This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
☀️Another cool, sunny day, with highs in the 60s. Sunset is at 6:23 p.m.
As of this writing, TSA and air traffic control employees at Logan Airport were still on the job — but going unpaid due to the federal shutdown. The first day went smoothly, but travelers might start noticing problems if the shutdown drags on.
“The increased stress and fatigue that comes from working long hours without pay cannot be overstated,” National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels said.
At Dorchester’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, federal workers spent the early part of the week cleaning their offices and setting their out-of office messages.
“I’ve been through this before, here and elsewhere, and it is an accepted and understood part of federal service that these things will happen from time to time,” Director Alan Price said. “We have procedures in place to maintain stewardship of the building and the artifacts and to make sure that employees have all the information they need to return effectively as soon as possible.”
p.s. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who donated to GBH on the first day of our Fund the Future campaign yesterday. We appreciate you and could not do our work without you. If you have not joined us in our mission to keep the journalism, documentaries, kids’ programming and other series you love, you can do so here.
Four Things to Know
1. Immigration and tax advocates are suing the federal government to try to stop the IRS from sharing data on roughly 50,000 immigrants each month with immigration authorities. The data includes home addresses and other personal details.
“It is a shocking revelation that the Social Security Administration has also agreed to send private taxpayer data to ICE for immigration enforcement,” said Luz Arévalo, a senior attorney with Greater Boston Legal Services. “It is shocking because the SSA holds the earnings records for virtually every worker in the U.S. We had to file this case to remind both agencies that our confidentiality laws apply to them both and that their sharing is unlawful.”
2. A federal appeals court is weighing the Trump administration’s argument that two international students with local ties, both detained over pro-Palestinian activism, should have had their cases confined to immigration courts, not federal district courts.
Federal district judges allowed both Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk and Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, who lives in Vermont, to be released on bail instead of staying in immigration detention centers while they wait for their immigration cases to be resolved. “Unbelievably, it was my writing — the single opinion piece published in our student newspaper — that led to my arrest and ultimately landed me in a damp and crowded for-profit ICE prison for 45 days this spring,” Öztürk told the court. “Despite my experience, I remain hopeful that our world can become a gentler and more peaceful place.”
3. Worcester Police officers will not be helping federal immigration agents arrest or detain people, city councilors voted this week. The vote was mostly symbolic: state law already sets similar rules for police officers throughout Massachusetts.
But federal immigration agents have still asked Worcester police for help in recent months, said City Manager Eric Batista, who oversees the police department, including asking police officers to tow the car of a person they detained. “We refused to provide that service to them, and we basically told them not to reach out anymore on that issue,” Batista said.
4. Two brothers from Western Massachusetts are currently on a flotilla trying to deliver aid to people in Gaza. Adnaan Stumo, of Sheffield, is a boat captain who has worked in the West Bank; his brother Tor is a maritime engineer and activist. Early this morning the Israeli military intercepted the ships and said they’ll deport the activists aboard back to Europe.
“It’s providing visibility, and it’s providing hope,” Adnaan Stumo said, speaking from the flotilla of about 40 ships earlier this week. “Seeing all the videos from the Gazans [on social media] is humbling and validating and and it makes it very much worth facing whatever risks that we are facing.”
Living in Pryde: How Boston LGBTQ+ seniors create community
By Emily Judem, senior digital video producer, GBH News
For the generation that weathered the AIDS epidemic and fought for same-sex marriage, finding community is still a challenge.
LGBTQ+ seniors have witnessed – and in many cases fought for – enormous political and social change in their lifetimes. Adults now in their mid-70s, for example, were young children during McCarthyism, which cast gay people as communists who needed to be rooted out of the federal workforce. They were young adults in 1973, until which time the American Psychiatric Association still considered homosexuality a mental illness. And they were already in their 60s when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.
As a result, the structures in place to support seniors in American society today are much more fragile for LGBTQ+ elders. They are twice as likely to live alone as non-LGBTQ+ elders, and 20 percent have experienced homelessness in their lifetimes.
Our team’s newest short documentary, Living in Pryde, follows residents of a senior living community in Boston trying to counter these statistics at a time when LGBTQ+ rights face renewed attack.
In the six months we spent following residents of the Pryde — a former Boston public school now home to New England’s first affordable, LGBTQ+ friendly senior housing community — we interviewed more than a dozen residents. They welcomed us into their homes and lives. We heard stories of family rejection, of needing to stay closeted in order to stay safe and of profound loss and fear at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
I grew up at a markedly different time than the people we met at The Pryde. I was 13 in 1997, when Ellen Degeneres came out on television, and I was 20 when gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts. The wildly different reality I came of age in made me wonder how the life experiences of older LGBTQ+ folks shaped their thinking about the current political moment. And what became clear as we spoke to more people around the building, is that the experiences they’ve lived through have prepared them to keep fighting.
“I see what’s going on in society now, and I have flashbacks to what it was like in the early part of the AIDS epidemic,” said Eddie Whitman, who at 67 has defied the odds as an HIV/AIDS survivor. “It wasn’t just people getting sick and dying, it was hatred that went along with it.”
The Pryde has become both a target and a refuge — a place where residents believe the strength of community is the most powerful tool in the ongoing fight for civil rights.
Thea Iberall, legally married her wife of 17 years, Shirley Riga, again last December as a bulwark against attempts to end federal marriage protections. As she put it, “On one hand, I have felt like a sitting duck ever since I came out. On the other hand, we have made a commitment to be living here with other gay people and to stand together. You have to make your voice larger to be heard. And that is through community.”
You can watch the full documentary here.
More documentaries from GBH News:
-What happens when you lose your home at 72?
-50 years after Boston’s busing crisis, two sisters confront their trauma
-Life after prison: Jailed at 16, a Boston man returns home
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