Author: Chloe Jad

  • Labor union protests in Boston, calling for Tufts student to be released from ICE custody

    A union leader led a chant for a crowd of more than 200 people, including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and state Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who gathered in downtown Boston Tuesday evening to protest the arrest of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk by immigration agents.

    “Come for one, face us all,” said David Foley, president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 509. The crowd shouted back: “Free Rümeysa, free them all!”

    Öztürk, a member of Foley’s SEIU local, was surrounded and handcuffed last week by six plainclothes immigration officers and taken in an unmarked SUV near Tufts in Somerville. She is a Turkish national and Fulbright Scholar studying on an F-1 visa. A neighbor’s doorbell camera captured the arrest on video.

    At the rally, held near the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, Wu said, “Boston will never back down to bullies.”

    The mayor, who was recently summoned to Washington, D.C. to be grilled before Congress about Boston’s immigration enforcement policy, on Tuesday said, “We are in dark times.”

    She added, “We are asking unthinkable questions about whether we still live in a democracy with rule of law, where we’re protected for our individuality and our humanity, or if we are living in a time when bullying and intimidation are how our government operates.”

    Öztürk is currently being held at a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. Documents filed in federal court in Boston late Tuesday revealed more of Öztürk’s ordeal in ICE custody. On the day of her arrest, agents picked her up at about 5:15 p.m., took her to Methuen, then to Lebanon, New Hampshire, and finally to an ICE field office in St. Albans, Vermont, at 10:28 p.m.

    A federal judge in Boston issued an order that night that Öztürk not be moved from Massachusetts. But it was already too late; she was being held in Vermont by then. At 4 a.m. the next day, ICE took her to the Burlington International Airport and flew her to Louisiana, arriving at 2:35 p.m., court records show.

    Prosecutors are defending the detainment of Öztürk, arguing in the federal court filing Tuesday that the Massachusetts court does not have jurisdiction in the case.

    State Attorney General Andrea Campbell, speaking at the rally, called this moment a “constitutional crisis.”

    “It’s not an on or off switch, it’s the turning of a dial,” Campbell said, “and we’re heading in a very dangerous direction, if what can happen to Rümeysa can remain and can stand without us organizing and mobilizing every single day. So you better believe I’m unafraid. Bring it on.”

    Boston was one of at least a dozen cities where union members held rallies Tuesday. Many state senators and city council members attended the rally downtown. A group of Öztürk’s peers and friends spoke in turn about her academic excellence and community contributions, demanding her return.

    Laura Beretsky, a Somerville resident and grant writer for MIT, said it was important to stand up for anybody detained by the government without due process. She wore a pin that said, “Dissent is Patriotic.”

    “If we don’t stand up, it’s not long before they’ll come after the rest of us, too, just because we express a view that is not in line with the current administration’s,” Beretsky said.

    Steven Thomas, another Somerville resident who works for MIT’s alumni association, expressed outrage: “This is not the country that I think I live in,” Thomas said. “And now I do. I’m furious. They snatched a young woman off the street. No due process.”

    He said there’s danger of a slippery slope. “It’s all sending the message: you’re at risk, so keep your mouth shut,” he said.

    In another arrest of a union member, SEIU Local 925’s Lewelyn Dixon, a University of Washington lab technician and legal green card holder, was detained at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, returning from a trip to the Philippines in late February.

    SEIU President April Verrett said the union is not going to be silent.

    “Let us use our power to build the America that we were promised, the one that they are trying to snatch away from our dreams,” she said.

    Verrett also talked about the concept of freedom.

    “We dealt with the dreams deferred too long,” Verrett said. “We’ve got to seize this moment and make it ours. We’re right here. We’re not backing down. We want Rümeysa back. We want Lewelyn Dixon back. We want every single person who has been detained. We want them back.”

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Library services threatened by Trump funding cuts

    By

    Anna Rubenstein

    and

    Chloe Jad

    Boston Public Library president David Leonard said he worries about future funding and hopes Congress will act to preserve the Institute of Museums and Library Services. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

    Libraries across Massachusetts are worried about how they’ll provide vital services such as interlibrary loans, e-books and access to databases in the wake of an executive order President Trump signed Monday.

    The state gets $3.6 million in federal funding for library services, and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners distributes that money to local libraries to supplement their budgets. This funding pipeline was disrupted this week when Trump ordered the entire staff of the Institute of Museums and Library Services to be placed on paid leave for 90 days, effectively halting the processing of grant dollars.

    Maureen Amyot, director of the state library board, said concern had been building since the Trump administration’s first pause on federal funding in January, but she and her colleagues were still shocked when Monday’s executive order came down.

    Amyot and her board worry they’ll have to cut funding to local libraries if the federal money doesn’t start flowing again soon. Any cuts would disrupt services that libraries must provide to the public under state law, she said.

    Local libraries are primarily funded by local property taxes to operate, but they depend on federal dollars to pay for statewide services, like databases and e-books, that interconnect every library. Without those federal dollars, libraries would not be able to afford those services on their own, and the state would not be able to make up the difference, Amyot said.

    While the order leaves the grants in limbo, Amyot said, the staff also wonders what will come next from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is firing workers across federal agencies.

    “It’s such a fluid situation right now – everything is changing – that we’re just sort of in a holding pattern,” she said.

    Libraries across the state are awaiting word from the Massachusetts library board about funding cuts or delays. Their level of concern varies depending on how much they rely on federal money. In a community like Waltham, the public library is fully funded by the city, while federal funding helps pay for staff salaries in Amherst.

    All libraries rely on federal funding — which is passed through the state board — to finance a host of services. One of the biggest concerns is for the interlibrary loan system, a digital catalog that allows people to request books, DVDs and other materials from other libraries in the state, saving money and shelf space for their home library.

    Libraries can also apply directly for funding through the state library board’s three grant categories — Explore, Impact and Inspire — provided by IMLS’s federal dollars. Before Monday’s executive order, Amyot said the board was set to award 18 libraries with smaller “Explore Grants,” which come in $4,000 and $7,500 checks totaling $93,000 in awards. They allow smaller libraries to implement things like English learning classes, citizenship resources and preservation services.

    Jean Canosa Albano, assistant director at Springfield City Library, said her library is scheduled to receive one of those grants. It would help purchase materials for people who want to gain U.S. citizenship and improve English language skills, highly desirable resources in her community.

    Now, they have to wait.

    “If we did not have [MBLC’s] expertise or the services they help provide, we would not be able to quickly rush in and fill that void that will be left,” Albano said. “We don’t have those funds elsewhere.”

    Another concern is funding for information access. That’s secured through June 30, but librarians worry about how they’ll pay for databases and subscriptions after that date, especially for patrons who can’t afford to subscribe to periodicals they enjoy. The impact is expansive: Last year, Massachusetts residents downloaded over 9 million texts, according to the MLBC, and 60% of database usage comes from schools.

    “These databases are not only for researchers but also for families who are going to buy their next car [looking] up Consumer Reports,” said Sharon Sharry, director of Jones Library in Amherst. “It’s the way people can afford information.”

    The statewide e-book and summer reading programs are also paid for with federal funding, and many libraries say they would not be able to fund them locally.

    Boston Public Library has received several hundred thousand dollars to support things like curriculum development and digitization of resources, such as an online high school program for adults. BPL president David Leonard said he worries about funding for next year and hopes Congress will act to preserve IMLS.

    “Is this something that Congress can act on, because support for libraries and museums nationwide has generally been a very bipartisan act?” Leonard said. “We just don’t know.”

    Librarians hope politicians representing Republican-leaning states will step up to protect funding. In response to Trump’s initial order for IMLS to be “eliminated to the maximum extent,” a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to the administration defending federal funding for both cultural institutions.

    “We are so lucky to live in Massachusetts, where library services are supported by our state officials,” Sharry said. “On the flip side, we are kind of left preaching to the choir … What we really need are people in the red states to advocate.”

    Andrea Fiorillo, head of public services at the Reading Public Library, said her library is using a $20,000 grant for a program called “Rooted in Reading,” which explores community gardening. She pointed out that federal funding for libraries constitutes a miniscule portion of the federal budget.

    “That comes out to about 87 cents per person per year,” said Fiorillo, who co-chairs the Massachusetts Library Association’s intellectual freedom committee. “What libraries turn around for our communities with that little bit of funding is almost miraculous. We take our tiny little bit and we just create these vibrant community centers.”

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Lawyers in Boston protest Trump administration on National Law Day

    Protesters listen to a speech at the National Law Day of Action protest at the Parkman Bandstand. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)

    More than 200 lawyers and advocates protested attacks on law firms and the norms of due process by the Trump administration on Boston Common Thursday.

    “The rule of law is not abstract,” said Matthew McTygue, president of the Boston Bar Association. “It’s the backbone of civil society.”

    In 40 cities across the country, legal professionals and advocates rallied against the administration’s unprecedented orders against law firms and its deportation actions against lawful U.S. residents, including students, at times without due process.

    Since 1958, May 1 has been recognized as National Law Day. This year, in response to the Trump administration’s targeting of law firms, the Lawyers for Good Government organization sponsored a nonpartisan “National Law Day of Action.”

    Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general and chairman of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, called the administration’s actions against law firms “extortion.” Harshbarger told WBUR last week his biggest concern is that “these major, major law firms bent the knee, obeyed in advance, sacrificed their tradition and honor” in order to avoid conflict with Trump.

    In Boston, 10 bar associations from around the state sponsored the rally held at the Parkman Bandstand.

    Tara Dunn Jackson, president of the Massachusetts Black Women Attorneys association, said in a speech that individual lawyers still have responsibility to uphold the law, even if their firms have cut deals with Trump.

    “You’re not off the hook because some of your law firms are putting their heads in the sand,” Jackson said to the crowd, “because you took the oath to protect democracy.”

    All speakers echoed the same general message: due process must be upheld. The crowd of legal professionals was responsive — quick to whistle, hiss, boo or crack a joke at each statement.

    Former Supreme Judicial Court Clerk for Suffolk County Maura Doyle speaks to a crowd at the National Law Day of Action protest. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)
    Former Supreme Judicial Court Clerk for Suffolk County Maura Doyle speaks to a crowd at the National Law Day of Action protest. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)

    Cynthia Granata waved a cardboard sign painted with the Doge meme dog and the words “BAD DOGE GET PUT DOWN,” referring to Trump’s cost-cutting unit led by billionaire Elon Musk. Granata is a lawyer, and so is her daughter.

    “We’re watching an evisceration of the Constitution,” Granata said. “There seems to be an arrogation of power in one branch of a three-branch government.”

    Maura Doyle, the recently retired Supreme Judicial Court clerk for Suffolk County, was met with whistles and applause as she took the megaphone to close out the rally.

    She asked the Massachusetts lawyers in the crowd to raise their right hand, and repeat after her to renew their oaths to the state and national constitutions.

    Cynthia Granata raises her right hand while symbolically renewing the lawyer's oath of office at a protest on Boston Common. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)
    Cynthia Granata raises her right hand while symbolically renewing the lawyer’s oath of office at a protest on Boston Common. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)

    A sea of voices responded, including Joan Ruttenberg, who jokingly referred to herself as a “recovering lawyer.” A graduate of Harvard Law, she is now a government and public interest career advisor at the school. She said renewing the oath was moving.

    “It felt very, very meaningful,” Ruttenberg said. “I could really listen to the words this time. They really mean a lot in this environment and in this moment. And I felt very proud to swear the oath again.”

    A crowd of lawyers symbolically renew their lawyer's oath of office at a protest on Boston Common. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)
    A crowd of lawyers symbolically renew their lawyer’s oath of office at a protest on Boston Common. (Chloe Jad/WBUR)

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Pass the Easter dinner rolls, please: A nutritionist’s take on what to eat — and avoid — ahead of the Boston Marathon

    One runner digs into a bowl of beef and sweet potatoes when training to run 26.2 miles. Another pops a pair of Pop-Tarts before long runs.

    Training for a marathon is as much about eating as it is about exercising. Nailing nutrition, or “fueling,” comes down to science — and timing. Boston Marathon spectators even might notice athletes fueling during the race next Monday.

    But are carbohydrate-dense foods the answer to a good race? What other foods are marathoners eating before the big day? What should they be eating? And what should they be eating if they celebrate Easter, which falls the Sunday before the marathon this year?

    Nutritionist and serial marathoner Carol Sullivan confirmed: Carbs are king.

    “Your body will take either white table sugar or berries or a sweet potato or jelly beans — that’ll all get turned into blood glucose,” Sullivan explained, “and that will get stored in your liver and in your muscles as glycogen.”

    The body taps these glycogen stores for energy to burn when exercising. Keeping these stores full is ideal pre-marathon. Most people underestimate the amount of carbohydrates their body needs, Sullivan said.

    Typically, she said, carbohydrates might take up 40% of calories in a regular diet, but when it comes time for a “26.2 effort,” that carb percentage should rise to 60% of caloric intake. Another way to measure the ideal carb-load is based on individual weight: eat eight to 10 grams of carbs per kilogram. To put that in perspective, for a 130-pound (59 kilogram) person, that would be about 10 cups of pasta for the day.

    Sullivan suggests runners stick to only familiar foods the day before the marathon. “They should also be eating foods that are very high carbohydrate, low fat and low fiber,” she said. “None of the traditional Easter foods make this cut, except for the dinner rolls.”

    As a clinical dietician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a former college athlete, Sullivan is running her ninth Boston Marathon this year. She shared some tips for specific foods to eat and avoid, whether it’s on your Easter dinner table or pulled from your pantry.

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    • Beets. They are rich in nitric oxide, which helps improve blood flow, aiding in delivering nutrients and oxygen to working muscles.
    • Fatty fish. Salmon, tuna and sardines are all great sources of Omega-3 fatty acids, known to promote heart and brain health, and act as anti-inflammatories for muscle pain.
    • Caffeine. This is one of the few proven performance-enhancing stimulants. “We love caffeine,” Sullivan said. Stick to the suggested 3-6 mg of caffeine per kilogram of your weight since it can cause unwanted gastrointestinal issues. And definitely don’t experiment with caffeine for the first time on race day!
    • Hydration is also a key part of fueling, and sodium is an electrolyte that acts like a water magnet for our cells. For sodium-rich hydration, Sullivan confirmed pickle juice does work.

    When it comes to traditional Easter meals…

    • Put down the mashed potatoes. Fats and fibers take more energy and time to digest than carbohydrates, so runners should look for low-fat, low-fiber and high-carb foods. Mashed potatoes are usually loaded with butter and sour cream, so opt for a baked potato or sweet potato.
    • Ham is high in fat, but roast chicken is a lower-fat substitute.
    • Eat vegetables and other high fiber foods at your own risk. While vegetables are great for you every other day of the year, any high fiber foods put you at risk of needing a bathroom stop mid-race. If you do opt for some veggies like carrots, be sure to cook them with oil instead of butter.
    • Skip the wine and opt for tart cherry juice instead. Sullivan recommends it for muscle recovery because the juice is rich in antioxidants and an anti-inflammatory called anthocyanin. Before a high-performance race, it’s best to stay away from alcohol, so she suggests enjoying it in a wine glass.

    While there are basic guidelines to follow, ultimately what people eat before their big race is truly personal. So, we asked a few local marathoners what they’ve been fueling up with during training, too.

    Bridget Leahy, 33, Salem

    Bridget Leahy prioritizes protein in her lunch and swears by an internet-viral protein bowl: ground beef, sweet potatoes, avocado and cottage cheese with hot honey. The day before long runs she has two big protein bowls. She hydrates with LMNT electrolyte drink mix — “one of my big things that I have every day, that I truly think that I will do for the rest of my life,” Leahy said.

    She realized fueling and hydration begins at the beginning of the week, not the night before her long Saturday runs. She downs carb-rich Gu or Edge gel packets every 4 to 5 miles. Salt tablets help her from cramping. Her carb load happens on Thursdays — and she swears the chicken saltimbocca from a restaurant on her route is her good luck.

    Leahy, who has a 16-month-old son, is running for Tufts Medical Center in support of its pioneering postpartum research. She works as an emergency room technician in Salem Hospital and is a member of the National Guard. This is her first marathon.

    Jason Venkat Bhardwaj, 42, West Newton

    Jason Venkat Bhardwaj keeps it simple.

    “I just kind of eat normally,” Bhardwaj, who’s run a dozen marathons including six Bostons, said. “I’m a big believer in, like, don’t change the formula a lot.”

    But he said he takes race day and in-race nutrition “pretty seriously.” Among his rules: Don’t eat anything greasy, don’t drink beer in the week before the race and get enough sleep. Taking a page out of the book “Hansons Marathon Method,” Bhardwaj doesn’t see much benefit in carbo loading.

    “I think part of the training is like your body gets used to storing a certain amount of glycogen from your normal diet,” he said.

    So instead, he leans into hydration. Sometimes, he drinks beet juice. He prefers half a cup of coffee on race day.

    On Monday, Bhardwaj will be in the first runners’ corral, with a 10 a.m. start time. Around 5 a.m., he said he’ll have a regular breakfast, like half an English muffin with peanut butter and some dry cereal. Before the race, a banana and Triscuits. And once he gets going, he’ll alternate between the caffeinated and decaffeinated Maurten gels every 5 miles.

    Trevor Hodde, 35, Uxbridge

    Trevor Hodde is staying true to his regular balanced diet. He learned his lesson.

    On Hodde’s 21-mile training run, he baked a batch of Kodiak protein muffins, knowing this run was the closest to the real marathon he was going to get; he wanted to carb up. But he said he felt heavy on his run.

    He said he likes Propel water for its electrolytes, sodium and potassium, and sometimes drinks LMNT electrolyte mixes while running.

    Hodde has been running since high school, and has run a few half marathons and triathlons, but this is his first marathon. He is running for the Boston Children’s Hospital’s Miles for Miracles Team.

    Seetal Ahluwalia, 23, Brighton

    Seetal Ahluwalia has a more colorful approach to carbs.

    Before a long run, she eats two Pop-Tarts — particularly the s’mores flavor — and while running she reaches for the occasional handful of Scandinavian Swimmers gummy candy from Trader Joe’s. The sour ones keep her mouth from getting dry, she said.

    Those quick sugars have worked well for her so far. On her runs, she alternates between caffeinated and decaffeinated Gu energy gels. On warmer days, she also takes SaltStick electrolyte chews to stay hydrated. She added that she also believes a chicken cutlet sub of any kind is “rewarding and satiating” after a long run.

    Ahluwalia picked running back up during the pandemic as a casual form of self-care. Running the Boston Marathon was on her Boston bucket list before finishing her master’s degree in the city. She’s repping Team Red Cross.

    As for the Pop-Tarts?

    “I stole it from people on TikTok, and it worked out,” she said.

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • New plan for a resurrected Great Scott comes with housing

    Allston’s atrophied “Rock City” might get its beating heart back — and Bostonians seem to be all in.

    Legendary live music club Great Scott, shuttered by the pandemic since May 2020, is being reimagined down the street from its original location. This time, live music comes with new housing.

    The city invited the public to submit written comments about the plan, and nearly all of the 372 comments that were filed voiced support for it. Many reminisced about the shows they saw over the years at Great Scott, where artists such as local bands Pile and Speedy Ortiz, Phoebe Bridgers, MGMT and Grimes have all played.

    “Our business model, where we are the landlord and the tenant, is a great model to bring this back and make sure that it lasts for the long term,” said Jordan Warshaw, one of the project’s three developers.

    The plan calls for Great Scott to be resurrected in the former Stingray Body Art at 1 Harvard Ave., next to the club’s old sister venue O’Brien’s Pub. The developers bought those buildings as well as a recording studio and two-story home on the same block. They plan to demolish all of them and erect a nine-story building that would put 139 apartments above the two clubs.

    Warshaw said the team expects to break ground six to eight months after approval, which they hope they will get this spring. Construction of the two music venues is expected to take at least a year and the apartments about 18 months.

    Many Boston-area music venues have died in recent years, like Rockwood Music Hall’s abrupt closure in Fenway last year and Atwood’s Tavern in East Cambridge in 2023. Great Scott’s original spot at 1222 Commonwealth Ave. is now a Taco Bell Cantina.

    With a 300-person capacity, the new Great Scott would hit the Goldilocks niche of music venues — not too big, not too small — that local musicians and music fans say Boston severely lacks. Plus, a green room would be available for artists to relax in before and after shows, complete with showers and laundry machines, something the old venue never had. O’Brien’s Pub would be rebuilt with a stage and a capacity of 75 people.

    Above the new Great Scott, separated by an acoustical barrier, 115 studio apartments and 24 one-bedroom units would rise nine floors high at the entrance of Allston, where Harvard Avenue and Cambridge Street meet. About 24 units would be designed as affordable. The building would have no parking except three ride-sharing spots and 209 spaces for storing bikes.

    Carl Lavin, who booked shows for Great Scott from 2003 until its closing, crowdfunded $300,000 to save the venue. To make the revival a reality, Lavin partnered with Paul Armstrong — producer of the Boston Music Awards, publisher of online music magazine Vanyaland and CEO of the media company Redefined — and Warshaw, president of the Noannet Group, who provides real estate expertise.

    The Great Scott redevelopment proposal is in the review stage, during which the developers get feedback from the public and the city agencies that measure and regulate the project’s impact. It needs the approval of Boston’s transportation, planning, and fire departments as well as its Interagency Green Building Commission.

    A document with public comments from the project’s 39-day comment period was published on the city’s website in mid-March. Responses were sorted into three categories: “support,” “oppose” and “neutral.” An overwhelming majority voiced support. Of 372 entries, 362 were in support, six in opposition and four neutral.

    “We’ve got a lot of support,” Warshaw said, “and we’re hoping that we will make it to the board approval stage very soon, and then get into the agreement stage very soon after that.”

    One email of support came from Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economics professor, who said he is a passionate live music fan.

    “As an economist, I think that having a reopened Great Scott will be a major economic contributor to the area,” Gruber wrote. “As a music lover, I know it will make many Boston area residents lives much richer.”

    Gruber wrote that Great Scott was a “vital part” of his history in Boston, and that he contributed to Lavin’s fund to help save the venue.

    Another supporter, Kristofer Thompson, wrote, “I’m just a library assistant at Tufts University, but I personally invested $3,000 in their plan because I couldn’t imagine the Boston scene without Great Scott in it.”

    Opposition to the project cited concerns about traffic congestion, the lack of parking, and gentrification and “yuppification” — the process of making neighborhoods more attractive to young urban professionals. Some complained expecting a high cost of concert tickets, or said they worried that the new Great Scott would lack the original’s grittiness.

    Great Scott’s developers presented the project at a virtual public meeting hosted by the Boston Planning Department in late February, where many local musicians said the city’s music scene is in dire condition and needs a place like Great Scott.

    Dan Moffat, a sound engineer and lead vocalist and guitarist for The Collect Pond band, attended the meeting and said the project must happen. What is left of the music venues still standing in the area is at best “flimsy,” he said, and the similarly sized Deep Cuts, a brewery and live music venue in Medford, is too far away.

    “I gotta cross two rivers to get there,” he said. “We need stuff where people are.”

    Moffat said Great Scott has “so much goodwill and street cred” to cash in after 44 years, which will pay off with great lineups “night after night.”

    “People are going to be climbing over themselves to want to play a venue like that, so the booker is going to have their pick,” he said.

    Babak Veyssi, owner of the Peridot apartment building next door, came forward in the meeting to oppose the project. Veyssi said although he is pro-development, he will do everything he can to stop the project because the nine-story building would cast a shadow that would “chill” his 32-unit building.

    Cullen Deimer, a housing advocate with the recently formed Allston Brighton Housing Action who attended the virtual meeting, called it “the perfect project” that addresses both the city’s housing crisis and Allston’s live-music attrition.

    Concerns over the project’s lack of parking don’t bother Deimer, who lives in Brighton with his wife and without a car.

    “A lot of people just like having their affordable, livable unit, close to all the things they need to go to,” he said, “and they don’t need too many more bells and whistles on top of that.”

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Meet Clube Desportivo Faialense, the amateur Mass. soccer team headed to the U.S. Open Cup

    The best team in the Bay State Soccer League doesn’t hold tryouts.

    Clube Desportivo Faialense, the back-to-back victor of the league’s Division I championships, builds out its bench by word of mouth, a vetting process that players say safeguards the team’s chemistry.

    Nearly every member can trace his joining CD Faialense to another player. Players are added when someone in the club says he “knows a guy” — a friend or former teammate or opponent — and says, “Come hang out on Saturday, pass the ball around.”

    “If someone is really good, but they’re gonna disrupt the basis of what we do, it’s better to just not have them,” said Lucas Rezende, the team’s starting goalkeeper. “Because if you come to a game and you hang around after, you’re gonna realize. You’re gonna be like, ‘I can’t believe these guys play soccer.’”

    This year, the tight-knit amateur club will makes its debut in the 110th U.S. Open Cup, the nation’s oldest soccer tournament.

    In its first round, the Cup pits 32 amateur teams against 32 pros, the only U.S. team sports competition that gives amateurs the opportunity to play against professionals. CD Faialense will take on Maine’s new Division III professional outfit, the Portland Hearts of Pine, in a single-elimination tournament Thursday.

    For the men of CD Faialense, having fun with friends is at least as important as winning. After every match, coach Paul Correia gives a bottle of champagne and a black cowboy hat to the best performer. Then, for hours after the final whistle, the parking lot buzzes as the guys joke, crack beers and discuss life.

    By no means do the chill vibes take away from the guys’ competitive edge. They play to win.

    “We want to win. We’re there to win,” said Rezende, who works in property insurance. “I tell the guys all the time before the games, I’m like, ‘we got up at 7 a.m. — might as well win this.’ Like we’re not gonna get up that early to lose.”

    The roster includes 40 men representing a dozen countries.

    “I feel like that’s an advantage of having that many people from all around the world,” said Josue Ruiz, a civil engineer who’s been with the club for seven years. “The soccer IQ is very high within the team.”

    Most are former Division I college athletes — from Holy Cross, Duke, Harvard, University of New Hampshire, UMass and Merrimack College — where many were honored as All-Americans, or exceptional athletes.

    Now, many are married with kids, and all have full-time jobs. For the Cup this week, only 18 club players can make the roster.

    Ruiz was invited to join the team just as he was finishing his senior year at Merrimack.

    “Ever since then, every Saturday I just showed up to have fun, have a couple beers after the games with my teammates, and as the time kept going, the team got better,” Ruiz said. “And then fast forward to now. We just win on and off the field.”

    Coach Correia attributes the team’s no-stress environment to a lack of egos — something rare when players are this good.

    “All these players could play the whole game for any team they want to in the division,” Correia said, “but they choose to play on this team even though they’re sharing minutes.”

    The road to the Cup

    CD Faialense’s roots go back more than 50 years.

    Correia’s grandfather immigrated in 1976 from Terceira Island in the Azores. He joined a community of people from Faial, another island in the Azores, who settled in East Cambridge and eventually formed a soccer team in 1972.

    In 1984, the men bought the building at 1121 Cambridge St. in Inman Square and turned it into Clube Desportivo Faialense — a social club, event hall, bar and restaurant that serves as the team’s home base.

    The team faded away sometime in the 1990s. In recent years, Francisco Correia, the club’s president and Paul Correia’s father, decided he wanted to bring soccer back to the club. Paul, a Merrimack College alum, told his father he knew some guys who would be interested — a club team he had recently joined with many of his fellow alumni.

    One of those players was Felipe Guimaraes, who has been with the team the longest at 12 years. He joined when it was called the Portuguese American Club of Lawrence and playing in Division III. He saw it become Merrimack Valley United FC and finally CD Faialense, when the Correias sponsored the team in 2023. He said qualifying for the Cup was “the cherry on top” of more than a decade of work.

    The team won its first division title in fall 2023 against Boston Street Futbol Club, a semi-professional team that plays a league above CD Faialense. Rezende said the only people who believed the team could beat Boston Street FC at the time were the players themselves.

    “They were training four or five days a week, and then they’re playing us amateurs who get together on Saturday mornings and drink beers after 90 minutes,” Rezende joked. “And I think the thought was that they were just going to run over us.”

    CD Faialense took the semi-professional team into overtime and won in penalty kicks.

    “I texted my mom after the game, and I was like, ‘Mom, I know I’m 27, But that was the most fun game I’ve ever played in,’” said Eoin Houlihan, who joined the team in 2019. “Because it was like you got the joy back when you were a little kid.”

    Gold trophies, old photos and a framed 2023 jersey from the team’s first league title now sit in the window of the club on Cambridge Street.

    CD Faialense qualified for the U.S. Open Cup on its second try, in November, after winning its second consecutive league Division I championship. Paul “Polo” Mayer, a top scorer, flew in from his home in France to help his team qualify.

    Coach Correia knows Thursday’s match will require the team to play better than ever. He said the guys are excited.

    “We have a really cool opportunity in front of us with this Open Cup game to do something pretty special.”

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • How Boston-area cinemas snagged ‘No Other Land’

    A still from the documentary “No Other Land.” (Courtesy Antipode films)

    If you don’t want to see it, don’t come.

    That’s Katherine Tallman’s philosophy about “No Other Land,” the divisive, Oscar-winning documentary showing at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre, where she is executive director and CEO.

    “We didn’t go out and look for this film because it was controversial,” Tallman said. “It’s a good film. It aligns with our mission. It’s something we would do. So we showed it.” The opening-night screening — in the Coolidge’s largest, 440-seat cinema — sold out.

    “No Other Land” pulled off the unusual feat of winning the Oscar for best documentary this month despite having no U.S. distributor. The independent film, about Israel’s destruction of villages in the West Bank, was directed by a team of Palestinians and Israelis and has been met with controversy. No major U.S. distributor would touch it, presumably because of its criticism of Israel.

    As a result, the film has shown in few theaters around the United States. So it is perhaps a surprise that it is now playing at two Boston-area cinemas: Coolidge Corner Theatre and West Newton Cinema. It also screened at the Regent Theatre in Arlington in October.

    The Coolidge Corner Theatre on Harvard Street in Brookline. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

    To make “No Other Land,” a collective of four directors — Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, who are Palestinian, and Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor, who are Israeli — captured nearly 2,000 hours of footage from 2019 to October 2023. The film bears witness to the Israeli military’s destruction of Adra’s homeland, Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, by claiming the land as military training grounds.

    Abraham said in January that distributors’ reluctance to take on the film was “something that’s completely political.”

    “We’re obviously talking about the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, and it’s very ugly,” Abraham told Variety. “The conversation in the United States appears to be far less nuanced — there is much less space for this kind of criticism, even when it comes in the form of a film.”

    Small independent theaters, like the Coolidge Corner Theatre and West Newton Cinema, stepped up to screen the film.

    Tallman said the film has had great audience reception so far, and that the theater will keep showing it as long as people want to see it — or until they have to make room for new films. She said she received one “really unpleasant” email from a patron who questioned why the Coolidge would screen the film, declaring they would never come again.

    Connie White, the theater’s longtime booker and the former owner of the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, is also the programming director for the Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia. White saw an advance screening of the “No Other Land,” which she featured in the October festival, and knew the Coolidge Corner Theatre would be interested.

    “No Other Land” premiered at the West Newton Cinema last Friday and was the second-best performer over the weekend, behind Sean Baker’s Oscar-sweeping “Anora.” Elizabeth Heilig, president of the West Newton Cinema Foundation, said theater staff have been thanked on the way out by patrons for showing the film. Some said the film was difficult to watch but important for people to see.

    “We’re very happy to be showing the film,” Heilig said. “There’s certainly a great diversity of opinions about the Israel-Gaza conflict, and that diversity exists in Newton and in the Greater Boston community, for sure. We want to provide people who want to see the film an opportunity to see it, and we want people to be able to make up their own minds about it.”

    West Newton will screen the film until at least next week.

    Kim Kronenberg and Allen Taylor of Brookline are co-directors of the nonprofit Science Training Encouraging Peace, which pairs health and computer science graduates — one from either Gaza or West Bank, and one from Israel — to partner in research. They saw “No Other Land” at the Coolidge, and Kronenberg said it was a disturbing film but one that should be seen.

    “Especially this moment in time where America is encouraging or endorsing the most right-wing elements in Israel to do whatever they want in the West Bank, I think it’s a cautionary tale in that it allows people to see what really happens when you take other people’s land and how well received you are or you aren’t,” Taylor said. “The film forces you to think about, what’s the problem there? Why is there constant conflict?”

    “No Other Land” had its world premiere at the 2024 Berlinale, or Berlin International Film Festival, and won the Berlinale Documentary Award as well as the Panorama Audience Award. The film found distribution in 24 countries outside the U.S., including France and Britain.

    To reach U.S. screens, the ‘No Other Land’ team worked with Cinetic Media, a film financing and distribution company, alongside independent distributor Michael Tuckman, who books individual theaters and has worked with the Coolidge for years. White booked the film through Tuckman.

    So far, “No Other Land” is the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s seventh highest grossing film of 2025, a fiscal year that began November 1, 2024. The two leaders are “The Brutalist” and “Nosferatu.”

    “We’ve grossed like over $200,000 on ‘The Brutalist’ and ‘Nosferatu’, and we’ve grossed close to $50,000 on [‘No Other Land’],” Tallman said, “but in a short period of time, and at a time, pre-Oscars, when not that many people really knew about it.”

    After the film’s premiere at the Coolidge in early February, panelists hosted a discussion about it.

    “And so if there was going to be any kind of, like, big showdown controversy, it would have happened there,” Tallman said, “and there wasn’t, I think, because our audiences in general are — they’re curious. They’re balanced. They know what they don’t know.”

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This story has been updated to include that “No Other Land” also screened at the Regent Theatre in Arlington in October.