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Somerville City Hall looking into what exactly local affordable-housing board member was doing in Washington during the failed coup

Cambridge Day reports Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone and city councilors expressed alarm today at tweets by Jessica Turner, a board member of a city affordable-housing trust fund who went to Washington earlier this week and at one point tweeted "We have breached the steps."

Turner, who is also a leader of a group representing tenants at the city's Clarendon Hill development, reported that Somerville Police had visited her at her home today. She then set her Twitter and Instagram feeds to private, but Cambridge Day posted some screen captures.

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So, she was a mole?

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These commissions are often chock full of conservatives who believe in "fiscal prudence."

It's no great secret to anyone else in city hall. Mayor Joe is surely "shocked" but damn well knew it.

In my area, the affordable housing commission is mostly local "business leaders." People who are worth millions and have never spent a day even having to worry about ending up in public housing.

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She's a bona fide resident of public housing in Somerville, and holds a seat on the committee intended to represent such residents. She probably does that well, but if she also was part of the DC insurrection mob, she showed sufficiently poor judgment that she should be replaced.

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There are many Somerville townies that have known Turner was a very vocal racist nutjob for years. Only now woke Twitter takes notice of her because of the frenzy to get likes in exposing any nutjob who went to DC.

Meanwhile, a town like Revere still has actual racists on their City Council and yet nothing from the followers of the next shiny thing to get angry about.

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Don't know why you are so focused on Twitter. The issue is what these people did on the sixth, not what their political views were before that. They may very well be nut-jobs but I don't know why you want to filter it all through Twitters role in self-incrimination. The "but what about people on the Revere City Council" is just bizarre.

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Fourteenth Amendment
Section 3
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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I'm not seeing it. Each city and town needs to deal with its own problems.

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Progressive Mayors in towns with townie racists in their city governments? Nah, why be concerned about that?

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We're all feeling the strain, but really, you're not making any sense at all.

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Please stop calling it a “failed coup”, that gives too much credit to everyone involved. It was a bunch of dummies walking around the capitol with no idea what to do. A result of listening to a tiny man try a last gasp tantrum to save face. It was a theater, and there’s a lot of it on my screens these days.

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Are dead

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...haven't seen the video from inside the Capitol. A LOT more than a bunch of dummies walking around. Terrifying to watch. Would you want to trade places with Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence? Perhaps hang out by the 'gallows'? It's a mistake to scoff at these people. I'm glad they are getting rustled up and arrested.

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If someone kicks down your front door and occupies your house, looking to hurt you, what would you call that?

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Kicks down your door, breaks your windows, kills you and sets your shop on fire, what do you call that?

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of "free speech."

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With deflection skills like that, you could be the White House Press Secretary.

While I'm under no obligation to offer an answer before my straightforward question is answered, I will.

I would call that breaking & entering, murder and arson. Probably some other things too, though I'm neither a cop nor a lawyer so I don't know the intricacies of each criminal statute.

Now, my question remains unanswered.

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It was a failed coup and goal was to install Donald Trump as the next President. The mob was literally seconds away from entering both the House and Senate chambers while lawmakers were still inside; the only thing that prevented that were the heroic actions of security staff, specifically the officer who shot that lady to turn back the mob at the House and the officer who faced down a menacing crowd by himself, backing up the stairs armed with nothing but a truncheon, buying enough time to complete the evacuation of the Senate chamber.

This action was planned weeks in advance, to take place during a rare joint session of Congress, one of the only days when so many high-ranking government officials and lawmakers would all be in the same place, and was promoted by Trump himself.

If the actions of the mob had persuaded Pence or Congress to do what Trump was openly demanding, or if the mob had gotten a little further and killed or held hostage federal lawmakers, or if staffers hadn't had the situational awareness to take the certified electoral counts with them when they evacuated and the mob had destroyed them when they reached the Senate chamber, the coup would have been successful.

Yes, most of the people who attended the rally didn't join the mob, and most of the mob probably didn't know they were providing cover for a coup attempt, but that's absolutely what it was. This tactic (inciting a large crowd as cover for a pre-planned coup) has been used in many other countries.

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While there were, as you say, "dummies walking around the Capitol with no idea what to do," there were also well-organized, well-equipped people with military training and tactical gear, methodically going office to office looking for Pence to drag out and hang.

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deliberately downplaying the insurgency for loathsome reasons. Watch the latest footage of the attacks: it's replete with sickening, brutal violence, not just idiots wandering around taking selfies. Stop pretending this was anything but a seditious mob that killed a cop in an effort to overthrow a free and fair election: a straight-up fascist coup attempt.

As someone else noted, their ranks included well-trained and -equipped militiamen with firearms and handcuffs who only managed to miss access to the top 3 Presidential line-of-succession officials by a couple of minutes. This was an effort to decapitate the government.

More and more evidence is emerging that Trump, his campaign operation, and his recently-installed Pentagon cronies (who deliberately delayed deployment of National Guard backups) planned this whole thing in advance.

Take in this clip https://twitter.com/i/status/1348312782299570176 of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick being dragged into a mob and beaten, stripped of his protection and left to die after getting his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher. Then STFU with your idiotic comments about how this was just "theater".

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It never seems to occur to people that this is actually what an insurrection or a coup attempt always looks like from the perspective of people who identify with the perpetrators. The rest of the world sees violent criminals, but the in-group sees regular people with complex motivations. In reality, both perspectives are correct: these are regular people with complex motivations, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an attempted coup or the people participating aren't also simply insurrectionists. It was, and they are.

Many people's (let's be honest: many white people's) instinctive drive to downplay what happened on Wednesday feels like it's the exact same drive that led the Capitol police to plan for "free speech activities" instead of the violent insurrection that was openly plotted on social media.

Whether or not it race is at the root of it, race is a highly visible tribal signifier. A group of white people, be they the insurrectionists this week or the Ammon Bundy at Malheur in 2016, surely are good at heart: fully-fledged people, with families and hopes and dreams, and boiling them down to a single mean word like "insurrectionist" feels like it must be an overstatement.

People like "Over dramatic, much?" anon above and soon-to-be-former Chief of USCP Steven Sund look at the members of the mob and see signals and symbols that mean they understand this group and can trust them: the color of their skin and their political symbols communicate that these are their people, and their people are good, decent folk who can be trusted not to do anything too crazy, even if they might say off-color things or get caught up in the moment sometimes. I've read some USCP officers say as much in the aftermath. This is how people can read or hear direct calls for violence against specific people like "HANG MIKE PENCE" and brush it off as rhetoric, or joking. Surely my people would never say something like that and mean it!

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This was confirmed to be a Metro Police officer and not Capitol Police officer Sicknick, who died from being struck with a fire extinguisher.

This does not change the validity of your well-made point.

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twitter page taken down

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https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/kuf741/video_showing_cult_...

This is a video of these 'patriots' beating a Capitol Hill Police officer to death.

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Fortunately they didn't succeed, but they got a lot closer than I am at all comfortable with.

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Yes, a large crowd of the MAGA invaders are on video loudly chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” I

https://twitter.com/exportedfrommi/status/1347763885646827522?s=21

I loathe Mike Pence but loathe infinitely more the idea of assassinating a sitting Vice President to remedy a political dispute. It’s wild how the calls for his life were coming from his own party and political allies.

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...could be used instead of “coup”. Does that work for you?

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I mean, the whole past 4 years has been a terrifying joke of a failure of an administration, so how could anything that comes out of it be any different?

I see all the losers on the steps, and they definitely are clueless that they are tools, but you may be right: perhaps there are hidden actors using it as cover for nefarious activities. Perhaps this is the way things are actually done all the time. Perhaps there is theater to distract you from the men behind the curtain.

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Honestly, I think that works much better. A "coup" implies a seizure of power. Call me naive, but I don't think that was possible here... maybe I'm just denying that it was possible. A bit too surrealist for this kind of folks.
A violent, insurrectionist riot with notes of sedition seems a bit more disgustingly practical.

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What do yo think those "nice" men would have done if they found AOC or Pelosi? Take them out to dinner and talk about their differences? Wake up.

They stormed the Capitol and took over the seat of our government for hours. Some were armed. 5 people are dead - by their hands. See the video of the cop they murdered? It's not pretty my friend. Every single person there should be tried as a traitor to the US.

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I wonder how many payroll patriots who are still getting their weekly checks including police,fire and teachers many of whom are collecting pensions participated in the failed coup.

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then "we have breached the steps" would mean "we the crowd". It's not illegal to identify with people who are doing something illegal, but... I don't want any of my public officials even *supporting* a violent insurrection.

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I'm not a lawyer, but there must be at least some level of legal RISK you are taking by identifying yourself as part of a group involved in a criminal conspiracy. I don't know that it would amount of culpability, so I can't say that, but I wouldn't go about claiming I was part of a group of criminal terrorists and not expect some scrutiny to follow.

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I’d be interested to know if she can be easily removed or if it will be harder bc it’s a gov position and not a private business.

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like the one I used to have on the Somerville Bicycle Advisory Committee.

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She would have said ‘they’ breached.

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Fourteenth Amendment
Section 3
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

May not cover her position, but it absolutely covers just about anything more.

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if she committed federal felonies she should be let go.

is the cambridge day article correct in saying she doesnt have a college degree ?

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She looks like a real winner. Somerville has a copy of her resume here: https://somervillecityma.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID=11943

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on the surface is honorable and admirable. Not the thing people should be attacking her on imo.

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part of me agrees; but, the other part makes me believe she is a legacy hire since she seems highly unqualified to be the housing commissioner for the most densely populated city in the country (once upon a time).

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But I'm guessing this is position which is either a member of a board (multiple people from various backgrounds and interests) or a position which does not have a lot of authority to make large decisions or manage large public budgets.

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are here.

Jessica Turner is described as "a low-income tenant representative who lives in Somerville," so she holds a seat reserved for a current resident of low-income housing. It is proper for her to have such a seat, which is probably an unpaid volunteer position. However, if she took an oath of office and then participated in an insurrection, she has likely forfeited her right to remain on this committee.

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This resume is the first I’ve ever heard of someone being a volunteer at a towing company.

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Would you criticize someone for volunteering to do used tire and rim distribution work too?

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What does a college degree have to do with any of this?

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i assumed (wrongly) that the requirements for being hired as commissioner of housing for a fairly large municipality would at minimum be a b.a.

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It's an advisory board. She represents residents of affordable housing. She lives in affordable housing so she is eligible to be on the advisory board. The real question is how well does she represent residents, many of whom are people of color, immigrants - the very folks the current occupant of the white house and the mob who invaded the capital hate.

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It states clearly says she is/was on an affordable housing board, which sounds like a typical tenants rights group which she would clearly be qualified for considering her long experience living on the dole.

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A member of a city-appointed committee, probably an unpaid one.

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Look at that resume! 8 years as a landscaper. 3 in a towing co, the most corrupt, all-cash business there is where she claims she was an "unpaid volunteer". Drives to Salem for a tow-truck job. GED 3 years ago. Skills include taking notes and writing emails. I've worked with Somerville Townies before and this really takes me back. I have the sudden urge to go buy a 30 pack of Bud and a pack of Parliaments.

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thumbs up to those correcting me.
similar to when i was in high sckool (joe was just an alder-person then) i served on the youth council where we would discuss things like budgets for the teen center, youth sports, after sckool activities...
i think this was part of the reason somerville had far less youth crime during the 1990's crime epidemic.

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I recall reading, many years ago, articles about how the management and tenants of the Clarendon Hill Towers development had a history of discrimination against certain racial and ethnic groups.

Seems like nothing has changed.

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Clarendon Hill Towers are three tall buildings on the south side of Broadway. I believe they are now a tenant-owned cooperative.

The Clarendon Hill public housing project is separate and is a set of much smaller buildings on the north side of Broadway, behind Stop & Shop and the veterans' cemetery.

Perhaps to avoid confusion, I often hear the latter referred to instead as "the North Street projects".

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There's another not-housing project on Alewife Brook Parkway that a lot of people are confused about. Rindge Towers is privately owned, though it gets a lot of city and federal subsidies.

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