The Monday morning before the first in-person annual Town Meeting at Town Hall Auditorium since 2019, a three-person camera crew representing Accountability For All conducted what it calls a First Amendment audit. The high-sounding effort obscured deliberately provocative actions in which people film local-government employees without permission.
Josh Abrams, Sandy Pooler on April 24.
Led by Joshua Abrams of Stoneham, who is known to police in a variety of cases (see links below), the self-appointed guardians of free speech showed up April 24 unannounced, as it does at municipal governments in Massachusetts and Connecticut, cameras running. The claimed aim -- an impartial record of how local governments support the First Amendment.
So how did Arlington rate? That depends on the observer. As in all such events, the camera's roving eye reflects its handler, who shapes the narrative.
