A celebration of City Council candidates endorsed by the Cambridge Citizens Coalition was interrupted Sunday by dozens of demonstrators who rallied outside. They protested the endorsement of Robert Winters and Carrie Pasquarello, who have received backlash for use of social media seen as transphobic, racist and Islamophobic.
The rally was organized by the Boston Democratic Socialists of America to encourage condemnation of Winters and Pasquarello by other candidates as well as urge the CCC to drop their endorsement. The protesters congregated at Inman Square Plaza at 4 p.m. and marched to 23 Fayette St., where the event was taking place, a half-hour later.
Attention toward Winters’ social media activity was raised at a Tuesday forum hosted by the Harvard Graduate Student Union, where a student asked Winters about his liking of several transphobic tweets. Two folders of screenshots of Winters and Pasquarello’s online activities were included in an online sign-up form the DSA created for the rally. Images of the posts were also printed on fliers distributed before the protest with “Do these people represent you?” asked at the top.
The protesters occupied the sidewalk across from the celebration, raising protest signs while chanting “Drop Rob, Drop Carrie!” and “When trans rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” Among them was Dan Totten, a candidate who has condemned Winters publicly.
The first in a succession of confrontations between protesters and event attendees occurred when Sara Mae Berman, host of the celebration, confirmed with the protesters that her private property would not be encroached on. During the interaction, Totten asked “Why won’t you reject hate, Sara? Why won’t you condemn it?”
“I don’t agree with what you’re saying,” Berman said. “I’ve known the person you’re talking about for many many years. I think you probably either made it up or conjured it up or something.”
Other celebration attendees who are longtime friends of Winters implied similar claims of fabrication and falsification. Renee Marie Chipman, a course assistant for Winters at the Harvard University Extension School, believes artificial intelligence could’ve faked the tweets.
“I’m very bothered when people spread lies and give wrong characterizations of someone because it’s slanderous, it’s liable, it’s false. They’re making it up, maybe using an AI chat box to try to portray him a certain way that would go with their agenda,” Chipman said in an interview at the event.
Focus on one candidate
In regard to what that “agenda” may be, Chipman suggested that she believes Totten orchestrated lies about Winters and Pasquarello to gain an election advantage.
“I think Dan Totten wants to get rid of as many of his challengers as possible. So if he can spread enough lies about a given challenger, then he thinks that he’s going to encourage his success,” Chipman said.
Berman agreed with Chipman and added: “It perverts the meaning of democracy when people tell lies about candidates for their own advantage.”
Candidates and elected officials who have condemned Winters alongside Totten are Ayah Al-Zubi, Ayesha Wilson, Vernon Walker, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, Burhan Azeem, Marc McGovern and Quinton Zondervan.
Azeem, a current city councillor, released a statement about Winters last Friday on X.
“His contributions in the past in no way make acceptable any of these behaviors, which should be unequivocally condemned in our community,” Azeem said.
Still, comments at the event and online have been focused solely on Totten.
Complaints go back a year
Complaints about Winters’ online activities also date back to at least June 2022, when his tweets were first screen-capped and written about by activist Loren Crowe, now a New Yorker.
The screenshots include Winters liking a tweet against the elimination of blood donation restrictions on gay and bisexual men and retweeting to an anti-queer account promotion of a “story time with drag kings and queens.” Past alerts from that account had sent violent hate groups such as the Proud Boys to disrupt events. Winters was also captured tweeting “Keep the chains on the protesters. They’ll go well with the leg irons. #StupidLivesMatter.”
Images of Pasquarello’s online activity are also stated on the flier to showcase “a slew of transphobic, homophobic, white supremacist and openly secessionist” sentiments. Her liked tweets consist of posts from figures such as Andy Ngô, who has a reputation for misrepresenting facts and spreading inaccurate claims in favor of far right-wing beliefs.
That the tweets are fake is not a narrative used by Winters or Pasquarello. Winters said Saturday that the “substance of the assertions, they are all misrepresentations” and told the Tuesday forum that he’d liked some tweets he thought were funny, but didn’t remember specifics. Another council candidate, Cathy Zusy, said Pasquarello had told her that “her security work requires her to make social media connections with alternative groups. She needs to know what they’re saying and how they’re communicating.”
Muchnik: Go to the source
Another confrontation transpired with Nicola Williams, a previously CCC-endorsed 2021 council candidate. Protesters urged her to join them on the sidewalk rather than attend the celebration. After a few minutes of pressure, Williams stated that the tweets were wrong.
As Williams turned around to enter the event, the crowd started singing “Which side are you on?” to which Williams said “That’s not fair. Like I said, I’m not hiding. I’m here.” As she continued on inside, some thanked her for her disapproval of the tweets.
Federico Muchnik, a CCC-endorsed council candidate, was confronted by protesters shortly after Williams. When the crowd asked Muchnik his opinions on the controversy, he replied by telling the protesters to “take it up” with Winters and Pasquarello. He responded to additional questions by repeating the Arabic greeting “as-salaam-alaikum,” which means “peace be upon you.”
The response upset attendee Sara Al-Zubi, who raised her voice over the crowd and called to Muchnik as he was walking away. “If we have issues in City Council, what are you going to say to me? Oh, take up your life issues with the other candidates? Is that what you’re going to say to me?”
Ayah Al-Zubi added, “Right now, there are candidates running and I feel unsafe as a candidate myself and I’m standing out here with these folks because it is not okay.”
Claims are “toxic narcissism”
After the altercation, Muchnik remained firm in his decision to maintain a distance from a conflict that he believes does not directly concern him.
“I say, go directly to Carrie, go directly to Robert. If they have to speak for their values, if they have to clear their names, then that’s on them,” Muchnik said in an interview. “I’ve been endorsed by the CCC. But just because I’m on a slate with them, doesn’t mean I share their values.”
Muchnik also referred to a comment he left in a previous Cambridge Day article to express resentment for Totten “hijacking” the council conversation at the forum and beyond. “If Winters and Pasquarello need to explain themselves or their values, so be it. The public will take note,” Muchnik said. “But to hijack a city’s local electoral conversation away from what the public needs to know about … smacks of toxic narcissism and embittered self-interest.”
Councillor Patty Nolan, who was endorsed by the CCC, issued a statement after the event to clarify her position:
Robert Winters has been an asset to the community, providing a way for residents to get information on local government and events and issues. His decades of volunteer work focused on civic engagement and education have greatly benefited our community. Robert Winters liked posts and made comments on social media that are offensive and do not represent values I or I believe the community share. Some posts crossed a line and caused harm, whether intentional or not, and should be condemned. There are also posts from other candidates that I find deeply troubling from anyone seeking to represent the community.
Demands are unchanged
After approximately an hour, the protesters marched back to Inman Square. A Boston DSA representative said the group still wanted the CCC to revoke its endorsements, apologize to the Cambridge community and see Winters and Pasquarello drop out of the race. Protesters seek a public apology if they stay in, the representative said.
Evan MacKay, a member of the Boston DSA and graduate student at Harvard University, said the rally should encourage an apology: “Rob has done good things in Cambridge to help people be more aware of what’s going on in our municipal government. But when you find out that you have harmed people in a way that you didn’t mean to or you are educated on the impact of your actions, you have to be accountable for those actions, and you have to try to make amends.”
The Boston DSA has also created a petition demanding the CCC to unendorse Winters and Pasquarello, publish a formal apology, solicit a formal public apology from the candidates, and publish a statement urging the two to withdraw from the council race. The endorsements contradict the organization’s stated values of “ending LGBTIGA+ violence, bullying, and discrimination” and “social justice for indigenous communities [and] people of color.”
This post was updated Oct. 2, 2023, to correct attribution of a quote to Sara Al-Zubi.
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“I think you probably either made it up or conjured it up or something” – Sara Mae Berman
“ I’m very bothered when people spread lies and give wrong characterizations of someone because it’s slanderous, it’s liable, it’s false. They’re making it up, maybe using an AI chat box to try to portray him a certain way that would go with their agenda”- Renee Marie Chipman
“I think Dan Totten wants to get rid of as many of his challengers as possible. So if he can spread enough lies about a given challenger, then he thinks that he’s going to encourage his success,” Chipman said.
Berman agreed with Chipman and added: “It perverts the meaning of democracy when people tell lies about candidates for their own advantage.”
Did they provide a shred of evidence for these extraordinary claims? If not it is irresponsible to publish them. These are paranoid and self victimizing responses to something that Occam’s razor pretty obviously indicates was Winter’s own doing.
Totten and the other critics provided evidence, CCC has provided paranoid conspiracies to defend open bigots.
Winters set up the CPL, Cambridge children, and local queer people to become targets of violence, the more CCC defends him with nonsense like that the deeper hole they dig themselves. What a profoundly unserious organization.
That does include Muchnik despite “remain[ing] firm in his decision to maintain a distance from a conflict that he believes does not directly concern him” because he decided to go out of his way to defend these bigots by saying criticism of open bigotry was “hijack[ing] a city’s local electoral conversation away from what the public needs to know about.” If anyone anyone “ smacks of toxic narcissism and embittered self-interest” it is the candidates who view their electoral campaigns as more important than opposing bigotry.
CCC are showing who they are here. When people show you who they are believe them.
CCC is deep in the Goebbels playbook of accusing their enemies of what they are guilty.
One of the party goes tried to take the megaphone from us. Half an hour later, another one attempted to intimidate the person with the megaphone by putting his hands on it. The police physically removed him from the protest. Here’s a video of the police removing him.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/16xm347/cccrob_winters_called_cops_on_protesters_ends_up/
It’s kind of funny that Winters had the police show up to “protect” the party when in reality we needed police protection from them. I’m glad the police were there as they can vouch that we did nothing but chant from from the sidewalk.
What’s most crazy about blaming this on ‘AI’ is that Robert Winters hasn’t claimed his account was hacked. As the article points out, this has been going on over many years, and he has posted plenty of things about Cambridge both before and after these posts… so it just doesn’t make any sense. This all feels reminiscent of Kellyanne Conway providing “alternative facts” about the size of the inauguration crowd…
I can’t believe Cathie Zusy and Federico Muchnik are not condemning this behavior. Really people, be careful of the company you keep.
I’m disappointed, but I absolutely can believe they’re not condemning it.
Hypothetical syllogism:
1) Winters is a person who said and did lots of bigoted things and isn’t sorry.
2) I am friendly with Winters.
3) Therefore, I am friendly with a person who said and did lots of bigoted things and isn’t sorry.
I’ll be generous and assume at least some of the candidates defending Winters aren’t doing so solely because they’re trying to win an election. The above still causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. It’s threatening to self-perception, so they either have to reject (1), (2), or (3).
Rejecting (3) isn’t really tenable because it defies logic, so candidates friendly with Winters have to choose between rejecting (1) and (2). Those who clearly don’t want to change (2) by disavowing Winters’ bigotry are left with denying the truth of (1), despite the evidence.
To paraphrase a famous quote, it is very difficult to get a person to understand a thing when their ego depends on their not understanding it.
The lack of self-awareness of the CCC members is astounding… they want a monopoly on slander, a monopoly on housing, a monopoly on roads for cars, and a monopoly on the moral high ground.
AI? Lmao. Cringe AF.
That picture of the CCC event says everything.
good to see a rumble in Cambridge “politics”…in the end let’s not forget a fish rots from the head first…so look at the CCC…then laugh…then don’t forget to flush.
It does indeed look like the CCC has lost their way over the years and become an unacceptable organization for its endorsement choices in this election.
My personal problem as a voter is deciding on a slate of choices that are not receiving developer money for their campaigns (or are otherwise not connected to non-local money sources or employment) and who are not trying to make political office locally a jumping off point to state or federal office so that they leave the city.
I want council members who aren’t going to flee to another city or state after they make a mess of the one that’s been my home for 25+ years.
A notably irresponsible piece of “journalism” The “reporter” didn’t even bother to go inside the event to talk to those who were there it seems from the text and pictures. I read the Crimson article first which addresses this event far better. Europe now has a law about deleting scurrilous “press” reports or comments. And what is it with the title: Why would this event have been canceled, it only would have encouraged the bullies more.
these are just people who have nothing better to do on a Sunday but cause nonsense protest
Obviously the crazies, who harrassed anyone trying to attend the meeting, including other candidates, is against the entire CCC and what it stands for, not just these two people.
@Willard this article includes more quotes from CCC members than critics, including absolutely absurd, baseless, and unsourced claims. If anything is irresponsible in this reporting it is how much leeway CCC members are given to just straight up lie without any pushback.
As for bullies, the only people there who laid their hands on others and needed to be escorted out by the police were CCC members. Winters passing on info of a drag queen story hour to libs of Tik Tok is bullying, people pushing back against that are standing up to the bullies in your organization. You are not being bullied by people pointing out your extreme bigotry.
“these are just people who have nothing better to do on a Sunday but cause nonsense protest”
And you have nothing better to do than defend extreme bigotry.
“Obviously the crazies, who harrassed anyone trying to attend the meeting, including other candidates, is against the entire CCC and what it stands for, not just these two people.”
No one in CCC has disavowed these people or even just their statements and actions being criticized. If your group cannot criticize and distance itself from someone who spreads nazi propaganda or someone spreading all kinds of bigotry and attempting to funnel violence at the Cambridge Public Library you also deserve criticism for that. And CCC has not only not disavowed it it has actively defended these people with lies, bad faith arguments, and claims that actually would probably qualify for a libel suit.
An odd complaint; Cambridge Day has had two stories on this topic to the Crimson’s one, with the principals contacted for comment in the first story. Robert Winters was quoted extensively; Carrie Pasquarello never replied; Suzanne Preston Blier called back and said she couldn’t comment because she didn’t have time. The same people who attended the event were encountered outside as well as inside – where one of the four photos used was taken. Five people from “inside” speak in these stories. It’s the same number of protesters spoken with.
To those who honestly believe this is a smear campaign: running for public office inevitably comes with greater scrutiny, and unlike the last time Winters ran for the council a few decades ago, Twitter exists now and apparently he didn’t realize or care that his bigoted opinions were out there for all to see. You don’t even have to read any editorializing from 3rd parties, just look at the evidence for yourself. The screenshots are unambiguous and damning.
While I don’t agree with everything the DSA does (the recent breakup with Rep. Connolly did not reflect well on them IMO), I appreciate them bringing attention to this and putting pressure on the CCC to rescind their endorsements of Winters and Pasquarello. I do somewhat wish the CCC had been given a little more time to respond; this blew up at the speed of the internet (again, this info has been floating around for a while now, but seems to have gotten traction starting just late last week) and the CCC seems to skew older and less online.
That being said, I can’t fault anyone for jumping at the opportunity presented by Sunday’s CCC event to demand answers and action. CCC president Suzanne Blier’s past involvement with the Loren Crowe situation essentially boiled down to a questionable “yeah X shouldn’t have said that homophobic thing to Y, but remember, Y is also kind of a jerk,” so there’s a good chance the CCC might have taken any grace given here as a chance to do some social media cleanup/sweep things under the rug, rather than actually meaningfully address the problem at hand. The “this is cancel culture!” reactions from Blier and other CCC candidates reinforce this impression.
At best, the CCC didn’t know about Winters’ and Pasquarello’s views, which reflects poorly on their candidate vetting process. I’m rather skeptical of this in Winters’ case though, given how long he’s been involved with the CCC. Did no one else in the CCC follow his Twitter?? The most generous interpretation is that they fell into the same trap I did — believing that surely no one holding those views would feel emboldened enough to run for public office in a city supposedly as progressive and LGBTQ+ friendly as Cambridge.
At worst, they were aware but turned a blind eye because their priority is alignment with the CCC platform.
The far right has been working hard (and with some success, unfortunately) to normalize various forms of bigotry as simply just another normal political view that people can calmly “have differences about” and rationally debate, as if they were on the same level as actual civic issues such as zoning or transportation. But let’s be clear: “Yes, he’s transphobic, but he’s been civically engaged for so long!” is akin to “There’s only a little bit of sh*t in this sandwich!” – in other words, not acceptable.
@Willard, I was there, I definitely saw Sabrina go inside the event, even though she arrived with our group, whom the property owner essentially threatened to have arrested* if any of us set foot on her yard for an “open to the public” candidate event.
* – not in those words but told us to stay out in the presence of two armed cops so yeah.
“CCC seems to skew older and less online.”
I agree with you about pretty much everything else but this is giving them too much credit. At least 3 other CCC candidates were in the comments section of this website defending the bigots within a couple hours of the articles being posted (Cathy Zusy, Federico Muchnik, and Hao Wang). Plus there are the other defenses given by other members in this article and in the Harvard Crimson. They know what they are going.
Older people are “less online?” I’m not young, but you wouldn’t know it from my screen time. Good thing everyone is avoiding stereotypes!
These folks cozy up in their multi-million dollar West Cambridge historic houses, then have the audacity to complain about ‘luxury housing’ being the problem. Meanwhile, many in my neighborhood are hustling just to make rent for a small apartment. Only someone dripping with that level of privilege could be so blind to how this racist and homophobic drivel impacts real people.
Want a real gut check? Pull up a map of where their donor money’s coming from, it’s half way down the page:
https://lorencrowe.com/a-fair-but-partial-account-of-the-cambridge-citizens-coalitions-activities-since-2019-a2ca8f233ad2
Then, ask yourself if this group and their endorsements represent you.
@ mike g
I don’t think that’s a fair representation of what Sarah Mae said. She’s not the one that called the cops and all she wanted to do was verify that we were not bringing the protest on her property. She asked calmly and politely.
I am surprised by the number of people calling McCarthy-esque a peaceful protest accompanied by a presentation of substantial evidence. Mr. Winters has the platform and forum to defend or apologize for his actions, and has clearly made his decision. Ms. Pasquarello has as well. I am also unpersuaded, like others, by CCC pleading ignorance, especially in the case of Mr. Winters: he has certainly provided a civic service for the community with the municipal information he makes available, but these views of his have been very clear for years now, and he has used CCJ as a platform for his own, in my view bad faith and misinformed, views, rather than simply as a neutral space for providing informational updates. I have seen him personally verbally abuse Mr. Totten and Councilor Zondervan after a City Council meeting, and proceed to lie about it on CCJ, slander Mr. Totten, and censor my attempting to comment on CCJ correcting the record and stating what actually happened. People interested can return to old Cambridge Day articles, where I posted what I intended to post there, and a description of what actually happened. This history makes me doubt very strongly his account of his interaction with Mr. Totten or Mr. Totten’s role in any of this.
In any case, the bottom line is both these candidates either directly tweeted or reacted positively to a _substantial_ number of tweets expressing hateful views that have no place in Cambridge. They deserve to be held accountable for these. I encourage CCC to think long and hard about the fact that neither of these candidates have expressed any remorse, and Mr. Winters had in fact doubled-down– in his words “I’m sorry if anyone failed to appreciate my sense of humor.” In his public statement, Mr. Winters seemed to not even engage seriously with the criticisms, seemingly relying on third-party reports to understand what he has been criticized for, rather than reviewing and assessing the actual documented record provided by the protesters. I would hope that he would actually review the record, reflect on his statements, and apologize, but I have no expectations that this will happen.
Finally, on CCC in general: I hope that commenters here also look into their history of spreading misinformation on a variety of proposals since their founding. They express opposition to commercial development yet endorse candidates who are the antithesis of that, and have taken developer money, and took no position on an actual resident petition to limit lab development earlier this year. They express support of affordable housing but advance no proposals that would substantively address the housing crisis, oppose the affordable housing overlay and its subsequent amendments, do not reckon with the long, recent history of displacement of low-income residents from Cambridge nor the fact that a substantial majority of current residents, especially renters, are cost-burdened or severely cost-burdened, and repeat the bad-faith, inaccurate, unproductive statement that “Cambridge is doing more than its part.” They express support for addressing the climate crisis yet endorse candidates who either voted to substantially weaken, or voted against, BEUDO. In sum, in my view, they are a bad faith organization that does not hew to the principles they claim in their written materials, but rather could be accurately described as NIMBY’s, as others have written elsewhere
Just so everyone knows, based on previous comments, Williard is almost certainly someone in CCC’s senior leadership.
Tweets and likes by two City Council candidates endorsed by the Cambridge Citizen’s Coalition have very appropriately become an issue in this fall’s election thanks to a question at a candidate night and the work of Cambridge DSA.
Candidate Robert Winters has, among other things, tweeted to alert an anti-trans hate group about a Cambridge Public Library story hour for Drag Kings, Queens, and friends. Another of his tweets says: “Keep the chains on the protestors. They’ll go well with the leg irons #StupidLivesMatter.” Winters, in his own defense, does not repudiate the content of any of his earlier remarks. Candidate Carrie Pasquarello has a history of twitter “likes”, aligning herself with Marjorie Taylor Greene and other far right activists who encourage hate against trans and gay people, Black people, and Muslims. She just deleted a tweet from a group whose name included “neo-aryan.” As the Black Lives Matter movement became a national force in 2020, she tweeted: “The horrid situation in communities around our country. These Democrat-led areas are sinking into the sewer. Stay safe.”
Our Revolution Cambridge unequivocally condemns racism, homophobia, transphobia and anti-Muslim hatred. We categorically oppose the candidacies of Winters and Pasquarello and ask that others do the same. We thank the Councillors and candidates who condemned Winters’ tweets when they were revealed, including: Ayah Al-Zubi, Burhan Azeem, Marc McGovern, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, Dan Totten, Vernon Walker, Ayesha Wilson, and Quinton Zondervan.
We urge other Councillors and Council candidates, especially those endorsed by the CCC, who have not taken a stand against these remarks, to do so. We urge the Cambridge Citizens Coalition to revoke their endorsement of these two candidates. Cambridge is better than this. Leading members of CCC should speak out, because in this era of Trump and MAGA, the spread of anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ, and racist messages increases the likelihood of real harm to people. It is not a time to find excuses or to diminish these actions by humor or appeals to moderation.
Carolyn Magid
Henry Wortis
Matthew Schreiner
For Our Revolution Cambridge
I believe Patty Nolan has also released statements condemning the tweets.
@cjfman Source? The only thing I can find is the statements above that criticized “some tweets” but depicts winters as someone who “greatly benefited our community” nonetheless. She also does not distance herself from him or call on CCC to do the same. That’s quite waffley for a “condemnation.”
She told me in person. I’ll look for a source.