DigBoston 5.9.19

DIGBOSTON.COM 05.09.19 - 05.16.19

"Everything you always wanted to know about guns (in Massachusetts)

But were afraid to ask"

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SUPER AGGRAVATING

I made a jackass out of myself on Twitter last week. Here’s how it went: All this blind support for the new #Boston Public Schools superintendent is pathetic. You had somebody thrust upon you with barely any input and are pretending it’s okay. Outrage fatigue I guess. What a bunch of pushovers. #bospoli #BPS I meant it. Hell, I mean it. But it was stupid and insensitive, since BPS parents are the last people around here who deserve criticism. I may not have intended to insult to all of the parents and guardians who struggle with fractured public schools day in and day out, year after year, but in review there’s no doubt that my words could have been construed that way.

In the interest of being totally honest in this half-apology, I’ll attempt to explain where my comment originated (other than my gut, which you may already realize). After I’d commiserated with all kinds of student advocates and parents about the sham of a search process, in which the public was presented with three finalists out of nearly 40 applicants, I was simply shocked to see the somewhat positive reactions of so many factions and organizations following the school board’s decision.

There were the parents from Quality Education for Every Student: [QUEST] congratulates [former Minnesota education commissioner] Dr. Brenda Cassellius on her selection as Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) … [and] hope[s] that the selection … will create an opening for new forms of communication, collaboration and mutual support between District leadership and key BPS stakeholders. “We were concerned about the process leading to this decision but are cautiously optimistic about the choice of Dr. Cassellius,” said Harneen Chernow, a parent of two children in the system.

And the Boston Student Advisory Council: We are thrilled to welcome Brenda Cassellius … For the first time ever, a YOB/BSAC member sat on the selection committee for the superintendent as an equal partner with school committee members, the BTU president, teachers, and parents.

And the Boston Coalition for Education Equity, which was the harshest of the bunch but still found a silver lining: We are dismayed at the process itself and disappointed in its implementation by the school committee. … However, despite this flawed process, most of our organizations believe that one of the finalists–Dr. Brenda Cassellius–has demonstrated that she has the experience necessary to be an effective leader in advancing equity and educational quality in the Boston Public Schools. all:

THU. MAY 16

I think it was that last one that finally set me off; in addition to pretending there were only three applicants, the taxpayer-funded BPS PR apparatus quoted interim Superintendent Laura Perille, who was unilaterally tapped by Mayor Marty Walsh. As if we haven’t heard enough from her already.

As many people said in different ways to set me straight, parents haven’t let their guard down. Rather, they are trying to harvest some light out of an opaque and disappointing situation. I pledge to follow their upcoming actions closely and to cover incoming Superintendent Cassellius fairly, since she deserves a chance and shouldn’t be blamed for the inadequate search process.

In the meantime, I apologize to anyone who I offended.

You are not pathetic. My lazy, thoughtless tweet, on the other hand, certainly was.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

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“All three superintendent candidates brought excellent ideas and experience to the discussion. … I thank all of them for participating in this public process,” said Boston School Committee Chairperson Michael Loconto.

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Gun laws, limits, and licensing in Mass—in perception and reality

BY MINH DO, CHRIS FARAONE, NOEL GASCA, OLIN HAYES, JAMES KWON, ABIGAIL NOYES, ALISHA PARIKH, AUTUMN PATTISON, SELAH POMERANITZ, AMANDA RASINSKI, MAX REYES, MADISON ROGERS, RIANE ROLDAN, ADRIEN SALZBERG, TAY THAI, CURTIS WALTMAN In Massachusetts, anyone from legislative insiders to casual 5 o’clock news watchers knows that the Bay State is hardly the proud beacon of progressive priorities that it is often cast as on Fox News. From environmental woes to large corporate handouts, there are countless strikes upon the blue-state image.

On the typically contentious topic of guns, however, Mass is almost always seen through a rose-colored liberal lens. Relative to over-the-top firearm fundamentalists in red states, even the most right-leaning Mass politicians are pacifist hippies. A recent public forum hosted by the Boston Globe and WBUR titled “Tackling Gun Violence” was a nod to that popular narrative and featured Republican Gov. Charlie Baker in conversation with Democratic House Speaker Robert DeLeo, among others.

The event was advertised as a discussion about Mass having “the lowest firearm death and disability rate in the continental U.S.” … “the result of a set of policies that were implemented by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, working with local advocates and researchers to develop best practices that can set an example for the country.”

The topic of guns in this state is complicated, as are the positions of a lot of Massachusetts politicians. Baker, for example, has an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and keeps in the good graces of many Beacon Hill Democrats on the topic of guns, at least publicly. On the other hand, the governor has accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from people affiliated with weapons sellers, manufacturers, and distributors. Bones he’s thrown to firearm enthusiasts have not helped his NRA report card grade, but in 2017 Baker appointed Ron Amidon, then-president of the Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL), the Commonwealth’s NRA affiliate group, to head the state’s Department of Fish and Game.

GOAL lobbies aggressively and has advocated for, among other controversial measures, a repeal to the Bay State’s assault weapons ban.

Compared to every other state, the Commonwealth has undeniably made major strides on gun reform and safety. Especially since the late ’90s, Mass has been at the national legislative forefront and is often recognized as having some of the toughest restrictions anywhere in the US. In 2017, it was ranked as America’s fourth safest state, according to the annual study by the Gifford Law Center. While Mass is often portrayed as a mob-infested murderground in major motion pictures, it is simultaneously hailed in pop culture as a progressive exemplar and has been the subject of gushing national news coverage, like a 2018 puff piece in Vox headed, “Massachusetts offers a model for dealing with gun violence that the rest of the country could follow.”

Some of the reputation is deserved; laws here have been applauded by gun control advocates and protested, physically and legally, by gun rights groups. In 2014, state legislators passed a sweeping reform bill focused on increasing background checks, attending to mental 4

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health issues, tightening security in schools, and making punishment for gun crimes harsher. A more recent ban on bump stocks, a reaction to the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has drawn praise from the left as well as criticism and a lawsuit from the right. A “red flag” bill that enables court-approved removal of guns from people considered to pose a threat to themselves or others, also passed last year, has been similarly received.

Compared to the Bay State’s safety bona fides, there is relatively scant attention paid to firearms within our borders, licensed or otherwise. The same goes for gun dealers, ranges, taxpayer-subsidized police militarization, and lobbyists who push to deregulate all of the above. In part due to the common perception that Mass is a gunfree refuge, many of these tidbits go unnoticed—from the 262 firearm deaths that occurred in 2017 (the last year for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have made statistics available), to politicians who speak out against violence but pocket campaign dollars from gun makers, to the fact that guns made in or distributed by Commonwealth companies have been used in mass shootings. According to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) statistics from 2016, Mass produced more than 3 million guns that year alone, far more than any other state (neighboring New Hampshire was a distant second) and accounting for approximately one-quarter of all guns made in the US.

Since 2018, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, in collaboration with MuckRock, the Emerson College Department of Journalism, and the Emerson College Engagement Lab, has thoroughly examined and reported on the unchecked nature of weapons procurement by state and municipal law enforcement agencies in Mass. In one discovery that emerged from documents secured via public records requests, our team revealed that certain law enforcement agencies continued doing business with companies that Attorney General Maura Healey found violated state law. In some cases, individuals from those businesses donated to pols including Gov. Baker while still under investigation.

In this all-encompassing installment, we look beyond

the fire power that is procured by police and focus on the weapons owned by members of the public—legally as well as illegally—that those very same departments are tasked with licensing and keeping tabs on. By looking past the myth and surveying the gun culture and economy across the Commonwealth, our intention is to portray a more accurate picture than popular perception provides and that, like our reporting on the millions of dollars that State Police have spent over budget on weapons, sidesteps the polarized politics of the national gun debate.

WHO BUYS? In Alabama, which has one of the top 10 worst firearm death rates in the country, there is no substantial wait time for getting a gun. The licensing process begins when you fill out a form at the gun store, sort of like if you could get licensed to drive at a car dealership. It’s a similar scenario in Tennessee, where state law does not require owners to obtain a license, register their firearms, or report lost or stolen guns. There’s also no waiting period or limit on the number of firearms that may be purchased at one time. In March, police in Brockton found three young men from the Volunteer State sitting in a car holding a warrior’s trove that included several pistols and an AK-47, as well as ammunition, black gloves, and masks.

Though firearms from other states end up in Massachusetts often, as far as the Commonwealth’s own licensing affairs are concerned, things work differently here. People everywhere are required to fill out some form or another to purchase a gun; by contrast, the process here is comparatively longer, more thorough, and more selective than anyplace else by several measures. Reform crusaders say such differences are part of the reason that Mass has one of the lowest gun death rates in the nation; in 2017, according to CDC data, the number of deaths per 100,000 Commonwealth residents was 3.7. The only state where people were on average at less risk of being shot and killed was Hawaii (New York’s rate was also 3.7); in Mass, you were several times more likely to die from sepsis than on the wrong side of a gun barrel. Compare that to 2017 firearm death rates of 22.9 and 18.4 in Alabama and Tennessee, respectively.

Massachusetts resident Brian Yule applied for a license to carry in 2016 in Plymouth. Recounting the experience, he said the whole entire process took about six months after he successfully completed a safety course and was interviewed by local law enforcement.

Yule, a Plymouth firefighter, described the procedure as “long and drawn out compared to other states,” and his observations match the data.

A “Review of the Commonwealth’s Firearms License Permitting Process”—released by Mass Auditor Suzanne Bump in 2017 and covering the period between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2016—showed that Plymouth had one of the longest waits in Mass, with the process taking an average of 116 days to complete—nearly three times the state’s designated 40-day limit.

According to that same report, municipal officials largely blame the elongated process on understaffing and a lack of communication with the statewide Department of Criminal Justice Information Services. Making things harder to track and synthesize, wait times fluctuate from town to town; per state law, municipalities have leeway when it comes to gun licensing, from specific application requirements to prescribed wait times.

In Cambridge, obtaining a firearms license is a lot like applying for a job. You need references—specifically, two letters of recommendation that are not from family members and that speak to your good character and intentions. You also need a cover letter detailing why you are seeking the license, plus the requisite ID, proof of residence, the statewide standard $100 fee, and a basic firearms safety course certificate.

Rather than make the process additionally onerous like Cambridge, others have streamlined applications. In Duxbury, the town proactively notes that returning applicants don’t need a safety course certificate; the policy applies statewide, but many local administrators leave it off their websites. Most police departments list requirements for firearms license applications online, but their checklists differ, in some cases dramatically. Newton, like Cambridge, requires two character references. Revere and Nantucket ask for three. In Western Mass, however, towns like Deerfield and Peru simply link to the state’s application website.

Our efforts to obtain gun license data for 2018 were ignored by the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services. One previous snapshot of Commonwealth ownership came in a comprehensive 2016 WBZ I-Team report that compiled information on active firearms licenses. That analysis, built on Massachusetts Department of Public Safety data and other primary sources, showed the most licenses in the most populated cities. When accounting for population, the hottest towns were largely found throughout the western half of Mass, as well as along the state’s northern and southern borders.

More populated urban areas have less licenses per capita.

The aforementioned survey also explored license denials from 2006 to 2016, which paint a different picture. Cities mostly had the highest denial rates, with Boston having the most (468), followed by other large municipalities including Lawrence (142), Lowell (226), Lynn (146), Quincy (162), Revere (214), Springfield (116), Taunton (144), and Worcester (248). Besides being the biggest cities in the state, many also have the largest minority populations.

In addition to how particular city or town specifications factor into the licensing process, there are other wild cards in play. Under one federal law, any applicant convicted of a misdemeanor or a crime for which the sentence is two years or less is not exempt from owning a firearm. Which is problematic here because some Massachusetts laws are relatively strict, with certain misdemeanors carrying two-and-a-half-year sentences.

At the local level, no town’s firearm laws can override or be less stringent than those set by the state. Confusing matters even further than the baseline state and federal background and fingerprint checks, stringency is not always so black and white, or necessarily applied in accordance with Mass law. The licensing process is often drawn out longer than it is supposed to be, with the majority of municipalities failing to meet the state’s 40-day deadline for application processing. According to the Massachusetts auditor’s report from 2017, only 38 of 347 local licensing authorities had average wait times that were within the mandated limit.

The average wait statewide was 65 days.

The Revere Police Department notes on its website that applicants need three letters of recommendation that are not from family members and that are written by people “of good moral character and must have known you for at least five years.” In periods for which numbers are available, Revere’s waiting period has been relatively long, in some cases up to more than 120 days, whereas the wait in some of its neighboring suburbs are on average one-quarter that long.

One Lynn resident who spoke with us applied for his license to carry last year. Jamie Rivera said he understands why towns have different policies and longer application processes. His deference appears to be in line with most Americans; in a Pew Research Center survey conducted last September, less than half of the respondents said the waiting period for buying a gun should be shortened.

“When you apply for a gun in a town that’s closer to a city,” Rivera said, “that’s a lot different than applying for one when you live near the woods.”

Rivera had to complete safety courses, interview with local cops, and pay a fee of $100 with his application. Authorities told him the process could take up to six months. In the end, it took half that long.

“With applying for a license in [dense cities] like Lynn, there’s more likelihood of gun negligence,” Rivera said. “Gun policy tries to combat that by making stricter processes.”

WHO TRIES? In 1998, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, under the leadership of Republican Governor Paul Cellucci and Democratic honchos in the House and Senate, banned the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons like AKs, UZIs, AR-15s, revolving cylinder shotguns, and “any semiautomatic weapon that can hold a magazine of more than five rounds.” The

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BIG BANG THEORY continued from pg. 5 Act Relative to Gun Control in the Commonwealth also banned certain high-volume magazines, slapped further restrictions on arms dealers, and granted broad powers to police departments to deny licenses to “unsuitable” applicants.

Over the following decade, the number of active gun licenses in Massachusetts plummeted from nearly 1.5 million in the late 1990s to just 200,000 less than 10 years later (that total has rebounded over the past half-decade and nearly hit 400,000 last year). Violent crime also decreased, which hasn’t stopped reform.

Even in instances when bullet-ridden episodes erupted elsewhere, Bay State politicians have responded, with varying results.

Following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left more than two dozen people dead, states across the country rushed to pass rigorous legislation aiming to prevent similar incidents in their own jurisdictions.

Some failed, but policy makers in Mass, led by House Speaker DeLeo and then-Sen. President Therese Murray, assembled a committee to investigate gun laws, then delivered recommendations the following year to thenGov. Deval Patrick, who signed an Act Relative to the Reduction of Gun Violence in 2014.

Among other changes, Patrick’s actions enhanced sentences for existing gun crimes and brought Massachusetts into compliance with the National Instant Background Check System, which raises red flags in the event that potential gun owners suffer from mental illness and substance abuse issues. Many of the tweaks were initially endorsed by voices on the gun violence prevention side of the national debate but have been criticized as ineffective in reflection. Summarizing various analyses, both statistical and anecdotal, last March WGBH political analyst David S. Bernstein noted that despite “new penalties for failing to safely secure firearms, failing to properly report the private sale or transfer of a firearm, and failing to report a lost or stolen gun,” an “[Executive Office of Public Safety and Security] report gives no indication … that law enforcement is making good on that threat. Neither does a report … from Northeastern University, assessing the implementation of the 2014 law.”

Assessments of the gun violence reduction act from people in communities that are the most impacted have been no more flattering.

“Look at the outpouring of everything when there’s a mass shooting,” Dr. Stephanie Shapiro Berkson, a strategist for the Mass Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, said. Also a professor of community health sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Shapiro Berkson added, “Why don’t we have that outpouring in my neighborhood, in lower Roxbury? Why don’t we have the same outpouring and the same attention?”

Following the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, Attorney General Maura Healey issued a notice to all gun sellers and manufacturers in Massachusetts, warning that her office is “stepping up enforcement of the state’s assault weapons ban, including a crackdown on the sale of copycat weapons.”

The AG’s letter led to more than 2,500 grudge buys in a single day and many more over the following months.

Another landmark Massachusetts gun reform came in 2018, in response to the killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The massacre spurred binding action nationwide, with Mass passing its version of a “Red Flag” law in an Act Further Regulating Certain Weapons. The measure allows relatives or mental health professionals to recommend the removal of a firearm from somebody who is considered to be a danger to themselves or people around them.

Such legislative developments—the response on Beacon Hill—have been touted locally as well as nationally. What’s less commonly acknowledged is the role that Massachusetts, from companies based here to many of its leading politicians, play in gun culture and the firearm economy. In the celebration of the Bay State’s statistical safety, it’s rarely noted that gun makers and 6

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distributors in our backyard have vended weapons that were used in some of the most horrendous bloodbaths in memory. Or that open markets in neighboring Second Amendment gracelands like New Hampshire stoke the fire.

WHO LIES? In 2017, a Manchester, New Hampshire woman went to prison for purchasing a gun and ammunition in her state that was intended for a friend with felony convictions on his record. The woman lied to the clerk at the gun store where she bought the firearm, saying that it was for her personal use. It was later found out that she gave the piece, which was connected to a shooting in Leominster, to her friend in Massachusetts.

Two years earlier, another New Hampshire woman bought a gun in Plaistow, falsely claimed the firearm was for her, then proceeded to deliver the 9 mm handgun to a Commonwealth resident.

In one case fit for tabloid fodder, a Boston Police Department officer was convicted of lying about purchasing two firearms for himself when he was in fact buying for friends. The weapons were illegal for civilian use in Massachusetts, while one of the guns was later found in the possession of a reputed gang member.

Individual straw purchasing cases differ in specifics and their level of shock value. Generally, a straw purchaser is anybody who serves as the proxy in a firearm transaction, whether a friend, romantic partner, or even a stranger who’s connected to a trafficking ring. These situations involve guns being secured by somebody who qualifies under applicable laws for someone who doesn’t.

And often lead to firepower flowing over borders into states like Massachusetts.

According to 2017 ATF data, less than a third of all guns recovered in Mass as part of police investigations were purchased in the state. Nearly 70 percent were from 43 other states, with the most guns coming from New Hampshire and Maine.

“The vast majority of people still get a gun [in Massachusetts] … but the NRA has made a lot of people believe that they can’t, so they try to go elsewhere to get it,” said Dr. Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice. He continues, “They will try to go to New Hampshire, or Maine, or Virginia, and ask somebody who lives there to buy a gun and you know, give them 50 bucks and let them go buy a $100 or $50 gun.

And then they will do it for you.”

Unlike Massachusetts, which currently has an A- from Gifford Law Center’s Annual Gun Law Scorecard, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine all have an F rating. The center assigns positive points for gun safety policies like private background checks and risk protection orders, and negatively values black eyes like concealed carry. Since New Hampshire and Maine removed their requirements for a license to pack a concealed weapon, Mass has seen an influx of guns from

those states.

In practice, when a person buys a firearm from a licensed dealer, they are required to fill out a form authorizing they are the actual buyer of the firearm, which does not apply if they are purchasing on behalf of another party. Straw purchasing is a federal crime and is punishable for both the dummy buyer and the person they pass goods to. Which hasn’t always been such a deterrent; according to an ATF study published in 2000, straw purchasing accounted for almost half (46 percent) of 1,530 firearms trafficking investigations reviewed and was used to procure nearly 26,000 trafficked firearms nationwide. A 2007 UPenn study found that “guns purchased in bulk were up to 64% more likely to be used for illegal purposes than guns purchased individually.”

In an effort to combat gun trafficking, some states have limited the number of guns that people can purchase in a short amount of time.

Laws to that effect have been passed in New Jersey (2009), California (2000), and before those two states in Virginia, which adopted a one-guna-month measure in 1993, after the commonwealth was noted as the primary source of guns recovered in surrounding states used in a crime. Following the passage of that law, studies showed the odds of recovering a gun sourced from Virginia dropped for states all the way up to New England—71 percent in New York; 66 percent in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; and 72 percent in Massachusetts.

In 2012, Republican Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell signed a repeal of the one-gun-a-month law.

WHO DIES? According to the CDC, social determinants of health include “conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play.” Education, for example, impacts outcomes differently. One 10-year study by researchers at Columbia University published in 2010 shows what those conditions can look like across community lines: White Massachusetts residents had the lowest gun violence death rate in the country, while the state overall had the third largest divide in gun death rates between black and white people. Black people living in Massachusetts were four times more likely to die from gun violence than white people, according to CDC data.

Dr. McDevitt attributed a lot of homicides in Mass to street violence: “Most of our gangs are African American or Latin and that’s the majority of homicide in Massachusetts.

Not all of them, but the majority.”

Dr. Shapiro Berkson of the University of Illinois at Chicago cautioned against blaming community members for homicides or gang violence. Factors outside a person’s immediate control, she said, like disparities in social determinants of health between neighborhoods, may play an active role in tragedy.

“To me,” Shapiro Berkson said, “homicide seemed to be a direct impact of segregation and racism.”

Speaking to the lasting impact of bigoted residential policies, one 24-year study that measured the impact of racial integration found that segregated neighborhoods may increase the black-white firearm homicide disparity.

The study hypothesizes that living in a segregated neighborhood may increase levels of black deprivation and disadvantage, in turn leading to greater instances of violence in impoverished areas due to lack of resources, desperation, and gang violence. In short, growing up in a neighborhood impacted by homicides can affect someone’s life in ways beyond the immediately obvious, affecting the risk of other negative health outcomes.

“Think of physical activity,” Shapiro Berkson said. “If you live in a community where there’s not a lot of homicides, you’re gonna go out to the parks, you’re gonna exercise, you’re gonna be active. If you live in a community where there’s a lot of homicides, you’re gonna stay inside and play video games.”

Beneath the surface perception of Mass as a gun-free oasis, there is the real-life toll of violence.

Working in response to that reality, the Mass Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence advocates for stronger gun laws at the state and local level. The organization was created in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 and has become something of a foil to GOAL on Beacon Hill.

Angus McQuilken, a co-founder of the gun violence prevention coalition, applauds Mass for its relatively ambitious state gun laws, but still calls for increased transparency and oversight.

“We have been working closely with police chiefs to improve our laws in this regard,” McQuilken said. “Our experience is that our police chiefs on a local level take their jobs … and the responsibility that they hold in the licensing process very seriously. But it’s important to know that even in the state with the most comprehensive and effective gun laws in the country, the percentage of licenses that are actually denied is very slim.”

Despite the Commonwealth’s progressive reputation, McQuilken sees gun advocacy groups as a force to be reckoned with. As an example of their influence, he points to Newburyport, where license applicants are directed to GOAL resources for information about safety procedures.

“They [GOAL] have, to my understating, 16,000 members, which is a very small percentage of our state’s population,” McQuilken said. “But they raise their voices and make a lot of noise whenever legislation is being considered on Beacon Hill …

They have a good amount of influence because they advocate very vocally when new laws are being considered.”

In 2016, hundreds of Second Amendment activists, many of them GOAL-oriented, demonstrated outside of the State House after the attorney general moved to ban “copycat” semiautomatic assault rifles.

“I tend to think that we would all be well-served if police chiefs relied on objective information to share with applicants for gun licenses,” McQuilken said.

“That doesn’t seem to me to be a proper role for an advocacy organization whose interest is to protect the interests of the firearms industry.”

GOAL did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, as Mass continues to set liberal standards for gun laws, its hodgepodge of municipal regulations has gone largely unscrutinized—by the media, lawmakers, and, as an apparent result, by the public as well.

WHO TITHES? Last June, Gov. Baker’s administration urged local police chiefs across the state to rescind hundreds of gun licenses from individuals who had been previously cleared to carry. The move came after federal officials informed the state that its Firearm Licensing Review Board approved applicants who should have been turned away per federal guidelines.

Several district courts have ordered those licenses reinstated, arguing that the state overstepped its bounds.

The ordeal is likely one of many contributing factors to Baker’s low NRA approval score.

Despite disapproval from more radical conservatives and rightwing interest groups, Baker has managed to coddle and accept campaign donations from people tied to the gun industry.

Stakeholders from the Westfield-based weapons supplier Camfour, which distributed the Remington Bushmaster rifle used in the killing of children and educators at Sandy Hook, have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito since 2015. As an earlier installment of this report about guns in Mass showed, Baker—as well as other Massachusetts politicians, from county sheriffs to state reps and Polito—has accepted contributions from the full gamut of gun givers, from employees and executives of major Mass-based distributors to proprietors of brickand-mortar retailers.

The biggest business of the bunch, Springfield-based Smith & Wesson, recently announced a move of some of its Mass workforce to more gun-friendly Missouri. After news broke that the gunman in Parkland used one of

the company’s AR-15 assault rifles to murder or maim more than 30 people, Smith & Wesson and its parent company, American Outdoor Brands, became the target of ongoing protests. Still, it remains a critical cog in the state’s large gun economy. The company employs about 1,600 people at its Western Mass plant and, according to federal data, manufactured 1.4 million pistols, 396,710 rifles, and 294,680 revolvers, as well as a smaller number of miscellaneous firearms and shotguns, in Springfield in 2016, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Baker and a host of other top lawmakers are also connected in innumerable ways to investment firms that profit from firearm sales. Cornerstones of the Commonwealth economy, State Street Global Advisors and Fidelity Investments each have millions of shares in multiple funds that are exposed to firearm-related stock.

Even the gun-wary Globe is reluctant to acknowledge these connections; though a viral page-one opinion piece that the newspaper ran in 2016 knocked both firms for their industry ties in the print edition, the condemnation of Fidelity and State Street was omitted from the online version.

In accordance with the chill repute that Mass enjoys at home as well as nationally, such unflattering activity on the firearm front hardly registers. Even in spaces where reformers are trying their best to navigate a state with leaders who talk a convincing game but lack the stats to match. Like at a symposium for first responders held in Quincy last September, when Gov. Baker sat in the crowd as Michele Gay, a founder of the group Safe and Sound Schools whose daughter Josephine Grace was killed in the shooting in Newtown, spoke about political efficacy and courage.

“Without strong leadership and leaders putting money where their mouth is, it’s like pushing a giant boulder uphill,” Gay said. “Safety is something we all say we want—the mission statement for every single school in America says something about providing a safe and secure environment. But when it comes down to the realities of what it takes to keep people safe, we often turn away because it’s uncomfortable, expensive, or may cause us to get into arguments.”

This is an installment of a multipart collaboration on weapons use and procurement in Massachusetts by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, Emerson College’s Department of Journalism, MuckRock, and the Engagement Lab. Support for this story was made possible by the Online News Association’s Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education. This project is administered by the Online News Association with support from Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, Rita Allen Foundation and the Scripps Howard Foundation.

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MORE ACTIVISM NEEDED IN STATE AND LOCAL POLITICS APPARENT HORIZON

Solely spending your money and free time on presidential pageants is unwise

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS The other day my colleague Chris Faraone made an interesting comment on social media—inveighing against those who lavish money on presidential candidates with the next national elections still a year and a half away: We held a forum for the people of Somerville to address critical issues in their community that are being ignored.

130 people came. As opposed to when a candidate from out of town, in a race for which the election is more than a year away, packs the Somerville Theatre, with people throwing untold gobs of money at this guy.

On one hand, this kind of thing makes me question my commitment to community journalism. At the same time, I accept the challenge. There is nothing harder than getting people to care about the issues in their backyard; after Trump got into office, we saw donations to the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism go through the floor. We nearly folded. Sadly, I am seeing a similar hysteria now.

Please stop throwing your money at these megalomaniacs and visit givetobinj.org instead. If you really just happen to love the national stuff, we have a bar rented out in Manchester for the primaries, and you can come hang out with us up there. Until then, please help us cover local. It’s important.

True, he said this in the context of encouraging readers to support the nonprofit journalism organization we run alongside DigBoston, and I wouldn’t be boosting his signal on that front if I wasn’t in complete agreement.

But it’s important to consider the problem Faraone highlights in explicitly political terms as well. The late Speaker of the US House of Representatives Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill of Cambridge famously channeled the truism “all politics are local” and I think he was absolutely correct to do so. One can quibble about exactly what he meant. Yet this much reasonable commentators can all agree on: National politicians are only as strong as the local politics upon which they stand.

Put another way, politicians—and, naturally, political factions—that don’t have a strong local base are inherently weak.

That is one reason why I long ago decided to focus both my political activism and my journalism on Boston and Massachusetts.

On my city and my state. As a result of a very negative experience with Beltway politics that saw me propose and organize the “Age and Youth in Action Conference” in Clintonera Washington, DC—only to find myself completely outmaneuvered by activists close to Democratic Party leadership when I tried to form an alliance between left-leaning student groups and elder groups aimed at defending and expanding the Social Security system.

In the months that followed, I reflected on what had gone wrong. And the main problem, as I saw it, was that I had no political base in the Boston area or in Massachusetts in general.

Without that base, it was impossible for me to get anything of consequence done in DC. Being the youngest member of the national board of an advocacy group didn’t give me such a base. So, I walked away from federal politics, and resolved to get deeply involved in local and regional political activism. Mostly in and around the labor movement.

What I discovered over years of work was that state and local politics were much larger arenas than I had realized. And that it was vitally important for many more people to engage the political process at both of those 8

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levels. From the outside, as advocates and agitators (as I have been). But also from the inside, as candidates for office—and ultimately politicians.

Yet people really don’t put much effort into state and local politics, I’m sorry to say. Not in the large numbers that are really needed. Especially when it comes time to elect local and particularly state politicians. Voting numbers remain scandalously low compared to many other democratic nations—all the more so when there are no federal contests. In 2018, only 60.17% of registered Mass voters went to the polls. Compared to a still-poor showing of 74.51% in 2016. And 50.84% in 2014—the lowest turnout of any of the races listed on the secretary of the commonwealth’s website. Going back to 1948.

The turnouts for state primaries—which are the only times when seats in the legislature are actually contested in most cases—are far worse: 21.85% in 2018, 8.84% in 2016, and 16.81% in 2014.

To pick the obvious municipality to compare state turnout stats with, only 54.8% of registered Boston voters cast ballots in the state election of 2018, 66.75% in the presidential election of 2016, and 41.99% in the state election of 2014. Shockingly low for a major city in an advanced industrial democracy. Remembering that many people don’t even bother to register. As Pam Wilmot of Common Cause said in a Boston Globe article on efforts to institute automatic voter registration statewide, there could be as many as 500,000 unregistered voters in the Bay State. Making all the voter stats in this article even worse than they appear, given that the number of registered voters was 4,434,934 in February, according to the secretary of the commonwealth.

But the number of contested races for seats in the state legislature is truly dismal—and hasn’t even had a significant spike during a recent midterm election season that was supposed to see new life breathed into a moribund American political system thanks to a grassroots reaction to a controversial president.

According to a study by Ballotpedia, only 12.3% of

available seats in the Mass legislature were contested in the 2018 primaries. Up from 10% in 2016 and 11.8% in 2014. Which is to say not really up at all.

Week after week, I’m writing about big problems in one policy area after another—housing, transportation, higher education, labor, environment, and on and on— and pointing out where increased public involvement in state and local politics could really have a positive effect. And there is a good deal of grassroots community activism and related volunteer work happening on many key issues. But little really changes because people continue to allow all too many do-nothing incumbents to keep their seats term after term after term. Many running without even token opposition.

Not that every pol needs to be unseated, or that putting term limits on politicians is automatically a good thing. But it could certainly help Massachusetts politics if, say, more candidates connected to strong grassroots movements for social justice ran for office each election season. People who don’t just do whatever big corporations pay them to do once elected.

So, I would really like to see more people put much more money and sweat equity into politics at the state and local level. And, yes, I’d be absolutely thrilled if more of those people were socialists like me. After all, one of the big reasons I’ve been watching Somerville politics so closely is because a number of socialists and social democrats have been elected to city council.

But honestly, we could also use more open rightwingers running for office in Massachusetts—and winning some seats. Better that, than electing more right-wingers who call themselves Democrats and give outsiders and the uninformed the idea that we live in some kind of left-wing fantasy land. As I’ve opined time and time again. I don’t believe that a democracy can be a democracy without free and open debate at all levels, and without multiparty elections. And I think it’s dangerous to live in a country—or a state—where everyone claims to think alike.

Almost as dangerous as living in a country where the rich and power rule the roost, and people think it’s a good idea to spend tens of millions of their hard-earned dollars on a presidential election spectacle where the populace isn’t allowed to vote directly for the candidates. Who in turn will automatically have to take office catering more to the interests of the billionaire class than to any other single group in our society. Whatever they promise on the hustings.

We need to pull that system down. And the only way that is going to happen is by improving politics at the state and local level, and building mass movements capable of effecting profound (“small d”) democratic change on federal politics.

If people think that even state and local politics are so corrupt that it’s not worth voting—let alone getting active in public affairs at those levels—then we’ll continue to see politics as usual at all levels. And America will continue to spiral downward toward some unimaginable abyss.

Apparent Horizon—winner of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2018 Best Political Column award—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s executive director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

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WHAT ABOUT THE REFUGEES? GUEST OPINION

Why is Harvard celebrating Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness?

BY BHUWAN GAUTAM

PHOTO OF DRUK WANGYAL LHAKHANG IN BHUTAN BY DHRUBA JYOTI BARUAH Harvard Divinity School recently hosted a conference on “governing for happiness” and featured Bhutan, a South Asian nation of less than one million people, as a champion of Gross National Happiness (GNH).

The truth is that in its quest to become the “happiest kingdom on earth,” the Bhutanese regime forcibly expelled more than 100,000 ethnic Nepalese who were Bhutanese citizens in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I’m one of the thousands of children affected by the forced migration. In the ’80s, my father spent some months in a hideout inside a cave due to fear of being persecuted. He was a close friend to the village head, who was against Bhutan’s discriminatory “one nation, one people policy.” The Buddhist ruling elite coerced Nepali-ethnic citizens to adopt their culture and norms. I walked hundreds of miles barefoot to an unknown destination, sleeping in the woods by making beds out of branches.

According to the Human Rights Watch, during this period of ethnic cleansing in the late 1990s, Bhutanese authorities targeted Hindu minorities without any search or arrest warrants. They expelled the Hindu and Christian minorities and advanced the prospects of citizens who shared ruling-class beliefs. They enforced a family separation policy that restricted the resettled Bhutanese all over the world, including naturalized Bhutanese US citizens, from visiting their families and loved ones.

Harvard’s conference was a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of refugees—victims of Bhutan’s ethnic cleansing policy—currently living in the United States. The brutality and atrocities of the Bhutanese government have led to a mental health crisis. There is an epidemic level of suicide among Bhutanese refugees affected by these policies. According to research published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, family separation has become the primary cause of concern in a growing trend of depression and anxiety in many Bhutanese communities.

Where’s the happiness in that?

When asked about this history during the conference presentations, Karma Tshiteem, chairman of the Royal Civil Service Commission, along with other panelists from Bhutan, deliberately avoided discussion of the refugees. They implied that the traumas had never happened.

“Since this is a student-led conference, we will not respond to this political question,” Kinga Tshering, a lead organizer, responded. Audience members were shocked.

Harvard is a world leader in education, and the actions of the university matter. The history leading up to the current Bhutanese message of GNH is important to acknowledge and consider. There is a degree of responsibility and accountability that the university must take in its position of power and esteem.

If the role of government is creating the right conditions for their citizens and enabling an environment where all can flourish, Bhutan is no model.

Bhutan’s GNH is not for all.

I cannot understand Bhutan’s happiness if it does not repatriate the remaining refugees in Nepal and allow resettled Bhutanese Americans to enter Bhutan. The only rational solution for the family separation issue would be to provide non-resident Bhutanese status to the resettled Bhutanese and allow them to visit their families and friends.

Institutions that provide a platform to promote Bhutan’s marketing around GNH should learn more about the true history of Bhutan. It is important to take a hard look at the past while remaining critical, and to recognize the complexities of history before publicly praising a country that claims to have achieved happiness but did so at the expense of others.

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A refugee from Bhutan and a 2017 MPA graduate from Westfield State University, Bhuwan Gautam is a former president of the Bhutanese Society of Western Massachusetts. He can be reached at bbdruk@gmail.com.

PHOTO OF THE TASTY COURTESY OF STEPHEN NICCOLLS

THAT FUNKY OLD SQUARE DIRTY OLD BOSTON

Remembering the Tasty and “bohemian free-for-alls”

BY JIM BOTTICELLI OF DIRTY OLD BOSTON

Harvard Square has forever been a durable destination with a significant variety of coffee shops, bars, diners, boutiques, and music venues, not to mention some of the best new and used book and record shops in the region. That’s more or less the case these days, even though the area is a mere shadow of itself. Harvard Square, of course, saw its notoriety grow in the late ’60s, as hippies, hustlers, and everyone in between became part of the milieu and common culture.

You could pen a book about the legacy and the importance of this corner of the world, and indeed more than a few people have. One of them, writer Mo Lotman, noted in his 2009 book, Harvard Square: An Illustrated History Since 1950, “Beginning in 1968, [Cambridge] Common was transformed every warm Sunday afternoon into a bohemian free-for-all, with drum circles, bead-sellers, trancedout dancers, and a ton of pot.”

As these things go, through the years old-timers have insisted that the Harvard Square of their day was the way it’s truly meant to be. The Boomer thesis typically goes, You should have seen Harvard Square when it was a square. Or, Today it’s a corporate wasteland. You should have seen it in the ’60s and ’70s, back in my day!

And of course boomers love telling their friends and family members all the tall tales that sprung out of so many legendary Cambridge locales that have left us: the Idler, the Oxford Ale House, the list goes on. There were daily double bills for a dollar at the Harvard Square Theatre, foreign films on JFK Street in another movie house that is no longer, cool used clothes at the Pennsylvania Company, and coffee at the Blue Parrot, where writers filled the tables. Let’s also not forget about Baileys Ice Cream or roast beef at Elsie’s Sandwich Shop. Oh, and of course the venerable Tasty…

Taken from this world in the late ’90s and turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch—a development that till this day peeves many square vets, the loss being one of those perfect early symbols of accelerated gentrification in retrospect— the Tasty was a one-room diner that was about 30 feet long and a quarter that wide. Customers ate burgers and dogs on a yellow linoleum counter that had 16 stools, and somehow busy nights managed to draw 60 to 80 people at a time. On those busy evenings, they could serve anywhere between 300 and 400 patties between midnight and 4 am.

The informal atmosphere and friendly staff at the Tasty drew in longtime residents, college students, and working people. Though it may not seem like such a big deal these days, back then it was one of the few places where locals and visitors from different social and economic classes easily mixed.

Around the mid-’90s, the owner of the building that housed the Tasty, Cambridge Savings Bank, decided to cash in on the chain store boom coming to Harvard Square. Higher rents and changing times forced the owner’s hand, and despite vocal protests from the Harvard Square Defense Fund—as well as from Car Talk hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi—the joint shut its doors for good in 1997.

Gone but always remembered as a spot where you could fill up for cheap around good people.

Today, it’s a row of ATM machines.

The Boomer thesis typically goes, “You should have seen Harvard Square when it was a square.”

Parts of this throwback have been previously published by Dirty Old Boston.

This Dirty Old Boston feature is a collaboration between DigBoston, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and Dirty Old Boston. For more local history visit binjonline.org and dirtyoldboston.com.

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FUNDS BLED DRY TALKING JOINTS MEMO

Microbusiness applicants demand changes

BY MIKE CRAWFORD OF THE YOUNG JURKS @MIKECANNBOSTON Frustrated with the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s application process and newly proposed delivery regulations, microbusiness applicants and their supporters rallied at the State House this week, and have organized an online petition. According to their event page: Small Local Micro Business has been left out of the Massachusetts cannabis industry … We are gathering to show those in power that we will not remain silent.

Licenses have only been awarded to business with capital outside the reach of the little guy. Show support for the industry YOU want in Massachusetts and let the little guy deliver the product you have been waiting for.

We interviewed five supporters of the rally about why they’re disappointed with the CCC as well as the changes they’re petitioning for.

Andrew Mutty (Beantown Greentown, microbusiness applicant): No micro/local businesses have been given licenses yet. The people need to get together and let our voices be heard. … We checked off all the boxes, but we don’t have $50 million sitting in the bank like some of the competition.

Mike Brais (Deep Roots, microbusiness applicant): When local growers are licenced, the big guys won’t be able to compete with our quality and attention to detail.

Averyl Andrade (Between the Rows, microbusiness applicant): Not only are microbusinesses a critical spoke on the cannabis wheel, but [they are also] an amazing opportunity for people who have been disproportionately affected by the war on cannabis to enter into this lucrative new industry.

have followed all the rules set up by the Cannabis Control Commission, but in the end we are placed on the back burner while our funds are being bled dry. It stops now.

Grant Smith (Massachusetts Patients for Home Delivery): I would like to see the CCC do two things: Firstly, I would like the CCC to create a fast track for reviewing licenses for microbusinesses (cultivators and manufacturers). Currently, those services are being forced, even with local approval in place, to pay thousands of dollars per month to secure warehouse space while awaiting final approval for the CCC. …

Some of those small local companies have already paid upwards of $30,000 simply to hold the lease on their warehouse over the past 6 months while awaiting final approval from the CCC. Forcing those companies to continue paying such costs is entirely unreasonable and the CCC should be doing everything it can to create a fast track for local applicants seeking such licenses.

The CCC [should also] include standalone delivery licenses in their final draft guidelines before they vote on those proposals in June. Currently, the proposed format for delivery services would only allow such services to deliver product from an already existing dispensary, and the CCC would review the potential for standalone licenses in the fall of 2019.

While I understand that such a piecemeal approach has its advantages both politically and otherwise (and while I very much applaud the work of Commissioner Shaleen Title [in] ensuring a 24-month exclusivity period for economic empowerment and social equity applicants for such licenses), I worry that standalone licenses will be voted down in the fall. Were that to occur, a permanent model which mandates delivery companies provide only products from retail dispensaries would fundamentally undermine the ability of smaller companies to exist on a level playing field with the owners of such establishments. In no way, shape, or form should the regulations have the effect of giving any sector of the

Ed DeSousa (RiverRun Gardens, microbusiness applicant): Our community has been driven to a point where we need to step up our fight. … We sat back and allowed the commission to license previous medical marijuana companies into the recreational field.

It stops now. The people, the community has had enough.

When Question 4 was drafted, it was written in a way that would include small local people to get into the cannabis market. A set of licenses were created for the small timers … the microbusiness license. Look around, do you see any microbusiness licenses being issued? … Instead, you have the same big businesses getting licensed every time the commission gets together.

Currently there is a huge backlog for license applications and we small guys and gals are being drained from everything we have in order to wait our turn. You may ask yourself, Why would it take us so long to apply in the first place?

The answer is simple, We don’t buy our way.

We worked with our towns, we created zoning, we paid rent PHOTO COURTESY OF BEANTOWN GREENTOWN on empty buildings, lawyers. … We 12

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market a monopoly and forcing delivery companies to only deliver product from retail dispensaries.

ED: The Cannabis Control Commission made the rules, but they say it will take a measure by the legislature to change them. Well, reps, listen up. … Look out your window and see the people. We voted for inclusion of local small business, we want inclusion of local small business. We want microbusinesses pushed ahead of the line for licensing. We want equity applicants to get licensed. We want patients to have affordable access to the medicine they need.

This isn’t about me or RiverRun Gardens, this is about you and all the other businesses that worked their tails off trying to get into this industry. This is about our spouses, who have put up with barely making mortgage. … This is about our children who wonder why mom and dad are always working and why they can’t have what their friends have because their parents are paying for empty warehouses. This is for the average consumer who wonders why the state wants them to go to big marijuana for subpar quality when the gray market offers premium cannabis for far lower costs.

AA: [We want] priority status for local microbusinesses. … Between the Rows is a small business comprised of three local farmers struggling to provide our community with healthy produce. We feel farmers should be given the opportunity to supplement their income through cannabis, but … lack of support from the CCC and dirty tactics from out-of-state big money hinder our progress.

AM: There should be some support from the CCC based on micro licensing priorities. We are just looking for a little help to get through the system so we don’t waste money and ultimately fail due to systematic slowdown.

A number of reasons small microbusinesses haven’t been approved. It’s very difficult to find an operational space without spending tons of cash; funding a microbusiness is not a “micro” amount of money. And finally we also believe that big business and big influence is taking a strong front line and getting through quicker.

Why and how we don’t know, but we can speculate.

GS: There are a lot of stakeholders who attempt to influence the way in which regulations are written within the Massachusetts cannabis industry, and some of those players have access to a substantial amount of capital and political resources. In order for regular citizens without such connections or monetary resources to be able to participate in our democracy, we all have to pay close attention to what is being said and proposed by our lawmakers and regulators.

Follow Mike Crawford on Twitter @ mikecannboston and subscribe to his email newsletter at midnightmass. substack.com. You can listen to The Young Jurks at anchor.fm/theyoungjurks or wherever else podcasts are streamed.

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SO MUCH MORE THAN MUSIC MUSIC

Evan Greer on having fun while creating art that makes progressive impact

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Despite performing on her own with just a guitar on most stages that she rocks, Evan Greer might be the loudest musician in Greater Boston. With a voice that often reaches even farther than artists with twice the clout and thrice the followers on social media, Greer is the ultimate modern acoustic embodiment of multimedia impact.

The last time we checked in, Greer had just organized a major tour in protest of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and was packing venues nationwide beside artists like Talib Kweli and Evangeline Lilly. Other times, the Dig has proudly covered and supported Break the Chains, her all-ages, all-gender radical dance party. As I’m inclined to note for ethical reasons, Greer has even written for the Dig; that’s technically a disclosure, but it’s also a humblebrag since our respect for her hustle is endless.

Greer may live and spend most of her time in these parts, but she’s by all means a national figure, collecting props from the likes of Billboard and Vice.

Between clocking wins related to net neutrality, Chelsea Manning, and SXSW, the latter of which Greer helped push to drop the “deportation clause” from its artist contract, she’s also been a guest on countless TV shows, making her the only subject or contributor in Dig history who appeared on Good Morning America and still returned to do an interview with us.

With Greer’s new album, She/her/they/them, finally out after a long recording hiatus, I threw some questions at the standout activist-musician.

Before you were Evan Greer the solo artist, what kind of bands were you in early on? I assume they were punk bands, no?

I’ve always been too much of a diva to really keep a band together. It’s really mostly been a solo project.

For me, music and activism has always been linked. I started playing guitar in high school, and I was getting into all of my dad’s old records—Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel. It was around the time the US was beating the drum to invade Afghanistan after 9/11, and that was kind of my political awakening. The first song I ever wrote was about that. I was like, “I can’t just say these things if I’m not going to do something about it,” so I went and found like the one kid at my high school who was always making announcements about protests and stuff at assembly.

I pretty quickly got involved, and helped organize a walkout that was the biggest student walkout in Boston since the Vietnam War on Boston Common.

That was the first time I ever played music for more than 20 people, and that was when I saw the power of organizing and of using music and art for bringing people together and inspiring them. Now a lot of people affiliate my music with punk, but really I didn’t like punk at all in high school. I was more into like Pete Seeger. I found punk through politics basically.

What was the next step after that?

I dropped out of college after two years to do music full time. By my second year I had made my schedule so I only had classes on Tuesday and Wednesday and then I would basically tour on Thursday through Monday.

I would make it as far as St. Louis all the way from Philadelphia. I was playing like 200 or 300 shows a year in basements and bookstores and living rooms for a while. I had a tiny but dedicated following. I could sell out your local feminist bookstore, but that was about it.

These were pre-Napster days, and [the collective Greer collaborated with] was one of the first to just kind of like putting all of our music online and then ask for donations. … Sort of like early alternative economics whereas now a lot of people are doing this stuff and there’s Patreon and Bandcamp. We were using archive. org to post all of our stuff. Riseup.net was our domain host and they kicked us off because they couldn’t host all of the MP3s.

What’s your full music diet these days?

People always ask about my influences, and they assume that I am going to say Anti Flag and Against Me and Public Enemy. And it’s like, yeah, all of them, but Alanis Morissette and Melissa Etheridge too. I’m a ’90s kid. All that ’90s alt rock and girl rock like Hole and Breeders—I still love it today. Lately I’ve been listening to like Rilo Kiley and a lot of women-fronted music and indie rock, but really I’m influenced by a wide range of music. Salsa too, classic salsa, and a lot of hip-hop.

The only music I know how to dance to is like Destiny’s Child. I’m also super into a lot of Boston artists like Anjimile and Brandie Blaze.

Do you feel that contemporary mainstream music is more righteously political these days than it was when you were younger?

I think there’s always been people making political music. I can also get into like early 1600s English peasant songs. The internet isn’t all good, but for one thing it’s tremendously broadened the range of musical and cultural expression that can gain a mainstream audience and changed what the gatekeepers think is cool, sometimes in favor of bands that have a bit more of a political message. The voices of people who have largely been left out or at the fringes are starting to gain more recognition and clout and bigger audiences.

The last time I put out a record, in like 2010, no lefty queer folk musician even bothered to send their record to Rolling Stone, whereas now you’re seeing artists with more independent spirit getting recognition. And I think we’re just at the cusp of it—we’re going to see an explosion. Music and the internet are colliding in this

way, and we’re at the intersection of that collision. … I think it’s going to lead to more sustainable methods of creating art and being compensated for it and being able to do it in a sustainable way. Obviously it’s going to take some figuring out, though.

As someone who has been an effective organizer, is there musical activism that you see as being superficial? How is the musical element most effectively woven into a movement?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over time, it’s that being right never made anything change. You have to channel that anger into real political power in order to get things done. You can get a crowd of a thousand people throwing their fists in the air to your song, but if you don’t leverage that collective experience into political power, then to a certain extent it does become noise. When I organized the Rock Against the TPP tour, we did a few things to make sure it’s more strategic.

We did it in places where there were members of Congress who were on the fence and who we thought we could flip, then we made it that in order to get into the concert, you didn’t have to buy a ticket—you had to write a letter to your member of Congress.

After eight years and all that you have done in the time since your last album, what kind of songs made it onto a project like this?

It’s not like I was toiling away on this thing. I was just busy and trying to book one tour while I was finishing the last one. The studio has never been my biggest strength—I’m much better on stage than in a booth. But [Gaetano Vaccaro and Taina Asili], who produced the album, really helped me translate what I do into the studio. Some of these songs I wrote more than 10 years ago, and it was cool to see which ones stood the test of time. It gave the songs some room to breathe, and for them to grow and change along with me. It’s an opportunity to share these songs with the world in a more intentional way. My live show is more vulnerable—it’s usually just me and a guitar connecting with people. This is a different kind of expression, and I’m thrilled with how it came out.

PHOTO BY KAYANA SZYMCZAK

>> BREAK THE CHAINS QUEER DANCE PARTY W/ EVAN GREER ALBUM RELEASE PARTY SAT 5.11 AT MAKE SHIFT BOSTON, 549 COLUMBUS AVE., BOSTON. FOR MORE INFO VISIT EVANGREER.ORG AND GET TICKETS AT DIGBOXOFFICE.COM. 14

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SOUND GARDEN MUSIC

How Muhammad Seven steals moments of his day to make music

BY SYDNEY B. WERTHEIM child, and the time I had to do it was in stolen moments of my day. I realized there was software where you could program a sophisticated folk song entirely on the phone, so I did it.

Do you think it is hard to be a working-class musician?

It’s brutally hard. I also finished a master’s degree this year [in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard], which took 10 years. Most of the songs on the album came to me while I was working. So a lot of it is multitasking.

I’ll write down a kernel when it comes to me and try to flush it out later. And then as an older working person there is just much less time for everything.

Let’s talk about the album. How did it start?

After having made an album on my cell phone where I produced the entire thing, sang all the parts, made the album art, did the mixing and mastering myself, and after writing, for the first time in my life, [had] a large collection of songs that I felt really excited about and that other people were having a strong reaction to, I decided there was not going to be any better time to make a serious album.

PHOTO BY DANNY SCHISSLER Muhammad Seven is a 41-year-old Americana musician based out of Codman Square. On the heels of his release of a self-titled debut with his band, collectively Muhammad Seven and the Spring, we met at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain where he’s a gardener to discuss his working-class roots, faith, and creative endeavors.

What’s your job here?

I’m the garbage man and outdoor custodian of the Arboretum. My title is gardener but I don’t do any actual gardening. … I’m also the shop steward, so I’m the leader of the union. … My background is in people’s movements and labor studies. … I really enjoy the work I do with my union.

The album is about working-class immigrants. Where did that concept come from?

I am a working-class immigrant. And my songwriting draws heavily from my personal experiences. … I tend towards narrative songwriting, songs that are also stories.

And the stories I want to tell are usually the ones that you hear about less commonly.

Did you always feel like an outsider? Did that make you want to be a musician?

My mother is a white American … and my father is an Iranian immigrant. And it was very clear from my earliest days that people saw me as different.

I found a great love for music at a very young age.

And I think the way music can articulate things that you feel, but you yourself don’t quite know how to say, made me want to be a musician. I’m a massive music nerd because I have often gone to music for information, for comfort, for inspiration … I was really 14 when I got my first guitar, started writing songs. The act of creation and participating in those things appeal to me.

What was the first song that you wrote that you were like, “Oh, this is kind of good”?

I had a series of those moments where until I was 30 or so, I was writing songs that often had promise, but I didn’t fully believe in. … I went on a tour at age 30. Thirty shows 16

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for three months with Chris Sand. I came out of that with better songs than I’d ever written, and those songs make up my first album I made on my cell phone. … After the nice reception of that very small album … somehow it was enough encouragement that my songwriting leveled up substantially to the point where I am now, where I’m actually very, very proud of this batch of songs.

Has religion had any impact on your music or you at all?

Huge impact. I am a mixed heritage Jew and Muslim and Catholic. It’s complicated because in spite of antiSemitic rhetoric you might have heard from some Iranian leaders, Iranian Jews have been very at home in Iran for decades, probably centuries. And political tensions clearly have divided all of us everywhere, and that’s not different from Iran.

Do you practice any religion?

I practice pieces of all of them. My wife is a mixed heritage Jew also, so since being Jewish is what we have in common, that is the main religious feature of our household. So, Shabbat and the high holidays, those are things that we do. To a lesser extent, we also observe some Christian holidays, she has Christian heritage. And I’m an Iranian Muslim. Most of the Iranian things that we observe in the house are Iranian cultural things and not actually Islamic holidays.

Are there cultural similarities that connect every Iranian person?

Culturally, for Iranians, there is a clear tradition of justice and liberation. A commitment to generosity plays a major role. And a love of the arts. I was named after the father of modern Iranian poetry, and poetry plays a very different role in Iran than certainly in the United States and probably in other parts of the world.

You recorded a whole album on your iPhone. What was that like?

I didn’t particularly want to make an album on my iPhone, but at that point I had gotten married and had a

Are there any songs on the album that you want to unpack and talk about?

My favorites change from week to week. These days I’ve really been enjoying the very first track, “Wood Stove Whine,” which is a lot about the man I once was.

And that might be why I enjoy it, because the story of a desperate person so filled with regret but also a hope for redemption moves me, and also reminds me that that’s not where my life is anymore.

The song that always gets the biggest reaction live is “Manifesto,” the fifth track. … It is an immigrant’s anthem, and when I play it live the room inevitably goes completely silent. After the song, people are filled with emotion. … It’s a rallying cry, it’s a fight song.

How does Boston influence your music?

I have been, from the start, excited about making music that is rooted in American roots traditions and at the same time deeply Massachusetts. And probably also very much Boston music. … I also bring a dimension of being an immigrant and dealing both in my life and in the work and the songs with issues of racism and classism. I think part of what draws me to Americana music is that woven into the fabric of the music is dealing with class.

Do you experience class issues in Boston?

Working-class people experience class issues everywhere, and Boston is no exception. I think [there is a] particular way that Boston is small and segregated. … In Boston there is more of an opportunity for the [wealthy] and the folks with privilege to hide out in the areas where they live.

Would you like those people to listen to your songs?

They are not my main concern, but I’m thrilled if anybody likes them, and if they mean anything to anyone.

My big hope is to play for working people. [I play] a lot of shows in my neighborhood, in Dorchester. I would like to be known for representing Dorchester.

Muhammad Seven and the Spring’s self-titled debut album is available on all streaming platforms. For information, shows, and streams visit muhammadseven.com.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

IMAGE FROM HER SMELL, COURTESY GUNPOWDER & SKY

TEAM EFFORT FILM

An interview with Alex Ross Perry

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

Alex Ross Perry is an American writer/director who has made six films to date, including Listen Up Philip (2014), Queen of Earth (2016), and Golden Exits (2018). His latest film is Her Smell (2019), which depicts the lead singer of a fictional ’90s rock band, Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss), in five long scenes (they make up nearly the entirety of the film’s 134-minute runtime) that collectively depict multiple years of her up and down and then perhaps up again career. We spoke last week via phone.

You recently published a piece about independent film distribution on The Talkhouse. I was thinking about that in relation to the fact that Her Smell is your first film since The Color Wheel that is not being released to VOD outlets on the same day it opens in theaters. Was this crafted for theatrical in a way that was different from your other films?

Not that I’m ever not crafting the movie with that as some sort of a hopeful eventuality … but I think there was a very conscious effort to up the ante on this one in terms of the scope and the feel of it. Starting with moving to 35mm [from 16mm], and doing it in a widescreen aspect ratio, one decision or another, everything was about trying to make it as big and cinematic as possible. With the hope being that somehow in the content of the movie, the spectacle of it and the scale of it would reach people in a different way. The way to look at it is this: The last three movies, kind of by design, feel like art films. And this was always designed to feel like a pop movie.

And I don’t want to fall into the trap of saying that Her Smell is “more cinematic” than those other films.

Frankly I’m not sure that I do think it’s “more cinematic” than some of those earlier films, if that phrase even has any meaning.

Oh, it is. You can say that.

But I do think about the way the razor sharpness of 35mm is apparent when this film is seen on a big screen, and the way that clarity allows us to see the focus of a given shot almost slithering from one point to another, creates a quality that is new to your work. There are

similar techniques used with focus in Queen of Earth, perhaps, but certainly the effect is quite different here.

Perhaps. I mean a lot of that, as with everything, is that Queen of Earth and Golden Exits are very small, very streamlined crews. And on this, with a really great camera team, a steadicam operator, a focus puller, we’re operating at a substantially higher and slicker level.

On that note, I’ve been thinking about this film within the context of “collaboration”—which is obvious, the movie’s about a band, that subject is surface, not subtext. And thinking about it in terms of how it reflects on your own collaborations with your film crew. I love a certain phrase said in dialogue at one point, “one big happy business family,” which seems as if it could just be describing the act of filmmaking.

In a way, yeah.

You work with a team of oft-recurring collaborators.

Along the lines we were speaking, was the very idea for this film in any way a reaction to your feeling that your crew was capable of something made on a grander scale?

I only felt that because I finally, not that I was eternally looking for it, but I had arrived at an idea that supported a scale like that. But also I’m always inspired by the people that I work with, because they make so many other things that I’m not involved with. So it’s both my desire to challenge myself in terms of scope and scale, but it’s also just seeing what people I work with are capable of when they do other films, music videos, commercials, anything.

I see someone I work with break new ground on a bigger, more expensive project, then I think, now that they’ve learned it, I want to do that with them. I don’t want to learn it together, I want one of us to know it, so that the other one can benefit from that, and [laughs] I want that to be me, benefitting from it.

Becky spells out a lot of phrases during the movie, one of them is good time, “G-O-O-D time.” It had me thinking about whether there was a relation between cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ experience on the film Good Time [2017], which he also shot on 35mm, and your work together on Her Smell. The films are extremely different, formally, in a general sense, but there’s also shared qualities, primarily the texture of neon lighting being constantly smeared by speedy camera movement.

Well, I can’t say that anything in the script like that is as specific as what you’re citing. … But on Her Smell and

Listen Up Philip, specifically, I was in a position where I was making a movie with a fair amount of crew from a recent movie that a friend of mine made where they kind of got to take a big leap. In the case of Listen Up Philip, there were a lot of people on the crew of that movie who had worked on Drinking Buddies (2013), which was kind of a comparable budget, but also a comparable leap for Joe Swanberg from his previous movie. And then on this, it was not just Sean but also Danny April, Sean’s gaffer, who worked on Good Time, and we also had the same steadicam operator, and the same script supervisor, and a lot of the same camera department. I always enjoy hearing how these other experiences have gone, and then getting to incorporate those experiences into what I’m doing. Because I don’t have the experience of making a movie like that, but 10 people around me do, so I feel like I might as well have had the experience.

Being that this interview is for a Boston-area alt weekly, it seems necessary for me to bring up the Sweet Potato [magazine] T-shirt that Becky wears throughout Scene two. To keep things on the subject of collaboration, let me ask, specifically, about that shirt, and then also, generally, about your collaborations with costume designer Amanda Ford, which goes back to Listen Up Philip.

The Sweet Potato shirt was just an Amanda thrift-store find, or eBay find. I didn’t know where it came from and probably didn’t see it until I was presented with it as an option that Lizzie had approved. There was just a lot of desire to, as much as possible, in Acts one, two, and four, to just let Becky wear blotchy T-shirts. Which felt very historically and narratively accurate. … I don’t really know where it came from, but we were really excited by it, and obviously the music connection is printed on the back of the shirt. It raises this whole narrative question of where did she get this, how long has she had it, did it come from Dirtbag Danny [her ex-husband played by Dan Stevens], did it come from Howard [a record label exec played by Eric Stoltz], it suggests a story of her inheriting this shirt.

And that’s just the ease of working with Amanda. Not only is it my fourth movie with her, but also through that it’s her third movie with Lizzie, so they have a pretty smooth conversational rapport at this point. And I trust her implicitly.

Beyond the prominence of the Sweet Potato shirt, there’s so much more to that look [of Becky in Scene two] that just completes Amanda’s narrative thinking about

>> HER SMELL. RATED R. AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL VOD PLATFORMS THIS FRIDAY 5.10. PLAYING THEATRICALLY AT THE SOMERVILLE THEATRE THROUGH 5.11, AND AT CINEMASALEM THROUGH 5.9. ALSO PLAYING FOUR TIMES AT THE LUNA THEATER IN LOWELL FROM 5.11—5.21; SEE LUNALOWELL.COM FOR SHOWTIMES. 18

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Becky. What she’s wearing with the rest of that outfit is purple sequined shorts, which plays into the fact that we see Becky wearing sequins quite a bit, on accessories and other pieces. Incorporating that into the sort of studio look [Scene two takes place during a recording session], with the Sweet Potato shirt, is a great way to keep her style consistent throughout the movie. And the barefeet, braless quality of that same look is not something that I insisted upon, or came up with, but once Amanda and Lizzie emerged with that as a concept that they were both excited by, it made perfect sense to me that that is exactly where Becky is at, at that particular juncture.

To bring together a few other craftspeople I’d like to speak about, I’m very interested in how much cross-departmental preparation is done between yourself, Williams, editor Robert Greene, and composer Keegan DeWitt [Greene and DeWitt, like Ford, have been working with Perry since Philip, while Williams has shot all six of the director’s films]. The sound design, the camera movement, and the editing rhythm in Her Smell all operate in a very unified manner. Can you talk about how that works from the preproduction stage on?

There’s not as much cross-pollination as one might think. If anything it’s just that all these people are starting work on the movie drastically earlier than most people start on most other projects. So a composer like Keegan can be sent a cut of a movie that is locked, and has a temp score, and be told, “This is what we want you to do.” Or he can do what we do, which is he reads the script a year in advance, and has essentially 15 months or more from the time he first reads the script, and has conversations with me, and is thinking about it, until he’s turning in his final delivery work. Therefore everybody gets a much more intricate and considered opportunity to do their job.

Robert, as an editor, is giving me script notes, and saying, “If you’re going to cover this this way, please make sure that you’re getting this as well,” and “We always end up not having this kind of shot of someone transitioning from one room to another, please make sure you’re getting that, because you always think it’s not necessary and then we always need it.” The process begins earlier and goes deeper because of this repeat business that we’ve all gotten locked in on.

Yet another collaborator who for me seems central to your films is title designer Teddy Blanks, who for Her Smell has crafted a suite of fictional album covers, tour posters, and various other such objects. What’s your working process like with him, specifically in finding the aesthetic of all those materials?

Well, again, it’s kind of the same answer I gave about Keegan and Robert. Teddy’s a guy who probably has, pound for pound, more credits and different opportunities, year to year, than anybody else I’m involved with, because he can generally start and finish his work on a movie in a span of a couple weeks. He probably works on 30 movies and TV shows a year, which no one who’s ever on a set could ever possible accomplish. Sometimes he’s being sent a locked movie and told “do the credits.” But for me he’s looking at it a year out, reading the script, and having creative ideas. His collaboration is done in tandem with the building of the movie. If he’s going to do the credits for us that means he’s also creating the posters that hang in the dressing room and he’s designing the band’s logo because we need that on a banner and T-shirts. …

I don’t even know what his job should be called, because it doesn’t exist on most other movies. He’s creating props and elements that normally you’d just have an intern or somebody doing, and not doing particularly well. But he’s doing that, and lends a complete sense of consistent aesthetic design, from preproduction well into post-production. He’s kind of the only person who spans every part of that, and it makes everything very unified. It’s not like we have these great credits with these great designs and then the logos in the movie look like garbage and all the posters look perfunctory. In the context of such a big, loud, chaotic movie, it might be hard for people to break down and think about how much of this stuff Teddy and I are doing, but I think it’s no more or less than you’d get in something like The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). It’s just being directed into a different kind of energy.

Thank you for indulging me as I ask questions that for the most part concern your collaborators.

Not at all, it’s just that, fortunately or unfortunately, it’s kind of all the same answer. It’s so nice for me that when I’m writing a script, a year before anyone sees it, I can just think, oh man, Danny April’s gonna light the hell out of that scene, and Sean’s gonna command the camera back here so excitingly, and Teddy’s going to make a giant 20-foot banner to go up here, and every one of these people is going to deliver. I think about that while I’m writing, which then makes me think I can go really far on the page.

The same sound designer [Ryan M. Price] has also done every movie since Listen Up Philip, and every one of those movies until now was a five-day sound mix. Golden Exits was probably the easiest of the sound mixes we’d done, because it’s dialoguebased and very quiet. When we were finishing it, Her Smell was already very much in the works, and I said, “The next one we do is going to be the biggest most complicated thing we’ve done.” And Her Smell was a 12-day sound mix, and our last day was almost 16 hours. That was it for everybody, not just Ryan and the sound department, but everybody. I’d said the next one’s going to be the big one. We’ve done these three movies together, they’re all different, but I know you’ve all got incredible talents that I’ve barely scratched the surface of, and on the next one we’re going as far beyond any of that as we’ve ever gone.

Transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY AT SPEAKEASY STAGE

SCENE FROM EBONIC WOMAN. PHOTO BY MICHAEL VON REDLICH

THE EBONIC WOMAN AT GOLD DUST ORPHANS

We’ve got trouble, my friends, right here in Massachusetts.

Hennessy Brown (Qya Marie) was a black-market baby who, as a little girl, watched her adoptive fathers get gunned down by an illegal immigrant dressed as a nun on the streets of Lynn. Twenty years later, she’s a brilliant young scientist who is working to create a serum that could bring an end to racism. Her particular target is the Lynn chapter of the Trump-loving “White Ladies Paranoid Society” who are responsible for spreading divisive and bigoted rhetoric all over the North Shore, and they’re big supporters of corrupt Lynn Mayor Ivy League (Kiki Samko), who has bigger political aspirations in mind.

As luck would have it, disgraced President Donald J. Trump (a perfect Tim Lawton) has just gotten out of prison and is ready to return to the spotlight. For this next chapter, Trump takes on a kind of superhero alter ego, Bald Eagle, who throws his support behind Ivy League and doubles down on his hateful rhetoric, hoping to draw his supporters out of their penthouses and trailer parks. His vision? An entirely fenced-in luxury community in Lynn.

Unlike walls, he says, fences are actually better because immigrants can climb over walls, sneak into our homes, and finger us while we sleep. And no one wants that. Oh, and he has also created a nuclear weapon (fueled by fried chicken) that threatens to end humanity as we know it.

But never fear, The Ebonic Woman is here. After a mixup involving her desegregation serum, Hennessy develops super powers beyond any white man and transforms into The Ebonic Woman. With the help of a riotous band of superheroes of all creeds and colors (Paxton Crystal is The Green New Deal; Rose Garcia is Hot Tamale; Felton Sparks is Aladdin; Jessica Barstis is Bat Mitzvah; Matt Kyle is Mr. Stretch), The Ebonic Woman takes on Trump and his gorgeous henchwoman Polly Wannacracker (the divine 20

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Penny Champayne).

The play is filled with wall-to-wall laughs and the kind of shameless irreverence and first-rate camp that is the hallmark of the extraordinary Ryan Landry, and I don’t know if I’ve had a better time at the theater this year. It isn’t just that The Ebonic Woman is a laugh-a-minute riot, but the direction (by the iconic Ms. Bubbles Goldberg, DDS) is inventive and moves at the speed of light.

And there’s one particular musical number worth the price of admission alone in which the White Ladies Paranoid Society—those self-righteous sisters of sobriety—put their own spin on “Springtime for Hitler” from The Producers.

Scott Martino once again proves that he just might be the cleverest costumer in Boston, and Windsor Newton’s comic book-themed set and Michael Clark Wonson’s lighting are impressive, especially given the limitations of the Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts, where the Orphans have been in residence at Machine nightclub for over 20 years.

This will be the Gold Dust Orphans’ final production at Machine. The building is set to be demolished, but rumor has it that the new developers are considering some sort of performance space where Landry and his band of Orphans can continue to make their biannual magic. In a post-show speech on opening night, Landry implored us to contact Joyce Linehan at the mayor’s office if the thought of an Orphan-less Boston is too much to bear.

Indeed, while The Ebonic Woman imagines a world in which the only unacceptable skin tone is orange, imagining a Boston without Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans is only slightly less terrifying than the idea of four more years with Trump. A smart pick-me-up for our politically pestilent times, The Ebonic Woman is the super musical that we need now.

THE EBONIC WOMAN. THROUGH 5.26 AT THE GOLD DUST ORPHANS AT MACHINE NIGHTCLUB, 1254 BOYLSTON ST., BOSTON. GOLDDUSTORPHANS.ORG

Putting a new twist on the ageold trope of the mean but secretly insecure queen bee and her gaggle of devoted followers, Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play is currently receiving its New England premiere in a SpeakEasy Stage production directed by Summer L. Williams.

This production, it must be said from the outset, is that rare instance of perfect theatrical harmony where all the components coalesce into something that is both unmissable and unforgettable, a gorgeously acted production of a play that goes down easy yet stings with some uncomfortable truths.

Set at a private boarding school in Ghana in 1986, the girls are abuzz with the news that a Miss Ghana recruiter will be coming to the school to select a girl to represent Ghana in that year’s Global Universe Pageant. Queen bee Paulina (an extraordinary Ireon Roach) believes that she is a shoo-in, that is at least until new student Ericka (Victoria Byrd) arrives.

While Paulina dazzles her friends with her feigned familiarity and connections to America (they idolize American culture), the Ohio-raised Ericka—along with her light skin and gorgeous hair—is an immediate threat. So Paulina does what all mean girls do best and blackmails another student, Nana (a terrific Shanelle Chloe Villegas), into helping her dig up some dirt on her new nemesis.

But School Girls cuts deeper than just teenage jealousy, and it is in its exploration of the internalized racism and colorism that has been ingrained in these girls from such a young age that gives it is profundity.

When we find out that Paulina’s mother bought her skinbleaching cream instead of food because she thought it would serve her better, our dislike of Paulina gives way to empathy, but it is ultimately Ireon Roach’s tender and fractured performance that does most of the heavy lifting.

The other girls in the group, Gifty (Geraldine Bogard), Mercy (Tenneh Sillah), and Ama (Sabrina Victor)—all of whom give uncommonly realistic performances—seem less obsessed with the shade of their skin than Paulina does, but they are all keenly aware that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, lighter skin is more beautiful skin. And watching the smiles fade from their faces as they realize that, when all is said and done, the world’s most beautiful women are all white is as emotionally devastating as any moment I’ve seen on stage this year.

I have long been a fan of the work of director Summer L. Williams, who regularly directs some of the most daring and thoughtful plays in Boston, and School Girls is another win for a director who is never afraid to go big or to ask big questions. The miracle of her production here is the painstakingly realistic performances that not only bring us inextricably into the lives of these characters half a world away, but also face to face with our own privilege.

And that’s what theater is all about.

SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY. THROUGH 5.25 AT SPEAKEASY STAGE, 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. SPEAKEASYSTAGE.COM

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BEST WISHES

SAVAGE LOVE

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NETE3 I’m a 43-year-old straight woman, and I spent the majority of my 30s celibate. At 40, I realized that while I wasn’t interested in dating, I was tired of my vibrator. I also realized that it was time to go forth and fuck with the body I had instead of waiting for the idealized body I was going to have someday. Over the past three years—despite being as fat as ever—I’ve consistently had fun, satisfying, exciting, creative, sometimes weird, occasionally scary, but mostly awesome sex. One guy I met on Craigslist was particularly great: awesome kisser, amazing dick. He came over, we fucked, it was excellent, we chatted, he left. This happened about four times. And then CL shut down the personals section. The only contact info I have for the guy is the anonymous CL address, and it no longer works.

He has my Gmail address (the one I use for dating sites), but he has not e-mailed me. I’m not a crazy stalker (I swear!), but he once told me he teaches at a university in our area, and I managed to find his photo and contact info on the school website. So I know how to reach him—but that’s a spectacularly bad idea, right? Unless you think it isn’t? If a dude I’d fucked a few times tracked me down at my job, I would freak out. But I keep thinking: Would it really be SUCH a bad idea to send him ONE e-mail? Should I just accept that it was great while it lasted? Or should I e-mail him and run the risk of pissing off/freaking out a nice guy?

Can Really Envision Every Possibility

Don’t do it, CREEP—don’t do that thing you already know you shouldn’t, that thing you wouldn’t want some dude to do to you, that thing you were probably hoping I’d give you permission to do.

That thing? Don’t do it.

You’re engaged in what’s called “dickful thinking” when guys do it—at least that’s what I call it, CREEP. It’s like wishful thinking, but with dicks. Men convince themselves of something improbable (“I bet she’s one of those women who like unsolicited dick pics!”) or unlikely (“Showing up at her workplace will convince her to take me back!”) because it’s what they want. Think of all the guys you’ve ever known who said, “She wants me!” when in reality he was the one who wanted her. Clitful thinking may be rarer than dickful thinking—women being less likely to think with their genitals and/or being more risk-averse due to socialization, slut-shaming, and the ever-present threat of gendered violence—but it’s not unheard of for a woman to rationalize unacceptable behavior (contacting this man at work) or deploy a self-serving justification (it’s just ONE e-mail) or solicit a “You go, girl!” from a sex-advice columnist when what she needs to hear is “Hell no, girl!”

Again, don’t do it. This guy has your e-mail address and he knows how to reach you.

And since you didn’t have all that fun, satisfying, exciting, creative sex over the last few years with only him, CREEP, I shouldn’t have to tell you to focus on your other options.

But since your clit is doing your thinking for you right now, I must: Leave this dude alone and go fuck some other dudes.

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

I have a desperate question for you. I’ve worked with a vivacious 30-year-old for five years. For three and a half years, she had a live-in boyfriend. She had a different boyfriend recently. I’m 58 years old and not good-looking. She is always sweet to me and always compliments me. She’s said that I’m a genius and a gentleman, that I’m a hoot, and that I have a confident walk. I’ve also overheard her say that she likes older men. However, a few months ago she walked up to me out of the blue and said that she just wants platonic relationships with coworkers. Then I overheard her say to another coworker: “I put out a sign, he will figure it out eventually.” But which sign did she mean? The “platonic” thing or the constant kindness?

Wondering On Reciprocated Kindnesses

This probably isn’t what you wanted to hear either, WORK, but this woman isn’t interested in you—and if you weren’t engaged in dickful thinking, you’d know that. But your dick has somehow managed to convince you that you’re the “he” she was referring to when she talked about sending someone a sign. But you need to ask yourself—and it’s best to ask right after you masturbate, as that’s when we’re least prone to dickful thinking—which is likelier: she went out of her way to let you know she’s not interested in dating anyone at work and you’re the “he” she was referring to, or the “he” she was referring to was one of the roughly four billion other men on the planet and not a coworker? I don’t mean to be cruel, WORK, I just want to stop you from doing something that could get you fired or screw up what has, up to now, been a pleasant work relationship. While kindness can sometimes signal romantic interest, the full weight of the evidence here—including the fact that she didn’t send an unambiguous signal when she was briefly single—indicates otherwise.

On the Lovecast, is it time for a gay homeland? Listen at savagelovecast.com.

22

05.09.19 - 05.16.19 |

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RUTHERFORD

BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM

savagelovecast.com

“Well, Yoko ono may be interested in covering some of these songs”

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