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Mar 8, 2025 | 
thebollard.com | Elizabeth Peavey |Al Diamon |Leo Hylton |Samuel James
How the fuck we got here Have you been asking yourself reflexively every 15 minutes how the fuck we got here? Well, it’s actually pretty simple. This country is covered in a nationwide web of racist voter laws and racist voter maps that not only smother the Black vote, but wildly overvalue Republican votes. Without that advantage, our last Republican president would’ve been Dwight Eisenhower. This white supremacist advantage distorts all of our national political systems.
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Mar 8, 2025 | 
thebollard.com | Elizabeth Peavey |Samuel James |Al Diamon |Leo Hylton
Maine still needs parole“Most testimony presented by criminal justice professionals, victim advocates, and victims feels that parole should be re-established in Maine.” — Dr. Arthur Jones, renowned criminal justice and parole expertThe Maine Legislature’s last session was painful. It was the first time in my life that I engaged in political processes in any meaningful way. At 32 years of age, I poured my heart, mind and soul into the push to reestablish parole in Maine.
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Mar 8, 2025 | 
thebollard.com | Elizabeth Peavey |Samuel James |Al Diamon |Leo Hylton
The touch of strangersI came home from Brooklyn for the holidays and spent New Year’s Eve watching a ball drop in my new home on a shitty TV in my old home. Times Square is a horrible scene in the best of times: headache-inducing neon lights blazing day and night; the zombified, mutilated corpse of Elmo trying to corner you aboard a double-decker tour bus. On New Year’s, the horrors only multiply. Thousands of tourists and drunkards shout and blast vuvuzelas, cough and shove you.
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Mar 8, 2025 | 
thebollard.com | Samuel James |Al Diamon |Leo Hylton |Elizabeth Peavey
Sole SisterThe year I turned 50, I started walking. I didn’t know where I was going. In circles, mostly. I like loops. Left to my own devices, I don’t know when to stop, when to turn back. I need a loop to bring me home. When I started walking, I lived in a house with a husband near the trail that makes the 3.75-mile circle around Back Cove in Portland. He and I had been in the house for five years, but I didn’t walk.
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Feb 2, 2025 | 
thebollard.com | Phoebe Kolbert |Samuel James |Al Diamon |Leo Hylton
Me and Kiki shortly before we were almost eaten by a bear in Brownfield a few falls ago. photo/Kiki GarfieldYear 20The Bollard was born 20 winters ago as an underground publication, by which I mean literally beneath the surface of Earth. There were advantages to starting underground. It’s relatively warm down there this time of year (especially around the furnace), the beers were cheap and the landlord let us smoke.
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Jan 5, 2025 | 
thebollard.com | Leo Hylton
Concern and Hope at Maine State Prison“Therefore put on the whole armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13, NIV)As the year draws to a close, I am realizing I haven’t been this uncertain and concerned about the future in almost 15 years.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Al Diamon |Samuel James |Leo Hylton |Steve Quattrucci
The worst political stuff in MaineHere’s my collection of the most obnoxious turds clogging up this state’s political toilet, in no particular order:The Maine Wire’s racist coverage of any crime committed by a person who isn’t white, and its transphobic coverage of anyone who changes their gender. Portland’s plan to deal with homeless people by not really dealing with homeless people. The Portland City Council’s plan to create more homeless people by raising property taxes.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Steve Quattrucci |Samuel James |Leo Hylton |Al Diamon
Youth sweeping the streets of Little Middle back in the day. photo/courtesy Steve QuattrucciAn op-ed by Steve QuattrucciIn the 1910s, my father’s parents emigrated from Italy to the United States and settled in Portland at the foot of Munjoy Hill, in a neighborhood they called Little Middle, where Middle Street meets India Street. From photos, old city maps, and the stories of my parents and grandparents, I have a good sense of what life in their neighborhood was like.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Leo Hylton |Samuel James |Steve Quattrucci |Al Diamon
Dear Steve Robinson’s Lynch MobLast month, Bollard editor Chris Busby wrote a powerful introduction to my letter to Gov. Janet Mills and her clemency board regarding my (still yet-to-be-approved) request for a clemency hearing (“Who’s Afraid of Leo Hylton?”), which was published along with my letter in the October issue of this magazine.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Samuel James |Leo Hylton |Steve Quattrucci |Al Diamon
Not the sharpest party in the drawer I have a confession to make. I’m a registered Democrat. I know. It’s been this way since a brief dalliance with the Greens back when they took themselves seriously — 2002 was a hell of a year here in Maine! Anyway, I’m not a Dem fanboy or anything. I’m not even a team player, really. I just don’t want to be killed by Republicans. Now, I don’t know how this election is going to play out, but self-destruction will probably be a continuing national theme.
