyone and getting tracks— some of which were made specifically for this mix! Hearing all the songs together is very interesting, and you can sense connecting strands through the bedroom folk, lo-fi jazz, indie electronic, and experimental pop that somehow make this document a cohesive thing.”

All good things come to an end, but if you’re lucky, you can capture a fraction of their spirit. Harrer is doing exactly that to make sure Magnolia Loft not only gets a proper farewell, but that it gets doled out in equal quantities to benefit the community it was born to uplift.

>> HUB NEW MUSIC, AUDREY HARRER, JEANNIE GREELEY. SAT 2.24. MAGNOLIA LOFT, 128 BROOKSIDE AVE., FLOOR 3, JAMAICA PLAIN. 8PM/ALL AGES/DONATIONS ACCEPTED.

MUSIC EVENTS FRI 02.23

STIR SOME COUNTRY IN YOUR COCKTAIL HAYLEY THOMPSON KING + DENNIS BRENNAN BAND

[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 7pm/21+/$14. citywinery.com]

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02.22.18 - 03.01.18 |

SAT 02.24

RYAN ADAMS-APPROVED ACOUSTIC FOLK PHOEBE BRIDGERS + SOCCER MOMMY [Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

6:30pm/18+/$20. greatscottboston.com]

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SAT 02.24

DANCE PUNK FOR ALL STRFKR + REPTALIENS

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$25. sinclaircambridge.com]

SUN 02.25

EMO NOODLIN’ SOUP FOR THE POP PUNK SOUL KALI MASI + COOK BAG + RED LEDGER + I WISH I COULD SKATEBOARD

[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]

MON 02.27

CAYTLYN’S 30TH BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA FULLSOUR + MINI DRESSES + ANNA ALTMAN + MORE

[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]

TUE 02.28

CHILL OUT TO ETHEREAL R&B RHYE + BOULEVARDS

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$25. crossroadspresents.com]

WHEEL OF TUNES

SOCCER MOMMY

Nashville bedroom popper talks horoscopes and eternal trends

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

512 Mass. Ave. Central Sq. Cambridge, MA 617-576-6260 phoenixlandingbar.com

Boston’s Best Irish Pub At 20 years old, Sophie Allison has already made a name for herself in the underground music circuit as Soccer Mommy. The Nashville native recorded soft bedroom pop songs in her bedroom and uploaded them to Bandcamp, a familiar story if any this decade, and soon found an audience of dedicated fans. She rounded up her best work for last year’s LP, Collection. Now, she’s preparing to release her proper debut album as a solo artist, Clean, on March 2.

Soccer Mommy finds her voice as a solo artist on Clean. Songs like “Your Dog” and “Cool” ditch the nonchalant vibe teenagers use to bait their crushes and replace it with assured confidence, even if just for a moment, to remind her that she’s worth championing. The album sees her build off the DIY Bandcamp recordings that gained her attention by dragging that intimate, warm, simple pop instrumentation into the studio for proper production. With that comes a cohesion that gives Allison a dreamy record that catalogs why turning 20 is such a formative time in one’s life.

“I found out that I can’t try to be something—for other people or even for myself,” says Allison. “Like over the last few years, I wanted to be cool, look skinnier, and change who I was. I couldn’t really appreciate myself for who I am, so I was idealizing this other beauty standard. There can’t be mirrored expectations, and I can’t look up to ideas of what I want myself to become. At the end of the day, you end up being yourself and you can’t stop yourself from doing so even if you try.”

We interviewed Allison for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask bands questions inspired by their song titles. True to her newest album, the answers dig into details about the everyday comforts of life and all the emotions we carry along for the journey—a perfect introduction to her music before Soccer Mommy plays Great Scott this Saturday.

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1. “Still Clean” What’s the best dry shampoo to fake being clean days after showering?

There’s one from Lush that I like. It’s the only one I’ve ever used because I actually love to shower, so I do so almost every day. There was definitely a period in school, though, where I would have an 8 am and didn’t want to shower for class. It’s a lemon-lime scented powder that comes in a shampoo-looking bottle.

2. “Cool” Which trend isn’t cool anymore, and which trend do you want to last forever?

I feel like skinny jeans are kind of dead. Well, I’m kind of wearing them right now, but they’re not the most trendy thing anymore. Even the ones I’m wearing now are cut at the bottom so that they’re loose in a way. Full-on skinny jeans, like jeggings, died back when I was still wearing them, like over the last couple of years. If anything, people just wear leggings now. There’s no shame anymore.

Trends I want to last forever are baggy jeans. I’m super into that. I just got my first pair and I already want more. Like the Avril Lavigne pants, you know? The ones I got are close, but they could be better. They’re like hip baggy. They’re not full-on JNCO jeans.

3. “Your Dog” If you were reborn as a dog, which breed would you be?

That’s hard. It would need to be something kind of ditzy. Maybe a little chihuahua— something small, snappy, wild, but slightly dumb. I’m definitely very much a Gemini and kind of stupid in that way.

4. “Flaw” What’s a flaw of yours that you’re aware of but haven’t taken many steps to fix?

Besides being kind of ditzy, I think maybe I’m self-destructive. I’m super messy and I don’t do anything about it, but I also get very stressed out by messes, so it’s a selfdestructive thing. Then I’ll randomly freak out about cleaning everything. I’ll get rid of all of the clutter, basically destroy my room, and eventually it becomes messy again. I can live in the chaos I’ve created even though I hate it most times.

Free Trivia Pub Quiz from 7:30PM - 9:30PM

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FIND THE REMAINING TRACKS FROM NINA’S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

THE SABOTEUR BOOKS

A vivid tale of courage in the face of Nazi force

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

If and when The Saboteur gets made into a major motion picture, an action-smacked WWII spy flick for the ages, the screenwriter will likely find the story of Robert de La Rochefoucauld easy to visualize. So will the costume and set designers. Paul Kix, author of the new book about “the aristocrat who became France’s most daring anti-Nazi commando,” already did the heavy lifting, providing more particulars in 227 pages than most academic historians do in backbreaking tomes.

The extensive effort, which brought the author to five countries in four years, was well warranted. Like so many masters of deep research and compelling narrative historical nonfiction before him, Kix leaves very little for the reader to imagine on their own. Some of the descriptions are extremely terrifying, starting with the image of “three columns of German tanks stretching back for more than one hundred miles” early on, but they’re also necessary if one is to understand the plight of the protagonist.

A tall and handsome aristocrat of particular note, La Rochefoucauld had the sort of pedigree that’s not available in the US. With ancestors including a duke in Louis XVI’s court, the founder of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (who, as Kix notes, “abolished slavery some seventy years before it could be done in the United States”), and military icons who fought in the Hundred Years’ War and the Crusades, among other exceptional Frenchmen, La Rochefoucauld saw no choice but to put

his own life behind enemy lines to help lead his beloved France out of the German occupation.

Even before the excitement and terror of combat and capture kicks in, Kix tugs at the reader with his explanation of the menacing prerequisites for righteous subversion, which in this case the hero learns in training with a secret British military outfit out to hobble Hitler with guerilla tactics. Illustrating a scene in which La Rochefoucauld is learning from ex-Shanghai policemen who were employed to school agents in “gutter fighting” and “Silent Killing” techniques like “jamming … fingers into the enemy’s eyes,” the author offers several scenes that beg for a Tinsel Town treatment: In the war’s early years, by way of introduction, the pair would stand at the top of a staircase … a class of agents sitting below, and would fall down the steps, tumbling to the bottom and landing in a battle crouch position, a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. They would then rise, so the prospective agents could take their measure.

La Rochefoucauld was one of those insanely dashing overachievers who accomplished more in an average week than your typical Joe Foucauld does in a lifetime.

From his recruitment and comprehensive instruction, to surviving through desertion and living to tell the tale, it’s hard to imagine how the guy ever slept, especially since Kix presents such a voluminous wartime timeline. (Having

>> PAUL KIX READS FROM THE SABOTEUR AT BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH ON TUES 2.27 AT 7PM

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once written a feature for Kix back when he was an editor at Boston Magazine, I can say from personal experience that his eye for critical minutiae is second to no other editor I have collaborated with; in delivering this book, he certainly applied that sensibility to his own work.)

And yet for all the detail around one character, the story arc is firmly grounded in the larger breadth of WWII, no small occurence for any reporter to truncate. While The Saboteur is sure to spur some readers to dig further into several of the resources that the author relied on, the book itself requires no outside explainers. Kix provides the quick and necessary context where it’s needed, never letting background details overshadow the MacGyver shit unfolding in chapter after chapter, making for a damn exhilarating page-turning experience with no interruptions. Besides one…

While Kix began collecting notes for The Saboteur long before Donald Trump became president, it’s impossible to read about the brave souls who fought Nazis in the 1940s without pondering the modern parallels. Kix doesn’t wink or pander for a second; still, certain sections could apply to the state of affairs that Americans—and people all around the world, for that matter—are experiencing in some way or another. If ever faced with devastating terror like the French were under German occupation, all decent people like to think we’d side with the resistance to fight and sabotage Nazis. As Kix shows, though, such commitments take more than just a little bit of courage.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

THEATER REVIEWS ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

A BEAUTIFULLY ACTED LONELY PLANET AT NEW REP

KERLINE DESIR AS LADY IN RED. PHOTO BY ROBERTO MIGHTY.

A PARTIALLY ILLUMINATED RAINBOW AT PRAXIS STAGE

The young Praxis Stage was formed just over a year ago in the days following the 2016 election as a form of theatrical resistance, aiming to present Boston audiences with stories and ideas that act as statements of opposition.

Praxis thus far has selected a wide variety of titles that have been anything but predictable: From Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets to Stephen Adly Guirgis and Shakespeare, Praxis has carved out a unique space in the Boston theater scene. Now, for its sixth production with Ntozake Shange’s 1976 landmark choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Praxis narrows its focus to the plight of black women in America.

Although for colored girls has inspired and empowered generation after generation of black women, it is doubtful that Shange could have known the far-reaching effect it would one day have when she first began performing drafts of the play in California bars back in 1974. But in a fairy tale-like ascent to mainstream success, she took the work to New York where it played at a string of tiny downtown theaters before being snatched up by Joe Papp for a brief run at his Public Theater. Three months later, for colored girls opened on Broadway, making it only the second play by a black woman to make it to Broadway (Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, two decades earlier, was the first). It was nominated for Best Play at that year’s Tony Awards and went on to run for two years.

I can’t know what it was like to have experienced something as cutting edge and genre bending as for colored girls back in the 1970s, but I can only imagine how revelatory it must have been for the hundreds of thousands of women of color who were finally seeing their stories shared on a mainstream stage. (It was cited as one of the influences behind Ifeoma Fafunwa’s HEAR WORD!, which just closed at the A.R.T.).

But for all that has changed since then, an awful lot remains unchanged, and the work still packs a mighty punch that feels like a desperately needed shot of

adrenaline, even in this liberal and supposedly tolerant city of Boston.

The work, which unfolds in a series of poetic vignettes, sometimes with music and sometimes with dance (remember, it’s a “choreopoem”), possesses both a clarity and an opacity that reels you in without offering any easy answers. It is at once totally specific and a completely blank slate, really allowing a particular director and cast to put their mark on it.

Praxis’ production, directed by Dayenne C. Byron Walters (who is also in the seven-person cast), is rough around the edges in a way that you’d expect a fringe production to be yet remains a mixed bag, only occasionally approaching the kind of profundity the piece feels worthy of.

Exploring themes of assault, shame, identity, empowerment, and sisterhood, the cast cycles their way through more than 20 poetic monologues. Each of the seven women wears a different color of the rainbow (the costumes are by Cassandra Cacoq) and is given ample opportunity to shine, both individually and as a unit. The radiant Kerline Desir is a standout as Lady in Red, as is the stunning Thomika Marie Bridwell (Lady in Green) and Karimah Williams (Lady in Orange).

But the production lacks confidence and cohesion, and the storytelling is often unclear, with a lot of the movement (by W. Lola Remy) feeling compulsive rather than instinctive.

When a director is also a member of the show’s cast, it can be difficult to attain total perspective, and I can’t help but wonder about what another pair of eyes would have done for its effectiveness.

The giant, characterless Hibernian Hall is not the ideal venue for an experience as intimate as for colored girls should be, and the cast—flanked by high ceilings that swallow up their sound—is frequently difficult to understand. Had this production played a venue not so opposed to atmosphere, the result would likely have been very different.

Still, there are moments of for colored girls that come close to reminding us why this piece holds such a revered place for so many. As for Praxis, a young theater company that is actually putting its money where its mouth is, its growth and continued success is in all of our best interest.

>> FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE / WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF. THROUGH 2.25 AT PRAXIS STAGE AT HIBERNIAN HALL, 184 DUDLEY ST., ROXBURY. PRAXISSTAGE.COM 20

02.22.18 - 03.01.18 |

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New Repertory Theatre continues its compelling Statements of Survival series with a 25th anniversary production of Steven Dietz’s 1993 AIDS drama Lonely Planet, which will run through March 4 in New Rep’s intimate black box theater.

Co-produced by the Boston Center for American Performance and beautifully directed by New Rep artistic director Jim Petosa, Lonely Planet exudes pleasant warmth in spite of the severity of its subject matter and remains satisfying despite Dietz’s compulsion to overstuff his scenes with both words and symbolism.

The play is set on the oldest street of an unnamed American city at Jody’s Maps, a small map shop run by a not quite middle-aged gay man named Jody (an exquisite Michael Kaye). His eccentrically manic friend, Carl (played by a supremely affecting Tim Spears), has been slowly filling Jody’s shop with chairs. (Ionesco, anyone?) Despite their friendship, they seem not to know an awful lot about each other and Carl—whom Jody describes as the little brother he never wanted—is entirely unforthcoming about the particulars of his life. Every time Jody asks him what he does for a living, the answer changes.

While it doesn’t ring completely true that such good friends would know so little about each other, such concerns are mitigated by the effortless chemistry of Kaye and Spears, who are each giving performances of tremendous heart.

Although the great mystery of the play’s early scenes surrounds Carl—where he’s going all day and why he’s filling Jody’s shop with chairs—Jody winds up being the more confounding question mark.

It turns out that Carl has been working as a volunteer, cleaning out the apartments of those taken by AIDS. There’s something about their chairs, though, that he just can’t leave on the side of the road, and so they fill Jody’s shop like ghosts. (This is echoed in Jeffery Petersen’s fine set design.)

At the center of Lonely Planet are two terrified men who are each showing their fear and sadness in two very different ways. With Carl at one extreme, Jody is stuck wilting at the other; he hasn’t left his shop in a while, unable to confront a city ravaged by disease. The question, then, not only becomes if Carl can convince Jody to leave his shop but whether Jody himself might also be sick.

The enormity of disease and death is irrefutably palpable throughout Petosa’s production, which does a masterful job of balancing the play’s occasionally oppressive tension and its lighter comedic moments, of which there are many. The production looks great, too, illuminated by Matthew Guminski’s beautiful lighting design.

There are other plays that tackle similar subject matter with far more heft, though Lonely Planet is at the very least admirable for its compulsive watchability. Flaws aside, it is the two performances at the center of this deeply felt production that shine brightest. >> LONELY PLANET. THROUGH 3.4 AT NEW REPERTORY THEATRE, 321 ARSENAL ST., WATERTOWN. NEWREP.ORG

GALLERY REVIEWS VISUAL ARTS

BY FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH AND HEATHER KAPPLOW

Inventur: Art in Germany, 1943-55—Harvard Art Museums Five years in the making, Inventur examines German artistic production in the decadeplus of recovery after World War II. It takes its name from a Günter Eich poem that describes his meager belongings, including a “precious nail / I keep concealed / from coveting eyes.”

That sets the tone for the work from the ’40s, executed in whatever media could be scrounged. Ruins figure prominently. Jeanne Mammen rendered them in cubism on cardboard. Erwin Spuler painted them isometrically on plywood, the wreckage seeming to extend forever. Wilhelm Rudolph recorded the dismal scene that was Dresden in furious ink lines, piled up like a nest of heartbroken twigs.

Liberalization of markets and taste in the ’50s enlarged the possibilities. Standing out among the abstractionists is Hann Trier, whose woodcuts—carved from tennis racket casings—are lively and urgent. A drawing from 1956 has him working with two hands at once, in a frenzy, as if making up for lost time.

Show runs until 3.6. Harvard Art Museum, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge. harvardartmuseums.org —Franklin Einspruch

Culture Hustlers: Artists Minding Their Business—Mills Gallery Most artists, if they ever had the management acumen to sustain a creative career, would have run the numbers, recognized the fiscal ridiculousness of it all, and entered another field. Lucas Spivey’s mission is to bring business education to them in a form they can comprehend: an exhibition.

He divides Mills Gallery using vinyl silhouettes of five American states. Each area features the work of an artist or team found there, samples of their production, and descriptions of their business model. They range from the sensible to the wacky. You can buy a copper ladle, joining handicraft with modern sensibilities, from Smith Shop in Detroit. You can also commission revenge raps from Derek Erdman of Chicago.

Spivey gathered this sampling over the course of a cross-country tour with a 1957 Shasta camper in tow as his office. His project is an unusual example of art that aims to mend the world in some way: It is lighthearted and optimistic, its goals are specific and modest, and it succeeds.

Show runs until 4.8. Mills Gallery, 539 Tremont St., Boston. bcaonline.org/visualarts/ mills-gallery/hours-and-information.html —Franklin Einspruch

Sandrine Schaefer: Pace Investigations No. 6—Mobius, Watch Factory Riverwalk On Dec 21, a scant crowd of humans, a stream of commuting vehicles, and a sliver of moon witnessed a series of gestures aimed at lighting fixtures, a goose-shaped hunting decoy, and the ground. The small audience, bundled against the cold, trekked back and forth for 105 minutes between the Watch Factory Riverwalk’s Northern and Southern docks, where Schaefer repeats a cycle of enigmatic actions at varying speeds.

An assistant handed out tiny flashlights. It was hard to see what was happening without them, or even with them. Schafer lit a candle in a corner and faced the sky.

Eventually it blew out. Cars honked on a bridge nearby. It’s durational work, made up of many micro-durations.

A goose head emerged from Schafer’s jacket neck, forming an enormous goose shadow on the ground. The jacket stored other components: a rock that skidded on the ice, a mirror, heavy breathing. Schaefer handed out lit candles, requesting that they be cared for. A digital gong rang to mark the end.

Show runs until 6.21. Watch Factory Riverwalk, 185 Crescent St., Waltham (on the public walkway near the North Dock). mobius.org —Heather Kapplow These shorts are being simultaneously published at Delicious Line, deliciousline.org.

Franklin Einspruch is the editor in chief of Delicious Line. Heather Kapplow is a Boston-based conceptual artist and writer, heatherkapplow.com.

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SAVAGE LOVE

BI & BIPHOBIA

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

I’m an 18-year-old female. I’m cisgender and bisexual.

I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my cisgender bisexual boyfriend for about a year. I’m currently struggling with a lot of internalized biphobia and other hang-ups about my boyfriend’s sexuality. I don’t know if I’m projecting my own issues onto him or if I’m just being bigoted towards bi men, but either way, I feel truly awful about it. But when I think about the fact that he’s bi and is attracted to men, I become jealous and fearful that he will leave me for a man or that he would rather be with a man. (I’ve been with men and women in the past; he’s never been with a man.) I know it is unfair of me to feel this way and he’s never given me any real reason to fear this. We have a very engaged, kinky, and rewarding sex life! But I worry I’m not what he really wants.

This situation is complicated by the near certainty that my boyfriend has some sort of hormonal disorder. He has a very young face for an 18 year old, a feminine figure, and not a lot of body hair. He orgasms but he does not ejaculate; and although he has a sizable penis, his testicles are more like the size of grapes than eggs. He struggles a lot with feeling abnormal and un-masculine. I try to be as supportive as possible and tell him how attracted to him I am and how he’ll get through whatever this is. But he can tell his bi-ness makes me nervous and uncomfortable. I think that because he appears more feminine than most men and is more often hit on by men than women, I worry that he would feel more comfortable or “normal” with a man.

I don’t want to contribute to him feeling abnormal or bad about himself. How do I stop worrying that he’s gay or would be happier with a man? I feel horrible about myself for these anxieties considering that I’m bi too, and should know better.

Anonymous Nervous Girlfriend Seeks Tranquility “Many people who encounter us Bi+ folk in the wild just project their insecurities onto us with impunity and then blame us for it,” said RJ Aguiar, a bisexual activist and content creator whose work has been featured on Buzzfeed, HuffPo, Queerty and other sites. “As someone who’s bi herself, I’m sure ANGST know this all too well.”

So if you’ve been on the receiving end of biphobia— as almost all bisexual people have—why are you doing it to your bisexual boyfriend?

“This hypothetical so-and-so-is-going-to-leave-mefor-someone-hotter scenario could happen to anyone of any orientation,” said Aguiar. “But maybe because the potential ‘pool of applicants’ is over twice as big for us Bi+ folk, we get stuck with twice as much of this irrational fear? I don’t know.

But here’s what I do know: most Biphobia (and jealousy for that matter) is projected insecurity. Built into the fear that someone will leave you because they ‘like x or y better’ is the assumption that you yourself aren’t good enough.”

And while feelings of insecurity and jealousy can undermine a relationship, ANGST, they don’t have to. It all depends on how you address them when they arise.

“We all have our moments!” said Aguiar. “But we can turn these moments into opportunities for open communication and intimacy rather than moments of isolation and shame. That way they end up bringing you closer, rather than drive this invisible wedge between you.”

Follow RJ Aguiar on Twitter @rj4gui4r.

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with rival advice columnist Roxane Gay: savagelovecast.com.

COMEDY EVENTS THU 02.22

OSAKA KOMEDY @ OSAKA IN BROOKLINE

Featuring: Dana Jay Bein, Srilatha Rajamani, Ben Quick, Paul Roseberry, & more Hosted by Alex Giampapa

14 GREEN ST., BROOKLINE | 8PM | $10 THU 02.22 - SAT 02.24

STEVE TREVIÑO @ LAUGH BOSTON

Treviño’s comedy has a “TEX-MEX” sensibility, yet as a performer he has a uniquely American voice that transcends anything about ethnicity, making him universally relatable. Treviño has made memorable appearances on The Late Late Show, Comics Unleashed and BET Comic View, among others. He also wrote on Mind of Mencia and produced and wrote on rapper Pitbull’s La Esquina. Treviño landed in the Nielsen Top 20, with his 1st Showtime comedy special, Grandpa Joe’s Son. His 2nd special Relatable is currently on Netflix.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $20-$25 FRI 02.23

THE GAS! @ GREAT SCOTT

Featuring: Vally D., Brian Bahe, Carolyn Riley, Brian Longwell, Dan Jay Bein, & Zach Russell.

Hosted by Rob Crean

1222 COMM AVE., ALLSTON | 7PM | $12 FRI 02.23

SEAN SULLIVAN @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Sean Sullivan is a comedian, actor, and writer from Boston, MA. A semi-finalist in the 2008 and 2009 Boston Comedy Festival, Sean has emerged as one of the top young comics in the country. He’s showcased for the producers of Late Night with David Letterman and the Just For Laughs comedy festival and is a favorite at colleges all over New England because of his quick wit and loose, unpredictable style. Sean made his national television debut December 4th, 2009 on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 02.24

FANTASTIC FILMING FESTIVAL @ THE GREEN ROOM

Boston comedians & improvisers perform some of their best material to record in preparation for festival submission season.

Featuring: Family Style, Hell Train, Chopped Improv, Sam Monk, Kwasi Mensah, Corey Saunders, Joe Buckley, Bear Skin Rug, Kelly Vernon, Kathleen DeMarle, Dylan Krasinski, Deadair Dennis Maler, & Srilatha Rajamani.

2 ARROW ST., CAMBRIDGE | 8PM | $19 SAT 02.24

TOM PAPA @ CITY WINERY BOSTON

Tom Papa is one of the top comedic voices in the country finding success in film, television and radio as well as on the live stage. On Dec. 9th, 2016, Tom premiered his third hourlong stand-up special, Human Mule, on Epix. Tom’s first two, critically acclaimed hour-long specials Tom Papa: Freaked Out (2013) is streaming on Amazon and Hulu and Tom Papa Live in New York City (2011) is streaming on Netflix.

80 BEVERLY ST., BOSTON, | 7PM | $22 - $30 SUN 02.25

THE PEOPLE’S SHOW @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Brian Bahe, Leif Enockssen, Jiayong Li, Kwasi Mensah, Kathleen DeMarle, Reece Cotton, Adrian Morse, David Afflick, & Liam McGurk.

Hosted by Joe Kozlowsky

40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | $10 WED 02.28

8 O’CLOCK @ 730 @ 730 TAVERN, KITCHEN & PATIO Hosted by Rob Crean & Liam McGurk

730 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE | 8PM | FREE

22

02.22.18 - 03.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more shows & info visit BostonComedyShows.com

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Steve Trevino

Netflix, Showtime Thursday - Saturday

COMING SOON Des Bishop

HBO, Just For Laughs, The Late Late Show Mar 1-3

Michael Yo

Chelsea Lately, E! News, Sirius XM Mar 8-10

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Luis Chataing

Special Engagement: Sun, Mar 11

Adam Ray

Spy, The Heat, Ghostbusters Mar 15-17

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Chris Franjola

Netflix, Chelsea Lately Mar 22-24 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

FEATURE

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