Good morning. I’m Janelle Nanos, a business enterprise reporter, and I’m guest-writing today to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how I discovered and investigated tension and infighting at a popular food business incubator. (Ian Prasad Philbrick will be back tomorrow.)
But first, here’s what else is going on:
- President Trump pledged to send the National Guard to deal with crime in Baltimore and Chicago even as a judge yesterday found that he acted illegally in dispatching troops to Los Angeles amid anti-ICE protests this summer. The administration has also suggested it might take over Boston’s South Station even as crime there is infrequent and falling.
- Survivors and relatives of victims of the 2023 mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine, are suing the US government, accusing military officials of ignoring warning signs about the gunman, an Army reservist.
- Dysfunction is roiling the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. It will pay more than $300,000 to settle a fired official’s racial discrimination claim, and a judge ruled that it wrongly fired its former chair, saying she could be reinstated with back pay.
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TODAY’S STARTING POINT
For the past decade, the Dorchester-based food incubator CommonWealth Kitchen has been celebrated for its work helping culinary entrepreneurs pursue their dreams. The nonprofit centers its work around uplifting small business owners of diverse backgrounds, focusing particularly on BIPOC-, women-, and immigrant-led companies.
The small business owners at CWK work hard, and they have great stories to tell. I know, because I’ve written about many of them over the past several years: Participants in its small business mentorship program, startups supplying food to local colleges and serving those in need during the pandemic, and the trials of a new restaurant trying to make it in Fields Corner.
Today, CWK’s small businesses serve food to MIT students and Boston Public Schools, own local cafes, and sell products nationally in stores. Over the past 10 years, CWK has been showered with both praise and money, winning millions in grants from the likes of the Barr Foundation and The Boston Foundation. Its annual revenue has grown tenfold, to $6.6 million in 2024.
But a few months ago, an email landed in my inbox from a source. It was an anonymous note that had been sent to the staff, and it singled out CommonWealth’s hard-charging executive director, Jen Faigel, saying her leadership left members feeling “exploited, ignored, and stuck” and “quietly pushed to the margins while the organization profits off their stories.”
I was intrigued, to say the least.
The note arrived on May Day, a holiday typically associated with workers’ rights. But the email was clearly also a call for help. The person, using the moniker, ”The People of CommonWealth,” wrote that the small business owners who had come to CWK for opportunities were instead “turned into poster children for progress, paraded like trophies of impact, while behind the scenes, many of them are unsupported, underdeveloped, or worse discarded.”
This would be an interesting story in and of itself. But what got me even more intrigued was that the anonymous missive had arrived at a particularly fraught moment. Five years after COVID and the killing of George Floyd, the corporate, philanthropic, and government support for Black- and brown-owned businesses that had fueled CWK’s rise seemed to be fading. Indeed, the very notion of DEI felt under attack. And yet in this instance, the critique of DEI efforts seemed to be coming from inside the house.
And so, I set out to learn more. And as I began talking to the many people within CWK’s orbit — entrepreneurs and the many employees and board members who’d cycled through the organization — it became increasingly clear that frustrations had long been brewing within CWK’s walls. Many described a worthy organization riven by mismanagement, infighting, and constant tension.
More than a dozen former employees told me that they felt under-supported, undermined, and often overwhelmed. Perhaps more importantly, while outwardly celebrating diversity, the organization seemed to operate internally by a different set of rules. Business members told me they felt financially beholden to CWK, and noted how the nonprofit benefits from keeping startups under its roof. They give Faigel a steady base of paying tenants, products to sell, and feel-good stories to share with donors. There’s little incentive, they say, to actually help them go out on their own.
Meanwhile, many also told me they experienced a persistent plague of microaggressions, undercutting the very values the nonprofit seemed to stand for. While entrepreneurs hustled to build their businesses, they were also expected to sell a story about the broader enterprise, and pose for pictures with oversized checks. And some say that part had increasingly come to feel transactional and exploitive.
As one longtime business member told me: “There’s a big difference between doing actual good work and telling everyone you’re doing good work.”
Over the course of some two dozen interviews, I’ve come to learn that CWK has been a house divided ever since that May Day missive hit inboxes. Since I’ve started my reporting, many business owners have come out in support of Faigel, and say CWK is a supportive place, and one that they critically need to survive the current political climate.
But for other business owners, including restaurant-owner Nathalie Lecorps, CWK is something else entirely: “CommonWealth Kitchen,” she told me, “is the place where dreams go to die.”
And so for them, this moment is something larger: A reckoning of a reckoning.
It’s also why many now feel CWK simply needs to do better.
Read my full report on the turmoil at CommonWealth Kitchen.
🧩 7 Across: Give way | 🌤️ 79° Early fall sunshine
POINTS OF INTEREST
Market Basket’s future: The grocery chain’s board will enter a mediation session today over whether Arthur T. Demoulas, its sidelined CEO, can keep his job.
Boston mayoral race: Tuesday’s preliminary election will narrow the field of four candidates to two. Here’s what to know about each.
Winding down? The Trump administration plans to reconsider a Biden-era permit for a large wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, its latest attack on renewable energy. (Bloomberg 🎁)
West Nile: A woman in her 70s became Massachusetts’ first confirmed human case this year of the mosquito-borne virus. These maps show where the risk of infection is highest.
Chronic absenteeism: Attendance at Rhode Island public schools is improving, but still down from before the pandemic. More than a fifth of students missed at least 10 percent of the last school year.
Organized labor: About 200 cooks, custodians, and other workers at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley went on strike just before the start of fall classes, demanding better pay.
Jeffrey Epstein: A GOP-led House committee released more than 33,000 documents it subpoenaed from the Justice Department related to the sex offender, but most were already public. And Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who has clashed with Trump, filed a measure that could force the administration to release all the files it has. (NBC)
Cartel strike: The US military said it destroyed an alleged drug-trafficking boat from Venezuela operated by Tren de Aragua, which Trump has labeled a terrorist group, killing 11 people. (CNN)
Trading spaces: Trump is relocating US Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, reversing a Biden-era move. (Politico)
Google ruling: In a major antitrust suit, a federal judge ordered the search giant to share data with rivals, but stopped short of breaking it up. (TechCrunch)
BESIDE THE POINT
By Teresa Hanafin
🏈 2025 NFL season: Globe writers have made their predictions for the season, which starts Thursday night — including how many games the Patriots will win and who will make the Super Bowl.
🏈 High school football: Talented quarterbacks across Massachusetts are set to showcase their improvement after working during the offseason with M2 Quarterback Academy, a program that offers private development sessions.
🚚 Risky move: U-Haul told a Needham father to pick up a truck for his daughter’s college move at 6 a.m. at their office at notorious Mass. and Cass in Boston. But the facility didn’t open until 7 a.m., leaving him stranded in a dangerous area.
🍽️ No. 9 Park: Barbara Lynch’s flagship that closed last year was replaced by a restaurant with a familiar name: Nine. Food critic Devra First says it’s a smooth segue.
🚄 Nice and late: Christopher Muther says Amtrak’s sparkling new NextGen Acela, touted as the fastest train in the country, is quiet, comfortable, and stylish. It was also late.
💌 Love Letters: Writer: I think my girlfriend may have timed our breakup to sabotage my important professional licensing exam. Meredith: This could be a yellow or even a red flag.
🎓 Hey college class of 2029: Welcome to sports-mad Boston. Columnist Dan Shaughnessy has a few suggestions to ensure you get the full sports experience while you’re here.
🎵 Resurrecting Great Scott: One of Boston’s most storied rock clubs, closed during the pandemic, needs another show of community support before the owners can break ground on a new home on Harvard Ave.
Thanks for reading Starting Point.
This newsletter was edited by Teresa Hanafin.
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Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her @janellenanos.