After Marching, Another Step

This past weekend gave a pretty clear visual of how much power we have when we organize together. And we all know that showing up to march was merely the first step of many.

The next is engaging with the political process — via electoral, issue and legislative work — as well as the work of community organizing– building communities of trust, making outreach and strengthening our progressive infrastructure. We’re committed to both. 

This week, we are releasing our 2017-18 Legislative Agenda, and we will be asking progressives to make some noise about how Massachusetts should become a leader again in bold progressive policy. 

The Opposite of Trump

We all want to DO something to stop the coming wave of Trump’s — and the traditional conservatives’ — cruel and incoherent policies on immigration, health care, women’s bodies, education, and their accelerating privatization and corporate kleptocracy. 

While many emerging activist networks are urging outreach to Congress, we’d like to propose that, in Massachusetts, we’ll get a lot more mileage fighting Trump — and making real change, helping real people who are vulnerable — BY focusing on Massachusetts:

  • We could pass a millionaire’s tax, and restore funding to programs destroyed by repeated budget cuts
  • We could pass a $15 minimum wage
  • We could ensure safety and dignity for immigrants and their family
  • We could lead the fight on climate change by investing more in solar and energy efficiency 
  • We could insist on the highest standards for the air we breathe and water we drink
  • We could fully fund excellent public education for all
  • We could pass universal pre-K
  • We could pass Paid Family and Medical Leave 
  • We could re-invest in a 21st century public transportation system
  • We could dismantle the apparatuses of mass incarceration and their racist effects
  • We could mend then strengthen the safety nets that have been cut and frayed to threads

These are changes that are needed. In Massachusetts. 

In Trump’s America, these changes are still possible. In Massachusetts. 

The truth is — We have a lot of work to do to make Massachusetts the progressive ideal that we would like to think we are. 

But the great news is that all of this is not only possible — we are much, much, more influential with our state legislators. AND Democrats have have a Super (duper) Democratic majority in both chambers. 

If we aren’t passing progressive legislation in Massachusetts, it’s because Democrats are standing in the way. On Beacon Hill, we aren’t fighting Ted Cruzes or Rand Pauls. 

Reminding our elected representatives of the progressive principles at the heart of the Democratic platform, through organized, well-timed, on-going outreach and pressure…we can do this, if we mobilize together. And, this hill, if we climb it, will produce real changes for real people most vulnerable under Trump.

The Legislative session just opened this month. We are starting our 2-year cycle of outreach and advocacy and citizen lobbying afresh. 

Well-timed, informed outreach to your State Rep and State Senator is a key part of the next 2 years: 

  • We will ask our legislators to sign on to our progressive agenda as cosponsors to our highlighted bills (that’s coming right up)
  • We will ask our legislators to advocate with their colleagues to push for the strongest progressive legislation possible
  • We will ask our legislators to stay strong when the going gets tough
  • We will thank them when they stand up for our goals and values–especially when it’s hardest to do
  • We will talk with our neighbors and help them advocate — or help provide the context to help educate where there’s disagreement

This contact is key. We’re asking you to be ready–look up, right now, your State Representative and State Senator. 

Senate Republicans Aren’t Hearing So Well

By Richard Marcus, Progressive Watertown

At least not when it comes to Trump’s Cabinet nominees. In their rush to confirm, they have skipped over some crucial steps of the vetting process. If we don’t make them slow down and do their jobs properly, we may end up with a Cabinet who will serve only themselves, not the American people.

His policies will be implemented by the people that he is picking to run various government agencies, and he has made some troubling choices, to put it mildly. They will set the policies for much of the government–for education, urban development, environmental protection, homeland security, the military, foreign policy, and much else.

When Trump says that his appointees will have no trouble being confirmed, he’s probably right. If history is a guide, any appointee who gets to a confirmation vote is likely to be confirmed, and congressional Republicans are hastening this along by flouting ethical standards.

In a normal year, each nominee submits financial and other disclosure forms to the non-partisan Office of Government Ethics, and the FBI conducts a background check. The OGE conducts an investigation (which can take weeks), and then reaches an agreement with the nominee spelling out steps to eliminate conflicts of interest. All of this is completed days or weeks in advance of the next step, Senate committee hearings. The committee members ask each candidate probing questions about their policy views and potential conflicts of interest. They then issue a recommendation on whether the nominee should be confirmed. Finally, the entire Senate votes to confirm or not, and it is decided by a simple majority vote.

This year, however, some of the hearings have been held (and other hearings are scheduled to be held) before the background checks and ethics reviews are completed (and in a few cases before the disclosure forms have even been submitted). By avoiding a proper vetting, Trump hopes to ensure his nominees skate to confirmation without having any trouble caused by those pesky ethics reviews.

To make it clear, this is the first time hearings have ever been held before the ethics reviews were completed. When Obama began his presidency, his appointees had completed the financial disclosure forms and ethics agreements six days to several weeks in advance of the hearings. Mitch McConnel himself has called for timely vetting, when it was Obama’s nominees. Somehow now that it’s Trump’s nominees he has changed his mind.

The OGE has even complained that they are being overwhelmed by the heavy rushed workload and have objected to the hearings being held before the ethics probe is completed. For a Cabinet composed of billionaires with extensive business dealings, there is a serious potential for conflicts of interest, so it is vital that the nominees are properly investigated.

Under Bush and Obama, nominations failed due to things like unpaid taxes and employing undocumented immigrants. So far during this round, Betsy Devos omitted a $125,000 donation to an anti-labor political group in her disclosure forms. She has also donated over $20 million to the Republican party since 1989, including to some members of the committee that is supposed to vet her. Jeff Sessions failed to disclose rights to oil extracted near a federal wildlife preserve. Other things will no doubt be revealed about the appointees.

The hearings are supposed to give Congress a chance to investigate such issues and decide whether they are grounds for disqualification. I’m not quite sure how they will be able ask about these things if they don’t know about them. A ouiji board, maybe?

Clearly, that isn’t what the Republicans care about. No surprise for a party that elected a man who has still not released his tax returns.

They tried to schedule hearings for six nominees on Wednesday, when they were also voting on the budget. This is a blatant attempt to overwhelm the opposition. They want to undermine proper vetting of the candidates and mute public outrage by having too much going on at the same time for the media to cover it effectively. Trump further distracted everyone by scheduling his first news conference in months during the hearings.

The Republicans want to keep any problems with the nominees under the public radar to prevent outrage that can stoke effective opposition. They are trying to distract us, so let’s not allow ourselves to be distracted.

There are a few ways to influence the outcome. Anything uncovered about the candidates between now and the confirmation vote must be amplified. The critical task is to make the committee members hear our concerns about the candidates and the rushed vetting before they make their recommendations. We can call for more hearings or a delay in the their decisions, at the very least until the ethics reviews are completed. We will have less leverage after their recommendations are issued. Here is the hearing schedule: https://www.senate.gov/committees/committee_hearings.htm.

Failing that, before the confirmation votes we can support Republicans who are willing to break with Trump and try to sway the minds of the broader Senate.

Going forward, we must hold the senators who helped rush the vetting process accountable for any scandals involving the appointees.

…Let’s keep the heat on…

In the Dark, Undoing the Voters’ Will

On November 8, almost 54 percent of voters in the Commonwealth voted to legalize recreational marijuana, an important step in advancing social and racial justice and combating over-policing and mass incarceration. However, yesterday, in a special session, without any public hearings or public notice, 7 legislators were able to postpone the opening date for recreational marijuana stores by six months, creating a limbo situation in which possession is legal but retail is not.

We are very disappointed, but not surprised, by such behavior. If the Legislature had concerns about the wording of Question 4, they had ample time before the election to pass their own bill or to offer a substitute ballot question. Instead, they chose to undermine the democratic will of the Commonwealth in a most undemocratic way. The Legislature has a history of avoiding public debate and recorded votes—as well as a history of weakening or even repealing ballot initiatives. If Massachusetts is to be a model for other states, that has to change.

Your legislators are supposed to work for you, and they deserve to hear from you. You can find contact information for your state representative and state senator here. And when you’re done calling the Legislature, call Charlie Baker to urge him not to sign the delay.

JP Progressives take on Criminal Justice Reform

Report from the field  — JPProgressives convened a community conversation on mass incarceration, following the lead of their chapter members. Engaging with neighbors, activists, advocates and legislators, JPP is doing the work of bending the arc towards justice. By joining the Jobs Not Jails coalition, the JP chapter of Progressive Mass will continue to represent progressive grassroots commitment to social justice, and help lead the organization to productive engagement and action. The chapter invites you to join the JNJ rally on Dec 13. More details are below.

Criminal Justice Reform is a core objective of our Progressive Platform. The Massachusetts Legislature will reconvene in January. Our Legislative Agenda will once again indicate which bills need our advocacy to get us closer to the goal of undoing the injustices of mass incarceration. Stay tuned for more from us on the legislative front. 

 More Than 150 Neighbors Attend Forum in Jamaica Plain to Discuss Mass Incarceration

This year, a standing room only crowd of nearly 200 people filled the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain for a forum on the problem of mass incarceration.  The event was organized by JP Progressives, whose members had previously established mass incarceration as their top social concern.  The forum was co-sponsored by 10 other organizations, including the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, the Mildred Hailey Tenant Organization, Black Lives Matter Boston, and the Jobs Not Jails Coalition.

The keynote speaker at the event was Rahsaan Hall, Director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program.

Mr. Hall pointed out that the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates of any country in the world and that, although the rate in Massachusetts is lower than in most states, it still compares to some of the worst rates internationally.  

In addition, Mr. Hall spoke about the extreme racial disparities in the application of our state criminal justice laws, with disparities in Massachusetts being worse than in many other states. He noted that in Massachusetts black and Latino incarceration rates are eight and six times higher respectively than for whites and, although blacks and whites use drugs at similar rates, the rate of black incarceration for drug crimes is significantly higher than for whites. Moreover, in some Massachusetts counties the median bail amount set for black defendants is four to five times higher than for whites. In June of 2015, for example, in Barnstable County, the median amount of bail set for blacks was $20,000 compared to only $5,000 for whites.

The forum included a panel comprised of State Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz, Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins, Boston Deputy Director of Public Safety Initiatives Conan Harris, and director of the Jobs Not Jails Coalition Lew Finfer.

Senator Chang-Díaz, who has led criminal justice reform legislation, spoke about the importance of current legislative initiatives.  Some of these bills include efforts to repeal mandatory minimum drug sentences, which often impose long sentences for relatively minor drug crimes with little discretion allowed to judges, and bail system reform, so that people who have not been convicted of a crime are not forced to spend weeks and months in prison because they cannot afford bail. Senator Chang-Díaz has also introduced a bill to establish a trust fund with the savings from improvements in the criminal justice system. This money would then be used to support programs for job training and drop-out prevention to keep youth out of prison in the first place.

Sheriff Tompkins discussed the need for services in prison to prepare people for reentry into society, and Conan Harris talked about Boston’s programs to help youths after their release from prison, including those that provide training and employment in the building trades and within city government. Lew Finfer noted that Massachusetts is entering a crucial period with respect to criminal justice reform.  In August of last year Governor Baker, House Speaker DeLeo, Senate President Rosenberg, and State Supreme Court Chief Justice Gants requested that the Council of State Governments study the criminal justice system in Massachusetts and make recommendations for reform. Based on this report, the four key officials will jointly propose legislation in the next few months. Finfer explained that this type of collaboration is extremely unusual and will create momentum for reform, but he also stressed that advocates must organize to ensure that the proposed legislation is as comprehensive and effective as possible.

Moderator Melissa Threadgill of the Crime and Justice Institute asked the panel why reforms in some “red states” have been implemented much more quickly than in liberal Massachusetts.  

Panelists pointed to the enormous costs of incarcerating large numbers of people for long periods of time, which has strained state budgets in many conservative states, but also to the lack of a strong Republican opposition in Massachusetts, which made it easier for Democratic leaders to avoid requiring their members to vote on contentious measures.

During audience questions, some expressed concern that the Council of State Governments study was looking at the wrong issues, focusing on recidivism and probation rather than on preventing imprisonment.  A criminal defense attorney questioned the arbitrary nature of many of the rules governing his clients in solitary confinement, such as the need for shackling when they meet with him and their confinement to a cell for 23 hours a day.  Other audience members raised the need for services that would support youth at risk before they faced imprisonment.

At the end of the program, JP Progressives urged audience members to sign a letter to their state representatives urging them to pass legislation on this critical issue. The State House partly heeded the call from many advocacy groups and included $250,000 for job training and reentry services for formerly incarcerated people returning to their communities.

But work remains to be done on reducing the burden of bail and probation, increasing mental health and job training supports in and out of prison, reducing unnecessarily long sentences, and reinvesting the money from reduced recidivism in the communities most harmed by mass incarceration.

JP Progressives announced has joined the Jobs Not Jails Coalition and will continue organizing events in Jamaica Plain.  

The Jobs Not Jails coalition plans a rally to demand real criminal justice reform from 10-11 AM on Tuesday, December 13, at 140 Bowdoin Street downtown.

If you want to attend or are interested in becoming involved, please contact us at moreinfo@jpprogressives.com

Confronting Racism – Progressive Watertown Member Speaks at Rally

Richard Marcus is a member of Progressive Massachusetts and is on the Steering Committee of Progressive Watertown. Watertown’s chapter held a series of forums on Race and the Criminal Justice System in 2016. He was invited to speak at the MetroWest Rally for Respect: Love Trumps Hate. 

The racism that threatened my father was not easily seen. 

On the day of my Mother & Father’s first wedding anniversary, they witnessed the Nazi Army marching into their home city of Vienna, Austria, under a cascade of flowers and cheers.

What my father had fled in his hometown of Berlin, was following him and it was time to flee again. Fortunately through luck and circumstance my parents were sponsored by a Jewish family in Dorchester and were able to flee to safety.  The special privilege that allowed me to be here today was that my father didn’t “look” Jewish.  My father’s family was fully assimilated and no longer practicing Jews, so my father was not circumcised.  When my father was stopped in the street by the Gestapo and was made to pull down his pants, he passed the test. Had he been I would not be standing here.

My parents were lucky to have found a sponsor.  If they hadn’t they would have been killed. In 1925 a Republican Congress closed US immigration by enacting strict immigration measures. They were tired of the flood of immigration in the US; from Italians, the Irish, the Jews, and Chinese, and wanted it to end. The new measure in America was “I fought for what I have, why should we let you in to take it away?”

Suddenly free passage to America, and opportunity was restricted.  Immigration was restricted to 150 per country/per year.  When WWII broke out, there were no special provisions for Jews fleeing extinction instead people said “there might be Nazis sneaking in among them.”  Sound familiar?  

Just as today people say no Muslims, no Syrians, etc, this is not new in our nation’s history where once there were signs that read “Irish need not apply”, “Italians not served”, and of course, the Jim Crow era of segregation where blacks and whites could not even share a water fountain. We have come together to end prejudices before, we must rally to end it again.  Immigration has built this nation, and is what makes it so unique.  When people yell “America First” what it really will lead to is America last.

But my journey has secured my place in this society. When I awake each day, I am free to go where I please.  When I walk through a store no one follows me. When I am driving my car, I never worry that a broken taillight will lead to my arrest.  And I know if my car is broken down by the side of the road, a policeman will not approach me with gun in hand.  

Yet a black baby boy born tomorrow stands one chance in three of becoming part of the legal system. A black or Latino person with pot is 700% more likely to be arrested than a white person. And, once before a DA or a judge, a black or latino person is much more likely to not be given the benefit of a doubt than a white person.  

Some people say Black Lives Matter.  Some people say White Lives Matter.  Aren’t they the same? No. Just because we label some parking spaces as handicap, there is no need to label all the others as Non-handicap.  There’s no need because it’s obvious. It should also be obvious that being a black or brown person in America is not the same as being a white person in America.  It’s a given.  

No one labels a person white, unless they want to identify that person as NOT black or brown. Yet we “white people” don’t acknowledge our advantage, partially because for us it’s ALWAYS been that way, partially because we can pass it off by saying “we didn’t create the system”.

Racism is America’s original sin. A white society established itself here at the near extinction of one race and the enslavement of another race.  If that isn’t racism, what is it?  And it will remain so until the playing field is leveled.

You hear a lot today in our political dialogue about the “system is rigged.”  Oh yes it is and it has been that way for a lot time.  Being white comes with assumptions about you that favor you today in America.  Being brown or black requires you to demonstrate what you do that makes you fit in.  What we don’t acknowledge is the end of the previous sentence, which really means “fit in the white society.”  Yet “we as a society” expect the wronged to right themselves.  The playing field must be leveled by the advantaged, not the disadvantaged.  As I sat down this morning to write these few words an image came to me of the black teenager with his pants slung down low and how that always struck me as inappropriate.  Today I question myself and ask simply, “why should I feel threatened by that?’  “why should I even care?”  

I am learning all the ways I contribute to this inequality.  None of it was intentional, none of it with malice.  

Just as we are told in improve our posture, we now must find MORE ways to improve ourselves as inclusionary.   Slowly but surely I will become better.   

Bob Dylan wrote “the ladder of justice should have no top and no bottom”. Helping someone climb that ladder does not put me lower.  I must teach myself that…every day from here on. Maybe today will be the beginning of your conscious effort to reexamine why black lives should matter in your life. While the Journey begins with each of us, I am reminded of my favorite quote, by Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

On Question 2 the Voters Have Spoken. Is Beacon Hill Getting the Message?

I know that most of us here in Massachusetts are still reeling from the results of the Presidential election, but I feel compelled to share some thoughts on the outcome of the vote to raise the cap on charter schools.

On one hand I am delighted by the result of the vote. The voters of Massachusetts have spoken and they absolutely oppose any attempt to expand charters at the expense of traditional school districts. But on the other hand, I am utterly outraged at what the corporate education reformers have put our kids, our teachers and our school districts through over the last ten years given how little electoral support we now know that these champions of privatization have across the state.

Clear Message to MA Legislature

Consider this: Question 2 only passed in 16 out of 351 communities in the Commonwealth.

  • Seven of these communities are located in one single state rep’s district on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
  • The other nine are spread across six other state rep districts.
  • And the only other district where a majority of voters voted ‘yes’ is in Education Committee Chair Alice Peisch’s district in Metro West.

This means that the ‘yes’ side only carried two of the 160 state rep districts in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. It was even defeated by a 2 to 1 margin in Speaker DeLeo’s district of Winthrop/Revere.

And after years of supporters claiming massive support for raising the cap in minority-majority neighborhoods, ‘yes’ lost by jaw-dropping margins in those neighborhoods – particularly in Boston.

What is astonishing about this outcome is that over the last decade elected officials on Beacon Hill have shown tremendous deference to proponents of lifting the cap, largely out of fear that they might someday follow through with their repeated threats to take this fight before the voters where polling, they claimed, showed them easily winning a ballot referendum.

Fear-Driven Policy

And so for at least the last ten years education policy in Massachusetts has been created under a cloud of political fear as the privatizers, conservative think-tank researchers, neoliberal officials and their allies in the media have whipsawed state legislators, policy makers, school district officials — and even some of our teacher union leaders — into accepting the assumption that the corporate agenda was fait accompli.

They used their political clout to bluster and bully their way through Massachusetts politics, forcing the adoption of a whole host of policies that “test and blame” teachers and “test and shame” children.

And all of this was done with the explicit intent of setting up urban schools and school districts to fail and then using this manufactured “failure” as a pretense for transferring the control of public funds over to private, for-profit interests.

Those who might attempt to deny this need only recall Governor Baker’s television commercial targeted at white suburban voters, telling them that they had nothing to fear about Question 2 hurting “their” schools because the new powers granted by its passage would only be used to liquidate urban public school districts (wink wink).

Last spring the lead corporate privatizers were offered another very generous compromise by leadership of the state senate. But after so many years of getting their way the privatizers scoffed at the offer, instead opting to take the issue to the voters, thinking they would easily win.

Instead, they got absolutely, utterly crushed as the citizens of Massachusetts united behind their public schools — even in every one of the 93 communities where Donald Trump won. In 250 communities the ‘yes’ side failed to garner even 39% of the vote. And in 150 communities, it failed to reach even 35%.

If that is not an electoral mandate, then electoral mandates do not exist.

Through their own arrogance and overreach these corporate reformers have helped to prove two things that elected officials on Beacon Hill had better take note of:

  1. that Massachusetts voters absolutely cherish their traditional public schools and reject any expansion of charters at the expense of traditional district budgets, and;
  2. Massachusetts voters want so-called ‘failing’ schools fixed – not closed – so that every child in every corner of our state can receive an excellent education.

Here in Massachusetts we know what it takes to build great schools. We have done it from one side of the state to the other, both in wealthy districts as well as low-income neighborhoods, and every other type of community in between. In spite of this, we all know that there are some schools in Massachusetts that need to be fixed, and many that need increased support.

Reject the Spin

As we move forward from this election we need to reject the continued ‘spin’ of the privatizers and make great schools for all kids our number one educational priority. And this means an about-face on policies that were designed and implemented as the build up to raising the charter cap and shifting toward privatization.

  1. We need to end high-stakes testing as a requirement for high school graduation. 
    Yes, we can and should still test kids – but with much less frequency. And we should not be sending children who have attended school and passed their course requirements into a 21st century economy without so much as a high school diploma simply because they failed a single metric. Doing so only dooms their chances of a hopeful economic future.
  2.  We need to stop closing and/or taking over schools based solely on student test-scores.
  3. We need to stop forcing schools to compete against each other for dollars and students.
  4. We need to stop demonizing urban school teachers for problems that these brave educators have dedicated their entire professional careers to trying to solve.
  5.  We need to stop the state Board of Education from using a school ranking and punishment system that guarantees that the lowest income communities will automatically have the most number of designated “failing” schools.
  6. We need to pass the Fair Share amendment, also known as the ‘millionaires tax,’ so that we can properly fund our education and infrastructure needs, and;
  7. We need to fix the foundation budget so that schools that serve all types of kids have the chance at a world-class public education.

And most importantly, as this election proved, we need to stop letting a small handful of people with a corporate-driven agenda dictate policies that we know are bad for communities and horrible for lots and lots of our children.

Twenty-five years ago Massachusetts led the way in education reform and now our public schools rank among the best in the world. Let’s continue that work together, without the corrupting influence of for-profit privatizers, and together we can build a public school system where every single child has the opportunity to attend a great school.

Ted Chambers is proud to be a Boston Public School Teacher. He works at the Edwards Middle School in Charlestown. 

Election 2016: Move to Massachusetts

I would like Massachusetts to run an ad campaign across the country that says, “Are you scared of your neighbor?

Come to Massachusetts, we voted against Nixon and Donald Trump, overwhelmingly.

We will still have Obamacare, marriage equality and you can smoke pot to get by for the next 4 years.

Massachusetts, an American alternative to moving to Canada.

Editor’s note: The Boston Globe took Jordan’s idea, not the other way around.

Jordan Berg Powers is a long time Progressive Mass member. He works on progressive campaigns and causes. 

Dark Money and the Charter Campaign

Want a Halloween fright? Peel back the curtain and look at the dark money behind Question 2.

If you want to know who is funding all those commercials for lifting the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts, you’ll need a good pair of binoculars.

Just like grainy, horror-movie TV campaigns ads, the commercials you’re seeing in favor of lifting the cap are made by PACS and superPACS, organizations whose names often suggest the exact opposite of the position they support.

This is the proverbial dark money: Individual investors give money to organizations that don’t have to disclose donors’ names, but use the money to fund ads for candidates and causes under the organizations’ names.

In this case, we know that Alice Walton and Jim Walton each forked over big bucks to create committees to raise money for Massachusetts charter schools. In turn, those committees raised bigger bucks from out of state investors, including many New York hedge funds and investment banks.

But the Waltons needed a Massachusetts resident to create the committees.

Frank Perullo of Sage Systems and Novus Group contributed $100 to establish one of the committees. He is also a consultant to Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a pro-charter player that is founded and funded by Wall Street aces.

Thanks to Maurice Cunningham of WGBH News’s MassPoliticsProfs blog we also know that Great Schools Massachusetts has funded much of the $18 million that has been spent on pro-charter TV ads, but most of their money comes from Families for Excellent Schools, a New York-based hedge fund.

Why are these investors hell-bent for more Massachusetts charter schools? For the same reason bank robbers rob banks. That’s where the money is.

A bill called the New Markets Tax Credit Act, which was established in 2000, ensures that certain investors can double their money in about seven years with virtually no risk. And there’s money to be made in the real estate that charters end up owning, too.

As Juan Gonzalez wrote on shadowproof.com, “Charters are just another investor playground for easy money passed from taxpayers to the wealthy.”

Why from taxpayers? Those credits from the government to the charter school investors are from your federal tax dollars. 

Closer to home, Massachusetts will send approximately $450 Million to charter schools in fiscal year 2017. That is state tax revenue that would go to cities and towns to fund public schools.

Shortfalls in any part of the cities’ and towns’ school budgets are also made up by you through your local real estate and other taxes. And if not, your public schools will end up cutting vital staff like librarians, reading specialists, and school psychologists, which is what happened in Boston.

That makes all of us investors in charter schools, but we have no voice in how that money is spent or how the schools are run. In some cases, we also have given charter schools — or the people in the organizations that run the schools — real estate in our towns and cities. 

So charter schools turn out to be a wonderful way for people we’ll never meet, many of whom don’t live in Massachusetts, most of whom have no experience in or apparent interest in education, to make enormous amounts of money from all of us.

There are many reasons to vote against lifting the charter cap in Massachusetts that have to do with charter schools themselves. But for me, this is a scam fueled by dark money to siphon away our precious tax dollars under the guise of educating our children.

As Maurice Cunningham pointed out, Justice Louis Brandeis was prescient about Question 2 on the Mass ballot when he said, “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

D.B. Reiff is a member of Progressive Massachusetts 

WGBH: Before 2018, Progressives Hope To Push Legislature And Baker On Taxes, Justice Reform And More

“Before 2018, Progressives Hope To Push Legislature And Baker On Taxes, Justice Reform And More” — Mike Deehan, WGBH (9/4/2016)

“The progressive activist base is really, really frustrated with the status quo of the Democratic party and leadership in the Legislature,” Progressive Massachusetts board member Harmony Wu told WGBH News. “And honestly, the House does seem to be the bigger problem.”

“The Senate does seem to move more on stuff, but as a whole, the party does not feel like it is responsive to the progressive interest, which is I think is the animating base of the party,” Wu added.

SHNS: Progressive group stakes out position on ballot questions

“Progressive group stakes out position on ballot questions” — Andy Metzger, State House News Service (9/1/2016)

**

Progressive Massachusetts, a political nonprofit, has endorsed ballot questions that would legalize marijuana and restrict animal products sold in the state, and opposed measures that could open the door to an additional slots parlor and more charter schools.

The group, which has about 350 members according to its president, voted “overwhelmingly” to join the campaign opposing Question 2, which would allow for 12 new or newly expanded charter schools annually, regardless of the existing statutory cap.

“I think there’s a recognition, particularly on Question 2, that public schools are a community benefit, and that really having an unlimited drain of funding without local democratic control isn’t something to build communities,” Josh Tauber, a Somerville Democrat and Progressive Massachusetts volunteer who chairs the group’s elections and endorsement committee, told the News Service.

Charter proponents note the schools are public and say limits on charters exclude students in troubled districts from educational choice.

Susan Davidoff, the president of Progressive Massachusetts, said the group has been around for five years, has chapters around the state, and has worked to support a surtax on high earners, minimum wage increases and paid sick leave.

The group’s endorsements were announced this week after an email poll.

Davidoff said the group “most enthusiastically” opposed the charter school question and would not be as active on the three other questions.

This year the group opposes Question 1, which would allow an additional slots parlor next to a race track; and supports Question 4, legalizing marijuana; and Question 3, which requires ample room for egg-laying hens, veal calves and pigs whose products are produced or sold in Massachusetts.

Tauber said for him personally the marijuana question is a “social justice” issue, as criminal records for marijuana crimes can limit people’s opportunities.

“Drug policy in this country has been so messed up for so long that frankly we need to start over on a lot of it,” Tauber said. Voters in 2008 decriminalized possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, and in 2012 they legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Gov. Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh are among the officials who have joined the campaign opposing Question 4.