New Sign, New Constitutional Violation
And someone is upset about the flag photos.
Update 1/18 5pm - Signs on the railings are gone, and the recording signs on the door have been replaced with these.
Worcester City Council has been in the spotlight for transphobia recently.
It’s drawing lines, on who on the council - and in the administration - is ok with what. Between the ceasefire petition, and this, two Councillors have recently announced they are not running again.
Here’s my summary, posted January 16th on Facebook
TLDR: Councilor Nguyen is taking a month hiatus due to transphobia in the workplace, namely being misgendered during meetings by Petty and Toomey, and the public is now hearing that Mero-Carlson has been calling them "It" behind closed doors.
Mero-Carlson has released a response statement which is textbook gaslighting and doesn't even include the word sorry, centers what she thinks she's done instead of acknowledging her impact.
Petty's statement mostly says that he's trying as an old man and corrected himself once during a meeting, doesn't acknowledge how condescending he's been or that he failed to maintain a healthy work environment, and almost tries to justify the transphobia by criticizing Thus "absence" and participation.
Russell has taken the opportunity to announce he's not running for reelection.
Pacillo (District 1) also announced a week later.
Greg Opperman did a great piece for Worcester Sucks and I love it earlier this week
It’s been in a lot of news recently, unfortunately including Fox.
You might notice something consistent about the photos in those aricles.
Trans pride. Nonbinary pride.
The city says nope.
Now, I’m familiar with this one. Mayor Petty asked at the end of the June 25th city council meeting "I just ask that next week we not allow anything on the banisters... nothing be attached to anything in the council room" and that was pretty much directed at me. This was the nicer part of my response at the time.
I sent this to them during the September 17th 2024 meeting, when some old assholes phone wouldn’t stop going off.
The next week, they put up the bottom sign
The top one was added after last meeting, and I can’t help but think this had a part in that
But also, it’s obviously me attaching my Gopro to the railing, and probably also be trying to discourage organizations like RacismfreeWorcesterPublicSchools from Streaming the city council trying to do nothing for Project Priceless. It’s also notable that Worcester City Theater 3000 has been streaming from up there, you can see Bill with his camera in the gallery.
Now, before we go further, I want to briefly touch on Massachusetts recording laws, which is easy because there are none - what is relevant are wiretapping laws, which prohibit secret audio recording. So long as it’s not SECRET it’s legal.
Courtrooms and courthouses are different, and there’s probably a few other expections, and of course private business can tell you to leave for violating their policies, but generally if you hold a phone/gopro up and record with it, you’re fine.
Public meetings, like city council, are even more clear cut, here’s the full section of that part of the Open Meeting law
So, after they added the bottom sign I emailed the clerk
Would you like me to schedule an automatic email for Tuesday evenings at 6:30 notifying you that I will be recording, or is my previous communication sufficient for you?
If I don't receive a response, I will set up the notifications in an effort to comply with your newly implemented notice.
As I told you last week, and said in my public comment today, if you don't apply the rules to one person you can't to another.
Now, generally speaking - the clerk hasn’t given a shit about that. I’ve tried. At one point I was sending regular emails like this, and they haven’t once actually announced it to the public. I’m assuming they think the paper notices are enough, and I guess it technically might be.
But they’re now trying to say that the only place people can record this PUBLIC MEETING is from this teensy area?!?
Appreciated. I did ask for them to figure out a press thing last week.
But not at the cost of everyone else being allowed to record.
This is a blatant violation of the first amendment and open meeting laws, and I will blatantly protest them tomorrow evening.
Fred Nathan’s gonna be pissed that I get his chair.
More importantly, now people cannot put signs right behind the speaker, as they have been, which might be what they’re really trying to prevent.
We’ll find out. I also emailed the state.
