title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River profited well from the American Civil War and was in a fine position to take advantage of the prosperity that followed. By 1868, it had surpassed Lowell as the leading textile city in America with over 500,000 spindles.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 1871 and 1872, a "most dramatic expansion" of the city occurred: 15 new corporations were founded, building 22 new mills throughout the city, while some of the older mills expanded. The city's population increased by 20,000 people during these two years, while overall mill capacity doubled to more than 1,000,000 spindles.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: By 1876, the city had one-sixth of all New England cotton capacity and one-half of all print cloth production. The Spindle City, as it became known, was second in the world to only Manchester, England in terms of output.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: To house the thousands of new workers—mostly Irish and French Canadian immigrants during these years—over 12,000 units of company housing were built. Unlike the well-spaced boardinghouses and tidy cottages of Rhode Island, worker housing in Fall River consisted of thousands of wood-framed, multi-family tenements, usually three-floor "triple-deckers" with up to six apartments. Many more privately owned tenements supplemented the company housing.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: During the 19th century, Fall River became famous for the granite rock on which much of the city is built. Several granite quarries operated during this time, the largest of which was the Beattie Granite Quarry, near what is now the corner of North Quarry and Locust Streets. Many of the mills in the city were built from this stone, and it was highly regarded as a building material for many public buildings and private homes alike. The Chateau-sur-Mer mansion in Newport, Rhode Island was constructed from Fall River granite, known for its greyish-pink color.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: While most of the mills "above the hill" were constructed from native Fall River granite, nearly all of their counterparts along the Taunton River and Mount Hope Bay were made of red brick due to the high costs and impracticality associated with transporting the rock through the city and down the hill. (One notable exception is the Sagamore Mills on North Main Street, which were constructed from similar rock quarried in Freetown and brought to the site by rail).


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River rode a wave of economic prosperity well into the early 20th century. During this time, the city boasted a bustling downtown with several upscale hotels and theaters. As the city continuously expanded during the late 19th century, additional infrastructure such as parks, schools, streetcar lines, a public water supply, and sewerage system were constructed to meet the needs of its growing population.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: From 1896 to 1912, Fall River was the headquarters of the E. P. Charlton & Company, a chain of five and ten cent stores. Founded at Fall River in 1890 by Seymour H. Knox and Earle Perry Charlton as the Knox & Charlton Five and Ten Cent Store, E.P. Charlton operated fifty-eight stores in the United States and Canada by the time of its merger with several other retailers to form the F. W. Woolworth Company in 1912.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The cotton mills of Fall River had built their business largely on one product: print cloth. Around 1910, the city's largest employer, the American Printing Company (APC), employed 6,000 people and was the largest company printer of cloth in the world. Dozens of other city mills solely produced cloth to be printed at the APC.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: World War I had provided a general increase in demand for textiles, and many of the mills of New England benefited during this time. The post-war economy quickly slowed, however, and production quickly outpaced demand. The Northern mills faced serious competition from their Southern counterparts due to lower labor and transportation costs, as well as the South's large investment in new machinery and other equipment. In 1923, Fall River faced the first wave of mill closures. Several of the mills merged, allowing them to remain in business into the late 1920s.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The worst fire in Fall River's history occurred on the evening of February 2, 1928. It began when workers were dismantling the recently vacated Pocasset Mill. During the night, the fire spread quickly and wiped out a large portion of downtown. City Hall was spared, but was badly damaged. Today, many of the structures near the corner of North Main and Bedford Street date from the early 1930s, as they were rebuilt soon after the fire.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: By the 1930s and the Great Depression, many of the mills were out of business and the city was bankrupt. The once mighty American Printing Company finally closed for good in 1934. In 1937, their huge plant waterfront on Water Street was acquired by the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company and soon employed 2,600 people. A handful managed to survive through World War II and into the 1950s. In October 1941, just a few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor, another large fire broke out in the main building of the printworks. The fire was a major setback to the U.S. war effort; 30,000 pounds (13,607 kilograms) of raw rubber worth $15 million was lost in the inferno.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: With the demise of the textile industry, many of the city's mills were occupied by smaller companies, some in the garment industry, traditionally based in the New York City area but attracted to New England by the lure of cheap factory space and an eager workforce in need of jobs. The garment industry survived in the city well into the 1990s, by which point it had fallen victim to globalization and foreign competition.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In the 1960s, the city's landscape was drastically transformed with the construction of the Braga Bridge and Interstate 195, which cut directly through the heart of the city. In the wake of the highway building boom, the city lost many of its longtime landmarks. The Quequechan River was filled in and re-routed for much of its length. The historic falls were diverted into underground culverts. A series of elevated steel viaducts was constructed to allow access the new bridge. Many historic buildings were demolished, including the Old City Hall, the Troy Mills, the Second Granite Block (built after the 1928 fire), as well as other 19th-century brick-and-mortar buildings near Old City Hall.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Constructed directly over Interstate 195 in the place of it predecessor, the new city hall (known as Government Center) was opened in 1976 after years of construction delays and quality control problems. Built in the Brutalist style popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the new city hall drew complaints from city workers and residents almost immediately.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 1970, Valle's Steak House opened one if its landmark restaurants on William S. Canning Boulevard in the city's South End. The steak house was popular with Fall River residents, but economic challenges caused the chain to close all of its restaurants in the 1980s.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Also during the 1970s, several modern apartment high-rise towers were built throughout the city, many part of the Fall River Housing Authority. There were two built near Milliken Boulevard, two on Pleasant Street in Flint Village, another on South Main Street, and in the north end off Robeson Street. Today, these high-rises mostly house the elderly.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 1978, the city opened the new B.M.C. Durfee High School in the North End, replacing the historic Rock Street building that had become overcrowded and outdated for use as a high school. The "new" Durfee is one of the largest high schools in Massachusetts.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Since approximately 1980, there has been a considerable amount of new development in the North End of the city. A significant number of new single- and multi-family housing developments have been constructed, particularly along North Main Street.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 2021, Fall River was ranked the 96th most dangerous city in the United States. It was also the third most dangerous city in Massachusetts and fourth most dangerous city in New England.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: On January 20, 2019, a cannabis dispensary opened in Fall River, becoming only the sixth dispensary in Massachusetts and the first in Southeastern Massachusetts to open to anyone 21 years or older.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 17.68%, is water.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Water power from the Quequechan River and natural granite helped form and shape Fall River into the city it is today. The Quequechan River once flowed through downtown unrestricted, providing water power for the mills and, in the last of its length, down a series of eight steep waterfalls falling into the Taunton River at the head of the deep Mount Hope Bay. Fall River and surrounding areas are located in the northeastern coastal forests, which make up the temperate broadleaf and mixed forest biome.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River was the only city on the East Coast of the United States to have had an exposed waterfall in part of its downtown area; it flowed less than into a sheltered harbor at the edge of downtown. Fall River has two large lakes (originally one lake) and a large portion of protected woodlands on the eastern part of the city, which is higher in elevation, with the Quequechan River draining out of the ponds and flowing through the heart of the city, emptying out an estimated per day into the deep Mount Hope Bay/Taunton River estuary in the western part of the city.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city lies on the eastern border of Mount Hope Bay, which begins at the mouth of the Taunton River starting south from the Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge. The greater portion of the city is built on hillsides rising quite abruptly from the water's edge to a height of more than . From the summits of these hills, the terrain extends back in a comparatively level table-land, on which a large section of the city now stands.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Two miles (3 km) eastward from the shore lies a chain of deep and narrow ponds, eight miles (13 km) long, with an average width of three-quarters of a mile, and covering an area of . These ponds are supplied by springs and brooks, draining a watershed of . The northern pond is the North Watuppa Pond, the city's main reservoir. The southern pond is the South Watuppa Pond. The narrow strip of land where the two ponds meet is known as The Narrows. East of the North Watuppa Pond is the Watuppa Reservation, which includes several thousand acres of forest-land for water supply protection that extends north into the Freetown-Fall River State Forest, and east to the Copicut Reservoir. Copicut Pond is located on the border of Dartmouth in North Dartmouth's Hixville section that borders Fall River. Copicut Hill, the highest point in Fall River, is located between North Watuppa Pond and the Copicut Reservoir. The hill has a summit elevation of greater than above sea level.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The Quequechan River breaks out of its bed in the west part of the South Watuppa Pond, just west of The Narrows, and flows through the city (partially underground in conduits) where it falls to a channel leading to what is now Fall River Heritage State Park at Battleship Cove on the Taunton River. The Quequechan River originally flowed unconfined over an almost level course for more than a mile. In the last half-mile (800 m) of its progress it rushes down the hillside in a narrow, precipitous, rocky channel, creating the falls for which Fall River is named. In this distance the total fall is about . and the volume of water per second.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Originally an attractive feature of the landscape, the Quequechan has seldom been visible since it was covered over by cotton mills and the Bay Colony Railroad line in the 19th century. As the Quequechan became an underground feature of the industrial landscape, it also became a sewer. In the 20th century the mills were abandoned and some of them burned, exposing the falls once more. Because of highway construction in the 1960s, the waterfalls were buried under Interstate 195, which crosses the Taunton River at Battleship Cove. Plans exist to "daylight" the falls, restore or re-create them, and build a green belt with a bicycle path along the Quequechan River.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In the south end, Cook Pond, also formerly known as Laurel Lake, is located east of the Taunton River and west of the South Watuppa Pond. The area between the modern day Cook and South Watuppa Ponds, east of the Taunton River and north of Tiverton, Rhode Island, was once referred to as "Pocasset Swamp" during King Philip's War in 1675–1676.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city is divided into two by Interstate 195; downtown sits between them. The two sections of the city contain a number of distinct neighborhoods.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Northern Neighborhoods ("The North End"; North of I-195, extending to the city's northern border with Freetown, Massachusetts and western border with Dartmouth, Massachusetts)


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Southern Neighborhoods ("The South End"; South of I-195, extending to the city's southern border with Tiverton, RI)


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River is home to 23 municipal parks and playgrounds, including three designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Fall River's more notable parks include:


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city is also home to several Massachusetts state parks, including Fall River Heritage State Park and Freetown-Fall River State Forest.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: According to the United States Census of 2020, the population of Fall River is 94,000. The largest racial groups within the city were 87.2% (83.4% Non-Hispanic) White, 3.5% African American, 2.5% Asian and 0.2% Native American and 7.4% Hispanic or Latino. 49% of residents are Luso American or have origins somewhere in the former Portuguese Empire. 37% of the population described themselves as being of Portuguese ancestry. The next largest groups by ancestry are French (12.4%) the original immigrants to largely populate Fall River until the Portuguese started immigrating to the area, Irish (8.9%), Cape Verdean (8.1%), English (6.0%), French Canadian (5.9%), Puerto Rican (4.5%), and Italian (3.6%).


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River and its surrounding communities form much of the Massachusetts portion of the Providence metropolitan area, which has an estimated population of 1,622,520.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In percentage terms, Fall River has the largest Portuguese American population in the United States. The exact percentage of the population they make up is disputed; a 2005 study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth estimated that 49.6% of city residents are Portuguese American, while other sources estimate that 43.9% are.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city has 38,759 households and 23,558 families. The population density was . There were 41,857 housing units at an average density of . Of the 38,759 households, 29.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.3% were married couples living together, 16.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.2% were non-families. 34.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.32 and the average family size was 3.00.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In terms of age, the population was spread out, with 24.1% under the age of 18, 9.2% from 18 to 24, 29.8% from 25 to 44, 20.0% from 45 to 64, and 16.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 87.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.9 males.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The median household income was $29,014, and the median family income was $37,671. Males had a median income of $31,330 versus $22,883 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,118. About 14.0% of families and 17.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 25.4% of those under age 18 and 17.4% of those age 65 or over.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River retains a vibrant mix of cultures that date back to its time as an immigration hub. While the distinct ethnic neighborhoods formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries have changed over the years, the legacy of immigrants who came to work in the mills can be found in the various parishes and restaurants throughout the city. This heritage is commemorated by the 19 flags which make up the "Banners of Allegiance" at Gromada Plaza. Erected in 1979 across from City Hall (and restored in 2019), this landmark commemorates the diverse nationalities of Fall River's residents.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city is host to many ethnic festivals throughout the year. The largest, the Great Holy Ghost Festival, occurs each August at Kennedy Park and attracts over 200,000 visitors. The feast is held over a total of four days.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Each summer, the city uses its waterfront at Heritage State Park and Battleship Cove for a Fourth of July fireworks display. For many years, the waterfront also hosted the annual Fall River Celebrates America Festival, sponsored by the Fall River Chamber of Commerce. The event was suspended in 2010 due to lack of financial support stemming from the Great Recession. While the Chamber of Commerce hoped to hold the event again in 2011, it has not been held since.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In recent years, a number of community organizations have made concerted efforts to promote the arts in the city, using vacant mill space for studios and performance centers. The Narrows Center for the Arts, located on Anawan Street, has been played by a number of national and international acts since its opening in 2001, including Rosanne Cash, Los Lobos, Blue Öyster Cult, Dr. John, The Avett Brothers, Richie Havens, Lake Street Dive and Susan Tedeschi. A proposal is in place to revitalize the downtown area by the creation of an Arts District. Along with the art centers being established throughout the city, Fall River has numerous Portuguese/Community Bands throughout the city that perform throughout the year.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 2020, artists and Fall River natives Harry Gould Harvey IV and Brittni Ann Harvey opened the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art (Fall River MoCA) in the first floor of a former mill on Bedford Street. The museum aims to "create culturally relevant programming that is in dialog with the global contemporary art world."


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River remains a predominantly Roman Catholic city due to the French Canadians who first populated the city, and is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River. St. Mary's Cathedral was formed in the 1850s by Irish immigrants; Edgar DaCunha has served as bishop since 2014. Santo Christo Parish on Columbia Street is known as the Mother Church of the Portuguese parishes in the diocese. The Church was established in 1892 to serve the local Portuguese community, Many of whom came from the Azorean island of São Miguel. Other notable Catholic churches include St. Anne's Church, Good Shepherd Church (formerly Saint Patrick's), and the former Notre Dame de Lourdes in the Flint neighborhood, which was destroyed in a large fire on May 10, 1982. At the time of the city's peak population in 1920, there were over two dozen Catholic parishes existing throughout the city, with each ethnic enclave having its own parish. In recent years, the diocese has merged several parishes in the city, closing some and renaming the united congregations, bringing the total number of parishes in the diocese to ten as of 2021. St. Louis the King Church closed in 2000.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Historically, the Highlands neighborhood was predominantly Protestant, with several churches in the area of North Main and Rock Streets, notably including the Central Congregational Church and the First Congregational Church, known for hosting many New England luminaries before its demise in a fire in the 1980s.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: German Jewish settlers arrived in Fall River beginning in the 1860s and continuing into the 1870s. The 1880s and 1890s saw the arrival of Russian Jewish immigrants. At the start of the 20th century, Fall River was home to three synagogues. The Jewish community historically worked in peddling, retail, and clothing stores. Temple Beth-El was founded in 1924 on High Street. In 1970 there were three congregations serving 4,000 Jews in Fall River; by 2008 that number had declined to less than 1,000.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Various other ethno-religious groups also live in the city. Recent arrivals from Cambodia and India maintain temples in the city, such as Wat Udomsaharatanaram and BAPS Shri Swaminarayanwasi.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city is led by the mayor-council form of government. There is a mayor and nine at-large city councillors, elected in odd-years to two year terms. The mayor, along with their appointed city administrator, lead and manage the city's day-to-day operations. The majority of the city's municipal offices are located at Government Center.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city's police department is consolidated into a large central police station. There are six fire stations located around the city. The Fire Headquarters is located on Commerce Drive, across from the former Fall River Municipal Airport.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: There are four post offices in the city. The central, located adjacent to Government Center, is modeled after the James Farley Post Office in New York City. The central branch was named after the late Sgt. Robert Barrett in May 2011, a Fall River native who died in Afghanistan in 2010. Additional branches are located in the Flint, the South End, and the Highlands.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city is home to several state and county-level courthouses. The murder trial of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez in 2015 was held at the district courthouse on South Main Street.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River is represented by three separate Massachusetts House of Representatives districts; only one, the 7th Bristol, is wholly within city limits. As of 2021, the city is represented by Democrats Carole Fiola (6th Bristol), Alan Silvia (7th Bristol), and Paul A. Schmid III (8th Bristol). The city is entirely within the First Bristol and Plymouth district, represented by State Senator Michael Rodrigues (D-Fall River). The First Bristol and Plymouth also includes the towns of Freetown, Lakeville, Rochester, Somerset and Swansea.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River's state highways are patrolled by the Third Barracks of Troop D of the Massachusetts State Police, based out of Dartmouth.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: On the national level, the city is divided between two congressional districts. Massachusetts' 4th congressional district, represented by Democrat Jake Auchincloss, contains most of the city, while Massachusetts' 9th congressional district, represented by Democrat Bill Keating, contains a part of the northeastern portion of the city.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River Public Schools operates all public schools in the city. Fall River has one public high school, B.M.C. Durfee High School. Durfee alum include Chris Herren, former NBA player for the Denver Nuggets and the Boston Celtics, former Supreme Court Justice James M. McGuire, and Humberto Sousa Medeiros, a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and former Archbishop of Boston.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The city is also home to Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School, which serves Fall River and the towns of Somerset, Swansea, and Westport. Chef Emeril Lagasse is a Diman Graduate. The school dates back to the Durfee Textile School, which branched out to include Diman. (The college, founded to promote the city's textile sciences, is now a part of University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.)


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In addition to public schools, there are several private and parochial schools in the city, including six Catholic schools, two private schools, a Christian academy (East Gate Christian Academy). Atlantis Charter School, a Pre-K through 8 charter school with a marine science-themed curriculum, was founded in 1995. The city is also home to Bishop Connolly High School, a Catholic high school named for Bishop James Louis Connolly, fourth Bishop of the Diocese of Fall River. Bishop Feehan was located in Fall River from 1961 to 1972.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Espirito Santo School opened on September 19, 1910, and was the first Portuguese grammar school to open in the United States. As of 2011, the majority of its students were ethnic Portuguese, and 70% of the students were bilingual.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has two branches in the city: the Professional and Continuing Education Center, located at 139 South Main Street, and the Advanced Technical & Manufacturing Center at the Narrows, on the former site of the Kerr Mills. Bristol Community College, founded in 1965, is a two-year college offering associate degrees as well transfer programs to four-year institutions. Eastern Nazarene College offers Adult Studies/LEAD classes in Fall River as well. It has GED programs and a recording studio.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River established its public library in 1860. As of fiscal year 2022, the city of Fall River spends 0.53% ($1,861,112) of its budget on its public library—roughly $20 per person.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The main location of the Fall River Public Library is located at 104 North Main Street, within the Downtown Fall River Historic District. It opened in 1899, and was designed by architect Ralph Adams Cram in the Renaissance Revival style. It is constructed from native Fall River granite. The building underwent an extensive renovation during the late 1990s and early 2000s.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The public library system also includes two branches; the South End Branch, located at 58 Arch Street, and the East End Branch, located at 1386 Pleasant Street.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River has historically been a transportation hub for the South Coast and Mount Hope Bay areas due to its location along the Taunton River. In addition to the Fall River Line, Slade's Ferry ran from Fall River to Somerset beginning in the 17th century. In 1875, Slade's Ferry Bridge was opened, connecting the two cities by trolley (and late by car). A two-tiered steel swing-span bridge, Slade's Ferry Bridge extended over from Remington Avenue in Fall River to the intersection of Wilbur Avenue, Riverside Avenue and Brayton Avenue in Somerset. The bridge was in use until 1970, when it was closed and subsequently demolished. The path of the bridge is now roughly marked by twin sets of power lines crossing the river.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 1903, the state authorized construction of a second bridge, the Brightman Street Bridge, a four lane, long drawbridge ending at its namesake street; the bridge opened in 1908. Closed in 2011 and inaccessible to pedestrians and vehicles, the old span is still partially standing. By the 1980s, structural issues with the Brightman Street Bridge resulted in frequent closures for repair, straining local traffic and forcing motorists to take long detours. By 1983, plans were being made to build a new bridge north of the original, which would directly link with Route 138 in Somerset. Plans were put on hold in 1989 due to Coast Guard concerns. Construction of the new span began in the late 1990s and continued until late 2011. The new bridge, the Veterans Memorial Bridge, was formally dedicated on September 11, 2011.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Construction on the Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge began in 1959, and the bridge opened to traffic in the spring of 1966. The six-lane cantilever truss highway bridge spans and was constructed in tandem with Interstate 195. The bridge is named for Charles M. Braga Jr., who died during the attack on Pearl Harbor while aboard the U.S.S. "Pennsylvania""."


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Interstate 195 is the main east-west artery through the city for motorists. The highway enters Fall River from the west via the Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge, continuing through the center of the city to The Narrows and New Bedford and Cape Cod to the east. The highway roughly parallels both the Bay Colony/New Bedford Cape Cod Railroad as well the original path of the Quequechan River. In 1999, a cement ceiling tile fell from the roof of the tunnel beneath Government Center, landing on several cars and causing minor injuries. The incident caused major traffic problems in the area, and is reminiscent of the I-90 tunnel collapse (a part of the Big Dig) in Boston in 2006.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In addition to Interstate 195, Fall River is served by four other major routes. U.S. Route 6 passes over the Brightman Street Bridge headed east, before joining the city street grid and continuing into Westport as State Road. Route 24, a two lane, north-south expressway, enters the city (and the state) at its southern border and extends towards the city center, where it is briefly concurrent with Interstate 195 before branching north along the city's eastern border towards Taunton, Brockton and the Southeast Expressway into Boston. Route 79, another north-south divided highway, begins at the Braga Bridge and continues northbound along the city's waterfront to Airport Road, where it becomes concurrent with Route 24. Route 138 enters the city via the Veterans Memorial Bridge before joining the city grid and headed south towards Tiverton and Aquidneck Island. Route 81 begins in the heart of the city and heads south along city streets into Tiverton. Additionally, Route 177 clips the extreme southern part of the city for less than between Westport and Tiverton. Route 138, Route 24, I-195, and US 6 are based upon pre-Colonial and Colonial-era Native American trails.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River last saw passenger rail service in 1958. An under-construction project named South Coast Rail will bring MBTA Commuter Rail service to a currently under-construction station serving the city via a slight rerouting/extension of the existing Middleborough/Lakeville Line as an interim service by 2023. The line is eventually planned to be rerouted via the Stoughton Branch and the former Dighton and Somerset Railroad by 2030. As of 2022, the nearest passenger rail station is Providence, which is served by the MBTA Providence/Stoughton line and Amtrak's "Acela Express" and "Northeast Regional" trains.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Along with New Bedford, Fall River shares ownership of the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA), a bus network that services both cities, as well as Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, Freetown, Mattapoisett, Somerset, Swansea, and Westport. The twelve fixed-route bus lines that service Fall River depart from the Louis D. Pettine Transportation Center, which opened in 2013. Service to Providence, Tiverton, and Newport, Rhode Island is offered by the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA).


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Intercity bus service to Boston and Hyannis is provided by Peter Pan, with connections available to the company's larger network via transfers.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River Municipal Airport, opened in 1951, served as a general aviation airport for small planes and commuter flights to the Cape and Islands for several decades. By the 1960s, the airport had fallen into a state of relative disrepair. it was closed on February 18, 1996, after the Federal Aviation Administration deemed it unsafe due to its proximity to the city's large landfill. Limited commercial service to the Cape and Islands, as well as general aviation, is available from New Bedford Regional Airport in nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts. Domestic and international commercial air service is available from T.F. Green Airport, located 13 miles west in Warwick, Rhode Island, and at Logan International Airport, located 45 miles north in Boston, Massachusetts.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The Fall River Line Pier, located directly beneath the Braga Bridge, is a major port for commercial fishing and cargo shipping, handling imports from and to Cape Verde, the Azores, Brazil, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. It has served as port-of-call for cruise ships, and serves as the terminus for a passenger ferry line connecting to Newport, Rhode Island. (Service to Block Island has been suspended since 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic). The pier also offers connections to freight rail via the Massachusetts Coastal Railroad.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: Fall River has a rich soccer history. The game was first introduced to the city in the 1880s by immigrants from Lancashire and Glasgow who worked in the local textile industry. In later decades, the arrival of immigrants from Portugal helped to sustain the game's popularity. Between 1888 and 1892, teams from Fall River won the American Cup for five straight years. One of these teams, the Fall River Rovers, also won the 1917 National Challenge Cup. The star and captain of the team was local-born Thomas Swords, who in 1916 captained the United States in their first official international.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: During the 1920s and early 1930s, the Fall River Marksmen were one of the most successful soccer clubs in the United States and were American soccer champions on seven occasions. Another local club, Fall River F.C., were champions in 1932.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: The Marksmen won the National Challenge Cup four times. Among their most notable players were Billy Gonsalves and Bert Patenaude, who were both raised in Fall River. Both played for the United States at the first ever soccer World Cup in 1930. Patenaude is also credited with scoring the first ever hat-trick in World Cup history. He scored all three goals in the United States' 3–0 victory over Paraguay.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: During the 1940s, Ponta Delgada S.C. became one of the most successful amateur teams in the United States. In 1947 the team was selected to represent the United States at the North American soccer championship. In 1950, two of their local born players, Ed Souza and John Souza, played at the World Cup, helping the United States defeat England 1–0.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: On January 18, 2011, Andrew Sousa was drafted by New England Revolution, becoming the first ever Fall River native to play in Major League Soccer.


title: Fall River, Massachusetts

text: In 2019, Fall River Football Club and Fall River Marksmen FC returned to the field after a long hiatus. Both clubs participated in the 1st annual Taça de Fall River, a Home & Away match series, with Fall River Football Club becoming the eventual winners.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In Marxist theory, the Lumpenproletariat () is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, particularly in the context of the revolutions of 1848. They dismissed the revolutionary potential of the "Lumpenproletariat" and contrasted it with the proletariat. Among other groups, criminals, vagabonds, and prostitutes are usually included in this category.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: The Social Democratic Party of Germany made wide use of the term by the turn of the century. Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) and Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) followed Marx's arguments and dismissed the revolutionary potential of the group, while Mao Zedong (1893–1976) argued that proper leadership could utilize it. The word "Lumpenproletariat", popularized in the West by Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" in the 1960s, has been adopted as a sociological term. However, what some consider to be its vagueness and its history as a term of abuse has led to some criticism. Some extremist groups, most notably the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, have sought to mobilize the "Lumpenproletariat".


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are generally considered to have coined the term "Lumpenproletariat". It is composed of the German word "Lumpen", which is usually translated as "ragged" and "prolétariat", a French word adopted as a common Marxist term for the class of wage earners in a capitalist system. Hal Draper argued that the root is "lump" ("knave"), not "lumpen". Bussard noted that the meaning of "lump" shifted from being a person dressed in rags in the 17th century to knavery in the 19th century.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language" defines it as "the lowest stratum of the proletariat. Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked awareness of their collective interest as an oppressed class." In modern usage, it is commonly defined to include the chronically unemployed, the homeless, and career criminals. The Communist Party USA website defines it as follows:


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In English translations of Marx and Engels, "lumpenproletariat" has sometimes been rendered as "social scum", "dangerous classes", "ragamuffin", and "ragged-proletariat". It has been described by some scholars and theorists, as well as the Soviet nomenclature, as a declassed (déclassé) group. The term "underclass" is considered to be the modern synonym of "lumpenproleteriat". Scholars note its negative connotations. Economist Richard McGahey, writing for the "New York Times" in 1982, noted that it is one of the older terms in a "long line of labels that stigmatize poor people for their poverty by focusing exclusively on individual characteristics." He listed the following synonyms: "underclass", "undeserving poor", and "culture of poverty". Another synonym is "riff-raff". The word is used in some languages as a pejorative. In English it may be used in an informal disapproving manner to "describe people who are not clever or well educated, and who are not interested in changing or improving their situation."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: According to historian Robert Bussard, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed the "lumpenproletariat" as:


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: They used the term exclusively with negative connotations, although their works lack "consistent and clearly reasoned definition" of the term. They used the term in various publications "for diverse purposes and on several levels of meaning."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Hal Draper suggested that the concept has its roots in Young Hegelian thought and possibly in G.W.F. Hegel's "Elements of the Philosophy of Right". While Bussard believes that the idea was "at one and the same time, a hybrid of new social attitudes which crystallised in France, England and Germany, as well as an extension of more traditional, pre-nineteenth-century views of the lower classes." Bussard noted that they often used the term as a "kind of sociological profanity" and contrasted between it and "working and thinking" proletariat. According to Michael Denning by identifying the "lumpenproletariat", "Marx was combating the established view that the entire working class was a dangerous and immoral element. He drew a line between the proletariat and the "lumpenproletariat" to defend the moral character of the former."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: The first collaborative work by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to feature the term "lumpenproletariat" is "The German Ideology", written in 1845–46. They used it to describe the plebs (plebeians) of ancient Rome who were midway between freemen and slaves, never becoming more than a "proletarian rabble ["lumpenproletariat"]" and Max Stirner's "self-professed radical constituency of the Lumpen or ragamuffin." The first work written solely by Marx to mention the term was an article published in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" in November 1848 which described the "lumpenproletariat" as a "tool of reaction" in the revolutions of 1848 and as a "significant counterrevolutionary force throughout Europe." Engels wrote in "The Peasant War in Germany" (1850) that the "lumpenproletariat" is a "phenomenon that occurs in a more or less developed form in all the so far known phases of society".


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In "The Communist Manifesto" (1848), where "lumpenproletariat" is commonly translated in English editions as the "dangerous class" and the "social scum", Marx and Engels wrote:


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In an article analyzing the June 1848 events in Paris Engels wrote of the "gardes mobiles", a militia which suppressed the workers' uprising: "The organized "lumpenproletariat" had given battle to the working proletariat. It had, as was to be expected, put itself at the disposal of the bourgeoisie." Thoburn notes that Marx makes his most detailed descriptions of the "lumpenproletariat" in his writings of the revolutionary turmoil in France between 1848 and 1852: "The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850" (1850) and "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" (1852). In "The Class Struggles" he describes the finance aristocracy of Louis Philippe I and his July Monarchy (1830–48) as lumpenproletarian: "In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it the financial aristocracy is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society." He distinguished the finance aristocracy from the industrial bourgeoisie as the former became rich "not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others." He further suggests that the "lumpenproletariat" is a component of the proletariat, unlike his earlier works. He claimed that the "gardes mobiles" were set up "to set one segment of the proletariat against the other":


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" Marx identified Napoleon III as the "Chief of the "Lumpenproletariat"," a claim he made repeatedly. He argued that he bought his supporters with "gifts and loans, these were the limits of the financial science of the "lumpenproletariat", both the low and the exalted. Never had a President speculated more stupidly on the stupidity of the masses." For Marx, the "lumpenproletariat" represented those who were "corrupt, reactionary and without a clear sense of class-consciousness." He wrote in "The Eighteenth Brumaire":


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In "" (1867) Marx claimed legislation which turned soldiers and peasants "en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances." By this he deviated from his focus on the vicious and degenerate behavior of the "lumpenproletariat" in his writings on France. Instead he described the "lumpenproletariat" as part of the what he called an "industrial reserve army", which capitalists used as times required. Thus "vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes" and other "lumpenproletariat" formed an element within the "surplus population" in a capitalist system.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was one of the first to use "lumpenproletariat" in their rhetoric, particularly to indicate the scope of their view of a "desirable" working class and exclude the non-respectable poor. By the early 20th century, the German Marxist tradition saw workers outside the SPD and/or labor unions as members of the "lumpenproletariat". In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rioting and violence was often attributed by the SPD and its newspaper "Vorwärts" to the "lumpenproletariat" working in collusion with the secret police. Historian Richard J. Evans argued that the SPD, thus, lost touch with the "militancy of the classes which it claimed to represent, a militancy which found expression in frequent outbursts of spontaneous collective protest, both political and industrial, at moments of high social and political tension." For many German socialists in the imperial period the "lumpenproletariat"—especially prostitutes and pimps—was not only a "political-moral problem, but also an objective, biological danger to the health of society." Karl Kautsky argued in 1890 that it is the "lumpenproletariat" and not the "militant industrial proletariat" that mostly suffer from alcoholism. August Bebel, pre-World War I leader of the SPD, linked anti-Semitic proletarians to the "lumpenproletariat" as the former failed to develop class consciousness, which led to a racial, and not social, explanation of economic inequality.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Vladimir Lenin called socialist attempts to recruit "lumpenproletariat" elements "opportunism". In 1925 Nikolai Bukharin described the "lumpenproletariat" as being characterized by "shiftlessness, lack of discipline, hatred of the old, but impotence to construct anything new, an individualistic declassed 'personality' whose actions are based only on foolish caprices." In a 1932 article on "How Mussolini Triumphed" Leon Trotsky described the "declassed and demoralized" "lumpenproletariat" as "the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy." He argued that capitalism used them through fascism. The "Great Soviet Encyclopedia", written from the Marxist-Leninist perspective, defined "lumpenproletariat" as:


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: The term was rarely used in the Soviet Union to describe any portion of the Soviet society because, Hemmerle argues, following the Russian Revolution of 1917 "millions of people passed through economic conditions that bore a resemblance to the traditional meaning of "lumpenproletariat"". However, it was used to label labor movements in capitalist countries which were not pro-Soviet. Soviet authorities and scholars instead reserved other terms for their own "lumpenproletariat" groups, especially "déclassé elements" (деклассированные элементы, "deklassirovannye elementy"), and viewed them, like Marx, as "social degenerates, isolated from the forces of production and incapable of having a working-class consciousness." Svetlana Stephenson notes that the Soviet state "for all its ideology of assistance, cooperation and social responsibility, was ready to descend on them with all its might."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Mao Zedong argued in 1939 that the "lumpenproletariat" (, pinyin: "yóumín wúchǎnzhě") in China is a legacy of the country's "colonial and semi-colonial status" which forced a vast number of people in urban and rural areas into illegitimate occupations and activities. Earlier, in 1928, he asserted that "the only way" to win over these wayward proletarians was to carry out intensive thought reform "so as to effect qualitative changes in these elements." He argued that the "lumpenproletariat" had a dual nature. Simultaneously, they were "victimized members of the laboring masses and untrustworthy elements with 'parasitic inclinations'", which made them waver between revolution and counterrevolution. He believed that "lumpenproletariat" elements, such as triads, the organized crime syndicates, "can become revolutionary given proper leadership". According to Luo Ruiqing, the Minister of Public Security, the "lumpenproletariat" population consisted of sex workers, vagrant gangs, and theft rings and were political problems that threatened the internal security of China. Following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), "lumpenproletariat" were interned into government-run reeducation centers. Some 500,000 people were interned into 920 such centers by 1953. Historian Aminda Smith notes that the "case of "lumpenproletariat" reformatories suggests that anti-state resistance from members of the oppressed masses was essential to early-PRC rhetoric because it validated claims about the devastating effects of the old society and the transformative power of socialist 'truth'."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later became a Senator, stated following the riots of 1967 that the "lumpenproletariat" is essentially anarchistic rather than revolutionary. By the early 1970s some radicals deviated from the orthodox Marxist viewpoint that the "lumpenproletariat" lacks significant revolutionary potential. Herbert Marcuse, an American philosopher and sociologist of the Frankfurt School, believed that the working class in the US "having been bought up by the consumer society, has lost all class consciousness" and lay the hopes for revolution on the "lumpenproletariat"—the social outcasts—led by intellectuals. Marcuse, along with Afro-Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon and other radical intellectuals, proposed that elements of the "lumpenproletariat" are potentially leading forces in a revolutionary movement. According to Michael Denning Fanon revived the term, long having been disappeared from left-wing discourse, in this book "The Wretched of the Earth" (1961). He defined the "lumpenproletariat" as the peasantry in colonial societies of the Third World not involved in industrial production who are unaware of the dominant colonial ideology and are therefore, "ready, capable and willing to revolt against the colonial status quo for liberation." He described them as "one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people." He was not uncritical of the "lumpenproletariat" due to their supposed unpredictability due to "their ignorance and incomprehension." Colonial forces could make a use of them as hired soldiers.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Fanon's use of the term prompted debates and studies, including by Pierre Bourdieu and Charles van Onselen. The African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral was skeptical about the "lumpen" being used in anti-colonialist liberation revolution. His African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde recruited "déclassé", but not "lumpenproletariat", groups as the latter were supportive of the Portuguese colonial police, while the former, in the absence of a developed proletariat in Guinea and Cape Verde, played a dynamic role in anti-colonialist struggle. Historian Martin Meredith wrote that Ethiopian ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam used "the lumpen-proletariat of the slums" to help with his Red Terror.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Laura Pulido argues that, historically, the "lumpenproletariat" in the US has mostly been African American due to the nation being racially constituted. It is primarily indicated by the high unemployment and incarceration rates among African Americans. The Black Panther Party, most prominent revolutionary socialists in post-war US, "thought of much of their following as "lumpenproletarian"." They adopted Fanon's viewpoint regarding the revolutionary potential of the group. Pulido claims the emphasis the Black Panthers put on the "lumpenproletariat" was the party's hallmark. Its co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton viewed the African-American "lumpenproletariat" as a potential organized threat if the party did not mobilize them. Seale included "the brother who's pimping, the brother who's hustling, the unemployed, the downtrodden, the brother who's robbing banks, who's not politically conscious" in his definition of the "lumpenproletariat". Newton called them "street brothers", alienated from the system of oppression in the US, and sought to recruit them into the party. Their strategy was a controversial one. Chris Booker and Errol Henderson argued that problems such as "a lack of discipline, a tendency toward violence, the importation of street culture, including crime, and the use of weapons" by Black Panthers was caused by the disproportionately high membership of the "lumpenproletariat" in their ranks.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: The Young Lords Party adopted similar views to the Black Panther Party, believing in the potential of the lumpen. They developed a Lumpen Organization within their larger organization with the goal of enlisting the people considered the lumpenproletariat, or "lumpen," in the struggle; they considered the lumpen to be "the class in our nation which for years and years have not been able to find jobs, and are forced to be drug addicts, prostitutes, etc." (p. 20) in the face of the capitalist system the Party considered an enemy. Crucial to the party's view on the lumpen is that, unlike criticisms of the lumpenproletariat around a perceived lack of productivity and organization, the Young Lords Party stated that "it's a law of revolution that the most oppressed group takes the leadership position" (p. 42) and that the lumpen would be the immediate focus of the party's organizing efforts in liberating all oppressed peoples.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Ernesto Laclau argued that Marx's dismissal of the "lumpenproletariat" showed the limitations of his theory of economic determinism and argued that the group and "its possible integration into the politics of populism as an 'absolute outside' that threatens the coherence of ideological identifications." Mark Cowling argues that the "concept is being used for its political impact rather than because it provides good explanations" and that its political impact is "pernicious" and an "obstacle to clear analysis." Laura Pulido argues that there is a diversity in the "lumpen" population, especially in terms of consciousness.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Post-anarchist Saul Newman wrote in 2010 that classical anarchists argue that the "lumpenproletariat" should be designated as a revolutionary class. According to Tom Brass, individualist anarchist Max Stirner "celebrated the lumpenproletariat as authentic rebels." Anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin, who was dubbed "the lumpen prince" by Engels, wrote that only in the "lumpenproletariat" and "and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallised the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution." Thoburn writes that for him, the "lumpenproletariat" represented a "kind of actually existing anarchism." Ann Robertson notes that Bakunin believed that "inherent in humanity is a natural essence which can be suppressed but never entirely extinguished. Those in society who are more distant from the State apparatus (the peasants are scattered throughout the countryside, the "lumpenproletariat" simply refuses to obey the laws) are accordingly natural leaders". Bakunin stated:


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Robert Ritter, the head of Nazi Germany's efforts to track the genealogies of the Romani, considered them a "highly inferior "Lumpenproletariat"" as they were "parasites who lacked ambition and many of them had become habitual criminals." The Romani were seen in post-World War II communist-ruled eastern and central Europe as an example of the "lumpenproletariat" and were, therefore, subject to an aggressive policy of assimilation.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Ken Gelder noted that in cultural studies, subcultures are "often positioned "outside" of class, closer in kind to Marx's "lumpenproletariat", lacking social consciousness, self-absorbed or self-interested, at a distance from organised or sanctioned forms of labour, and so on."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In Ukraine, "titushky", pro-Viktor Yanukovych thugs active during the Euromaidan protests in 2013–14, were characterized as lumpen elements.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: The 1979 report of the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education warned that the US is in danger of creating "a permanent underclass, a self‐perpetuating culture of poverty, a substantial 'lumpen proletariat'." Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote in 1985: "An American version of a lumpenproletariat (the so-called underclass), without work and without hope, existing at the margins of society, could bring down the great cities, sap resources and strength from the entire society and, lacking the usual means to survive, prey upon those who possess them." According to political scientist Marie Gottschalk the tough-on-crime stance on African Americans has been caused by political manipulation of public fears of a lumpen underclass threatening the majority as African Americans were perceived to have turned to crime due to losing in the deindustrialization of the country.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Mark Cowling argued that there is considerable similarity in both definition and function between the "lumpenproletariat", as proposed by Marx, and the contemporary theory of the underclass by Charles Murray, an American conservative political scientist. Although Murray and Richard Herrnstein did not use the term in their 1994 book "The Bell Curve", Malcolm Browne noted in a "New York Times" review that the authors argue that the United States is being "split between an isolated caste of ruling meritocrats on one hand and a vast, powerless Lumpenproletariat on the other. Society, the authors predict, will have little use for this underclass in a world dominated by sophisticated machines and the bright human beings who tend them."


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Several commentators and researchers have analyzed Donald Trump's political base as modern American "lumpenproletariat". Francis Levy compared "basket of deplorables", Hillary Clinton's phrase to characterize some Trump supporters during the 2016 presidential election campaign, to Marx's rhetoric of the "lumpenproletariat".


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: Ranjit Gupta, the Inspector General of the West Bengal Police, claimed in 1973 that the Maoist Naxalite rebels in India were made of "some intellectuals and lumpen proletariat. Their main target was policemen—and they thought that if the police force could be torn apart, so could society." Political scientist Atul Kohli claimed in his 2001 book that "variety of lumpen groups, especially unemployed youth in northern India, have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements in recent years," especially the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In 2010s, cow vigilantism in India has been linked by Pavan Varma to "lumpen Hindu fanaticism" and to "lumpen and self-appointed "gau rakshaks"" by Bhalchandra Mungekar.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: , an Italian Marxist historian, argued to have confirmed in his 1953 book "Un comune socialista" that the "lumpenproletariat" is essentially a conservative force based on his study of Sesto Fiorentino. He found that some 450–500 members of the working class had joined the liberal-conservative party, which was led by landowners, industrialists, and professionals in hopes of getting recommendation that would allow them to join Richard-Ginori, the largest local employer, which refused to hire socialists.


title: Lumpenproletariat

text: In 1966 sociologist David Matza cited disorder and violence as two of the most prominent characteristics of the disreputable poor. In his 1977 book "Class, State, and Crime", Marxist historian Richard Quinney defined "lumpen" crimes (or "predatory crimes") as those intended for purely personal profit. In a 1986 study sociologist David Brownfield defined the "lumpen-proletariat" (or the "disreputable poor") by their unemployment and receipt of welfare benefits. He concluded that "while no significant effects of class can be found using a neo-Marxist conception of class, gradational measures of class (occupation and education) ... Measures of disreputable poverty—unemployment and welfare status [recipiency]—are relatively strong correlates of violent behavior." He explained:


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Starbase is a spaceport, production, and development facility for Starship rockets, located at Boca Chica, Texas, United States. It is in construction in the late 2010s and 2020s by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: When conceptualized, its stated purpose was "to provide SpaceX an exclusive launch site that would allow the company to accommodate its launch manifest and meet tight launch windows." The launch site was originally intended to support launches of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles as well as "a variety of reusable suborbital launch vehicles", but in early 2018, SpaceX announced a change of plans, stating that the launch site would be used exclusively for SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle, Starship. Between 2018 and 2020, the site added significant rocket production and test capacity. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk indicated in 2014 that he expected "commercial astronauts, private astronauts, to be departing from South Texas," and he foresaw launching spacecraft to Mars from the site.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Between 2012 and 2014, SpaceX considered seven potential locations around the United States for the new commercial launch facility. Generally, for orbital launches an ideal site would have an easterly water overflight path for safety and be located as close to the equator as possible in order to take advantage of the Earth's rotational speed. For much of this period, a parcel of land adjacent to Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas, was the leading candidate location, during an extended period while the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted an extensive environmental assessment on the use of the Texas location as a launch site. Also during this period, SpaceX began acquiring land in the area, purchasing approximately and leasing by July 2014. SpaceX announced in August 2014, that they had selected the location near Brownsville as the location for the new non-governmental launch site, after the final environmental assessment completed and environmental agreements were in place by July 2014. An orbital launch of the Starship would make it SpaceX's fourth active launch facility, following three launch locations that are leased from the US government.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: SpaceX conducted a groundbreaking ceremony on the new launch facility in September 2014, and soil preparation began in October 2015. The first tracking antenna was installed in August 2016, and the first propellant tank arrived in July 2018. In late 2018, construction ramped up considerably, and the site saw the fabrication of the first prototype test vehicle, "Starhopper", which was tested and flown March–August 2019. Through 2021, additional prototype flight vehicles are being built at the facility for higher-altitude tests. By March 2020, there were over 500 people employed at the facility, with most of the work force involved in 24/7 production operations for the third-generation SpaceX launch vehicle, Starship.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Private discussions between SpaceX and various state officials about a future private launch site began at least as early as 2011, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mentioned interest in a private launch site for their commercial launches in a speech in September 2011. The company publicly announced in August 2014 that they had decided on Texas as the location for their new non-governmental launch site, the SpaceX South Texas launch site. Site soil work began in 2015 and major construction of facilities began in late-2018, with rocket engine testing and flight testing beginning in 2019.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The name Starbase began to be used more widely by SpaceX after March 2021 when SpaceX had some discussions described as a "casual enquiry" about incorporating a city to be called Starbase, and by early 2022, the Starbase moniker for the SpaceX facilities in south Texas had become common. Starbase is also used sometimes to describe the region of the Boca Chica subdelta peninsula surrounding the SpaceX facilities; see .


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: As early as April 2007, at least five potential locations were publicly known, including "sites in Alaska, California, Florida, Texas and Virginia." In September 2012, it became clear that Georgia and Puerto Rico were also interested in pursuing the new SpaceX commercial spaceport facility. The Camden County, Georgia, Joint Development Authority voted unanimously in November 2012 to "explore developing an aero-spaceport facility" at an Atlantic coastal site to support both horizontal and vertical launch operations. The main Puerto Rico site under consideration at the time was land that had formerly been the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. By September 2012, SpaceX was considering seven potential locations for the new commercial launch pad around the United States. For much of the time since, the leading candidate location for the new facility was a parcel of land adjacent to Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: By early 2013, Texas remained the leading candidate for the location of the new SpaceX commercial launch facility, although Florida, Georgia and other locations also remained in the running. Legislation was introduced in the Texas Legislature to enable temporary closings of State beaches during launches, limit liability for noise and some other specific commercial spaceflight risks, as well as considering a package of incentives to encourage SpaceX to locate at the Brownsville, Texas, location. 2013 economic estimates showed SpaceX investing approximately in the development and construction of the facility A incentive package was approved by the Texas Legislature in 2013.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: From the beginning, one of the proposed locations for the new commercial-mission-only spaceport had been south Texas. In April 2012, the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation initiated a Notice of Intent to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement and public hearings on the new launch site, which would be located in Cameron County, Texas. The summary then indicated that the Texas site would support up to 12 commercial launches per year, including two Falcon Heavy launches. The first public meeting was held in May 2012, and the FAA released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the location in south Texas in April 2013.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Public hearings on the draft EIS occurred in Brownsville, followed by a public comment period ending in June 2013.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The draft EIS identified three parcels of land—total of —that would notionally be used for the control center. In addition, SpaceX had leased of land adjacent to the terminus of Texas State Highway 4, of which would be used to develop the vertical launch area; the remainder would remain open space surrounding the launch facility.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In July 2014, the FAA officially issued its Record of Decision concerning the Boca Chica Beach facility, and found that "the proposal by Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies would have no significant impact on the environment," approving the proposal and outlining SpaceX's proposal. The company formally announced selection of the Texas location in August 2014.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In September 2013, the State of Texas General Land Office (GLO) and Cameron County signed an agreement outlining how beach closures would be handled in order to support a future SpaceX launch schedule. The agreement is intended to enable both economic development in Cameron County and protect the public's right to have access to Texas state beaches. Under the 2013 Texas plan, beach closures would be allowed but were not expected to exceed a maximum of 15 hours per closure date, with no more than three scheduled space flights between the Saturday prior to Memorial Day and Labor Day, unless the Texas GLO approves.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In 2019, the FAA completed a reevaluation of the SpaceX facilities in South Texas, and in particular the revised plans away from a commercial spaceport to more of a spaceship yard for building and testing rockets at the facility, as well as flying different rockets—SpaceX Starship and prototype test vehicles—from the site than the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy envisioned in the original 2014 environmental assessment.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In May and August 2019, the FAA issued a written report with a decision that a new supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) would not be required.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In May 2021, the FAA issued a written FAQ regarding the FAA's Environmental Review of SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In 2022, Starship had been delayed extensively from an orbital flight due to a delay in an FAA license to allow findings on environmental impact. On 13 June 2022, the FAA announced that Starbase was not creating a significant impact to the environment, yet listed more than 75 actions to be taken before review of an orbital launch license. Some of these actions include $5,000 contributions to wildlife non-profits in the area, making sure roadways stay open on certain days of the year, and actions to protect local sea turtle populations.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Prior to a final decision on the location of the spaceport, SpaceX began purchasing a number of real estate properties in Cameron County, Texas, beginning in June 2012. By July 2014, SpaceX had purchased approximately and leased near Boca Chica Village and Boca Chica Beach through a company named "Dogleg Park LLC", a reference to the "dogleg" type of trajectory that rockets launched from Boca Chica will be required to follow.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Prior to May 2013, five lots in the Spanish Dagger Subdivision in Boca Chica Village, adjacent to Highway 4 which leads to the proposed launch site, had been purchased. In May 2013, SpaceX purchased an additional three parcels, adding another , plus four more lots with a total of in July 2013, making a total of 12 SpaceX-purchased lots. In November 2013, SpaceX substantially "increased its land holdings in the Boca Chica Beach area from 12 lots to 72 undeveloped lots" purchased, which encompass a total of approximately , in addition to the leased from private property owners. An additional few acres were purchased late in 2013, raising the SpaceX total "from 72 undeveloped lots to 80 lots totaling about 26 acres." In late 2013, SpaceX completed a replat of 13 lots totaling into a subdivision that they have named "Mars Crossing."


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In February 2014, they purchased 28 additional lots that surround the proposed complex at Boca Chica Beach, raising the SpaceX-owned land to approximately in addition to the lease. SpaceX's investments in Cameron County continued in March 2014, with the purchase of more tracts of land, bringing the total number of lots it now owns to 90. Public records showed that the total land area that SpaceX then owned through Dogleg Park LLC was roughly . This is in addition to that SpaceX then had under lease. By September 2014, Dogleg Park completed a replat of lots totaling into a second subdivision, this one named "Launch Site Texas", made up of several parcels of property previously purchased. This is the site of the launch site itself while the launch control facility is planned two miles west in the Mars Crossing subdivision. Dogleg Park has also continued purchasing land in Boca Chica, and now owns a total of "87 lots equaling more than 100 acres".


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: SpaceX has also bought and is modifying several residential properties in Boca Chica Village, but apparently planning to leave them in residential use, about west of the launch site.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In September 2019, SpaceX extended an offer to buy each of the houses in Boca Chica Village for three times the fair market value along with an offer of VIP invitations to future launch events. The 3x offer was said to be "non-negotiable." Homeowners were given two weeks for this particular offer to remain valid.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Major site construction at SpaceX's launch site in Boca Chica got underway in 2016, with site soil preparation for the launch pad in a process said to take two years, with significant additional soil work and significant construction beginning in late 2018. By September 2019, the site had been "transformed into an operational launch site – outfitted with the ground support equipment needed to support test flights of the methane-fueled Starship vehicles." Lighter construction of fencing and temporary buildings in the control center area had begun in 2014.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The Texas launch location was projected in the 2013 "draft" EIS to include a vertical launch area and a area for a launch control center and a launch pad directly adjacent to the eastern terminus of Texas State Highway 4. Changes occurred based on actual land SpaceX was able to purchase and replat for the control center and primary spaceship build yard.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: SpaceX broke ground on the new launch site in September 2014, but indicated then that the principal work to build the facility was not expected to ramp up until late 2015 after the SpaceX launch site development team completed work on Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A, as the same team was expected to manage the work to build the Boca Chica facility. Advance preparation work was expected to commence ahead of that. , SpaceX anticipated spending approximately over three to four years to build the Texas facility, while the Texas state government expected to spend to extend utilities and infrastructure to support the new spaceport.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The design phase for the facility was completed by March 2015. In the event, construction was delayed by the destruction of one of SpaceX two Florida launch facilities in a September 2016 rocket explosion, which tied up the launch site design/build team for over a year.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In order to stabilize the waterlogged ground at the coastal site, SpaceX engineers determined that a process known as soil surcharging would be required. For this to happen, some of new soil was trucked to the facility between October 2015 and January 2016. In January 2016, following additional soil testing that revealed foundation problems, SpaceX indicated they were not planning to complete construction until 2017, and the first launch from Boca Chica was not expected until late 2018. In February 2016, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell stated that construction had been delayed by poor soil stability at the site, and that "two years of dirt work" would be required before SpaceX could build the launch facility, with construction costs expected to be higher than previously estimated. The first phase of the soil stabilization process was completed by May 2016.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Two S-band tracking station antennas were installed at the site in 2016–2017. They were formerly used to track the Space Shuttle during launch and landing and made operational as tracking resources for crewed Dragon missions in 2018.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: A SpaceX-owned photovoltaic power station was installed on site to provide off-grid electrical power near the control center, The solar farm was installed by SolarCity in January 2018.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Progress on building the pad had slowed considerably through 2017, much slower than either SpaceX or Texas state officials had expected when it was announced in 2014. Support for SpaceX, however, remained fairly strong amongst Texas public officials. In January 2018, COO Shotwell said the pad might be used for "early vehicle testing" by late 2018 or early 2019 but that additional work would be required after that to make it into a full launch site. SpaceX achieved this new target, with prototype rocket and rocket engine ground testing at Boca Chica starting in March 2019, and suborbital flight tests starting in July 2019.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In late 2018, construction ramped up considerably, and the site saw the development of a large propellant tank farm including a 95,000 gallon horizontal liquid oxygen tank and 80,000 gallon liquid methane tank, a gas flare, more offices, and a small flat square launch pad. The "Starhopper" prototype was relocated to the pad in March 2019, and first flew in late July 2019.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In late 2018, the "Mars Crossing" subdivision developed into a shipyard, with the development of several large hangars, and several concrete jigs, on top of which large steel rocket airframes were fabricated, the first of which became the Starhopper test article. In February 2019, SpaceX confirmed that the first orbit-capable Starship and Super Heavy test articles would be manufactured nearby, at the "SpaceX South Texas build site." By September 2019, the facility had been completely transformed into a new phase of an industrial rocket build facility, working multiple shifts and more than five days a week, able to support large rocket ground and flight testing. As of November 2019 the SpaceX south Texas Launch Site crew has been working on a new launch pad for its Starship/Super Heavy rocket; the former launch site has been transformed to an assembly site for the Starship rocket.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: On 7 March 2021, it was revealed by Michael Baylor on Twitter that the SpaceX South Texas Launch Site may eventually expand to the south. The expansion could see the addition of 2 Suborbital test stands along with one orbital launch pad code-named Orbital Launch Mount B. The expansion could also include a new landing pad, an expansion to the current tank farm, a new tank farm situated next to the proposed Orbital Launch Mount B, expanded Suborbital Pad B decking and two integration towers situated to under-construction Orbital Launch Mount A and the proposed Orbital Launch Mount B.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In March 2021, SpaceX received a "Determination of no hazard to air navigation" from the FAA for the launch tower that SpaceX is building that is intended to support orbital launches. The period of construction shown on the FAA documents was April–July 2021 but the expiration date on the regulatory approval was 18 September 2021.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The launch tower was fully stacked by late July 2021, when a crane lifted the ninth and final large steel section to the top of the tower at the orbital launch site (OLS). The tower is designed to have a set of large arms attached which will be used to stack both Super Heavy and the Starship second stage on the adjacent launch mount and, eventually, catch the rocket on return to the launch site as well. There will be no separate large crane attached to the top of the tower.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The launch mount ("Stage Zero") began construction in July 2020 when the rebar of the deep foundation began to rise above the ground. Soon six large steel circular launch supports rose from the ground which would eventually support the massive weight of the launch table some ten months later. The mount got to full height on 31 July 2021 with the rollout and craning into place of the launch table, which had been custom built at the manufacturing site over the preceding months. Musk has commented that Stage Zero is everything needed to both launch and catch the rocket, and that building it is at least as hard as the booster or ship. , launch mount and launch tower plumbing, electrical, and ground support equipment connections are yet to be completed. Soon after tests for Starships were taking a break, production started to get ready for the First Orbital Launch. They started making GSE tanks, Cyro shells, SN20, and Booster 4. As SN20 was completed, and Booster 4 and SN20 were rolled out to the launch site for a full stack. On August 6th 2021, SN20 was stacked on top of Booster 4 showing a great view of the two on the Orbital Launch Table giving us a great view of the future. SN20 soon after was taken back to the Production site, and Booster 4 as well to finish what needed to be finished between the two.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: As of October 28, 2021, Starship SN20 and Booster 4 are at the launch site and are conducting proof tests for the First Orbital launch very soon. SN20 conducted two proof tests which were successful, but lost some heat tiles in the process, and recently conducted a pre burner test, and a raptor engine test firing up its engines, and lost some heat tiles again during the process which is very normal as tests are conducted to gather information for future tests. Booster 4 has not conducted any tests yet as it sits on its test stand waiting for its first proof tests or even a raptor engine test in the near future.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The South Texas Launch Site is SpaceX's fourth active launch facility, and its first private facility. , SpaceX leased three US government-owned launch sites: Vandenberg SLC 4 in California, and Cape Canaveral SLC-40 and Kennedy Space Center LC39A both in Florida.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The launch site is in Cameron County, Texas, approximately east of Brownsville, with launch flyover range over the Gulf of Mexico. The launch site is planned to be optimized for commercial activity, as well as used to fly spacecraft on interplanetary trajectories.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Launches on orbital trajectories from Brownsville will have a constrained flight path, due to the Caribbean Islands as well as the large number of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX has stated that they have a good flight path available for the launching of satellites on trajectories toward the commercially valuable geosynchronous orbit.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Although SpaceX initial plans for the Boca Chica launch site were to loft robotic spacecraft to geosynchronous orbits, Elon Musk indicated in September 2014 that "the first person to go to another planet could launch from [the Boca Chica launch site]", but did not indicate which launch vehicle might be used for those launches. In May 2018, Elon Musk clarified that the South Texas launch site would be used exclusively for Starship.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: By March 2019, two test articles of Starship were being built, and three by May. The low-altitude, low-velocity Starship test flight rocket was used for initial integrated testing of the Raptor rocket engine with a flight-capable propellant structure, and was slated to also test the newly designed autogenous pressurization system that is replacing traditional helium tank pressurization as well as initial launch and landing algorithms for the much larger rocket. SpaceX originally developed their reusable booster technology for the 3-meter-diameter Falcon 9 from 2012 to 2018. The "Starhopper" prototype was also the platform for the first flight tests of the full-flow staged combustion methalox Raptor engine, where the hopper vehicle was flight tested with a single engine in July/August 2019, but could be fitted with up to three engines to facilitate engine-out tolerance testing. "Starhopper" currently stands to the side of the launchpad, hosting what appears to be radar equipment.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The launch site has been the main production and testing site of the Starship/Super Heavy system. All Starship vehicles have been constructed here besides the Mk2 prototype, which was built in Florida but never completed, and eventually scrapped.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: By March 2020, SpaceX had doubled the number of employees onsite for Starship manufacturing, test and operations since January, with over 500 employees working at the site. Four shifts are working 24/7—in 12-hour shifts with 4 days on then 3 off followed by 3 days on and 4 off—to enable continuous Starship manufacturing with workers and equipment specialized to each task of serial Starship production. A 1 MW solar farm and a 3.8 MWh battery supplies some of the electricity.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In September 2022, during a first test firing of all six engines of the Starship prototype, scattered hot debris ignited a SpaceX dumpster, and caused a bushfire in the nearby "Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area", an environmentally sensitive area, ultimately destroying 68 acres before the fire could be doused.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The new launch facility was projected in a 2014 study to generate of economic activity in the city of Brownsville and eventually generate approximately in annual salaries from some 500 jobs projected to be created by 2024.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: A local was created for south Texas in 2014—the Cameron County Space Port Development Corporation (CCSPDC)—in order to facilitate the development of the aerospace industry in Cameron County near Brownsville. The first project for the newly established board is the SpaceX project to develop a launch site at Boca Chica Beach. In May 2015, Cameron County transferred ownership of 25 lots in Boca Chica to CCSPDC, which were stated could be used in the future to develop event parking.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The launch facility was approved to be constructed two miles from approximately thirty homes, with no indication that this would cause problems for the homeowners. Five years later in 2019, following an FAA revaluation of the environmental impact and the issuance of new FAA requirements that residents be asked to voluntarily stay outside their houses during particular tanking and engine ignition tests, SpaceX decided that a couple dozen of these homes were now too close to the launch facility over the long term and began seeking market acquisition of these properties. An attorney with expertise on such situations referred to the timeframe given by SpaceX for homeowners to consider their purchase offer as "aggressive".


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The United States Fish and Wildlife Service claimed that SpaceX had caused 1,000 hours of highway closures in 2019, well above the permitted 300 hours. In June 2021, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz threatened to prosecute SpaceX for unauthorized road and beach closures, as well as employing security officers who may not be licensed to carry handguns.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: Some residents of Boca Chica Village, Brownsville, and environmental activists criticized the Starship development program, stating that SpaceX had harmed local wildlife, conducted unauthorized test flights along with infrastructure construction, and polluted the area with noise. Environmental groups warned that the program threatens wildlife in the area, including 18 vulnerable and endangered species. A rare beetle species, the Boca Chica Flea Beetle ("Chaetocnema rileyi"), is known only from the beachside dune system next to the launchpad. The spaceport is built under the assumption that the Falcon Heavy rocket would launch there, thus creating a large radius where a Starship debris can land on.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: During the SN8 launch, SpaceX ignored FAA warnings that the flight profile posed a risk of explosion. Following the launch, the FAA's Associate Administrator Wayne Monteith commented that SpaceX does not have a strong safety culture for not conducting thorough checks and following the FAA's statements. Members of the United States Congress voiced concerns about the FAA's response, calling on the agency to not have too much influence over SpaceX. However, the FAA Administrator stated that while SpaceX had done several corrections for those violations, the FAA would not approve further flights if SpaceX did not continue to perform those corrections. David Newstead, the director of one local environmental group, said that the explosion of SN11 left rocket debris on parts of the wildlife refuge that took three months to clean up.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The FAA allowed the public to comment until 1 November on the environmental impact statement draft that is released on 19 September. SpaceX's environmental assessment missed important details about the propellant source. One such example is SpaceX's plan of building a 250-megawatt gas-fired power plant without specifying how it would obtain tens of millions of cubic feet of gas per day. Pat Parenteau, a law professor and senior counsel for the Environmental Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law School, stated that it was unusual to exclude such details, which could violate the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act.


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: The Brownsville Economic Development Council (BEDC) was building a space tracking facility in Boca Chica Village on a site adjacent to the SpaceX launch control center. The STARGATE tracking facility is a joint project of the BEDC, SpaceX, and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (formerly the University of Texas at Brownsville at the time the agreement was reached).


title: SpaceX Starbase

text: In January 2016, the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Advisory Board (CVA) recommended that the South Padre Island City Council "proceed with further planning regarding potential SpaceX viewing sites."


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: I Know Who Killed Me is a 2007 American psychological thriller film directed by Chris Sivertson, written by Jeff Hammond, and starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough and Brian Geraghty. The film's story revolves around a young woman who is abducted and tortured by a sadistic serial killer. After surviving the abduction, she insists that her identity is that of another woman.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: "I Know Who Killed Me" was released by TriStar Pictures on July 27, 2007, and was deemed a critical and commercial box office failure and it has since been called one of the worst films ever made. The film was the most awarded at the 28th Golden Raspberry Awards, winning eight of nine nominations, including Worst Picture and Lohan tying with herself to win Worst Actress as well as Worst Screen Couple for both characters she portrayed. It did, however, attain a more successful home video performance, having almost quadrupled its U.S. box office gross in estimated domestic DVD sales. The film subsequently developed a cult following and several screenings of it have been put together by historic theaters and film festivals.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: The quiet suburb of New Salem is being terrorized by a serial killer who abducts and tortures young women, holding them captive for weeks before murdering them. Aubrey Fleming, a pianist and aspiring writer, appears to be his latest victim when she disappears during a night out with her friends. She is later seen bound and gagged on an operating table as her hands are exposed to dry ice. As the days tick by, the special FBI Task Force convened to track the killer begins to lose hope of finding him before it's too late.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: Late one night, a driver discovers a young woman by the side of a deserted road, disheveled and seriously wounded, with one of her hands and legs amputated. The girl, who looks identical to Aubrey, is rushed to the hospital, where Aubrey's distraught parents, Susan and Daniel, wait by her side as she slips in and out of consciousness. When she is finally able to speak, she shocks everyone by claiming to be a down-on-her-luck stripper named Dakota Moss. Convinced Aubrey is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, her doctors, parents, and law enforcement officials can only wait for rest and therapy to restore her memory. But after returning to her parent's suburban home, she continues to insist she is not who they think she is.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: An FBI psychologist believes Dakota to be a delusional persona of Aubrey, and the agents speculate the persona functions to distance and protect Aubrey from the events that happened. Examining Aubrey's laptop, they discover a short story about a girl with an identical twin sister named Dakota. In addition, a DNA test confirms that Dakota is Aubrey. Nonetheless, Dakota explains away her injuries to the police, recollecting a series of bizarre events that happened before she arrived in town. She begins to suspect she may be Aubrey's identical twin sister and comes to believe her injuries are sympathetic resonance with her twin's wounds, manifesting in a stigmata-like fashion. However, Susan shows Dakota a video of her pregnancy ultrasound clearly revealing there was only one fetus in her womb. Dakota confronts Daniel, and he eventually admits that his and Susan's child died shortly after birth and that he informally adopted Aubrey from Virginia Sue Moss (another character that appears in Aubrey's short story), a crack addict who bore twin daughters—one of whom was Dakota, who was left to be raised by her biological mother. Susan has remained unaware of this for all of Aubrey's life.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: Confused and terrified, Dakota starts seeing visions of a menacing figure slowly butchering his captive. One of these visions takes Dakota to a nearby cemetery. After investigating the grave of Aubrey's recently murdered friend, Jennifer Toland, Dakota finds a blue ribbon from a piano competition, with a message from Jennifer's (and Aubrey's) piano teacher, Douglas Norquist. She is followed by Daniel, and declares "I know who killed me".


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: The two go, without FBI backup, to Norquist's home to confront him. Daniel heads into Norquist's house alone leaving a panicking Dakota in the car alone. Attempting to calm herself, Dakota refers to herself as Aubrey. Daniel is seemingly overpowered, and it is implied killed, by Norquist. Dakota, having entered the house, attacks Norquist in self-defense and cuts his hand off before being overpowered and tied up. Confused, Norquist asks why she has returned and exclaimed that he had buried her (referencing an earlier vision Dakota had). Freeing herself, Dakota kills Norquist and heads into the nearby wood, finding where Norquist had supposedly buried Aubrey alive. Using her prosthetic hand, she smashes the front of the glass coffin that Norquist had buried Aubrey in, revealing her barely alive in a white dress. This seemingly verifies Dakota's version of events. Relieved to have found her long-lost twin, Dakota lies on the ground next to her.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: Before filming, Lohan took pole-dancing lessons to prepare for her role as a stripper, stating: "I've been in pole dancing lessons, S Factor by Sheila Kelley, every day for four hours. I have bruises all over." Filming dates took place between December 2006 and March 2007. Principal photography was mostly held in California. In the first week of production, filming was halted after Lohan was hospitalized, her representative saying "she was overheated and dehydrated." Production stayed halted soon after as Lohan underwent appendix surgery. Filming was soon then delayed even longer after the incision was infected and the filmmakers were waiting for a doctor's approval for Lohan to continue working. This all occurred around the same time Lohan admitted herself to the Wonderland Center rehabilitation facility for a 30-day stay. During the stay she continued shooting the film, returning to the facility at night. Sivertson claimed that production "never lost any shooting days because of rehab," with Lohan declaring she drew from what she was personally experiencing to tackle some of the film's darker themes. Because of all the media attention Lohan was receiving, she could not even walk to her trailer without the paparazzi photographing her. Sometimes they would even end up in the background of some shots of the film.


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: Sivertson talked about his experience directing the film saying, "I was happy as hell to get my hands on the script. It's exactly the kind of thing I'm into. Stylistically I guess you could say the influence is Hitchcock filtered through De Palma and Lynch. There were echoes of some of my favorite movies in the script - stuff like "Vertigo", "Dressed to Kill", "Twin Peaks", "Blue Velvet"," continuing that he wanted the movie "to play both as a dark psychological thriller and as a surreal fairy tale. I went for a very bright poppy look with saturated colors, particularly blues and reds." He concluded, "Love it or hate it, it's stuff that I wanted to see on the big screen and now I can. That makes me happy." In 2019, Sivertson revealed the existence of a three and a half hour-long director's cut, disclosing, "[...] To a lot of people it doesn’t make sense. And there were a lot of plot scenes, especially a lot of investigative FBI stuff that were just totally cut out of the movie. [...] I was more interested at the time with just the weirdness of it all." Siverston stated about casting Lohan: "We needed someone who could play complete opposites... but not in a clichéd way. The movie really rests on Lindsay's shoulders." Likewise, producer Mancuso Jr.'s only concern in casting Lohan was whether the actress, best known for roles in family comedies and teen flicks, could continue making the transition and play more adult-oriented characters, admitting, "It was a risk, but it didn't scare me because I felt like she wouldn't do this unless she was willing to go for it."


title: I Know Who Killed Me

text: In July 2007, Lohan was arrested for driving under the influence, which prevented her from doing promotion for the film. She had to withdraw from a scheduled appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in which she had been due to promote its release.