DigBoston 8.30.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 08.30.18 - 09.06.18

ELECTION GUIDE

ABOUT THAT CRITICAL DA RACE

PRESSLEY VS. CAPUANO YOUNG VOTERS MATTER

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WHO VOTED?

This week’s issue will be one of the least popular of all 52 mags we drop in 2018. Knowing what I know from 15 years of trying to write sugar for this town to help the medicine go down, I have little doubt that many of our frequent readers will see the word “election” and look the other way, perhaps pick up the Improper Bostonian this time instead.

In some ways I don’t blame them. Politicians suck, they rarely pay attention to constituents, and often even when they do listen they act for corporations and selfpreservation, not the people.

At the same time, apathy will get us nowhere slowly.

Take it from me, a consummate hater of almost all elected and authority figures who nonetheless spends months every year cranking out news that (hopefully) spurs people to head to the polls. This column is no exception.

Luckily for voters who reside in Suffolk County— Boston proper, Winthrop, Chelsea, and Revere—there’s a rare chance to make a significant impact in the primary election next week. If you are dismayed with the way that cops are coddled by prosecutors who they ought to and have power to keep honest, or if you think the office of a district attorney should be more corrective than punitive, then you can help put a decent person in the Suffolk DA’s chair for a change.

There are several choices that would seemingly bring overdue reform to this notorious arena. State Rep. Evandro Carvalho, who once served as an ADA in West Roxbury District Court, has taken prudent positions on criminal justice through the race; it’s unclear if he has the stamina to simultaneously affect change at the institutional level while handling cops who will eschew such measures, but I wouldn’t protest if he prevailed in next Tuesday’s primary. The same goes for Shannon McAuliffe, the lone experienced public defender in play, and for former prosecutor Linda Champion, who absolutely packs progressive bona fides but in my mind hasn’t entirely distanced herself enough from the operation of outgoing DA Dan Conley.

Relatively speaking, all the candidates noted above excite me and could rewire the law enforcement apparatus around here. However, in speaking with some trusted local activists and criminal justice observers who I truly respect, and in watching her debate performances, I have an especially positive impression of Rachael Rollins, another Democratic hopeful—namely, she’s all kinds of bold and unique in her views on everything from sentencing to youth crimes and accountability. A former federal prosecutor who has also worked as legal counsel for the MBTA and MassDot, Rollins could help catalyze the most seismic slide left in Mass politics since… like… ever?

Whatever you do in the booth, if you want to help steer Suffolk County clear of yet another reign in which people of color are presumed to be guilty and cops are assumed to be just, then by all means do not pull for candidate Greg Henning. It’s not just that he is endorsed

by DA Conley and talk radio race-baiter Howie Carr (plus Carr’s stain of an editorial page at the Boston Herald).

Beyond his unfortunate allies, Henning wears his antireform reputation as a shameless badge licker on his lapel and is the preferred choice of law enforcement donors by a long shot.

There is no endorsement here. I could never totally support a candidate or idea that suggests that there’s a single shred of the American judicial system worth salvaging. Nevertheless, I’m not so cynical that I would cut my vote to spite my fate, at least not when it comes to issues that impact the lives of people I know, love, and interact with.

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#STUCKONREPLAY NEWS TO US

A reinvigorated push for political accountability this election season

BY OLIVIA DENG @OLIVIADENG1 In February 2016, James Mackey attended an event at the Massachusetts State House billed as Young Adults in the Criminal Justice System: Taking a Developmental Approach. Watching from the crowd that day, he noticed that few other people of color were in attendance, while none spoke on the panel.

“You had no persons of color on the panel [speaking about] how they are incarcerating so many young people of color, and targeting, and hyper-policing, hypercriminalizing young people of color,” Mackey says. “It upset me, and so I told the young folks that were with me if you feel a certain way about it, you should say something to the audience, which they did.”

Frustrated with the scene on Beacon Hill, Mackey says he built on lessons he learned as a community organizer for 10 years and founded #StuckOnReplay that July to address institutional racism. After having some success connecting politics and people, he took a hiatus in 2017 but relaunched earlier this month with an event in Roxbury.

“It’s election season, and so we want to make sure that 4

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we start holding elected officials accountable because … a lot of laws, policies, and practices are still crippling and criminalizing black and brown communities,” Mackey says, adding that his goal is to “challenge these systems of oppression that have taken advantage of us so we can create change for ourselves and for the betterment of our community.”

Since #StuckOnReplay’s launch in July 2016, it has hosted more than 30 events throughout Boston, partnering with various community organizations.

The relaunch event, co-hosted by the Center for Teen Empowerment and Violence in Boston, focused on local, state, and federal organizing to influence policy and hold officials accountable.

“We can influence them all we want, but they still will be making decisions on our behalf without us,” Mackey said at the event, held at City on a Hill charter school near Dudley Square.

Other speakers came from orgs including Violence in Boston, ACLU Massachusetts, City Life/Vida Urbana, Boston

Teachers Union, and Massachusetts Senior Action Council, and all zeroed in on social justice and young people. Carrie May, an organizer at Teen Empowerment, told participants the youth are often overlooked.

“Sometimes people forget, especially politicians forget, the largest demographic in our city,” May said. “The youth are being impacted by all these policies. … It’s hard for me to stay motivated. … How are you supposed to be motivated when the education system that lacks a lot of resources, that lacks a lot of books … how are you supposed to become the people of the future?”

Along with others, Mackey noted the significant achievement gap for children of color, who are hurt more than their white peers by cuts to the Boston Public Schools budget. “[In] our neighborhoods, it feels like … luxury apartments [are being built] faster than Donald Trump tweets,” said Kurt Faustin, a motivational speaker. “JP, Roslindale, Roxbury, and Mattapan … rent prices are going up. Homelessness is still a huge issue in our city. We are

getting kicked out. … It feels as though we are homeless in our own city. So once again my question is, who do we value?”

Jamie Kennedy first got involved with Bikes Not Bombs as a 13-year-old, and is now a community action coordinator there. Kennedy works directly with young people who come from marginalized communities and said that places like Bikes Not Bombs are important refuges. “[In] almost every conversation with every youth I’ve heard stories of [being] racially oppressed in a variety of ways, whether that be in school, whether that be feeling like a prisoner in your neighborhood,” Kennedy said. “It’s painful to hear and it’s painful to see they really do feel like they’re being watched by the police, being brutalized by the police … Most of these kids’ homes, they’ve been raided.

They’ve been constantly degraded by the police, they’ve been called out to by the police even though the police shouldn’t know their name.

“I think a lot of the youth before they get into Bikes Not Bombs or some other community organization, there’s a lot of pessimism.”

Kennedy added that many youth of color express discomfort at school. In Massachusetts classrooms, only 8 percent of teachers were nonwhite in the 201617 school year. Black youth are also disciplined, expelled, and suspended at four times the rate of white youth.

The issue of policing people of color extends far outside of the classroom walls.

According to the ACLU, in Massachusetts, black people are almost over three times more likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana compared to their white counterparts.

“We need to stop being stuck on replay with this cycle of mass incarceration, this cycle of hyper-criminalization, and this cycle of, you know, systems of oppression that continues to criminalize … black and brown communities,” Mackey said.

Bringing specific examples, Monica Cannon-Grant, founder of Violence in Boston, pointed to a recent Washington Post article that found a large gap between arrests for homicides with white victims (90 percent) compared to those with black victims (42 percent).

“The African-American community is victimized … even though [Boston] police have been praised nationally,” Cannon-Grant said. “Two days ago, three people shot in Mattapan … this happens in communities of color.

“Progression in Boston means white progression. Right now it’s an election season. I need you guys to pay attention.”

Kennedy, who is also a part of BosCops, an organization that challenges police power, said the BPD runs a discriminatory 10-point gang database.

“It’s bullshit,” Kennedy said. “You get two points if you’re seen with anyone who’s considered a gang member. This is all dictated by where you live, who you hang out with, what you look like.”

Fatema Ahmad, deputy director of Muslim Justice League, has lived in Roxbury and Dorchester, and said her neighbors have frequent traumatic run-ins with the cops.

“The Boston Police Department is just like every other police department in this country. … A fundamental aspect of their work is racially profiling people and really focusing on marginalized communities. … It is sort of a violent response to marginalized communities instead of actually getting at the roots of why there’s crime and violence within certain communities.”

Ahmad added: “Even in a place that people think is supposedly progressive, all of these things are actually happening. In fact, because people think this is a progressive place, they don’t necessarily pay as much attention to what’s happening.

“The [Department of Homeland Security] program Countering Violent Extremism, it uses a lot of language to hide the fact that it’s a soft surveillance program, to hide that it’s criminalizing Muslims. Boston is one of the leaders of that program.”

With the #StuckOnReplay relaunch, Mackey said his team will try to help educate the community about critical issues like public safety, senior concerns, education, and housing, and encourage people to harness their power—both voting power and grassroots-level organizing.

Ahmad said that organizations like #StuckOnReplay that demand for elected officials to be held accountable are “really necessary in cities like Boston that call themselves progressive.” “[We] can never just rely on them [elected officials],” Ahmad said. “We have to be able to back it up with community support and to really show them this is what the community wants, this is what the community is saying, to the point where to have to do something about it. It’s difficult to hold people accountable once they’re elected.”

“A lot of folks don’t know about what these specific roles mean and how these specific roles within local, state, and federal level affect them,” Mackey said. “There are so many different positions that are up for grabs, all of these positions through Suffolk County that folks don’t know anything about.

“They may see fliers or posters or banners or folks that are running for specific positions and get their register to vote. They may just go and write folks’ names in that they see. But do they have an opportunity to really meet and greet with these folks? To have a conversation with these folks around the issues that they are dealing in reference to the housing, in reference to education, in reference to public safety?

“It has to happen now. ”

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VOTING AS A SOCIALIST IS STILL HARD ANALYSIS

(in the Massachusetts of 2018)

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

It’s never easy being a socialist in the United States. And at no time is it more difficult then come election season.

Because neither of the two major parties—hard-right ravings to the contrary taken as given—is socialist.

Both Republicans and Democrats are capitalist. There have been many attempts to form major left-wing anticapitalist parties over the last couple hundred years.

Some, like two I’ve participated in—the Green Party US and the Labor Party—have been national efforts.

The former is still struggling on gamely, though Mass affiliate Green-Rainbow Party currently does not have official party status—having failed to win 3 percent of the vote for any state or national candidate in the last election or to enroll 1 percent of registered voters. The latter petered out over a decade back. There have also been state-level efforts like the Peace and Freedom Party in California—which, for one reason or another, haven’t spread to other states.

The received political wisdom is that the major parties have set up so many structural roadblocks over their many decades in power that it’s impossible for any of the smaller so-called third parties to achieve major party status. And from my experience that received wisdom has been correct. So far.

Where does that leave a socialist like me? Well, I have a few options. None of them ideal… unless we manage to change our political system to allow for small parties to more easily become big ones. I could go back to the Greens. I could join one of the tiny socialist parties that runs candidates from time to time like Socialist Alternative. I could join the somewhat larger Democratic Socialists of America—which is not a party but a pressure group that throws its weight behind the most left-wing candidates it can find or field, mainly in the Democratic Party. I could help try to revive an effort for a “fusion” ballot in Massachusetts with the Working Families Party (of New York and several other states). Such a move would create a formation that would be allowed to support larger parties’ candidates (i.e., the Democrats for all intents and purposes) without sacrificing independence. But allowing that would require a change in Bay State law… and a 2006 attempt to make the necessary change failed. I could help start a new left-wing party in the Boston area, and try to win some municipal races before moving on to state and national contests. Or I can join the majority of Massachusetts voters and be an independent.

Registering as “unenrolled” in our state’s parlance.

Currently the simplest and easiest option. And a reasonable one for a journalist like myself since I remain independent of all political parties.

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So like many other left-wingers, I’ve bitten the proverbial bullet and have been unenrolled for most of my adult life. But it’s a dissatisfying place to situate myself politically. Because functionally it means that I’m voting for whoever comes closest to my beliefs on a caseby-case basis. Not usually for a slate. As minor parties like the Greens rarely have the wherewithal to run candidates for multiple offices in one voting district. Just individual candidates. And should those candidates win, they are basically on their own. Meaning any political gains they make typically won’t outlast their terms of office.

Being unenrolled also means that I’m almost never voting for a candidate I fully support. Unless a maverick left-wing candidate happens to run for one office or other in my area—usually in a nonpartisan local race—I’m nearly always forced to compromise. And, sure, voting always involves compromises. Even for dyed-inthe-wool Democrats and Republicans. Yet casting such votes usually requires that I make a big compromise. A fundamental one, as the candidates on offer all share the major flaw of backing a political economic system— capitalism—that I don’t believe in. Even though I’m forced to participate in that system by nature of being born in a capitalist country in this time and place.

At this juncture, some readers will naturally ask, “Well, why vote at all?” After all, I’ve got more than a little bit of a libertarian streak in the sense that I’m a big fan of liberty. And many left libertarian traditions— notably anarcho-syndicalism—push for direct democracy at the local level in place of representative democracy at every level. I’ve always had a soft spot for such views. But I have never found them practical for a nation-state of over 300 million souls amid a planetary population of over seven billion and rising.

Ultimately, as messed up as capitalist democracy is, I refuse to take my franchise for granted. For much of human history, people like me didn’t get any say at all in how they were governed. Even the US restricted voting to white males with property at its inception. Only after generations of grassroots political struggle did we get universal suffrage for everyone 18 or older. So as long as we remain an even nominally representative democracy, I’m going to keep voting.

Great, but how do I go about picking candidates to support? Not easily, and I simply don’t vote in races where none of the candidates are good by my lights.

Still, taking next week’s primary as an example, let me shed some light on my internal decision-making process. For sake of space, I’ll think aloud about only the hottest current local political fight—the 7th District Congressional race between incumbent Michael Capuano and challenger Ayanna Pressley—in the manner I normally do when preparing to vote as an independent socialist.

Mainly by considering the candidates’ political positives and negatives from my perspective.

Capuano’s positive policy points include backing Medicare for All for many years and consistently antiwar foreign policy

stands. Strikes against him include taking campaign contributions from the real estate and biotech lobbies.

Pressley’s positive points include taking decent positions on issues like housing and immigration—including recent support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Strikes against her include more hawkish foreign policy views. And a long Intercept piece on the race paints her as the chosen candidate of corporate Democratic leadership. Someone who fakes left, but will likely break right when it matters. A big negative in my book.

For me, Capuano is one of the last old line social democrats in Congress. Meaning he’s about as left-wing as he can be without leaving the Dems. He’s also been in office a long time and holds key committee positions that would be lost with the election of a first-term opponent. He’s brought a lot of money to his district that benefits the working class, and he’s taken a lot of stands he didn’t have to take in defense of that class.

Pressley has done much less as a politician thus far.

According to Politico, her “biggest projects have ranged from supporting pregnant teens and revamping sex education in schools to expanding liquor licenses in minority neighborhoods.” Admittedly while holding a seat in a political body, the Boston City Council, that has very little power. So not an entirely fair comparison, but food for thought nonetheless. However, given Capuano’s predictable and significant lead in the polls and in funding, I can’t shake the feeling that Pressley’s really doing groundwork for her next big race more than expecting to win this one.

For these reasons and many more besides, I have to back Michael Capuano in the Democratic primary for the 7th District Congressional seat.

But all that said—and there’s much more to say—in backing Capuano, I’m still backing a capitalist. This is not a guy who is pushing for workers to own the means of production. This is a guy who has consciously decided that the best path is to shave the rough edges off of capitalism to make it less harmful to workers. While allowing billionaires to control the commanding heights of our political economic system. He may not like it. But he’s decided that’s the best that can be done under the current circumstances.

I respect that decision, even if I disagree with it. Yet whatever I think about individual candidates, I always have to come back to the same problem: What can I do to help ensure that there is a mass socialist (and anti-racist and feminist and environmental and anti-war, etc., etc.) party that can field candidates with the experience and funding to win enough electoral races to change the face of politics in Massachusetts and the United States for the better?

And my answer? For the moment, I’m writing for a growing audience about the kind of political changes I’d like to see, and looking for opportunities to help build the kind of political party that could bring those changes to fruition. There are seeds of what I’m searching for in Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Alternative and many other existing socialist and anarchist and green formations besides. But none of them presently fits the bill for me. All I can say is that I’ll know the party I’m looking for when I see it. And jump on board as soon as that happens. But for now, I’ll just muddle through at election time in the fashion I’ve described above. As best I can.

Readers interested in engaging in discussion and debate on this and related matters in various public forums can contact me at execeditor@digboston.com.

RAYTHEON BOMB THREAT GUEST OPINION

The Bay State’s war in Yemen

BY BRIAN GARVEY

Your VOTE is your VOICE Primary Election: Tues., Sept. 4th Polls are open 7am to 8pm

General Election: Tues., Nov. 6th Polls are open 7am to 8pm On Aug 20, more than 75 veterans and peace activists assembled on Concord Avenue outside the Cambridge offices of the fourth largest military contractor in the world, Raytheon. I was one of them. We gathered to respond to a war crime committed 7,000 miles away in Yemen, and to demand that the company end its complicit role in such crimes. On Aug 9, coalition forces led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia bombed a school bus in the village of Dahyan, killing at least 51 people, including 40 children as young as 6 years old. Yemen is half a world away and in a region plagued by unrest, and it has been obscured from the American public. A war has been raging there since a group called the Houthis took power in 2014 and subsequently Saudi Arabia intervened in April of 2015 to overthrow them. Their attack and blockade of Yemen has killed tens of thousands, threatened millions with famine, and created a major cholera epidemic. The United Nations calls it “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.” Even so, the war seems distant and removed from Massachusetts.

But this is not the case.

The bombs and aircraft killing innocent civilians in Yemen come from America. Raytheon, headquartered in Waltham and maintaining several facilities in the Commonwealth, has sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in the last decade. It is currently in the process of selling 60,000 more bombs to the Saudis and their coalition partners, the United Arab Emirates. The coalition has received direct support from the United States government in the form of intelligence and mid-air refueling. If this recent strike on civilians was a drive-by shooting, then America provided the car, the gun, the bullets, and a map to the house, then filled the gas tank on its way to the crime scene.

The people of Yemen know it, too. Fragments of missiles and bombs made in the United States, by companies like Raytheon, have been repeatedly discovered in the aftermath of airstrikes on schools, hospitals, markets, wells, and houses.

They bear incriminating labels. Sifting through the wreckage Yemenis find among the mutilated bodies of their countrymen, and yes, even their children, shards of bombs that say “Made in the USA.” I was reminded of a question we were all asking after Sept 11, 2001: “Why do they hate us?” It was such a burning question for millions of Americans that President George W. Bush addressed it during a joint session of Congress. His answer may be the most destructive lie of our new century, “They hate us for our freedoms.”

The truth is much simpler. For over 40 years now Democratic and Republican administrations alike have been arming, bombing, invading, and overthrowing governments in the Middle East. So it is in Yemen. We’ve been led to believe that the enmity between us and the Islamic world is a question of ideology or of cruelly manipulated religious beliefs. It isn’t so. If a man from Mars were to observe us, with no knowledge of our beliefs or intentions, he would see a large, powerful, and wealthy nation preying on weaker, poorer countries thousands of miles from its shores. It is that simple. They hate us because we’ve killed their children. We are actively fomenting the next generation of hatred in Yemen.

So what can be done? The biggest problem may be that most people simply don’t know about any of this. We can change that. I do not believe that the people of Massachusetts support this war, but unfortunately they weren’t given a say in the matter. We can change that too. America is currently caught in a chain reaction of violence that has become self-perpetuating. The closest link in that chain, Raytheon, is headquartered less than 10 miles from where I sit. They are supporting an absolute monarchy with an atrocious human rights record— Saudi Arabia. We must use every form of nonviolent protest and action to strike at that link in the chain. Yemen is Massachusetts’ war. It is our responsibility to stop it.

Brian Garvey is a handyman who works with senior citizens. Garvey volunteers works with Mass Peace Action on Middle East issues and is a member of the Raytheon anti-war campaign.

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DEPTHS OF DEPRAVITY DEPT. OPINION

Does the GOP have a cutoff point for racist fearmongering?

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sole f ul bliss:

THE YEAR TO MANAGE UP!

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President Donald Trump traffics in racial epithets.

Since his first year in office, Trump’s displays of xenophobic, misogynistic, LGBTQ-phobic, and racist remarks (to name just a few from his laundry list of bigotries) appear to have no cutoff point.

The Republican Party under Trump doesn’t seem to have one, either.

In a recent YouGov poll, 70 percent of Republicans said they believe diversity unfairly advantages Blacks and hurt whites, 59 percent said Blacks don’t have as much motivation as whites, and 59 percent said the judicial system treats Blacks fairly.

As I have noted before, many of Trump’s appointees have used the scripture as a text of terror, just like miscreant thugs in power throughout history, including slave owners, Nazi sympathizers, apartheid enforcers, supporters of Japanese-American internment, and loyalists opposed to the American Revolution. As recently as June, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions used the biblical passage Romans 13 to defend Trump’s indefensible “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul … to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of the order,” Sessions said.

“Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

In 2017, Boston-born White House Chief of Staff John Kelly came off as a diehard Lost Cause of the Confederacy revisionist history apologist on Fox News. His remarks reopened a divide deep in this country about slavery, as he acknowledged Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as “an honorable man,” and said “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.” If a tape of Trump using the N-word appears, a tape that former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman and others say exists, will the GOP have a cutoff point? What stance will the Republican Party take? Impeachment or apology?

Or will it be too feckless to move forward?

The N-word is one of the most odious of words deriving from this country’s original sin of slavery, and it is firmly embedded in the lexicon of racist language that was and still is used to disparage African-Americans. If President Trump used the N-word, then he has breached his oath to respect and represent “all the people” as one who holds the highest office in a democratic society.

Trump has a history of racist statements and actions toward Blacks. Recently, he mocked the intelligence of LeBron James, called CNN anchor Don Lemon dumb, and said Auntie Maxine Waters has a low IQ. Trump has also attacked NFL players for taking a knee at games, created birther fearmongering, and years ago even bought full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for the execution of the Central Park Five—a campaign he continued after their exoneration.

Trump’s embrace of white supremacy also famously showed up in his statement about Black immigrants, as well as his comments about groups like the Klan and neo-Confederates. Some are on a list of violent white extremist groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center; nevertheless, Trump wants to travel back into the Jim Crow era with them in order to “Make America Great Again.”

Through it all, national GOP politicians have by and large demonstrated an allegiance to party above country. While there has been some success in elections on the progressive side, there are also places where white nationalists are winning state, county, and municipal seats, making some Democratic incumbents squirm in states with huge numbers of Trump supporters.

Meanwhile, we have learned that Republicans have no cutoff point when it comes to their president’s comments—they’re fine with everything. Every minute that party drags its feet to respond to Trump’s slurs and claims, the GOP increasingly becomes a party that endorses racism.

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DEMOCRACY BREWING BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU

Welcome to Boston!

Liquid equity in Downtown Crossing for the beer-mongering set

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

Welcome to the Boston Better Beer Bureau, our latest incarnation of the trusty suds reporting we’ve done at DigBoston ever since people referred to beer as suds. Really, we remember the days when we’d spend half our checks on fancy German bottles just so that we could review them, whereas these days breweries from all around New England kindly send us samplers and stay in touch. The BBBB is a new attempt to return that love, all while sharing more news about the innumerable microbreweries and pubs among us. Here’s a dispatch from a new favorite place.

Who would ever think that if you give employees ownership and a reason to give a damn, that the word would get out among those with much faith in cooperative hustle and lure people from across the region to participate in such a common dream?

The team at Democracy Brewing, that’s who. As Dig reporter Haley Hamilton wrote last year in a feature that went on to win a national award:

Your local food store!

Dinner made easy and fabulous Staples and special treats Gift baskets and snacks Tastings every weekend

575 Washington St Oak Sq, Brighton wildflowerpantry.com

Monday - Saturday 10 am to 8 pm Sunday 10 am to 6 pm

The founders of Democracy Brewing come from two worlds that intersect often: alcohol and activism. James Razsa is a former labor and community activist; Jason Taggart was head brewer for eight years at John Harvard Brewery in Cambridge. Both aim to make their project not only a place that makes and serves great beer, but a pillar of the Boston worker’s community and a space to foster conversation, education, and empowerment.

Now that the dream has been in motion for a few months, we figured it was time to rehash our first visits there. DB is a new hall downtown where we will be pulling regular stool shifts, not simply out of love for its business model, but also for its grub and rotating in-house beer roster.

On our most recent trip we ordered up the 7.5 percent A.B.V. Consummate Rioter IPA, which came in a tulip roughly two hairs thinner than your typical beer glass.

The setup fit the cold pop well, its darkish amber rolling smooth over our fingers to the last drop. The Rioter is yet another glorious newfangled double that will basically fool you—delivered to our community slab at Democracy Brewing with sublime inch-and-a-half headroom, the citrus hops made for an experience that steers clear of showy and still satisfies without denting the tummy. We could drink it all night. We did drink it all night.

We’ll be back to cover new brews as our friends at Democracy keep cranking them out, but last time, in addition to the Consummates, we washed down a hamburger the size of two fists with a seasonal brown IPA chased by a Workers Pint, their trademark basic.

All in all, it was a heck of a day for democracy.

And we got pretty silly drunk as well.

PHOTO BY DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN

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CANNABIS CHAMPIONS TALKING JOINTS MEMO

While Brockton drags its feet on cannabis, an entrepreneur perseveres in spite of prohibitionists

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

Subscribe to our newsletter at talkingjointsmemo.com and get all of your cannabis headlines in one place. And for the full version of this interview check digboston.com.

Despite being a well-known entrepreneur in Brockton, where his company, Natural Agricultural Products, is trying to build three recreational dispensaries, Gary Leonard comes off as more of an independent businessman than a big corporate cannabis type. There’s a growing team behind his effort, but he’s right there in the trenches, wrestling a labyrinthine Brocktonian bureaucracy that’s hellbent on fighting the inevitable.

I first met Leonard several months ago and have paid some attention to developments in Brockton cannabis. In Good Health, located on the west side of Route 24, has been operating a medical dispensary since 2015 and will soon move into the recreational market as well. Leonard, on the other hand, is eyeing downtown, where as recently as 2015 he held a position as the city’s main street manager, tasked with helping to revitalize the depressed corridor.

With bans or moratoriums on cannabis of various durations and parameters in every municipality around Brockton—Avon, Abington, Whitman, Holbrook, Stoughton, Easton, and East and West Bridgewater—the city’s fate on this front is something the cannabis community should pay attention to. To that end, I drove down to meet with Leonard at the legendary Cape Cod Pizza in the Campello section on the south side of the city to ask what is taking so long, among other things.

What’s your relevant background for trying to do what you’re doing?

I’m a lifelong Brocktonian. I come from a political family—my father was a city councilor. We’ve been involved in the city, and in charity organizations and volunteerism for years. I am passionate about my city.

How has Brockton changed in the area where you are trying to put dispensaries?

When I was a youngster, Brockton was bustling with 15-20,000 people in the downtown area, every single day seven days a week. Working, shopping, pushing baby carriages, it was the place to go. … That’s where everybody was. We had five movie theaters—we have none now.

Brockton High School was also downtown, so the parents used to drop the kids off then do their shopping. In 1970, they built a new high school on the west side of Brockton near the highway. That took away a lot of the foot traffic that was downtown.

Then, in somebody’s bright wisdom, they also implemented one-way streets downtown. That really was the icing on the cake—people weren’t able to navigate where they wanted to go, and what businesses they wanted to go to. It became kind of a ghost town.

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What’s your model for what your company would like to do downtown?

I took the model from Boulder, Colorado. … Boulder has the same population as Brockton [Ed. note: Roughly 100,000, give or take], but outside of Boulder it’s just one house per thousand acres. It’s all farmland. When you step out of Brockton, you have more than 200,000 more people you can market to. That’s quite a difference. Boulder pulled in $18 million in tax revenue last year, so you can imagine what kind of tax revenue will be generated in a city like Brockton.

How much of an ongoing issue for Brockton government is the lack of finance and tax revenue?

For I can’t remember how long, teachers in Brockton have been getting pink-slipped at the end of the year. … They haven’t learned how to become self-sufficient, and the model I’m presenting here is a change for them to not have to worry about getting cut every year.

What is the technical quagmire holding you back right now?

There’s no host agreement in Brockton. I did submit a [proposed] host agreement to the mayor. It was a one-year agreement, which means the mayor didn’t have to go through the City Council. But he decided to wait and see where the City Council was going with it on the zoning part. That was in March.

They’re trying to drag it out until December, so the soonest I would be able to get my license is February or March.

What’s your message going forward?

I’m all in.

I am here to make Brocktonians more wealthy than they are. We’ll run between 90 and 110 employees. We already have 32 or 33 people—a human resource person, growers, trained dispensary managers. They’re ready to go.

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HOUSE PARTY FEATURE INTERVIEW

Newly active voters, insurgent outsiders, political unrest, and targeted incumbents in Mass congressional races make for one of the most interesting battlegrounds in America

BY PATRICK COCHRAN

The Commonwealth’s 7th Congressional District incorporates all of Somerville, Chelsea, and Everett to the north. It stretches over 20 miles south, through Milton and Randolph.

To the west, it covers most of Cambridge. To the east, the Boston Harbor Islands.

The district includes some of Boston’s most distinct and diverse neighborhoods: Jamaica Plain, Eastie, Mattapan, Allston-Brighton, Roxbury. It is the only district in Massachusetts where whites don’t represent a majority of the population, nor does any other demographic.

Just 12 districts across the nation are statistically more liberal. The 7th is quintessentially Boston’s district, and for the first time in decades its congressman is facing a viable primary challenge.

Twenty years after his first House campaign, Rep. Mike Capuano is locked in a marquee battle with Boston City Councillor Ayanna Pressley, whose activist-driven candidacy has caught national attention.

“This campaign is about the ‘we,’” Pressley has said on the trail. “It is not about me.”

Seeking to become the first woman of color from Mass to be elected to the House, and just one of two women from the Bay State’s delegation (not including Elizabeth Warren in the Senate), Pressley has served as an at-large member on Boston’s City Council since 2010 (she likewise became the first woman of color elected to that position).

But Pressley’s challenge to Capuano doesn’t follow the familiar formula of a young progressive taking on an old moderate-to-conservative Democrat guilty of losing touch with his constituents after decades in DC. By most accounts (on the left, anyway), there is nothing wrong with the way Capuano has represented the district. A member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he’s a politician who, when liberals look back at his votes on the most controversial measures, almost always looks honorable. Capuano opposed the PATRIOT Act, voted against the invasion of Iraq, famously admonished big bank CEOs in the wake of the 2008 12

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financial crisis, and has been a strong proponent (and sponsor) of HR 676—former Rep. John Conyers’ singlepayer healthcare bill—for years.

“With Donald Trump in the White House, we are in the fight for our lives,” Capuano said at a debate at UMass Boston. “He’s threatening everything we care about: from healthcare, to the environment, to a woman’s right to choose, Social Security, and Medicare.”

The campaign hasn’t centered around policy battles or ideological sparring, but rather on the candidates’ ability to effectively organize and advocate in the Trump era—and, to a certain degree, the value of having a representative who better embodies the demographics of their constituents.

“They both have their merits,” said Zachary Hollopeter, a progressive activist who plans to vote for Pressley. “They’ve voted the right way on the issues that really matter. … The main thing, I think, is that [Pressley] will be a vocal advocate.”

The Pressley campaign especially took off after 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upset New York Rep. Joe Crowley, the third-ranking Democrat in the House. In the weeks leading up to the election, Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez fundraised together, and the Pressley campaign even sent a staffer down to New York to help the get-out-the-vote operation, according to Politico.

But while they share similar storylines, positions, and the backing of the left-leaning group Justice Democrats, the two progressives vary in their proximity to Democratic establishment. Ocasio-Cortez, likely to be the first House rep to be endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in 2016. Pressley (and Capuano) endorsed eventual-nominee Hillary Clinton. As Commonwealth magazine reported, in 2016 Pressley derided Sanders thusly: “Plans without price tags are simply pandering. … Anger is not a plan.”

There’s little daylight between Pressley and Capuano when it comes to policy, but an area where the congressman has been lauded on the left over the years is on issues of foreign affairs and militarism.

“Do you know anything about her foreign policy?” an Allston resident asked me at an immigration rally in June. “Because—I don’t know—Capuano’s not bad.”

In a candidates questionnaire from Massachusetts Peace Action, Pressley said that the US had a “responsibility” to nations facing conflict in the Middle East, but emphasized intervention as a last resort.

“My approach is to always exhaust all diplomatic and non-military options before committing U.S. forces in any capacity to any conflict,” she wrote.

“With respect to the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, the United States has a responsibility to provide leadership—in concert with the international community—that brings about an expeditious end to the conflicts and creates stability in the region—it would be irresponsible to foreclose any potential avenues to achieving that goal.”

Hardly a dovish response, and certainly more opaque than Capuano’s explicit opposition to unauthorized military involvement in Syria and Yemen, and his support for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It is yet to be seen what the role of militarism, or any of the other areas where the candidates show modest disagreement, will have on voters. At this point, it’s all about organizing and turning out the vote. And that’s an area where Pressley has a lot of experience. Over the past three Boston elections, she has topped the City Council ticket twice and picked up over 57,000 votes her last time around. This will be her fourth election over the past five years. “[Former rep and presidential candidate] Shirley Chisholm has been a big influence on my life,” Pressley said. “She said, ‘If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.’”

Capuano, on the other hand, could be rusty, given the dearth of competition since being first elected.

Whatever happens, a key question this primary will answer is how much the electorate values diversity, and the reflection of its constituents, in a representative.

What is often clumsily and erroneously derided as “identity politics” is an important factor in American politics and society for many.

“I really want to see more diversity,” Hollopeter said.

“Life experience is important.”

“I’m not silly enough to think that people don’t take [race and ethnicity] into consideration, of course some do,” Capuano said at a recent debate. “I think most don’t.

They will look at my record. They will look the record of accomplishments we’ve had. The fights we’ve had against Donald Trump. The fights we’ve had in favor of the [Affordable Care Act].” *** The race in the 7th District may be the competitive primary getting most of the attention, but it’s not the only hot contest. In a year dominated by political unrest, the number of candidates seeking office and volunteers getting active has surged. In the Bay State, that energy has translated to the targeting of incumbents who’ve spent decades in Washington.

“I think there’s a magnetism to people challenging incumbents,” Hollopeter said. “It’s good for democracy.”

In the 1st District, which spans from southern Worcester County to the state’s western border, Rep. Richard Neal is fending off a progressive challenge from Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, an attorney from Springfield. If elected, Amatul-Wadud would become the first Muslim elected from Massachusetts and would join a small

group of recently electeds as the first Muslim women in the House.

The 1st is the third most liberal district in Massachusetts, according to Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI).

“I am running this race because I have noticed an absence of moral leadership and of being able to advance policy that meets our families,” Amatul-Wadud said in a debate. “I support policies that will deliver us to success and victory not only for the 1st District, but through our country.”

Some of those policies include raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and supporting a Medicare for All system. Neal supports raising the minimum wage and hasn’t ruled out single payer, but is currently committed to strengthening the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which he helped craft.

Back east, the other Boston district is home to the Bay State’s most conservative congressman.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D, MA-8) has served in Congress’ lower chamber since 2001, and while he’s evolved on most of the fundamental liberal issues, he still stands to the right of most of his Democratic colleagues. Most recently, he defended ICE in a nonbinding affirmation of the controversial government agency.

“Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon,” Lynch told the Boston Globe in 2010. “It’s all relative.”

While steeped in a history of conservatism, the 8th District has a D+10 PVI, making it the fourth most liberal district in the Commonwealth. This has drawn a leftwing challenge from video game developer Brianna Wu. Wu has taken up support for popular progressive ideas like single-payer healthcare, combating inequality, and a strong commitment to protecting the environment. But she’s also taken her platform a step further, promoting ideas like a universal basic income.

Also in the race is Christopher Voehl, an Air Force veteran running as a moderate challenging Lynch’s vote on the Iraq War authorization.

The most wide open race is taking place north of Boston, in the Merrimack Valley, where an array of candidates have clogged the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Niki Tsongas in the 3rd District. A field that at one point included 15 candidates will feature 10 hopefuls on the primary ballot.

Leading the pack financially is Dan Koh, former chief of staff to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Koh has raised close to $3 million since jumping in the race.

A pair of progressive state legislators make up the primary’s left lane. State Rep. Juana Matias, formerly a practicing attorney and social worker, has the backing of the progressive group Justice Democrats, while state Sen. Barbara L’Italien has been endorsed by the singlepayer group Mass-Care and progressive state Sen. Jamie Eldridge (who contemplated running for the seat himself). L’Italien, a longtime proponent of universal healthcare, enjoyed some recent national attention when she duped Fox News into a live interview—pretending to be a conservative Democrat running for the Senate in Arizona—only to chastise the Trump administration for its policy of kidnapping immigrant and refugee children.

Other prominent candidates include Lori Trahan, who was chief of staff to former Congressman and current UMass President Marty Meehan, and Rufus Gifford, who was ambassador to Denmark during the Obama administration. Jeff Ballinger, Abhijit Das, Alexandra Chandler, Leonard Golder, and Bopha Malone round out the wide-open field.

Rick Green is the only Republican running for the seat, which Democrats won by more than 37 points in 2016. *** The House remains the top target for Democrats in 2018. This is primarily due to the fact that other goals are

too lofty or have less of an immediate impact when it comes to the priority of stopping Donald Trump.

“We have a wider path to take back the House,” Mass Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.

In the Senate, Democrats are defending a whopping 26 seats up for reelection—including 10 in states carried

by Trump in 2016—compared to the nine GOP seats up in 2018 (only one of which, held by Nevada’s Dean Heller, is in a traditional blue state). But when it comes to the statehouses, it’s a much more favorable map for liberals.

Of the 36 governorships up for grabs this year, 26 are occupied by Republicans, including eight in states carried

by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Overtaking local governments is one of the most practical and effective ways to counteract the Trump administration, but it likely won’t fulfill the visceral desire among liberals to skewer the president directly. That will involve winning some federal elections.

The idea of retaking the House for the first time since the GOP bloodbath of 2010 became realistic in March, when Democrat Conor Lamb beat Republican Rick Saccone in a special election for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, a gerrymandered swath of counties outside Pittsburgh that had favored Trump by 19 points only 16 months earlier. The Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to gain control of the House—no easy feat, but no Everest either. As CNN pointed out, there are 119 GOP-controlled districts rated as less conservative than PA-18.

PA-18 is not necessarily a reflection of the rest of the country, or even those 119 other districts, but the Democrats don’t need an entirely clean sweep in the House as they do in the Senate. If they hit on 20 percent of those elections, the Republicans lose the House. And so far, the primary voting numbers look pretty good for both major parties, but better for Democrats. It’s not a fine science, but at this point near the end of 2018 primaries across the country, there have been 20 races in GOPheld districts that feature competitive contests on both sides in which the Democrats outvoted the Republicans.

It other words, in scenarios where both parties have a reason to drive out their voters, the Democrats have outperformed their GOP counterparts.

Mass won’t be a factor in whether or not the Democrats flip seats from red to blue. The Commonwealth’s 11-member delegation—nine representatives along with the two senators—are all on the blue team. There hasn’t been a Republican member of Massachusetts’ delegation since Scott Brown’s brief tenure in the Senate ended in 2013, and Bay Staters haven’s sent a GOP congressperson to Washington since the 20th century. That seems unlikely to change this time around.

A relatively gerrymandered state, Mass offers little in the way of electoral opportunity to Republicans— especially in a year when so many Bay State voters despise the conservative president. It’s not unheard of to see a conservative push in the Commonwealth, particularly at times when the sitting president belongs to the same party dominating Mass politics. In 2009, at the height of the country’s most intense healthcare debate in decades, Mass voters elected to send Brown to the Senate over a Democrat. In 2014, the GOP nearly swiped a House seat in the state’s 6th Congressional District from scandal-plagued Rep. John Tierney, but Seth Moulton saved the day, soundly winning a primary before defending the seat from a strong Republican challenge on Election Day. Charlie Baker won the governorship that same night.

But with a polarizing figure like Trump occupying the most powerful office in the land, it’s not too likely there will be enough Republican voters at the polls on Nov 4 to send him some help in the Massachusetts congressional delegation.

Meanwhile, most of the money coming into Mass on the Republican side in 2018 will be for races not including bids for House seats. The gubernatorial contest will draw big money because Republicans know that that’s a race they can win, and holding the corner office in a liberal

state is an enormous accomplishment. Dirtying potential presidential contender Elizabeth Warren’s reputation in a longshot bid for the Senate will be the other big-time money target from the right, leaving little for the deep blue Bay State House seats.

That doesn’t mean no credible challenges will materialize from the GOP. The Commonwealth’s 6th and 9th districts lean Democrat and are currently represented by moderate liberals, but are relatively affluent and have hosted tight races in recent years. Both Rep. Seth Moulton (D, MA-6) and Rep. Bill Keating (D, MA9) will face Republican challenges in November.

Some potential defense could be key in the Democrats’ efforts to retake the House, but the Commonwealth won’t be a central point of that project.

What the Commonwealth will be key to, however, is shaping what the Democratic caucus looks like when, and if, those reps retake power.

The Massachusetts Dems in office stand to gain a lot of influence if the party flips the House in November.

Neal is the ranking Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means committee. Thus, should he survive the challenge from Amatul-Wadud, the veteran congressman is in line to become the committee’s chairman. If that comes to fruition, Neal, a relatively progressive pol from a deep blue district, would become the most powerful member of the House when it comes to topics like tax policy, much of the nation’s social safety net, and—one of the congressman’s central issues—strengthening Social Security and workers’ pensions.

In April, following the death of Rep. Louise Slaughter, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi named Jim McGovern (D, MA-2) as the ranking Democrat on the House Rules committee. The aptly named committee dictates the rules of debate on the House floor. For more liberal Dems, someone like McGovern occupying the chairmanship won’t just be integral to keeping Trump in check but also to passing important policy in the event that they get back on top. It wouldn’t be the first time a Bay Stater headed the committee; the late Boston Rep. Joe Moakley—considered McGovern’s mentor in the House— headed the group until Republicans took control in 1995.

Beyond seizing power of influential committees, flipping the House could also create an opportunity for some of the Commonwealth’s younger pols to raise their profiles.

Moulton has been very active this election cycle, forming the Serve America PAC, a political action committee devoted to “supporting a new generation of leaders,” frequently running liberal and moderate candidates who have served in the military. A critic of Pelosi who supported Rep. Tim Ryan’s (D-OH) failed bid for minority leader in 2017, there’s been speculation that the former Marine could seek a leadership position or even the presidency. Taking control of the House would only shine the light brighter on Moulton.

Then there’s Rep. Joe Kennedy III. As long as there’s a Kennedy in politics, there will be an absurd amount of attention following their every move. That only heightened in January when Kennedy delivered the official response to Trump’s State of the Union speech from Fall River.

“We see an economy that makes stocks soar, investor portfolios bulge, and corporate profits climb, but fails to give workers their fair share of the reward,” the moderate Democrat said in his speech.

The role of responding to the State of the Union is usually overblown, but nonetheless leads to speculation regarding the speaker’s ambitions. Over the past three presidencies, seven politicians to make the official response have gone on to run for president, vice president, or one of the leadership roles in Congress.

2020 might be too early for Kennedy, who will turn 38 in September. But he’s a Kennedy who can deliver the rhetoric to repudiate an unpopular president, and that’s a recipe for political speculation.

At the very least, Kennedy is yet another reason that a lot of eyes are prudently on Mass, whether there is an election underway or not.

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WHO SAID IT BEST? POLITICAL GAMESMANSHIP

When it comes to Pressley and Capuano, who do you really agree with?

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

For months now, all eyes have been on the commonwealth’s 7th congressional district, where longtime US Congressman Mike Capuano is facing an exceptionally formidable opponent in Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley. We’ve been belly up to the main show, taking in debates and media galore.

Though there are many differences between the life and job experiences of Capuano and his challenger, one major theme of the race has been the extent to which they essentially agree on everything politically. Which led us to wonder, Just how similar are Pressley’s ideas to the incumbents anyway?

The most accurate way to determine which of their hearts is closer to one’s own, it seems, is to cast aside whatever prejudicial love or hate one has for either candidate, and evaluate them without attribution. So we extracted these quotes, categorized below, for you to peruse blindly and thus perhaps determine who you agree with more.

Check the bottom of the page for answers (and no cheating!).

From the WGBH debate 1—Women’s rights …

A) “My opponent … supported extending [an] amendment, which prohibits access, mostly to low-income women, to abortion. I also would have cast a different vote on the Blue Lives Matter legislation.”

B) “I wouldn’t have got 100 percent from Planned Parenthood and NARAL had I voted for the Hyde Amendment as proposed.”

2—On compromising …

A) “I will sit at the table, and compromise, and work with anyone in the name of progress, but there are things that I am unwilling to compromise and negotiate on. And that is: the rights of women, of immigrants, of workers, and the LGBTQIA community.”

B) “In the United States Congress, you have to be able to work with all kinds of people: people that don’t think like you, people that don’t look like you, don’t worship like you. In this district, there is a majority of no one.”

3—On gun control …

A) “Majority and seniority means nothing without leadership.”

4—On a DREAM act compromise with wall funding …

A) “It’s great to be perfect, but Senator Warren, Senator Markey, and Senator Sanders, all voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill. … It would have saved a lot of hassle for people on Temporary Protective Status, the Dreamers, and the mothers and children separated at the border.”

B) “I cannot look in the face of parents if it is not a clean Dream Act, and say we are going to save some children but not all of them.”

5—On the criminal justice system and racism …

A) “Most people in the criminal justice system are trying to do the right thing and trying to get it right. A lot of the problems they have are the laws that are passed. A lot of the problems they have are mandatory minimum sentences. A lot of the problems they have is after a person serves that time, they have to carry that burden for the rest of their life.

All of that.”

B) “We’re not talking about people; we’re talking about institutions. And just to be clear, mass incarceration is a by-product, it is the manifestation of discriminatory and racist policies and the confluence of those things over time. It’s modern day slavery. The lion’s share of people who are incarcerated are black and brown men and women, and low income folks. … There’s just so many injustices; this is racist.”

6—On NFL protests …

A) “I support their right to protest, absolutely, 100 percent. … I personally think that if you’re going to raise an issue like that you should do it in a way that actually brings people in …

I thought that that particular action divided America … because he chose to do it on the National Anthem. … I actually agree with the concept of what he’s doing, I just thought it could have been done in a way that would have brought more people into a discussion.”

B) “I support both [the cause and the tactic] and it is necessary that we are disruptive right now and making people uncomfortable. The issue of police brutality and disproportionate brutality and murder of black men: this strikes at the soul and the consciousness of the country. And this should be of consequence and concern to everyone.”

7—On unity …

A) “The biggest problem we have is the internal fights within the Democratic party. We have to stop that if we have any hope and desire to defeat Donald Trump. … You can disagree with someone … I just don’t think you should be calling them names.”

CHECK DIGBOSTON.COM FOR MORE QUOTES ANSWER KEY: 1—A) Pressley B) Capuano; 2—A) Pressley B) Capuano; 3—A) Pressley; 4—A) Capuano B) Pressley; 5—A) Capuano B) Pressley; 6—A) Capuano B) Pressley; 7—A) Capuano 14

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BRANDED AUTHENTIC MUSIC

Why Mark Merren is rounding up the coolest rising rappers

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Perhaps Boston’s biggest secret is how deep the talent in our rap scene runs. While there are plenty of famous hip-hop acts that call Boston home, it’s those closest to the underground scene and their initial roots that are delivering some of the most genuine and intriguing work today. There’s a slight disconnect between the old generations and the new generations, between the national touring acts and those still performing in basement venues. That’s why you have to send the elevator back down when you make it to the top. That’s exactly what Mark Merren is doing. This Friday, he’s throwing another edition of Branded Authentic, and this time he’s sending a dozen elevators down at once for the show.

Brighton Music Hall will host one of the best rap events of the year this Friday. Dubbed Branded Authentic, the concert will see Mark Merren coheadlining with Oompa for just $13 in advance. The special surprise to an already promising night is that they plan on featuring a massive selection of special guest performances. Not just three or four. No, this year’s Branded Authentic will see over a dozen fresh faces in hip-hop taking the stage beside them.

For those who aren’t familiar with Mark Merren, trust us when we say it’s worth it to go to the show just to see him. As a solo artist, Merren has two albums: Motivate and this year’s powerful Motivate II. Released this summer, the latter pairs soulful, layered production with conscious wit and lyrics that confront self-doubt.

It’s a stirring listen—especially onstage, as Merren knows how to deliver his material like a pro.

Ever since his cousin tapped him to perform a talent show at 9 years old, Merren knew he was destined to become a performer. So did those around him. His cousin believed Merren had raw talent in him and just needed someone to cultivate it. So the following year, he helped Merren begin to write and record his own raps. He’s never looked back since then. Merren joined the creative collective Agari Crew—a music and art-focused group of friends based out of both the US and Japan—and they soon released a self-titled project later in 2009. While trekking around Japan on a mini tour in support of the record, Merren found a new fire within himself. He was determined to get his solo career going.

Now, Merren wants to make sure others have the same opportunities to not online rise up, but to discover and embrace the natural talent sitting inside of themselves. This isn’t his first rodeo in doing so, either. Merren threw the first Branded Authentic back in August of 2010. At the time, he noticed the lack of quality outlets for Boston hip-hop and wanted to make a contribution. He’s since continued to throw showcases under the Branded Authentic name over the years.

But because this Branded Authentic is taking place at Brighton Music Hall, a special venue with its own historic history and the biggest event he’s thrown yet, Merren decided to go a bit bigger than normal. If all goes according to plan, this all-hometown lineup will sell out

the 475-person capacity space. A big part of why that’s possible is because he’s teamed up with Oompa, one of the brightest and biggest rising stars of Boston’s local scene right now.

“Mark Merren gave me my first chance to be a rapper on stage, so when he asked it was as good as done,” says Oompa. “I just want to make sure I earn that featured spot. I want to do Merren proud. Because that is synonymous with doing well by the city.”

“I met Oompa at an event that I put together with my business partners Stae Tru called Verses,” he explains. “It was an Emcee competition. She competed and destroyed the stage! It wasn’t even close! I was drawn to her stage presence, confidence, the cleverness of her lyrics, and that she’s such a great spirit. She truly represents what Branded is all about. Being your true authentic self unapologetically,” says Merren. “I’ve been doing showcases for so long, and I have genuine relationships with a lot of artists [because of it]. I made the decision for this lineup based on the recent shows I’ve been to. All of these artists bring a different energy.

I wanted the lineup to be diverse as possible while still being rooted in hip-hop.”

He’s staying true to his word. There are a lot of people tapped to join them onstage, and the talent ranges in ways beyond just flow and background. The special guest performances include artists like Rayel, Bakari JB, Anson Rap$, Spnda, Stay Pure, Philly G & Baylen, Ace Da Truth, Vylette Music, Treva Holmes, FreshfromDE and Ab Soarin, Rex Mac, Self Serv, and MegaZoyd.

“I’m excited and honored that Akrobatik is hosting this show,” says Merren. “He’s a hip-hop legend in my eyes. He’s always been supportive of what I’m doing.

Other than that, I’m excited about the show as a whole.”

A big part of that excitement stems from the special guests. Both artists are eager for concertgoers to fall in

love with some of the names they may not recognize and the features that will be performed onstage. For Merren, there’s a lot of promising energy and skill coming from Rayel, someone he’s eager to watch the audience see.

Though he’s quick to mention the equally impressive work by Bakari JB, Anson Raps, and FreshfromDe and Ab Soarin.

“Who am I ready to watch the city love the way I do?

Anson Rap$ and Rex Mac,” says Oompa. “[In Boston’s rap scene, we] don’t tear each other down. We have cross-genre support and it’s amazing. There’s a show happening like every few days, and they’re such high quality bills. We’re a small city. Which means you will have multiple touch points to the same artists. It means that the people who are important will hear those artists’ names and get to decide how they engage with them. Everything here is DIY and in that way, the artists get a lot of control over how they show up in the world.”

Believe us when we say you’ll be able to feel what Oompa is describing come to life onstage this Friday.

And when you show up, there’s another special feeling that will bury itself in your soul. There’s the sense of supporting a community that has done the work needed to deserve its time to shine. It’s just waiting to share that glow with the people already living here.

“We have to support not just by clicking or liking on social media. We have to show up more, and we need more venues that support local hip-hop consistently,” says Merren. “I’m proud of how people have taken matters into their own hands. There are so many dope platforms and outlets that support Boston music now.

I think people are starting to buy into the idea that we have our own industry here. It’s come a long way, and I think Branded Authentic helped to make a contribution to spark that growth as well.”

>> MARK MERREN, OOMPA, SPECIAL GUESTS. FRI 8.31. BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, 158 BRIGHTON AVE., ALLSTON. 8PM/18+/$13. CROSSROADSPRESENTS.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 08.30

THU 08.30

FRI 08.31

FRI 08.31

SAT 09.01

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

8:30pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 6pm/21+/$25. citywinery.com]

[Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 6:45pm/ all ages/$10. lilypadinman. com]

[Atwood’s Tavern, 877 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 10pm/18+/$8. atwoodstavern.com]

[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]

CHICAGO’S CLASSICALLY TRAINED EXPERIMENTALISTS OHMME

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08.30.18 - 09.06.18 |

FESTIVAL AT THE FARM PREPARTY RYAN MONTBLEAU BAND + DWIGHT AND NICOLE

DIGBOSTON.COM

A SAMPLE PLATTER OF LOCAL ROCK BANANA + I WISH I COULD SKATEBOARD + SLEEPY MONKS + MORE

THE FLORAL VOICE OF SOUTH END SOUL ALI MCGUIRK + DEAN JOHNSTON

BASEMENT SHOW BREAKOUTS TONY BULLETS + MINT GREEN + COSMIC JOHNNY + SPISH

WED 09.05

CHEERS WITH AERONAUT AND ALLSTON PUDDING ANSON RAP$ + REX MAC [Zone 3, 267 Western Ave., Allston. 5pm/all ages/free. zone3westernave.com/ aeronaut]

FOXING WHEEL OF TUNES

Star Trek, Ned Flanders, and how to measure intelligence

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

PHOTO BY HAYDEN MOLINAROLO

It’s hard to know where to start with a band like Foxing because they have so many moods with so few entry points. The St. Louis emo indie rock band only has three albums to its name, yes, but the band has done so much within that space. There are reflective songs and guitarheavy numbers, a vocal style that’s consistent yet sounds different on each release.

But after the release of their newest album, Nearer My God, the choice of where to start in

Foxing’s discography has become far easier.

Though it’s undoubtedly the biggest and more over-the-top record in the band’s career, their third album is one that feels impossible not to see why the collaborative efforts of vocalist Conor Murphy, guitarist Ricky Sampson, drummer Jon Hellwig, and guitarist Eric Hudson should be applauded. For one, it’s the first record where they felt like they were all on the same page. It was a bonding experience dotted with unexpected uses of instruments like synth and bagpipes. It’s experimental in some ways on paper, but in sound Foxing turn all of their odd choices and bold decisions into an album that explodes, as if it’s a record determined to mark a shift not only for the band but for the genre they often get lumped into.

“At the time, it made sense to us to self-produce a lot of this record,” says Murphy.

“When we were first putting songs together, one thing we realized from the last record was that we have a very hard time with demoitis: you write the song, you demo it, and then nothing you record after that can ever be as good as what you did in the moment. We suffer from that really bad. To fix that, we decided to do it all ourselves so that the demo is the actual version on the record. A lot of what you hear on the record is catching lightning in a bottle, all spontaneity. The only problem with that is that it made everything so, so, so messy. To keep track of all of that and then to work with [ex-Death Cab for Cutie guitarist] Chris Walla who mixed it? We knew it would be difficult, but it was by far the hardest part of the process.”

To understand the personalities that inform Foxing’s chemistry, we interviewed Conor Murphy for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Nearer My God as the prompt, his answers range from speculative to open-ended—a similar quality you can hear in their music when they headline the Sinclair this Sunday.

New Single "Habit" released Labor Day on Mediabase Billboard brianhutsonmusic.com

apmusicgroup.com

1. “Grand Paradise” What’s one trick you’d recommend to make a boring vacation better?

Oooh. Play Dungeons and Dragons! Are you in the midst of a boring vacation or are you bored on an okay vacation? Because to me, a boring vacation is one where the sole purpose for everybody is to go and see one thing and along the way everyone is trying to pass the time. So my remedy for that would be the conversation of “Is Nick Cage a good actor or a bad actor?” This is directly stolen from an episode of Community, I should mention, but makes for the greatest conversation in the world with anyone where you try to get to the bottom of it. I know it seems simple right away, to just say, “He is a bad actor.” But if you dig into it real hard, and actually watch the movies of his, the line between good actor and bad actor becomes impossible to define. I feel like that’s a conversation we constantly have all the time on tour—which is the most boring vacation of all time, because [touring travel] never ends.

2. “Slapstick” What’s the best comedy movie you’ve seen this year?

Okay. Hmm. Oh! You know what I just saw for the first time, like yesterday, that everybody told me to see for my entire life? Mallrats! It was hilarious. I can’t believe I had never seen it before. I assumed it was going to be the same type of thing as Clerks, Clerks 2, and Jay and Silent Bob. I’ve seen all of those. But everybody I talk to about Kevin Smith movies told me I had to see it. So I finally saw it yesterday and I think it’s my favorite one out of all of them. It was really good. Had a great time.

9.13.19

READ THE REST OF NINA’S INTERVIEW AT DIGBOSTON.COM >> FOXING, RATBOYS, KISSISSIPPI. SUN 9.2. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/ALL AGES/$15. SINCLAIRCAMBRIDGE.COM

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CASH CABERNET COMEDY

Ben Bailey rolls through City Winery

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

few spots where we start. We’ve gotten pretty strategic. We don’t play the game while we’re sitting in traffic, so we just kind of sit there and chat. It can take two hours to go 20 blocks.

Yes, these are the things that we wonder about at home. Did you have an inkling that there was going to be a comeback? Where did everything leave off last time that you did the show?

People were clamoring for us to make it again since we cancelled it, and I don’t know—it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to anyone else that just all of a sudden the network was like, We’re going to make it again.

What was the first creative thing that you wanted to do after the first stint of “Cash Cab” ended?

I always wanted to do more acting—I love acting. I was planning to be a filmmaker, but I got into stand-up comedy, which then led to Cash Cab instead. I’m not trying to get myself back on that track, but I’m happy to be hosting, I’m happy to be doing stand-up.

Is your act different when you’re touring pegged to Cash Cab?

I talk about weird things regardless. I’ll talk a little about Cash Cab, maybe do a Red Light Challenge.

Question: Who’s the biggest game show nut around this motherfucker?

Answer: me.

Question: Who will whip your stupid asses anytime there is a competition with tough questions?

Answer: me again.

For real, dawg. I will tear that ass up. Whether in Jeopardy or in some arcane Game Show Network oddity.

But for all my quiz enthusiasm, there aren’t many programs in this category that I find both challenging and entertaining. Ever since Jimmy Kimmel found much better things to do than hang out with Ben Stein, nothing has put Trebek’s top spot in real jeopardy. With one standout exception…

Cash Cab upped the ante from the first time that comedian Ben Bailey rolled down Broadway in Manhattan back in 2005. Between the clever questions, the way you get to meet contestants in a deeper way than happens in those corny 15-second intros on the Wheel and Jeopardy, and of course the charismatic host, the show took off and drove for seven seasons.

Now, after a five-year hiatus, Cash Cab has returned to the Discovery Channel. With Bailey hitting City Winery in Boston for a stand-up show this week (yes, we’re told there will be Cash Cabernet involved), I asked my favorite TV quiz driver everything I have always wanted to know about his amazingly odd triple career as a comic, host, and chauffeur.

What was the original casting like for Cash Cab?

They auditioned a ton of people in LA, San Francisco,

Chicago, New York—over 2,000 people. I didn’t expect to get a callback, but it did go really well. Something just clicked in that audition, so I thought maybe there was a shot, because we were just laughing the whole time I was in there. Sure enough I got the callback, and then I went back and did it again. I did that again four more times, so six times I went, and then they were like, “We want you to host the show, we just want you to go and do this background check and pass the test and get an actual taxi license.” They were keeping other possibilities open just in case I didn’t pass one of the standards or something.

How long did it take for you to get acquainted with the whole driving-while-hosting-a-TV-show thing?

I was pretty familiar with New York City already. I had driven around there a lot; I had been a limo driver.

I’ve been driving to make my living since I was able to drive, delivering whatever—pizza, flowers, prescriptions, sandwiches, people.

Can you write jokes while you’re driving? Is it a good job for a comic?

Yeah, it is. I like driving. You’re working for somebody, but you’re out there on your own.

How has traffic changed? Does technology come into play? Or does none of that really matter since you’re filming a television show?

Yeah, we don’t really mess with Waze or anything—just the old-fashioned way. Traffic’s pretty terrible, though.

How does that affect the rhythm of the show?

We’ve actually kind of figured out a way to work around it. We start at a particular time of day, and we have a

>> BEN BAILEY W/ JIM MCCUE AT CITY WINERY. FRI 8.31. CITYWINERY.COM/BOSTON/TICKETS 18

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What are some of the questions you get asked the most about the show? How do you avoid crashing the car?

Have you ever crashed the cab? Have you ever been robbed in the cab? What’s the weirdest thing that ever happened? Did anyone ever throw up in the cab? I get that last one often.

Has it happened?

It has never happened. Thank goodness.

I’m sure that you have been asked this a million times, but how conscious are you and the producers about making sure that the Cash Cab doesn’t discriminate against certain types of riders?

We’re pretty conscious.

“We want you to host the show, we just want you to go and do this background check and pass the test and get an actual taxi license.”

You kind of fit into the same conversation with Sacha Baron Cohen, like, How fucking long can this go on for without everybody knowing who they are? Do you get away with it because the passengers are looking at the back of your head when they get in?

Sometimes people know, but the biggest thing we have on our side now is that people didn’t know that we’re doing the show again. They weren’t expecting it.

TRIBUTE

THE ART WORLD LOST SOME LIGHT A community remembers Robert Todd

BY KORI FEENER @KORIFEENER How do you encompass the life of a brilliant artist, an inquisitive spirit, and a friend?

On Friday, Aug 17, I went on Facebook and saw former colleagues, classmates, and friends from the Boston film community and Emerson College frantically posting a missing poster of prolific experimental filmmaker and Emerson College professor Robert Todd.

A man who could always be recognized by his tall stature and a puff of gray hair above his head, Rob was the kind of person who gave so much of himself to so many, without ever asking for anything in return. That was just his way.

Which is why it was unsurprising that when a social media call came out to search Franklin Park where he was last seen, many answered. Not long after the search party set out, Rob was found, and news of his death spread like a roaring wildfire. Hearts collectively broke at the news, and some catharsis came from the sharing of stories about how Rob positively shifted the course of so many lives.

What follows is a compilation of moments from friends, colleagues, and fellow artists that can serve as a record for how important this quirky and thoughtful man was to so many.

It was the early 1990s, and Joey Kolbe, a cinematographer and adjunct professor at Emerson College, was shooting an Edgar Allan Poe-connected film. He had cast two important roles—the first was a nurse, the second an old man in a wheelchair who lived in a mansion. “The day of the shoot, the old man showed up, but the nurse that I had cast was a no-show,” Kolbe recalls.

At the time, Rob was the editor and sound guy for several Edgar Allan Poe projects as a part of a collaborative film workshop at the Museum School of Fine Arts. Kolbe remembers that his friend had a lot on his plate, but unable to let a colleague flounder, Rob jumped at the chance to come to the rescue and acted as the nurse, dressing up in her uniform.

“It actually came out way better than it would have had the actress been there,” Kolbe says. For Kolbe, who was friends with Rob since their late teens, this is the epitome of who Rob was. “He would just jump into positions that he was not comfortable with out of pure kindness.”

In 1996, Rob was teaching part time at the Museum School when Brittany Gravely met him. Like many of Rob’s students, they kept in touch.

“Over the years, Rob was one of my primary film ‘resources’—his knowledge of film was thorough and deep,” says Gravely who, like many who were closest to Rob, is a member of the filmmaking collaborative AgX. “His ability to see, his capacity to go to the places of pure feeling and not turn away, not dissemble, were exquisite,” says Sarah Bliss, another AgX artist and friend.

In fall 2017, Bliss curated a program comprised of AgX works at the Northampton Film Festival. Over the weeks of working on the programming, Bliss was simultaneously caring for her dying father. A week before he died, he asked to see some of the films she was considering.

“His strength was sapped and his energy exceedingly weak,” Bliss says. “I needed to choose carefully.” She chose Rob’s two films, Restless and Matters of Life and Death.

“Watching together, we let the films say what was too painful for us to put into words,” remembers Bliss, “speaking the truth in this way, through the creative act of love, was the greatest gift I could give my father.”

Moved, she wrote Rob that evening, poetically expressing her thankfulness for his work, and saying how his films became personal in the moments she shared them with her father.

Rob wrote back, “I am breathless from reading this. … It is kind of overwhelming to feel that these motions of mine have led to these emotions in you.”

For Bliss, that’s how the artistic friendship should work: “Each of us mirror for the other.”

Bliss reflects, “Now, a mirror has been shattered. That mirror unfailingly reflected the best of me back to myself.”

“We must each polish our own glass. That is the special work we are called to as filmmakers and artists. We must believe in ourselves and cultivate and grow our own deep listening, presence, and attention, generosity, courage, deep-seeing, empathy, and critical thinking.”

Let us all carry on Rob’s work.

For a longer version of this with more remembrances, please check digboston.com.

On Oct 27, friends and family will embark on an Out of the Darkness walk through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. To join that walk and help support suicide prevention or just donate, find this article on digboston.com for links.

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DAILY GRIND FILM

Bing Liu’s debut feature goes far beyond the skateboarders at its center

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

IMAGE COURTESY OF HULU.

How rare to see a nonfiction film distributed by a streaming platform that moves with a patient rhythm.

Credit to Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap [2018] for achieving exactly that: The movie introduces its main characters up front, but then it takes its sweet time revealing what part of their lives it’s going to focus on (all while so many other contemporary nonfiction movies collect their various “themes” all tidy-like in an easy-to-digest pre-title card intro segment). Perhaps it’s damning this film with faint praise to say that you cannot accurately visualize where it’ll end just by watching its beginning. But given how rarely that’s true of modern American cinema, it seems a quality that demands consideration all the same.

Liu begins with Kiere, a teenager from Rockford, Illinois.

He’s first seen in stylish wide-angle shots that follow him skating as opening credits play underneath. The aesthetic here is “monied skater techie uploading footage to Youtube,” and you might even suspect the whole movie will play out in that manner. But when those credits end, Liu follows Kiere home, and the aesthetic changes distinctly. Kiere’s bedroom is the first of many deeply unkempt spaces documented without adornment during Minding the Gap—another rare thing about this movie is that it captures something of what the average US living space actually looks like—and Kiere seems insecure about that (he even mentions that he meant to clean earlier on). As they leave the room, Liu (who’s a “character” in the film himself) engages Kiere in a conversation about why the younger man spends his time either skateboarding or home alone (“I always felt like I didn’t fit in with my family”). From this segment one might imagine the film will develop beyond its skate-tape footage into a more general study of skateboarding as an outlet for “outcasts” and “outsiders.” But that’s another expectation that gets quickly obliterated—the film moves onto a different angle before we even reach the five-minute mark.

At that five-minute point we’re introduced to the last two characters being profiled: first Zack, who’s older than

Kiere and shifts between unemployment and roofing work, and then Zack’s girlfriend Nina, who’s about to have their first baby (yet has more promising employment options waiting ahead nonetheless). Once we’re familiar with them, the film opens up to consider matters of employment as one of its primary subjects—at this point, we’re also granted a look into Kiere’s job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. Minding the Gap mostly subsides on segments like that—observational footage of its characters—but there are occasionally audio clips taken from news reports presented alongside them. The first of which concerns work opportunities in Rockford—we hear about the low pay rates and the high unemployment numbers, all set over images of storefronts that have clearly seen better days. This is a formal approach that Liu employs constantly: He references the macro issues that are related to his characters’ micro struggles, and he does so without imposing unwieldy significance or subtexts onto those characters themselves. Instead he just lets their behavior and circumstances make the connections for him.

Within minutes of his introduction, for instance, a number of details quickly reveal that Zack revels in his own immaturity and that he sees no reason to hide it from Liu’s camera. In his first moments onscreen, he’s hosting a party in his backyard, shotgunning PBRs, smoking weed on camera, and speaking directly to the camera about how he doesn’t give a fuck about smoking weed on camera. That last bit actually gets at something integral about Minding the Gap. From the start, there’s an atypical intimacy between Zack, Kiere, and the camera recording them. To be specific, Zack and Kiere often look past the camera itself during conversation, and speak directly to “Bing.” They behave as if Liu and the camera were one and the same (which, of course, in the context of a completed film, they are).

One quickly notices, for instance, that Zack, who is white, does not think twice about saying racial slurs on camera, and in front of Kiere, who is black. Which

>> MINDING THE GAP IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON HULU.COM WITH A SUBSCRIPTION. 20

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is, of course, problematic on any number of levels—but it also goes to illustrate just how unguarded Liu’s subjects are with regards to being on camera. In fact, it’s a matter of trust between subject and filmmaker that creates the film’s most significant “drama”: In an offhand moment while Zack is running an errand, Nina confides to Liu that Zack has physically abused her—but Nina, not wanting to irreparably shake up the tenuous relationship she has with her child’s father, demands that Liu not disclose her comments to Zack. It puts the filmmaker in an ethical corner: To respect his source’s wishes, he’d need to ignore the next direction his film is developing toward, and he’d need to give an undeserved free pass to his most reprehensible subject.

Indeed, domestic abuse becomes something of an endpoint for Minding the Gap’s associative structure: All four characters have suffered through physical abuse by a loved one, and following Nina’s revelation they begin to share experiences with one another more openly, perhaps even to therapeutic ends.

This leads to formal decisions about which I have reservations. The film reaches its climax with two emotionally intensive interview segments: In the first, Liu confronts his own mother about the assaults he suffered at the hands of his stepfather, and in the second, he confronts Zack about having abused Nina, albeit in a manner that does not betray the confidence of Nina’s “private” statements. Both respond with vague remorse and half-hearted explanations. Liu’s edit crosscuts these scenes together, and it just doesn’t play: You feel an effort being made to create a sociological or even cosmic link between the individual’s respective circumstances, and that effort becomes a real strain. But this is perhaps because Minding the Gap draws comparable links with unvarnished clarity in other, simpler instances. One particular exchange comes to mind: Liu briefly interviews Kiere’s mother Roberta, who long ago had divorced her son’s abusive father. There’s barely a single question asked before Roberta’s current boyfriend attempts to reclaim her—“[Your] five minutes are up,” he bellows possessively from offscreen, like an unseen spectre of a much larger tragedy. In this one brief aside, Liu finds shape and texture for these abstract cycles—recurrences of abuse, unemployment, addiction, misogyny, all connected by unseen lines. In these moments his movie seems to see those lines—how these occurrences constantly reassert themselves, from household to household, from boyfriend to boyfriend, from one generation to the next. In looking for catharsis, in looking for a finale, Minding the Gap does eventually reach something of a dead end. But it doesn’t remotely lessen those observations made along the way— for every unexpected development the film makes, it finds a reason.

GATEWAY MIXER FOOD | MUSIC | GAMES

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Join us for a colorful and lively evening of free entertainment and mingling between Northeastern students, faculty, staff & local residents!

September 13, 2018 | 4 pm - 7 pm (Rain date: September 19) Ruggles Plaza 1155 Tremont Street, Roxbury

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COMEDY EVENTS

SWINGING QUICKIES SAVAGE LOVE

THU 08.30

MELISSA VILLASENOR @ LAUGH BOSTON

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

This woman has gone down on me (I’m a man) more than half a dozen times in the last three months. Each time seems to be better than the previous! She does not want reciprocation. She has also turned down all my offers for intercourse. As far as I know, she is heterosexual just like me. What’s with that? I am getting a bit frustrated. Also, without going all the way, am I considered a friend with benefits?

Just Chilling You’re benefiting here—think of all those blowjobs—and if she’s a friend, you can certainly regard yourself as a friend with benefits. As for why she won’t allow you to eat her pussy or put your dick in her pussy, JC, well, a few things spring to mind. She could be one of those women who love to give head and that’s all she wants from a casual partner.

Or she could have body-image issues. Or she could have a sexually transmitted infection, and she’d rather blow than disclose. Or she might be unwilling to risk pregnancy. Or she could be intersex or trans and not ready to open up. If you enjoy those blowjobs—if you’re enjoying the benefits—focus on what you are getting instead of what you’re not.

My husband and I occasionally go to swingers clubs. I don’t want to inadvertently fuck any Trump supporters, but I hate the idea of bringing up politics and killing everyone’s collective boner. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Occasionally Swinging At the risk of killing your boner forever, OS, the organized swinging scene “leans right,” as pollster Charlie Cook would put it if Charlie Cook polled swingers. Easily half of the couples I met at a big swingers convention I attended in Las Vegas told me they were Republicans. One man—a swinger from Texas—told me he was a “traditional values” type of guy and that’s why he opposed same-sex marriage. Fun fact: His wife was off fucking someone else’s husband while we were chitchatting in the hotel bar. Good times.

Melissa Villaseñor broke barriers by becoming the first-ever Latina cast member of Saturday Night Live. A comedic impressions expert, she got her start as a semifinalist on “America’s Got Talent.” Melissa has voiced characters on Cartoon Network’s OK K.O.! and Adventure Time, Comedy Central’s TripTank, Fox’s American Dad and Family Guy. On camera she most recently filmed HBO’s Crashing and Barry, Fullscreen’s Alone Together, and of course Saturday Night Live.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 PM | $25-$29 THU 08.30

HARPOON COMEDY NIGHT @ HARPOON BREWERY

Featuring: Sam Ike, Laura Severse, Christine Hurley, & Jack Burke.

306 NORTHERN AVE., BOSTON | 7PM | $20 FRI 08.31 - SUN 09.02

ROB LITTLE @ LAUGH BOSTON

Rob Little has appeared on Last Comic Standing, The Best Damn Sports Show Period, Last Call with Carson Daly and more. Rob has been named a “Real Man of Comedy” by MAXIM.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 PM | 7PM SUN | $25-$29 FRI 08.31 - SAT 09.01

RAY HARRINGTON @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Ray Harrington is an infectiously likable comedian who performs across the globe.

Harrington has turned his awkward and un-led stumble into manhood into hilariously irreverent material and marvelous improvisational riffing that embraces the uncomfortable and the absurd with a smile. His documentary BE A MAN won the LA Comedy Festival and was featured as ‘New and Noteworthy’ Internationally on iTunes before premiering on Hulu. His first album from Stand Up! Records, The Worst Is Over, debuted at the top of the comedy charts on Amazon and iTunes.

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

I’m a happily married 35-year-old mom. I have a loving and devoted husband. Recently, I started a job to get out of the house more and interact with more people. Well, it turns out my new boss is a real hottie. I have a crush on him and often find myself fantasizing about him. While I know these feelings can be normal, I tend to fixate/obsess. I’m basically looking for advice on how to move past this crush or maybe find a more productive outlet.

Newbie Fantasizing

FRI 08.31

Here’s a more productive outlet: Turn out the lights, climb on top of your husband, get him hard, then sink your pussy down on his cock and ride him while you fantasize about your boss. (Perhaps this is better described as a more productive inlet?) Bonus points if you and your husband are both secure enough in your marriage and cognizant enough of reality to regard crushes on others as normal and, so long as they remain crushes, not a threat to your marriage or commitment. Because then you can talk dirty with your husband about your boss—he can even pretend to be your boss—while you ride your husband’s cock.

SAT 09.01

The other night while my wife and I were watching porn and masturbating together, I suggested we masturbate in front of DirtyRoulette. I briefly explained what the site is about. She asked me if that’s what I do—if I get on DR when I masturbate. I replied yes, sometimes—and she was so taken aback, she ended our masturbation session to process it.

We’re fine now, but do you think this is “cheating”?

Dirty Rouletting I don’t think it’s cheating, DR, but you aren’t married to me. In other words, if your wife regards you masturbating with strangers on the internet as cheating, then it’s cheating. There are, of course, some people out there who regard too many things as cheating—fantasizing about others, looking at porn, even non-webcam-or-porn-enhanced masturbation. People who think this way usually regard cheating as unforgivable and, consequently, their relationships are doomed to failure.

BILL’S BAR COMEDY @ BILL’S BAR BOSTON

Featuring: Sean Sullivan, Lamont Price, Alan Fitzgerald, Kindra Lansburg, John Paul Rivera, & Drew Dunn.

Hosted by Zach Russell and Robert Pooley

1222 COMM AVE., ALLSTON | 7PM | $5

BOSTON COMEDY FESTIVAL SUMMER SERIES @ HARD ROCK CAFE Hosted by Jim McCue

24 CLINTON ST., BOSTON | 9PM | $20 SUN 09.02

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Ethan Diamond, Chris Post, Janet McNamara, Austin McCloud, Liam McGurk, Joe Medoff, Tawanda Gona, Mike Settlow, & Alex Giampapa.

Hosted by Ellen Sugarman

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 09.03

FREE COMEDY @ CITYSIDE

Featuring: Clark Jones, Jack Burke, Kathe Farris, Sam Ike, & Anjan Biswas.

Hosted by Rob Greene

1960 BEACON ST., BRIGHTON | 8:30PM | FREE TUE 09.04

POWERHOUSE COMEDY NIGHT @ SPACEUS Hosted by Owen Linders

4228 WASHINGTON STREET, ROSLINDALE | 10PM | FREE WED 09.05

COMEDY IN THE ELLIS ROOM @ MAGNOLIA SMOKEHOUSE

On the Lovecast, a sex toy expert’s husband’s favorite sex toy: savagelovecast.com

Featuring: Kindra Lansburg, Dylan Uscher, Rob Greene, Nicole Sisk & more.

Hosted by Ellen Sugarman & Brett Johnson

6 HARVARD SQ., BROOKLINE | 8PM | FREE

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more info on everything Boston Comedy visit BostonComedyShows.com Bios & writeups pulled from various sources, including from the clubs & comics… savagelovecast.com

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08.30.18 - 09.06.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Rob Little

The Best Damn Sports Show Period Friday - Sunday

COMING SOON BOS POD FEST

9 days. 12 hilarious podcasts.

ALL recorded live!

Sept 2-10

Robert Kelly Comedy Central, FX, Netflix Sept 7 + 8

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Matteo Lane Girl Code, Guy Code Sept 13-15

The Naked Magicians Sept 17-23

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Tom Arnold VICELAND’s The Hunt for the Trump Tapes Special Engagement: Fri, Sept 21 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

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