Tag Archives: Get out and vote inner-city Worcester!

Election Day is today! … Worcester, America decides!

November 8, 2016 admin

THE FUTURE: Chef Joey’s baby girl – Gigi! pic: Chef Joey

By Rosalie Tirella

Dear Worcester and America:

Today’s the day – ELECTION DAY! We all make the somber, joyful, vindictive?, salutary amble to our local churches, neighborhood centers, senior centers to pull the lever, color in the ovals – X marks the spot! – in our hearts! No bludgeon-wielding thug can coerce us into saying how we voted or make us vote for this one or that one! This is America! The grand land of Lincoln – not Putin!

Today, Election Day, every American 18 or older can partake in the ultimate American pot luck dinner: a FREE, NONVIOLENT, OPEN election! An election whose results are accepted by this sea-to-shining-sea country of millions and millions of people who show the rest of the world what true day to day, cheek by jowl DIVERSITY is – a people – and we are “WE THE PEOPLE” – who accept election results in peace … go back to the drawing board to get our guy or gal or point of view in next time. Our elections do not trigger beheadings, civil wars, coups d’etat.

Remember: We are the land of Lincoln – not Putin!

Today we can choose as our next president: A brilliant, seasoned stateswoman, a public servant who’s advocated for women, children and families her entire political life – which spans decades – OR we can choose a megalomaniac, racist, sexist nut job whose most substantial and consistent character trait is his fake goldy-locks-comb over. Republican nominee Donald Trump was all over the place this election cycle – but his hair, each and every follicle – never wavered!

Do we want a bad comb-over as our next president?

Do we want to empower Donald Trump to make that 3 a.m. phone call that could end the world as we know it? Madness! Choosing between Hillary Clinton, a former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, First Lady and Donald Trump, a bloviating, mentally unstable blow hard reality TV show star WHO HAS ZERO GOVERNING/POLITICAL experience and who loves only himself. We are all just tools or toys with which Trump can play to feel GREAT about himself and all his other delusions. He is a vulgarian who has criminally assaulted women, ogled naked 15-year-old girl models, a man who, at the slightest puerile provocation (like, hey, Donald you’re a wimp!) would blanket the Mid East with bombs – children and women be damned.

Of course, Trump wouldn’t have gotten this far if the Republican Party weren’t a shambles. The Republicans have dismissed, forgotten, NEVER SERVED, the people who’ve given them their electoral prowess ever since Tricky Dick: the white working class, the lower middle class with high school degrees and God on their side. Their wages have been depressed for years, they’ve been down sized without new free training for the global economy, they visit food pantries after working all day at Wal Mart. THEIR VOICES MUST BE HEARD!

The Republican political elite got their votes and closed their ears and hearts. Now the slumbering have awoken! American democracy, the Republican hoi polloi have puked up Donald Trump.

Good. The Republican Party deserves it. Now it will be forced to retool itself for 21st century America: a land of young people, immigrants, people of color, the LBGT community, the working poor, the poor, women, women, women… the majority of whom will not be white in a generation. THE FUTURE!

Today! PLEASE VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON AS OUR NEXT PRESIDENT!

******

Referendum Questions:

YES ON Q 3 – So that Mass doesn’t accept animals or their bounty from places where the animals live in quarters where they cannot lie down and fully extend their legs, stand up or turn around in.

HUMANE LIVING QUARTERS FOR VEAL CALVES, PIGS, CHICKENS now!!!

YES ON Q 2. Poor parents stuck in the inner city without academic choices for their kids…NEED TO BE EMPOWERED TO MAKE CHOICES, to send their kids to the schools they think will most benefit them – academically, socially, emotionally. On this website I wrote of my wonderful, late mom and why she would vote YES ON Question 2. She was a loving person who adored little kids. She always wanted the best for them. She would take union politics and paycheck bullshit right out of the equation and see a YES on 2 as a YES for Mass kids!

YES ON Q 4. Legalize Mary Jane! I’ve come around on this issue: Arresting half the young men in our inner city ‘hoods for a non-gateway drug is folly. We’re destroying young lives – especially black, brown and poor young lives.

NO ON Q 1. NO MORE CASINOS IN MASS. We’re the smart state. We can innovate our way to a gangbusters economy! Go, Massachusetts, go!

And You! GO OUT AND VOTE TODAY!

InCity Yum Yums

This is it! ELECTION DAY! Get out and VOTE!

November 8, 2016 admin

You could say, notwithstanding the sunny disposition, this guy was the beginning of the end … pic:R.T.

By Edith Morgan

This is it! Our final chance to vote! If you did not take advantage of the two weeks of early voting that ended on November 4, TODAY, Tuesday, November 8, is your big chance!

In case you are hesitating because you “don’t know the ropes,” here’s what you need to know:

The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

If you have not moved very recently, and have voted recently, just show up at your assigned location…

… check in (address, then your name)

… get your ballots (THERE ARE TWO PAGES this time, because of the 4 referendum questions). So be sure to look at both sides of the first and then fill in the second, before you check out.

Be sure to use the pen that is provided, and carefully fill in the oval by the name of your selected candidates. Fill in the oval by YES or NO after each of the four referendum questions. Voters will be deciding who’ll be our next president! Also, there are the Massachusetts Senate and House contests! If you need to review what is on the ballots, there are samples posted at the entrance to the voting area.

Once you have marked your ballots, check out at the tables and insert your ballots (pages 1 and 2) into the machine. Wait a few seconds until the machine says thank you!

Take – and proudly wear! – your free “I VOTED” sticker! Some polls even have coffee and donuts for all. Everyone is very helpful!

If you are not certain where you are registered, please call the City of Worcester Election Commission office at 508-799-1134 for information.

If you are a first-time voter please bring ID with you.

If you are an inactive voter (“I” by your name,) you will be asked to fill out a voter certificate, and then you will be able to vote. Bring proof of residency (something with your present address on it) Most people have a current driver’s license, or other photo ID.

Fear not! Just come! Everyone who works at the polls will do their best to enable you to cast your vote. Poll workers will answer your questions, help you in any way they can and see that your vote counts.

You can bring along a translator, or helper if handicapped – or your children if there is no babysitter at home.

JUST COME OUT AND VOTE TODAY!

Animal Issues

Some electoral musings: CLOSING POLLS SHOW CLINTON LEADING

November 7, 2016 admin

The country needs another awesome prez! pic:R.T.

By Steven R. Maher

On the last day of the 2016 campaign, new polls show Hillary Clinton’s lead against Donald J. Trump is steady.

Fox News this morning reported that Clinton was ahead in a national poll – 48% to 44%. Given that Fox is the more conservative mainstream media outlet, whose pundits like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have been favorable to Trump, this is clearly not a slanted poll. Likewise, the Boston Herald and Franklin Pierce University did a poll that yielded the same 48% to 44% result.

Transit strike

There were concerns that a mass transit strike in Philadelphia would prevent thousands of African-Americans from voting in the key Pennsylvania battleground states. The strike ended Monday when the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) and a union representing 5,000 employees announced a deal on the eve of Election Day. “Tentative agreement reached. We are off strike,” Local 234 announced on its website.

Cyber Security

With the uproar over WikiLeaks and Russian hackers, voters might be concerned someone in Moscow will be invading their voting booth to change their votes. Fortunately, America’s voting network is decentralized, safely in the hands of city and town clerks. There is no national database of voters that the Russians can hack into to change election results. The Russians would need to hack into the electronic voting lists of a substantial number of cities and towns to affect an election. Given that the state and federal governments are working with the larger communities to cyber-protect them from our former Cold War adversary, the small entities probably can take care of themselves. Keeping our elections decentralized would be a good thing.

Two calls from the Governor

Today I received two robo-telephone calls from Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker. In one call Governor Baker asked me to vote for Question 2 to lift the charter school cap. In the next call Governor Baker asked me to cast my vote for State Representative Paul Frost (R-Auburn), so Baker and Frost could continue fighting for equal pay for women. I was too abashed at receiving two calls in one day from such an august figure to tell the Governor that I had voted two weeks ago in early voting!

Florida

A Republican consultant in Florida, David Johnson, told Reuters news agency that he believed Clinton could win Florida by as much as three points, thanks in part to the shortcomings of his own party’s get-out-the-vote efforts. “We used to have a great statewide operation,” Johnson told the Naples Daily News. “Now I’m not convinced that’s going on, because I don’t see the evidence. And I see it on the Democrats’ and their allies’ side.”

*******
On election eve: to Donald Trump from ICT:

Worcester dump truck. pic:R.T.

Animal Issues

Election fever! Watch “Michael Moore in TrumpLand”!

November 6, 2016 admin

From filmmaker Michael Moore:

Watch my movie “Michael Moore in TrumpLand” tonight! (It’s our secret weapon and sure-fire pick-me-up!)

Friends,

On Tuesday we are either facing a new future that will have equal pay for women, paid maternity leaves, and a debt-free college education — or we face utter madness. A dark, authoritarian era run by a thin-skinned sociopath and admitted sexual predator. How can this election even be close? MADNESS!

There’s probably no time left to try and convince Trump voters of the error of their ways.

But there IS a job we all must do this weekend: get the nonvoters to vote! Give our young people a reason to vote!

And I’ve made a film that will help you to do just that. Critics are calling it “a game changer,” “an unexpected, empathetic appeal to those not inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton,” and “if the liberal choir needs a song to sing, this is the one that will inspire them.”

It’s called “Michael Moore in TrumpLand” and it’s #1 in the country online and streaming!

You can get it right now on iTunes:
www.itunes.com/trumpland.

Or you can get it right now on Amazon: https://amzn.com/B01M4OX2AY.

“TrumpLand” has been referred to by one commentator as “already historic in its impact.” The New Yorker magazine simply says it’s “majestic.” And, even though I don’t have a distributor, a budget or a single ad placed anywhere, through word-of-mouth my movie has become an unexpected hit.

It has been #1 for the past two weeks on iTunes! It’s also been playing in cinemas in 61 cities because 61 theaters asked if they could download it and put it up on their screens — and I said yes, and thanks!

I urgently made “TrumpLand” in just 12 days and yet it’s considered every bit as powerful as the rest of my work. How is that? Because as this presidential race tightened, pure passion – and fear – took over and I just went for it.

I called up and brought back together my top producers and crews from “Fahrenheit 9/11”, “Roger & Me” and “Sicko”, plus the people from my TV series “TV Nation” and “The Awful Truth” — and we set out traveling to battleground Ohio to film me perform a one-man show in the most unlikely of places — a majority-Republican town where only 8% of its citizens are registered Democrats!

The result is a raucous, funny, fresh look at how we can win in these final four days — a 73-minute pick-me-up and fire-you-up! Watch “Michael Moore In TrumpLand” tonight, show it to your friends tomorrow. And send it as an online gift to your conservative brother-in-law or your cousin who’s down in the dumps about the polls she’s reading about.

If you’ve got someone in the house who’s thinking of not voting and in need of a different sort of appeal, one that’s convinced tens of thousands across the country to show up on Tuesday, then watch and share “TrumpLand.”

Let’s do this!

Michael Moore

InCity Yum Yums

Political Analysis: How Hillary won the debates

November 6, 2016 admin

By Steven R. Maher

Hillary Clinton’s decisive wins in the three Presidential debates was no accident. If she’s elected President on November 8, 2016, Clinton will owe her victory to a well planned and ruthlessly executed undertaking to provoke Donald J. Trump into destroying himself in front of American voters, by manipulating Trump’s own psychological insecurities against him. Clinton’s plans to do so were published by the New York Times on August 29, 2016, one month before the first debate on September 26, 2016.

“Rarely are debate preparations as illuminating about the candidates as a debate itself, but Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Trump’s strikingly different approaches to the Sept. 26 face-off are more revealing about their egos and battlefield instincts than most other moments in the campaign,” said the newspaper in the August 2016 article. “Mrs. Clinton, a deeply competitive debater, wants to crush Mr. Trump on live television, but not with an avalanche of policy details; she is searching for ways to bait him into making blunders. Mr. Trump, a supremely confident communicator, wants viewers to see him as a truth-telling political outsider and trusts that he can box in Mrs. Clinton on her ethics and honesty.”
Primary contests differed

Both candidates were shaped by their completely different primary experiences. Clinton, apparently expecting a coronation, found herself barely able to fend off a challenge by Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist and comparatively unknown Vermont Senator. Clinton emerged from the primaries victorious, but shell shocked by her own negative ratings and performance. She understood her own shortcomings as a debater, and was open to new ideas. Clinton knew she needed a new game plan to win.

Trump’s road to the Republican nomination reinforced his inherent self-confidence, a cocksureness than often trespassed into arrogance, and sometimes into megalomania. Trump’s insurgency in the GOP began with a bellicose denunciation of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and to the amazement of both the political classes and pundits, continued as he won primary after primary. Trump systematically devastated his Republican opponents with slash and burn comments, tagging them with pejorative nicknames like “Little Marco”, “Lying Ted”, or “Low Energy”. Pundits repeatedly wrote Trump’s political obituaries, only to retract them after Trump won the next primary.

Trump understandably developed a belief in his own omnipotence. His rhetorical excesses and personal insults had given him the Republican nomination. Trump had no reason to believe the same tactics wouldn’t bring him victory in the general election.

“I can handle Hillary,” Trump told the New York Times. “I believe you can prep too much for those things [debates]. It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony – like you’re trying to be someone you’re not. I know who I am and how I got here.”

Clinton’s plan

Clinton set up a debate committee within her campaign. They conducted “a forensic-style analysis” of Trump’s debate performances. Unlike a Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton refused to be silenced when Trump repeatedly interrupted her. Most of the time, she kept on speaking as Trump tried to talk over her. There were a few occasions where Clinton wisely said nothing and let Trump continue talking, recognizing that Trump’s line of argument was self-defeating.

Clinton seemed acutely aware that there would be a split screen during the debate, perhaps because during the primaries there was a split screen during her debates with Sanders. Trump, who usually had anywhere from three to sixteen Republican on the debate stage with him, seemed totally unaware that voters were watching him as he grimaced and grunted, assessing Trump partly on that basis. Clinton had a Reaganesque smile on her face as Trump spoke, while Trump looked like the Grinch who stole Christmas as Clinton talked. Clinton’s self-discipline was enormous.

Clinton’s campaign debriefed Trump’s ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal”, Tony Schwartz, who lived with Trump for eighteen months while co-authoring the book. They consulted with psychologists about Trump, who advised Clinton how she could take advantage of Trump’s male chauvinism by identifying “trigger points” where Clinton could goad Trump with needling remarks; that Clinton was a woman was woven into the fabric of these trigger points.

“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” said Schwartz. “He’ll use sixth-grade language, he will repeat himself many times, he won’t complete sentences, and he won’t say anything of substance.”

Schwartz’s prediction was clairvoyant. Trump refused an offer from conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham to play Clinton in a mock debate. While Clinton spent precious, dwindling campaign days in mock debates with Democratic operative Ron Klain playing Trump, Trump stuck to his campaign rallies. And Trump did indeed act like a six grader during the third debate after Clinton called him Vladimir Putin’s puppet: “No puppet. No puppet,” Trump said. “You’re the puppet.”

Machado trigger

The first debate was a disaster for Trump. The last trigger point was the straw that broke Trump’s psyche – Clinton’s retelling of the Alicia Machado story, a Venezuelan beauty contestant Trump allegedly called “Miss Piggy” after she gained weight. Trump couldn’t let go of the Machado tale. He tweeted about Machado at 3:00 AM a few days later, an episode which raised questions about Trump’s mental stability and lack of self-discipline.

Each debate “followed the same pattern” wrote Ezra Klein on the Vox website. “Trump begins calm, but as Clinton needles him, he falls apart, gets angrier, launches bizarre personal attacks, offers rambling justifications for his own behavior, and loses the thread of whatever question was actually asked of him.”

Trump didn’t change his attitude toward debate prep. He refused to participate in mock debates. It was as if Trump had been overcome by inertia. During the third debate Trump admitted he did not prepare for the debate that day, but instead watched Clinton’s commercials attacking Trump all day long.

“We aren’t used to candidates winning not so much because of how they performed but because of how they pushed their opponent into performing,” concluded Klein. “But the fact that we aren’t used to this kind of victory doesn’t make it any less impressive. Hillary Clinton has humbled Donald Trump, and she did it her way.”

****

InCity Yum Yums

State of the Race: FOX NEWS RETRACTS FALSE CLAIM CLINTON WILL BE INDICTED

November 5, 2016 admin

Oh, Lord, stay with us! pic:R.T.

By Steven R. Maher

Fox News is the cable channel liberals love to hate. While portraying itself as “fair and balanced” in its reporting, flamboyant commentators like Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity organize Fox’s ideological base of Republicans and conservatives with their attacks on various villains, especially Hillary Clinton. So, it was with some glee that the left greeted with delight news that Fox founder Bill Ailes was forced to resign under a cloud of controversy due to allegations of sexual harassment.

Now it turns out that two Fox network stars, Bret Baier and Hannity, ended up retracting false statements about Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign.

“Continue to an indictment”

In a special report, Baier on November 2, 2016, broadcast the following, per a transcript on the “Real Clear Politics website:

“Here’s the deal,” said Baier. “We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations. • “One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far. Several offices separately have been doing their own investigations.

• “Two: The immunity deal that Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top aides to Hillary Clinton, got from the Justice Department in which it was believed that the laptops they had, after a narrow review for classified materials, were going to be destroyed. We have been told that those have not been destroyed — they are at the FBI field office here on Washington and are being exploited.

• “Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence they have as ‘a lot of it’ and said there is an ‘avalanche coming in every day.’ WikiLeaks and the new emails. They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about accusations of pay-for-play… They are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive.

• “The classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They are having some success — finding what they believe to be new emails, not duplicates, that have been transported through Hillary Clinton’s server.

“Finally, we learned there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that things had been taken from that…

• “There has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch — what she has done or not done,” continued Baier. “She obviously did not impanel, or go to a grand jury at the beginning. They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015. I pressed again and again on this very issue… The investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.”

A meal of his own words

Baier soon found himself having to eat a huge meal consisting of his own words. On Friday November 4, 2016, Baier during a Fox news alert admitted many of the “facts” quoted above were completely and totally false.

“Baier said he relied on a single anonymous source within the FBI for his report about an alleged hack of the server,” the Washington Post reported on November 4, 2016. “’I was quoting from one source about his certainty that the server had been hacked by five foreign intelligence agencies. As of today, there still are no digital fingerprints of a breach, no matter what the working assumption is within the bureau.”

“I explained the phrasing of one my answers to Brit Hume on Wednesday night, saying it was inartful the way I answered the last question about whether the investigations would continue after the election,” the Post further quoted Baier. “And I answered that yes, our sources said it would, they would continue to, likely, an indictment.

“That just wasn’t inartful. It was a mistake and for that I’m sorry. I should have said they will continue to build their case. ‘Indictment,’ obviously, is a very loaded word, Jon, especially in this atmosphere, and no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment, no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is. It’s obviously a prosecutor who has to agree to take the case and make that case to the grand jury.”

Baier’s false allegations quickly made their way to the Internet and conservative columnists. Pat Buchanan devoted a whole column to what Baier said, stating that the Justice Department should make known before the election if Baier’s story was true, so the American people wouldn’t elect Clinton.

Sean Hannity apologizes

One person who was slow to take down from his website Baier’s retracted falsehoods was Fox commentator Sean Hannity. A few days earlier Hannity apologized after he made false remarks on his radio show that President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren had deleted tweets favoring Hillary Clinton.

“Fact is they didn’t,” Hannity later tweeted. “I humbly apologize. Live radio.”

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Oh, girl

November 4, 2016 admin

By Rosalie Tirella

Will Trump win Tuesday, Nov. 8?

Will the electorate go rogue and annoint the crazy one?

Is our hatred for Hillary and all the Clinton baggage so acute and absolute that we’re willing to surrender nuclear codes to Donald Trump? Allow him to nominate Supreme Court Justices? Start a pissing contest with ISIS? Deny global warming as he revives the coal industry?

Who slipped the tabs of acid into our orange Koolaid?

Why are we so freaked out?

Don’t kid yourselves! The nominees are a reflection of our American psychosis! Years of $7/$8 minimum wage, unpaid family leave, hungry American kids (20%), and the fact that Black Lives don’t Matter in America can do that to a country. The jobs have changed, disappeared … workers have lost their homes. We cried out in anguish, but the political elite went right on nibbling their arugula salads. So now we’re having a meltdown and Trump is the symptom of our malady!

“I don’t care,” the OIF said to me, “I’m voting for him.” He – once a tree hugger who voted – twice! – for Jerry Brown is voting for The Donald next Tues. Even though he knows better. He said, with a shake of his hoary head, that Trump was “imploding” what with all his gaffes and gropings, but he was still voting for him. FOR A BIG CHANGE. Something that Hillary/the Clintons can not deliver.

The OIF, like many white, older, blue collar guys loathes Hillary, but he also believes America needs to be shaken to her core. The OIF is no dummy – he was one class short of getting his BA in English Lit, was offered a job on the copy desk of the main daily in Syracuse, and uses words like “impoding.” He can TIG weld, build a house even! AND write beautifully. A true Renaissance Man!

But I digress! The OIF (sorta) represents the group that can make Trump the next POTUS. He has experienced what Trump first talked of, quite movingly, early on in the campaign: job loss, a changing American and global economy. The racism is there too. The OIF has competed for and lost jobs in roofing, painting etc to newer Americans who often used undocumented workers from their homelands to do the labor. They could undercut the OIF’s job bids because they were paying their guys shit wages under the table. Often they were offering their services to customers for 2/3 the price the OIF would charge. The OIF is fully licensed, takes all the required classes$$$ and spends mucho $$$$ following the laws/working within the system. He’s got to charge customers more money to cover his expenses and still make a profit. But he often loses jobs to the cheaters. And this is happening to working guys all over the country. It’s changed their businesses, trashed their standard of living…affected their lives – and made them prejudiced. In the beginning of the election cycle the OIF would say to me – laughing because he thought Trump was funny and entertaining when he watched him on the boob tube – “You know, he’s right about a lot of things.”

How could the rich, cheating, playboy Trump reach into the OIF’s very soul and pluck out his pain? How did narcissist Trump become empathic and feel the OIF’s pain? He’s never been a friend to the working man!

This is the confusing/sad part: America wanting to hang her dreams on Donald Trump – Trump unable to rise to the occasion. Trump imploding.

Yet his supporters still support him. They excuse his bad, his God awful, even criminal behavior, because they love him – and loathe Hillary and the Clinton political dynasty.

Sometimes I wanna go rogue too and color the oval next to Donald Trump on my ballot… I know a president Hillary Clinton will be slightly to the right of President Obama, even though today it seems like she’ll govern from the left. Under a President Clinton things will chug along in America pretty much as they have during these past eight years. Watching her on TV give uninspiring speeches and interact with the press and the people in a robotic way has left me uninspired. Much of America will still be in pain if Hillary Clinton becomes our next president. But choosing Donald Trump isn’t the answer: there will just be more pain.

Animal Issues

We’re always on the outside, inner-city Worcester! MAKE YOUR VOICE COUNT! VOTE!… EARLY VOTING BEGINS TODAY!

October 24, 2016 admin

Rose’s ‘hood, 10/24/2016. pics:R.T.

By Rosalie Tirella

Worcester’s callous cops. Even the young ones! (my experiences with them have hurt me and taught me to fear them)….Our racially segregated public schools, the lilly white teaching staff in our majority-minority school system…as if Black or brown people are incapable of being school teachers…so little REAL outreach done to Moorehouse, Temple etc! VOTE YOUR INTERESTS, INNER-CITY WORCESTER! All the municipal jobs we’ve been denied (with polite smiles) stick in our craws.

On the national “stage” Donald Trump spells THE END of neighborhoods like ours!…With his Supreme Court justices POOR WOMEN will lose reproductive rights. The wealthy and middle class have always had access to safe abortions, tests, procedures!

Trump, a global warmining-denier, will defile, pollute our neighborhoods. Will we be able to see our sky?

Trump will make our streets more dangerous! He will create a police state in our hoods! Poor people have always been king of the streets! Lovely but … violent. The solutions are multi-faceted.

Just last year: Outside my house: I saw the young guy – a kid – reach in the inside of his coat for his gun…I saw my situation in the most intense way! Every second was oceans deep! Infinite. I didn’t – couldn’t – squander precious nanoseconds with the thought: He’s going to shoot me.

He didn’t.

The Blessed Mother shyly praying, in my ivy pot, on my window ledge – was she on my side?

The kid saw, as my car turned the corner into the driveway, that it was just me, ol’ Rose, with her two crazy little dogs Jett and Lilac. Just Rose. And Lilac. And Jett…

His hand fell down, to his side. His shoulders relaxed.

Mine too. I felt safe again.

Police cruisers outside my three decker now, as I write this post. They are always around. Today two vans, white with blue trim…new, courtesy of the Worcester taxpayer? Most cars in my hood are old, except for the luxury vehicles of the top-dog drug dealers. Not the drug runners. They drive crap cars like mine. Or conduct business on foot.

Legalizing marijuana (ballot Q) might take some of the pressure off my hood. We’ll always have the heroin. But with weed, fewer of our kids will land in jail for something that is so NO gateway drug, though potentially dangerous for teens. We cannot arrest our way out of this complex problem. Where are we putting all these lives? In a 10-foot cell!

More Ballot Questions to consider: Like Q 2. I am voting YES. To LIFT THE CHARTER SCHOOL CAP TO ADD UP TO 12 MORE IN MASS.

THERE ARE SEVERAL HUNDRED WORCESTER FAMILIES STILL TRYING TO GET THEIR KIDS INTO A WORCESTER CHARTER SCHOOL!

Too many poor people with their backs against the school yard wall!

Inner-city families, living pay check to food pantry to taxi cab ride to shit apartment…They need MORE GOOD THINGS IN THEIR LIVES…school choice is a good thing. It helps moms and dads make the right choices for their kids and their situations. They know best…Vote your interests, inner-city Worcester!

Q 3: YES TO HUMANE LIVING QUARTERS FOR FARM ANIMALS.

ENSLAVE THE CHICKENS, PIGS and VEAL CALVES, ENSLAVE the poor workers on the factory farms.

The workers must learn and practice abuse, torture…they are stuck in a world of unending fear and pain. They are treated no better than the animals. They too are immersed. In the stench. The disease, the filth …the degradation of God’s handiwork – both man and beast.

Vote YES ON 3.

THE FIVE VOTING LOCATIONS IN WORCESTER: (Early voting begins today and runs through Friday, November 4.)

• Precinct 1: from 8:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday and Oct. 31; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, and 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Unitarian Universalist Church, 90 Holden St.

• Precinct 2: from 8:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Nov. 1; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, and 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Recreation Center, 28 Mulberry St.

• Precinct 3: 8:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Nov. 2; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, and 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Worcester Senior Center, 128 Providence St.

• Precinct 4: 8:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday and Nov. 3, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Clark University, Higgins Center, 950 May St.

• Precinct 5: 8:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday, and 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 4 at Worcester State University, May Street Building, 280 May St.

Unlike Worcester, most Massachusetts cities and towns will allow voting in their city halls or town halls! To vote at Worcester City Hall would have been so convenient for many inner-city Worcester residents! … Next time, Woo!