https://www.washingtonsun.com/national/northampton-western-mass-fascism-sciarra

In a Western Massachusetts Town, Everyone Is Someone Else’s Fascist

Fights over school funding and redevelopment projects in the deep-blue town of Northampton have taken on the ugliest traits of national politics: mudslinging, name-calling and body-shaming.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — Opponents of the mayor’s budget concluded that she hated children. The project to redevelop Main Street was denounced as racist, and the purchase of a church was compared to the handling of the Epstein files. A former city council member posted a drawing on social media of “The Mayor” next to a bomb and the caption “villainize neoliberals.”

And now came an Instagram photo from a public meeting, zoomed in on the mayor’s feet, deriding her so-called cankles, apparently engorged from “carrying the water of imperialism.”

The mayor, Gina-Louise Sciarra, a 52-year-old mom of two, really liked the burgundy sandals in the photo. They were comfy and added a pop of color. But now wasn’t the time to contemplate the contour of her leg, because a local leader was walking into her office. The mayor took a seat by the window, near the rainbow flag.

They didn’t agree on every issue, but the political gulf in Northampton isn’t very wide. They were meeting to discuss things like the schools, zoning, taxes, and now, the storm of insults that had targeted them both.

Sometimes it felt like the whole town had been whipped into a vortex of hostility. Like the mayor, this leader had been called incompetent and corrupt. People accused her of being “in the mayor’s pocket.” Someone had slammed her in a group chat, and she was tired of pretending it wasn’t happening.

“She shared about my status as a domestic violence survivor, and she said she hoped my ex would finish the job of killing me,” she told Sciarra.

“I didn’t know that,” Sciarra said, her eyes welling.

“Nobody corrected her,” the woman said. “She said: ‘Why didn’t he finish the job?’”

Here, the fight wasn’t along party lines. In this town of about 30,000, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 18-to-1, and the political spectrum runs from ice blue to indigo. Eighty-one percent of them are white. They have launched a reparations commission, outlined five different types of equity on the city website, and acknowledged the Nipmuc and Pocumtuc Nations as first to the land they call Northampton.

They support abortion, which is available in town. Trans kids play school sports and use whichever bathroom they want. The town’s unofficial nickname is “Lesbianville, USA,” and even the churches fly rainbow flags. One resident said the worst insult here was labeling someone “Blue MAGA.”

Although people here are demographically compelled to agree on most things, they fight with the language and tactics of the president they detest. Mudslinging. Name-calling. Cankle-shaming.

On the same day as a No Kings rally against the Trump administration, one of the mayor’s critics encouraged protesters to stop by City Hall: “We’ve got a dishonest democracy-disdaining demagogue usurping power, overstepping authority, unilaterally governing, and demanding fealty modeling monarchy in our very own backyard.”

Nationally, politics has gone rancid. Civility is plummeting, violence rising. But when the language and tactics of national political warfare filtered into this small town, it felt invasive and sinister. The issues here were personal, and the targets more exposed.

The mayor of Northampton had a staff of five, no communications manager, no security team. When she got threats, she forwarded them to the police, just like everyone else.

Sciarra didn’t tell the local leader about the odd strips of paper wheat-pasted on the front porch of her home, where she lives with her husband, two teenage daughters, two cats and a rescue dog, Nova. She realized whoever did this must’ve snuck onto the lawn after dark. She stopped hanging out on her porch.

“This feels so dangerous,” Sciarra said.

“I’m really surprised how off the rails it has gotten,” the local leader said. “In a community where you actually have so much in common, just like, on paper. How is that happening?”

* * *

Sciarra saw the pink bike with training wheels parked at the rack. It was 2019, and she was celebrating the opening of an affordable housing project.

After all the meetings and debates, a family now lived here. This bike belonged to a kid who had a new home and a safe place to play. She thought: “This is why we do this.”

And while she was on City Council, they passed a resolution declaring that Northampton welcomed refugees, and Catholic Charities of Springfield later selected her town to resettle 51 Syrians and Iraqis.

“Things like that hooked me,” Sciarra said. She’d stayed in Northampton local government for more than a decade, rising to council president before becoming mayor.

She had watched her colleagues decide not to run again and sometimes wondered if she should have done the same. She barely won reelection, and she wasn’t sure if she was the leader who could heal a community that felt so broken.

She kept reminders around her office of why she’d wanted this job. In framed photos, she poses with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Al Gore, the Obamas.

A sticker of Taylor Swift in all her eras is taped to the bottom of her computer screen. While driving to a particularly contentious public meeting, she blasts “...Ready For It?” from her car speakers and sings along: “Baby, let the games begin.”

Critics come with the job, but the attacks on her integrity hurt. She has been stoic at public meetings; her mom taught her to never let people see her rattled. In the privacy of her office, she cried.

Across the country, local officials from both parties have installed home security systems as minor differences mushroomed into major conflicts. In Michigan, members of the Tyrone Township Board faced threats of death and rape this summer after a rumor spread about plans for a data center. City council members in Conroe, Texas, faced harassment and death threats after a vote related to Flock cameras. Last week, the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, a Democrat, announced she would not seek reelection because of personal attacks, conspiracies and threats. “The price of serving,” she wrote, “has become too high.”

In Northampton, Josh Silver, a local political consultant, helped found a nonprofit to share basic facts about city government. He said policy disagreements have warped into a grand fight against the perceived establishment.

“It’s just people literally disagreeing on what good policy is,” he said. “The circular firing squad of the left is on display in Northampton as vividly as anywhere in the country right now.”

At first, Mayor Sciarra loved Northampton’s nerdy engagement over the exact width of a curb and whether they really needed another bike lane. Northampton was within the “Five Colleges” area, where nearly two-thirds of residents had college degrees. Neighbors disagreed using philosophical arguments about neoliberalism and dug into city documents to find data.

People here were so equity-minded that one childless resident created a 10-slide presentation after learning that some parents slip their kids an extra $10 for snacks or arcade games at a parks and rec program.

This, that person wrote, created a “Tiered System of Citizenship.”

The mayor had started a policing alternative, the Division of Community Care, that staffed unarmed public health professionals to respond to people in crisis. She’d launched a climate action department and reduced energy use in municipal buildings by nearly 20%.

She’d boosted the school budget but said she was limited in how much she could allocate because of other municipal needs, as well as a statewide cap on property taxes that impacts available funds. Some dismissed that as an excuse.

The city spent more than $3 million to convert a church into a hub for homeless services, only for those plans to reach a standstill after federal grant options vanished under the Trump administration. Her critics called it the “churchase,” pointing to an independent appraisal that found the city overpaid by as much as $1.5 million.

Sciarra was used to those kinds of criticisms — not the cruel, righteous tenor taking over town.

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Eighty-one percent of Northampton residents are white, and the political spectrum runs from ice blue to indigo. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

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Arguments in Northampton, where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 18-to-1, aren’t along party lines. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

At city council meetings, Dan Breindel, a former mayoral candidate, called the planning director an “authoritarian leader” who had “subverted democracy as often as physically possible.” He blamed her for potholes, dead birds and “anything you can think of that’s wrong with this town, including cutting my daughter’s vegetable garden.”

Breindel created a Halloween poster last year that referred to Gina-Louise Sciarra as “Giant Louse Scary Mayor” who feeds children to monsters.

His critiques were policy-driven, Breindel said, not personal. He’d created spooky lawn signs as a parody of campaign imagery, featuring a werewolf candidate with the last name Wolf. He remixed his own mayoral sign to say “Mayor of the Damned.”

“Months later, somebody told me, ‘Oh, yeah, you put up that really controversial thing where you called the mayor fat.’ … And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” he said. “Anytime I do anything playful or silly or jokey, there is a very loud response.”

Sciarra’s opponent in the last election, Jillian Duclos, knew and respected the mayor. They’re both moms. When people complained about Sciarra, she’d pivot the conversation. But that cost her support, she said, from “people who wanted me to be mean.”

“We’re a very intellectual community, but … this is about how people feel, not necessarily what the data says,” Duclos said. “We’re in this polarized place of right or wrong, black or white. It doesn’t work that way.”

Duclos came within 79 votes of becoming mayor. She did not ask for a recount.

Many people had lost trust in the mayor. They wanted the city to pay for basics before investing millions in a Main Street redesign, and said the mayor never owned up to the flawed hub for homeless services. Hand-wringing about civility, they argued, was just a way for those in power to dismiss dissent.

Two residents sent The Washington Sun a bingo card spotted in the Planning Board office that poked fun at critics with squares like: “Trying way too hard to prove how liberal they are,” “Refers to vacant lot as ‘green space’” and “FREE SPACE: I’m not racist.”

In her inaugural address, Sciarra had implored people to disagree with kindness and joy. Her remarks were dismissed as “toxic positivity” and compared to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Some supporters wanted her to build a social media presence like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Do walk-and-talk videos. Reach people where they are. But she’s always felt uncomfortable in front of the camera.

“I’m a workhorse, not a show pony,” she’d tell them.

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City Hall faces out toward Main Street. Inside, the mayor meets with residents and local officials about everyday concerns: grass length, construction timelines, liquor licenses, taxes and education. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

Sciarra tried to address the complaints in a way that felt true to herself. She heard criticism that she wasn’t accessible, so this year she started office hours for residents. She launched a wonky volunteer committee to dig into city finances.

But she couldn’t control what her teenage daughters were hearing. Sciarra didn’t know if they had seen the cankles post or the other caricatures that portrayed their mom as cartoonishly round.

She didn’t want them to grow up with the messages she received as a girl — that a woman’s worth correlated to her dress size, especially in an era of weight-loss drugs and deepfakes.

“It’s really painful that now, publicly,” Sciarra said, “people are talking about my body.”

* * *

One of the people questioning the mayor’s integrity on Facebook was standing in the frozen-food aisle. So was the mayor’s husband.

Bill Scher, Sciarra’s husband, had never talked to this man in person and thought this Stop & Shop sighting was his chance. Michael Stein was on the local school committee and had asked on Facebook if “GL is lying or incompetent?”

Scher would later say he hadn’t planned to raise his voice.

His wife was a political figure, duty bound to put up with some level of dissent. But she was also the girl he met in high school when they acted together in “The Pigman.” She was the mom who always stayed behind at PTO meetings to put away the chairs.

At some point, Scher started to yell.

Stein knew this intense emotion must come from how much Scher loved his wife, but he really didn’t care whether she was, privately, a wonderful person. He had been part of the majority on the school committee who voted in favor of a massive increase in school spending. The mayor, who had final say, disagreed. He didn’t plan to back off. Stein later said in an interview: “It’s never about anything except her feelings.”

A 77-year-old woman overheard the January grocery store argument and was so alarmed that she posted a recap on NextDoor: I “told the shouter that he was frightening me. The shouter told me that ‘he can do and say what he wants.’”

Then: “IT WAS THE MAYOR’S HUSBAND.”

Scher was called “an embarrassment to feminist men.” He had “accosted” someone in an act of “patriarchal violence.”

The night after the incident, Scher put on a gray hoodie, walked to the lectern at a public meeting and read an apology from his phone: “I let my emotions get the better of me.”

During that same meeting, a former city council member stepped to the mic.

Her name was Quaverly Rothenberg. Some people affectionately called her Q. Others labeled her supporters a Qult.

She was also suing the city and three council members for censuring her last year, arguing their actions were defamatory and violated her freedom of speech.

This night, Rothenberg compared Scher to the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis. Scher, she said, was “abusing a dissenter.”

Soon after, the Boston Globe wrote about Northampton: “The liberal Western Mass. city where the left is eating its young — and old.”

* * *

At a community cookout last month, it seemed obvious to pretty much everyone that the mayor’s administration kept making the wrong choices.

“Did you come here for politics? Did you come here for the community?” Quaverly Rothenberg asked. People paused their conversations and put down their forks.

Those in power were making decisions that she deemed dangerous. The very wealthy kept tricking liberals into believing they care about human rights, climate and homeless people.

The mayor, Rothenberg said, wanted to raise taxes. She would pretend it was for schools and sidewalks, then put the surplus toward projects like Picture Main Street, a downtown construction plan projected to cost $17 million more than its initial estimate.

The mayor and her supporters should be scared, Rothenberg said.

“We’re going to storm that castle. We’re going to get our government back,” she said. “If that doesn’t work, we’re going to see if we can get this woman taken out of office. If that doesn’t work, guess what? Elections are just around the corner. We’ll take her out ourselves. We’ll take the whole council out ourselves.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

“This is just a battle for human decency, and we cannot ask nicely for this.”

In the room were parents who felt the school system had neglected their special needs kids and people who thought the city spent too little on education and too much on Picture Main Street.

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The mayor’s opponents argue that Picture Main Street, a downtown construction plan, would hurt local business. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

Michael Kane, who has been part of a group concerned about the Main Street redesign, left before the speech. Although their concerns overlap, he finds Rothenberg’s language offensive. A couple years ago, his group asked Sciarra to pause Picture Main Street, but she wasn’t interested in making changes.

“It’s hard to communicate and hard to grasp on some level how dispiriting it can be,” said Kane, who has lived in Northampton since 1980. “We need more sanity and we need to fight this and struggle ahead on the basis of principle and intelligence rather than name-calling and mudslinging.”

Online, Rothenberg had been posting photos emphasizing her own breasts as a way to expose more people to her arguments: “No OnlyFans, just an OnlyRants about the mayor of my city.”

The comments rolled in:

“I have a political revolution in my pants.”

“Northampton mountains right there.”

She’d used gimmicks before — posting videos depicting herself as a talking toilet-paper roll and showing up virtually to city council with a Zoom filter that portrayed her as a cat. She’s called the mayor and another elected leader “total fascists.”

Days after the cookout, Rothenberg posted a photo with one of her children, showing this Washington Sun reporter in the background interviewing the chef.

Rothenberg alleged that the mayor sent this reporter to cover the gathering and that an editor had close connections to the mayor. This was false. Rothenberg declined follow-up interview requests.

“This is insane,” one commenter wrote. “I love it.”

* * *

It was late September and the most divisive issue on the mayor’s agenda that week was a meeting for the $43.3 million redevelopment of Main Street.

The project, for which the city would pay $11.8 million, would leverage the need to upgrade the city’s underground pipes. It would use mostly state and federal funds to make the street safer, supporters said, with clearly marked lanes for cars and bikes, wider sidewalks and shorter crosswalks. There would be wheelchair ramps, more benches and outdoor dining spaces, misting fountains and native plants.

Her opponents called it a vanity project that would hurt local businesses. They said she cared more about aesthetics than teaching children to read. A critic edited the mayor’s face onto a Soviet World War II propaganda poster.

“We could all go French farmer resistance and dump manure on the steps of the mayor’s house and City Hall,” one person wrote on social media. Another remarked that he had never seen the mayor on a bike and asked, “do they make them heavy duty enough for someone of her physical stature?”

The mayor worried this tone would discourage civic-minded people from serving in local government. The three city council members sued by Rothenberg did not seek reelection. Five of the nine school committee members last term did not run for another elected position.

“I was accused of being part of this cabal that supports the mayor and that’s part of the deep state that’s running Northampton,” said former City Council Member Stanley Moulton, a retired journalist who is a defendant in Rothenberg’s suit. “I miss the constituent work … But again, being in that sort of maelstrom of the cesspool of social media that’s really uncensored and unedited, I don’t miss that.”

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Posters of the Picture Main Street project were on display for Northampton residents at the public meeting. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

Some who work closely with the mayor said they wear baseball caps to public events or avoid them altogether for fear of harassment. At least four people who were singled out online, on various sides of the issues, said they installed security cameras at their home.

Marissa Elkins, another former city council member who is also a defendant in Rothenberg’s suit, recalled sitting on Sciarra’s porch one day when a passerby cursed at them and accused them of hating kids or teachers. A school committee member posted her home address on Facebook. She stopped going to the Pride parade and began to have panic attacks whenever she went to her daughter’s band concerts.

“I didn’t run again because I was just so tired,” Elkins said. “It was just a constant onslaught of bullshit.”

Critics were finding highly educated ways to interrogate city government. Already, the records requests for 2026 outnumbered each of the last two years, climbing to 541. A local pediatrician filed 86 of them.

Dr. Melissa Maciborski, the pediatrician, did not respond to an interview request, but has spoken at public meetings about the need for transparency.

“Critical thinking, debate and questions,” she said, “are under attack in Northampton.”

It all leaves people who were drawn to Northampton’s progressive cohesion grappling with an ugly division they’d rather attribute to the other side.

“Democracy is messy and my side doesn’t always win,” resident Abby Spector said at a February city council meeting. Spector, often a target of the mayor’s critics, later worked with Silver and others to help found a nonprofit called the Northampton Information Hub. “I hope all of us, residents and elected officials alike, can begin by seeing good intent in the other, no matter how passionately we might disagree…If not, I fear we will just be joining Trump’s project of destroying and dehumanizing those we disagree with.”

* * *

Sciarra had been preparing for this meeting for weeks — the next in a long line of community sessions about Main Street.

She had picked out her clothes days earlier, including a new, gem-toned blue blazer from ThredUp, an online consignment store. At least, she thought, she wasn’t repeating an outfit. She paired it with black pants and black slingbacks. It felt like a game day outfit to match the hours of work behind the presentation.

She put her shoulders back and mustered some confidence as she walked into the senior center. There were lemon bars in the back. She found a chair and made small edits to her remarks.

This was the kind of town where people arrived early, and she wanted to be ready.

Twenty-six people had arrived by 6:17 p.m., and 13 minutes later, it was standing room only.

All the city officials and representatives from the design company made it through their presentation. They showed a flyover video rendering of the new Main Street, including a giant chessboard as an example of public games they could add to the project. People oohed and aahed.

Afterward, the leaders split up around the room. Sciarra steadily answered questions for almost an hour, but no one called her fascist or corrupt. No one screamed.

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Sciarra steadily answered questions about Picture Main Street and any other concerns residents had about their city. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

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Northampton residents packed the room at the local senior center for an update on the Picture Main Street project. Ryan Williams for The Washington Sun

Their questions were about parking spots, homeless people and events in the park. Two seniors from Smith College introduced themselves as fellow Smithies and asked if she’d talk to one of their classes.

“I’d be thrilled,” Sciarra said. It was the broadest smile she had all night.

By the time everyone left, the mayor checked in with the head of public works.

“That was great,” he said. “There were no bombs of any kind. No swearing.”

In the coming weeks, the oversize chessboard rendering would become the town’s newest boogeyman.

“Who plays chess?” one person wrote in a community Facebook group. “The authoritarians in City Hall are a few moves ahead of us, the opposition.” People joined a makeshift caption contest, a speech bubble superimposed on a zoomed-in photo of the mayor:

“Those disabled poors and children are spoiling my legacy!”

“F*%k them kids!”

“I’m a piggy mayor here’s my snout, tip me over and vote me out.”

The commenters agreed there was no need to be civil.

The mayor, they said, deserved what she got.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5915888&forum_id=2#50211900)