TRANSCRIPT for DEEP CUT #1
Courtesy of Steph DiBona!
[music]
MIKE MOSCHETTO: If youāre listening to this you probably play in a band or at least did at one point. Probably not an unfair generalization to make. So, where do you practice? If youāre lucky you rehearse in your basement or your garage, some room in your home, or possibly your parentsā home. I had that luxury for many years, but now I live in a one-bedroom apartment that I share in one of the most expensive cities in North America so even if I didnāt have neighbors on either side of and underneath me, say I could make all the noise I wanted without a landlord, superintendent, or cops knocking on my door, I realistically couldnāt fit two amps and a drum set in this shoebox if my life depended on it. So what I and others like me do depend on instead is commercial rehearsal facilities. These are often converted storage lockers or rehabilitated industrial buildings. But, they can also be their own little cultural hub, places of expression for not only snotty punk bands but also performance artists, craftspeople, all types of outsiders that maybe canāt get heads through the door at your bog-standard rock club or even your DIY venue at the same neighborhood but whose creative output is no less important.
And such is the reputation of the EMF building, just across the river from me here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Or at least it was a complex filled with local and touring artists and storied recording studios until it was purchased and shut down recently. The circumstances of its closure may seem unique on the surface but to me, deep down this is just another shining example of the way that economic realities like the luxury condofication of urban centers and predatory real estate speculation can make their way into our lives as creative types. Every once in a while the invisible hand of the free market will reach out and sucker punch you.
So joining me to talk about all of this is Ben Simon, a former EMF tenant himself and a board member of the Cambridge Artist Coalition, an activist group trying, perhaps in vain at this point, to save their space. Itās a story that I think needs to be head, one that contains many valuable lessons for you, the paying patron of a program like this one, from respecting the autonomy of other performers, to just the transient nature of institutions with artistic missions and simply valuing what you have while you have it.
Anyway, hereās the conversation I had with Ben, stick around to the end if youāre so moved to find out how you can help his cause. Enjoy!
[music: āI canāt afford to live in the town where I was born / but hey at least theyāre developing this place for somebodyā]
MIKE: You were obviously a tenant. How long were you there?
BEN SIMON: Iāve never calculated the exact number of years -
MIKE: That long.
BEN: - but something like five, six -
MIKE: Five or six years.
BEN: - years, something like that yeah.
MIKE: Would you say that there was a sense of community there prior to the eviction? Because like I have a space in Charlestown, I tried to get a space in EMF when I first moved to the city, and it was, like I was waitlisted. But you know, when Iām walking around my practice rooms no-one says āwhatās upā in the hallway really, I havenāt met any friends or collaborators. So was that there prior to this or was it the impending eviction that galvanized people around the space?
BEN: I think it depends on who you ask. There were certainly people who had more of a sort of like knit community, probably somewhat insulated within the whole building. It wasnāt as though everyone knew everyone and said hi in the hall but...
MIKE: Well, there was obviously some turnover, right?
BEN: That as well, yeah, but WEMF Radio kind of had a crew of people around it, they eventually got pushed out before we were all evicted. Um, but yeah.
MIKE: It was, you know, New Alliance was kind of a fixture there too.
BEN: Right, right. Thereās definitely been like communities within the EMF community that perhaps didnāt like include the entire building, but I wasnāt like really viewing it as a community space, more just like something I needed for my band. But yeah my experience was like this was a catalyst to becoming part of a community and pushing back. A bit of my own personal history, I grew up in a rent-controlled building in Porter Square in Cambridge and after rent control was abolished, you know, it was just a matter of time before our building was sold to a developer, and that indeed happened in the late ā90s, and we were all evicted. We settled in the Midwest.
MIKE: Whoa.
BEN: And I came back as an adult and Iām just sort of more or less waiting to be priced out or have the same thing happen to me again. So this happening and seeing people starting to organize and fight back really meant a lot to me and it allowed me to feel like I was doing something to fight something thatās already, Iāve already dealt with.
MIKE: So, does the Cambridge Artists Coalition, does that rise out of this or was that preexisting?
BEN: It was not preexisting, um, yeah. The...
MIKE: So thatās like part of the organizing effort.
BEN: Right, yeah. The group was formed to sort of organize the tenants and see what we could do to preserve it as an art space and we decided to give ourselves the name Cambridge Artist Coalition.
MIKE: How many members is that, and compared to how many tenants were there at the time of the eviction notice going up?
BEN: Um, there were over 200 people, um, artists musicians in the building. As far as our group membership itās difficult to say precisely, the first few meetings we had were, you know, around I donāt know 30 to 50 people, but you know as time went on itās sort of been a core group of people that have like stayed committed. We have a Board that Iām on which is right now six people. We encourage more people to get involved and join the group, you donāt have to necessarily come to meetings to be part of the group.
MIKE: Sure. So this building is purchased in 2016 by this guy, John DiGiovanni, who is operating as some kind of, you know, property management developing company but heās also president of Harvard Square Business Association. Weāll get to that later.
BEN: Yes.
MIKE: When these eviction notices go up, are there any grounds cited or is it just like āthis is what Iām doing, see ya.ā
BEN: When I first heard we were getting evicted I wasnāt given any reason. It seemed like the person who had received that notice hadnāt been given any reason but Iām also told that some people initially got safety as being the concern. That, you know, the building wasnāt up to code, et cetera, and we were all, you know, in danger so we had to leave the building. However, you know, people that formed the group went to the fire department and asked if the building was up to code and they said it had always passed inspection, there was nothing wrong with it.
MIKE: When this news starts going around do people start to jump ship immediately? Like, because the story here is obviously the steely resolve of the people who stuck around and fighting to the bitter end, including possibly at the time of this recording, people who are still occupying the space. Is that still happening?
BEN: That is still happening, yeah.
MIKE: Fuck yes. That is so awesome.
BEN: Yeah, itās very cool.
MIKE: So do a lot of people just try to jump the gun...
BEN: I got the impression that there were some bands that yeah, moved pretty soon after they knew that we were going to have to leave. Yeah probably some of them thought that they would beat the rush.
MIKE: I mean itās a tough thing to tie your fate to if you just need to keep being a band and keep rehearsing.
BEN: Yeah, for sure. We had our initial eviction date and then we got a one-month extension after going to City Hall and seemed to have the city, you know, concerned about our plight and wanted to do something. And they were able to negotiate with the landlord to give us an extra month, but I think that last month we were probably something like around, for most of the month around half capacity and then even less towards the end of the month.
MIKE: Dwindling, yeah. And somebody posted something about going into Public Records and finding John DiGiovanniās donations to various members of Cambridge City Council.
BEN: Yes.
MIKE: Does this kind of explain maybe the cityās resistance to really pushing, like putting pressure on to buy it from him?
BEN: Um...
MIKE: Because that was a tactic, that was kind of the initial tactic of...
BEN: Yeah, I mean obviously you can draw conclusions from seeing the list of donations, um, and who received what. Weāre not sure, we are concerned for sure that like the cityās initial interest and then eventual backing away might have had something to do with John DiGiovanniās influence, financial and otherwise.
MIKE: President of Harvardās Business Association.
BEN: Heās a very powerful man. And it seems very suspicious to us that, you know, the building had passed code and then suddenly was retroactively determined to be a death trap as soon as he wants everyone out.
MIKE: And is that the language used, ādeath trapā too?
BEN: I donāt know if he ever exactly used that phrase, but he said itās unsafe for anyone to be in it in its current condition, which makes us very confused why he had us in there and was collecting rent.
MIKE: And the city also justified their resistance by saying like, āoh this would be a huge investment on our part,ā right?
BEN: Right, they were saying, I guess their thing was like, āitās up to code, but if were to buy it, it has to be even better than up to codeā or it has to be really, really top notch. But we were concerned that it might have been you know a diplomatic way for them to backpedal out of coming to our rescue. Yeah, more or less.
MIKE: So, tell me about the genesis of the idea of protesting the Make Music event. So I should maybe, the background is that Harvard Square Business Association puts on a festival, kind of just like an outdoor music and arts festival every year called Make Music, or Fete de la Musique.
BEN: Yeah [laughs]
MIKE: Very pretentious.
BEN: Yeah. Well it was started in France, itās actually an international event. Harvard Square Business Association just manages the local one.
MIKE: Oh, maybe Iāll be a little more charitable. So where does the idea come from to protest this Make Music event in Harvard Square?
BEN: So the structure of the thing independent of the Harvard Square Business Associationās running of it is that I guess musicians are not compensated. Maybe in other cities they are, but in Cambridge they never have been. And we just thought it was especially egregious and you know insulting for John DiGiovanni to evict all these musicians in what was, as far as I know, like the only affordable practice space in Cambridge. Claimed to be a patron of the arts, claimed to be concerned about community and art and then a couple weeks later ask those same people to play for free so that his businesses, the businesses in his Business Association can make a bunch of money from the people coming in.
MIKE: āPatron of the artsā in that capacity certainly seems to mean like art that you can kind of line your pockets with a little bit. And so leading up to this protest DiGiovanni agrees to a meeting. Were you at this meeting?
BEN: So there were two meetings, one was with the mayor, Mike Connolly who is also the State Rep. Mike Connolly who has been really a great ally. And then a couple people that were running businesses from, in EMF, recording studios and had kind of different concerns, had spent a lot more money or invested a lot more money in their spaces than the musician tenants. And yeah, apparently that meeting got a little heated at points. Um, so I wasnāt in the first meeting at City Hall so I canāt, um, one thing I can describe about the first meeting is that we initially came with somebody whoās been giving us free legal counsel. And at the beginning of the meeting as soon as he identified himself as a lawyer, John DiGiovanni said, āThis meeting is not going to continue if heās still here.ā So he had to leave before we could proceed. But during that meeting John Glancy who is more or less the guy who got this whole thing started, the CAC group, asked John DiGiovanni if heād be willing to meet again, the next day, with some people from the Board of CAC and he agreed.
MIKE: Okay.
BEN: Sort of surprisingly. But um yeah. So we had a meeting at Charlieās Kitchen in Harvard Square. And he offered us beers, I think only one of us accepted that beer, oh, and then another guy got a like a Sprite or something. But yeah that was a, it was a strange meeting.
MIKE: Basically though, the Charlieās Kitchen meeting sounds like a bit of an olive branch.
BEN: Yeah, yeah perhaps. It, it was not an accident that he refused to meet us until after we were already evicted. You know, like, we really have...
MIKE: The silence was deafening.
BEN: Yes. He completely refused to meet with us, and now, and then after we were evicted heās finally willing to come to the table when we really have very little to gain, that he would be willing to give us. I think he was probably hoping to see what he could do to convince us maybe, or persuade us not to have the protest. He actually said during the meeting at Charlieās Kitchen, āOh no I believe in democracy, you guys should do whatever you want. But you know, this is totally misguided and youāre conflating all these things and you donāt really understand the way the world works. And, you know, if you really want to know the truth, this protest is gonna make me even less likely for me to want to play ball with you guys, to do what youāre asking for.ā
MIKE: Well, I mean what are you supposed to do, your hands are kind of tied.
BEN: I mean, in a perfect world it wouldnāt rely on, you know, private developers to keep our communities intact.
MIKE: At any point has he made his intention with the building clear or is it just kind of a foregone conclusion that itās gonna be a luxury condo?
BEN: He at least is making it seem as though he has no definite plans right now for the building. He said heās intending to lease it to somebody who has a plan for it, but that you know heās hoping to any economically viable project that should come his way.
MIKE: So ransom basically.
BEN: Yeah, I mean...
MIKE: From reading from this Cambridge Day article about it, Mark Levy the author here says āDiGiovanni made clear he has investors and has āto do something financially viable.āā Is any kind of optimism that is gleaned, any kind of olive leaf that is extending by having this meeting, is that just totally invalidated by this ideal like well, the bottom line is the thing?
BEN: Itās tricky ācause he at least professed to be willing to have it continue to be something like EMF provided that you know that x, y, and z were such that it was good for him. Yeah, we said would you be willing if we could find a non-profit to be involved perhaps, or we would get money to get the building up to code so it could continue to have the function itās had as a rehearsal space. Um yeah, heās like āyeah as long as the numbers work.ā But yeah I think it allows him, I mean he can obviously just say that you know it doesnāt have to, it can be completely insincere, but he had a lot of blame to put on pretty much every party concerned in the matter except for himself. He said, you know, the tenants are at fault here, the city is at fault, the previous landlord is at fault, the previous manager of the Sound Museum who operated in EMF before he bought it, all these parties are at fault, but he is entirely not at fault.
MIKE: But he had to buy the place, so.
BEN: Yeah, I mean, he didnāt say this precisely but itās probably true, that if he didnāt buy it someone was gonna buy it, and that someone was going to want to do something more profitable than what it was currently being used as, with it.
MIKE: Yeah thatās one way to look at it.
BEN: Well, thatās true. The thing that I really want and I think yeah the group generally wants to kind of promote is the idea that it shouldnāt just be a handful of wealthy developers that completely control the shape of our cities and like get to make the call about what kind of buildings, what kind of businesses go into our cities.
MIKE: Yeah, why should they get to decide, like why, when the ultimate incentive is just to go for what enriches them personally.
BEN: Right.
MIKE: And I have a, you know itās very cool to me that you have Mike Connolly on your side, a Representative, and I have a quote from him here, from the protest where he says, āWhat good is Central Squareās Cultural District designation if the 99% of us who want to enjoy it canāt afford to live or play in that community.ā
So did a lot of the folks that attended either of the two meetings, were they put off in any way from participating in the protest?
BEN: The second one certainly not, the first one I canāt say. The people that own the studios who were there, they didnāt go to the protest, so itās possible that the way the meeting went had that effect to them, but.
MIKE: Itās been a couple of days since that action, and DiGiovanni was conspicuously absent. Has anyone heard from him since then, has he put out any...
BEN: Not that I know of, no. After the main protest and rally was done, we marched past Trinity, the Trinity Building on Church Street and posted a list of demands on his door, and chanted a pretty humorous chant, I think, outside his door, and marched on to Cambridge Common.
MIKE: Were those demands composed by the Board, or by the members of CAC?
BEN: Yeah, I donāt know that we ever really officially agreed on them in any sort of official way but they were ones we were talking about and they were bouncing around for a while. Kind of things that, the core things that weāve been fighting for the whole time you know that heād sell the building to the city or some non-profit that can maintain it as a formal art space, or lease it possibly. I think the term we used was sell. That he preserve it as an art space in some manner and also I think on there was that he refund us a yearās worth of rent, all of the tenants, for having, collecting rent in what he termed āan unsafe buildingā.
MIKE: Yeah, that seems...
BEN: And, and I think lastly was if he does not do these things that he should step down from the Harvard Square Business Association because heās not committed to its tenets, or its core values.
MIKE: And you had a big turnout it seems like, on your side?
BEN: Yeah, yeah it was a good turnout, somewhere between 150-250 people came out, and uh, yeah I mean I think it was the biggest stage area of the event. Previous years, you know, I think there were twice as many stages and twice as many bands but a lot of bands dropped out in solidarity with us.
MIKE: Excellent.
BEN: And that sort of, like the core stage area in front of, in Brattle Square, in front of Crema CafƩ and stuff like that, all the bands of that stage area dropped out and the person running the stage offered it to us.
MIKE: Wow, thatās amazing.
BEN: So, yeah, we, from my perspective we had the biggest, best-attended event going on in that festival.
MIKE: And what I appreciated about, from what I read about it, was that there wasnāt any really vocal discouraging anyone to play, it was just like you know āI donāt wanna deprive you of your autonomy to gig,ā itās about the music ultimate at the end of the day, if you wanna sing protest songs, if you wanna turn the mic over to an EMF member, something like that.
BEN: Right, we definitely very deliberately tried to not be divisive, and make it seem like you know we were against any musicians who chose to play. There were some people on Facebook who like described musicians who refused to drop out as scabs, and a lot of people disingenuously tried to say, āoh that this is what this movementās aboutā but no, we never endorsed that and we were, we tried to be very upfront about the fact that we were totally fine with anyone choosing not to be part of our protest, not to, you know, to just continue to play as they would. I mean itās a very, yeah, itās a tough world, the world that music occupies and I totally understand you know, not wanting to pass up the opportunity to have a gig.
MIKE: Absolutely. Now that that has happened, whatās next? Like, what do you do moving forward to continue the push? Is there another big action plan, how can people help?
BEN: We definitely want to have another big action, while momentum is still strong. We also have potentially a court date coming up for some of the people who are still occupying their space in EMF so we do have a GoFundMe. Anything you give to that weād be using towards potentially legal fees, lawyer fees for that court date and planning future actions to elevate this and similar issues. Personally what I would really like to go forward or do going forward would be sort of to broaden our anti-displacement and anti-gentrification tactics or strategy, and I donāt want to be fighting about just like we shouldnāt have artists being displaced, we shouldnāt have anyone being displaced out of their communities and thatās the kind of really bold, progressive legislation that needs to be getting passed and is criminal, I think, that state and city governments arenāt on this. We have to be a huge pain in the ass to both private developers who are, you know sort of de facto city managers but also yeah definitely our city and state representatives who are sort of sitting on their hands and letting this, you know the evisceration of our communities nationwide go on.
MIKE: So have you personally found a new practice space? Of all the people who have stayed behind to occupy the space or who got out early, like how cataclysmic has the displacement been? Are people kind of floundering without a place to express themselves or..?
BEN: I think itās really cataclysmic. A lot of the bands I talk to, you know, the last few days as I was moving out my stuff said not only did they not have a space, they didnāt know when they would get a space, they were gonna go on hiatus with their bands for a few months. Some people were talking about moving out of Boston. Like, this is a devastating blow to the city of Cambridge, greater Boston, weāre losing a ton of artists because weāre not recognizing that we need to give them the infrastructure they need to do what they do.
MIKE: Have the folks whoāve managed the spaces at EMF set their sights on kind of relocating or trying to take over another unused space that would maybe fill that gap?
BEN: When we first started getting organized and went to city hall to bring this to their attention, Quinton Zondervan, one of the Cambridge City councilors who hasn't taken money from John DiGiovanni and has been also you know in addition to State Rep. Mike Connolly, really awesome and helpful, he wrote a thing thatās called a policy order and some of the items on it were you know, negotiating for more time for us, which happened, but also one of them was looking in to find another space that could do the same thing that EMF did. Even that still hasnāt happened but it could happen, I hope it does.
MIKE: Sure, yeah. I mean in Cambridge, eh, I donāt know.
BEN: Yeah, I mean there are actually a fair number of just disused buildings that are kind of sitting around and empty lots here and there. But when you know the mayor and the Cambridge City Council were discussing potential future sites and they brought up this handful of buildings that are sort of lying vacant right now, something that kept coming up was that people are gonna be angry if this doesnāt become affordable housing when we have an affordable housing crisis.
MIKE: I mean people are gonna be angry if EMF doesnāt become affordable housing on the same token, so...
BEN: Right, right. And there, I donāt know, itās been very frustrating to me because I think a number of people in city government have sort of made us seem out to be like weāre these little privilege musician folks that you know, and obviously a lot of us are not at all privileged but, um, but that weāre vying for a bigger piece of the pie but there are other people that weāre just ignoring and sort of more or less pitting us against other marginalized groups and saying that weāre being selfish and egotistical or whatnot. But, I mean itās somewhat understandable...
MIKE: I mean yeah, youāre right, thereās an affordable housing crisis right now.
BEN: Sure, sure sure.
MIKE: But to me, it keeps coming back to the fact that it is designated as a cultural district, like, so other than bands that can you know, basically play at any two-drink minimum bar or like bring heads through the door at one of the places on Mass Ave., right like what about the people who donāt necessarily, what about people who are still artists whose work is valid and vital right?
BEN: Definitely. I guess the thing that I would want to throw back at city and state government is like, if you all would actually do your jobs and actually represent the masses, there wouldnāt need to be different groups pitted against each other, struggling for bits of these handouts because we would have policies enacted that would prevent displacement from happening at all. And that parallel organizations like our own need to emerge in order to put pressure on our representatives and hold them accountable. And, you know, or even run their own candidates for city councils and stuff like that. I mean the Richmond Progressive Alliance, the RPA, on the West Coast has been a great example to similar progressive groups all over the country and I think is a, yeah a great model to look to. But yeah, going forward weāre definitely hoping to endorse people for city council, who knows maybe even run some people from our own group.
MIKE: Yeah, a coalition of kind of concerned parties.
BEN: Yeah.
[music: āevery new business that opens up is an overpriced bar or bougie restaurant / our venues are closing but we got a Whole Foods, everything a tech startup could wantā]
MIKE: Thatās Ben singing under the name Toby Tantrum. To contribute toward the EMF occupiersā legal fees visit gofundme.com/saveEMF. You can get in touch with me at [email protected] or on Twitter @sellinoutAD. Thanks for supporting the show! Iām Mike Moschetto, youāre listening to Sellinā Out. See you next time!
[music: āyouāre not as smart as you claim to be / but hey no hard feelings when it comes around, for Christmas Iāll buy you a dictionaryā]
