#worcester

Myself and my horse have two good (human) friends. They are good friends and good people. They are *kind* people without the passing glance of a meanstreak between them. T. is in his 60s, has COPD relative to a workplace chemical accident when he was younger, grew up in a shockingly abusive household (his brother, when they were teenagers, shot and killed their father), and yet is about as soft and gentle as a flower, one of those tall, wavy kinds in the autumn. He has had custody of his son L. since L. was a wee baby. L.'s mother cannot and has never been able to make safe, consistent parenting choices. L. is 18, autistic with high support needs, and semi-verbal (he does not use a lot of direct conversational speech, a lot of spontaneous and mitigated echolalia). He is an utterly charming young man who adores horses and mine in particular. With time at the barn, he has come to tolerate chickens, and is willing to pet the cat. He is a great listener, kind and empathetic (like dad), and quite capable (he even got an award recently at his pre-voc program).

Unfortunately: they are also without stable, permanent housing and have been for sometime, indeed virtually all the five years I've known them. They were only placed in a shelter in early 2024 after T. Was hospitalized with pneumonia and L's mother had a breakdown while caring for him (for 5 days). The shelter staff, busy putting out fires (Massachusetts is a right to shelter state), have had little time for them and have been... Less than helpful to the point of being entirely cavalier about their situation.

The clock is short. Their shelter ends on October 11th and they have to leave. They currently have nowhere to go except to pay out of pocket for a hotel while they re-apply to the shelter system. Winter is incoming, faster than we think in days of sun and 70s.

I'm driving five miles across the city to check out a tip that there's an ICE rendition ongoing. I've got the scanner on the car stereo as I'm about to pull onto the street in question. It’s a quiet neighborhood, small houses on small lots, people walking dogs, the mailman waving, the lawnmowers running, and I hear the dispatcher: "We have an ICE officer over there who's allegedly being surrounded." "On our way," the officer responds.  As a local reporter for a decade now, I've learned that you can hear the cops at their most honest on the scanner. And as I'm hearing that “surrounded” comment I remember what the city's police chief told the city council in January: "We do not do civil detention arrests," Police Chief Paul Saucier said at the time, reassuring them that they wouldn’t be party to the ICE assault Trump was about to unleash. The police, he said, "do not have the authority to affect a civil arrest."  What he didn't say is that if you try to stop the civil arrest, the police will stop you from stopping it.  This morning a few dozen of us here in Worcester Massachusetts got to see that unstated fine print in action firsthand. A woman was led by federal agents in cuffs away from her family, through a throng of community organizers trying to stop it, and into an unmarked car. The local police arrived to prevent the community from protecting their neighbor from an unlawful kidnapping. They succeeded, and in the process arrested two of the people who tried to stop it. I park my car on the edge of the scene and all I can hear are the screams—the deafening desperate screams, from a mother, from her daughter, from the woman holding the daughter's baby. Wordless screams. And then I see the mother, a young woman in a green shirt, wailing, crying, held on either side by menacing white men in tactical vests, black neck warmers pulled over their noses in the style du jour for our secret police forces. Surrounding them are a few dozen community members who were tipped off about the ICE raid and got to it before the police did. Before I arrived, they demanded to see a warrant. The ICE agents refused to provide one, so they created a human chain, which the ICE officers eventually broke through.

[ ... ]

Maydee, still confronting the officers, says "Where is the warrant?" Officer Lugo, according to his nameplate, says "Ma'am we are trying our best but they are federal." Morales again asks for the warrant. "They're federal." "They still need a warrant." Another officer, frustrated, says "They don't need a warrant." Finally, one of them tells the truth. Due process is not a matter they're concerned with. The deportation must proceed. Trying to stop it is the unlawful thing. At this point an ICE agent starts pushing me away, but not very hard. Lazy jabs, his mind elsewhere. Too many people, too much pushing to be done. I return to my pre-push position. I keep filming. I don't know what else to do.   A cop pulls his cruiser behind us—we're boxed in now—and from the intercom says "This is the Worcester Police Department. This is an unlawful assembly, I'm warning you to disperse right now or you will be subject to arrest." On the other side of me, a crackle of the scanner from an officer's vest-mounted radio: "Do I have a car to escort the marshals out of here?" They don't need a warrant but they do need an escort.

It's been a hot minute since we were at a live engagement, but it's happening again! Shifty will have a table at Mission Dispensary in Worcester, Massachusetts from 12-4pm on 4/19! We'll bring some of our original merch as well as a fine selection of curated secondhand nonsense available for purchase. Tell Didi you're from the blog to get one of our last few enamel pins!