Follow-up from webinar “The Tech Billionaires Are Coming for Fair Share. Here’s How to Fight Back.”

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us last night for our webinar “The Tech Billionaires Are Coming for Fair Share. Here’s How to Fight Back.”! 

You can watch the video here. And feel free to share it with friends! 

Next Steps

Support & Strengthen the PROTECT Act

he MA Senate is voting tomorrow on the PROTECT Act (S.3072), which takes important steps to protect immigrant communities in Massachusetts, such as banning new 287(g) agreements, preventing law enforcement from asking about immigration status or using resources for civil immigration enforcement, limiting information sharing with ICE, protecting courthouses and other sensitive locations, and more.

The MA Senate has the opportunity to strengthen the bill by adopting the following amendments:

  • Amendment #7 (Gómez): Effective Date Support, which reduces the implementation timeline of the provisions limiting law enforcement collaboration with ICE from 180 days to 30 days from passage
  • Amendment #10 (Edwards): Courthouse Curtilage Support, which extends courthouse protections to the walkways, alleys, driveways, and sidewalks adjacent to the courthouse plus 300 additional feet
  • Amendment #11 (Eldridge): Protect Immigrant Victims of Crime and Trafficking, which helps immigrant victims get faster decisions on certifications they need to apply for immigration relief, especially if they are facing deportation, and makes it clear they can get legal support
  • Amendment #55 (Brady): Language Access and Community Education, which requires translation of model policies for sensitive locations in the Commonwealth’s top 5 languages and requires annual Know Your Rights trainings at schools and covered health care providers.

Can you send your state senator an email in support?(Or leave them a message?)

Just Say NO to Corporate Extortionists

Corporate CEOs are backing two ballot questions to cut the income tax. Combined with Trump’s cuts to the state, these questions will blow an $8 Billion hole in the budget, a radical, reckless attack on our state’s finances and working families. This cut of more than 10% of the state’s budget means defunding our schools, our cities and towns, and our health care.

With the threat of such severe cuts, these CEOs are trying to scare the legislature into a backroom deal to cut taxes for millionaires and corporations.

These CEOs are still mad about the passage of the Fair Share Amendment. They chipped in a few more cents per dollar on their income over a million, and we were able to fund universal school meals, free community college, and more. They want to get rid of all of this and more.

The big donors and backers of these questions won’t go to the ballot— they know that such deep cuts will undermine the transportation and services their businesses depend upon. If a few fanatics do go forward, faith, labor, and community groups are ready to defeat them.

If the Legislature concedes and lets these corporate extortionists get their way, they will keep coming back year after year with more threats and more demands. They will keep enriching themselves, and the investments we all depend on will suffer.

Tell your legislators to say NO to negotiating with corporate extortionists and NO to any deal with them.

But there’s more that you can do:

Follow-up to Spring Forward Webinar “Spring Forward: Investing in People, not Prisons: The Prison Moratorium and Beyond”

Thank you so much to everyone who joined our Spring Forward webinar on Wednesday about the prison moratorium and the important work happening on decarceration with Mallory Hanora of Families for Justice as Healing!

Follow-Up Links

  • You can watch the video here. 

Happy National Library Week! Let’s Rein in Book Bans.

Happy National Library Week!

The theme for this year’s National Library Week is “Find Your Joy,” a recognition of the value of libraries in helping individuals of all ages explore, imagine, learn, relax, and so much more. Libraries make learning fun.

But libraries have been under attack, with a rise of book ban efforts attacking schools and libraries across the country and here in Massachusetts. Book bans are attacks on free speech in general, and attacks more specifically on the identities, histories, or topics represented in targeted books, materials, and media. Many attempts have targeted books and media dealing with LGBTQ characters and themes, race, equity, social justice, and the US’s complicated history.

Many book bans have targeted librarians themselves—limiting their ability to choose books and media, and even proposing punishments. Some book ban attempts challenge classroom book collections, limiting teachers’ abilities to meet their students’ needs.

Last November, the MA Senate passed legislation to rein in politically motivated book bans. We need the MA House to do so too.

Can you write to your state rep today about the need to pass legislation to do so?

Follow-up Links to Spring Forward: What Beacon Hill Can Do on Energy Affordability webinar

Thank you to everyone who joined last night’s webinar! And if you weren’t able to join, you were missed!

Here is the video:

Vick shared two action alerts and one upcoming event:  

Follow-up links & actions to Webinar “Spring Forward: Privacy and Power: Protecting Our Digital Rights and Democracy”

Thank you so much for joining our webinar on Wednesday “Spring Forward: Privacy and Power: Protecting Our Digital Rights and Democracy”! And thank you to our great speaker, Kade Crockford from the ACLU of Massachusetts. 

You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/wHi4nsmLjjc.

https://youtu.be/wHi4nsmLjjc

And here are the follow-up links from Kade: 

  1. ACLU presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1G9hEyXj0-3IMz16f9ctnPXQaiP7NO_bZ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108538486946816465140&rtpof=true&sd=true
  2. ACLU resources on privacy: https://www.aclum.org/campaigns-initiatives/data-privacy-now/
    1. Includes talking points
    2. Action: https://mobilize.aclum.org/a/pass-enforceable-data-privacy-legislation
  3. ACLU resources on facial recognition: https://www.aclum.org/campaigns-initiatives/press-pause-face-surveillance/
  4. ACLU blog on license plate readers in MA: https://data.aclum.org/2025/10/07/flock-gives-law-enforcement-all-over-the-country-access-to-your-location/
    1. Local level action: https://mobilize.aclum.org/a/email-your-municipal-leaders-flock

Hope to see you at an upcoming event!

Take Action: Investing in People, Not Incarceration

Friday was the first day of spring, and the new season is always a perfect time to think about second chances and new life. As winter passes, we get more light, we get more greenery, we see more flowers.

It’s a time to think about how our systems can be designed to encourage second chances and new life instead of cycles of violence and harm.

Prisoners’ Legal Services, Families for Justice as Healing, the Keeping Families Connected Coalition, Jane Doe, Inc., Medical Justice Alliance-MA Chapter, Progressive Massachusetts, and Citizens for Juvenile Justice recently teamed up to write a letter to the Senate and House Committees on Ways and Means, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate President urging them to prioritize a package of six critical bills this session. Over 100 organizations have signed on in support and now we need the help of individuals to ask their legislators to make this a priority.  

This platform includes:

  • An Act relative to elder and medical parole (H.2693)
  • An Act to build restorative family and community connection (H.2591)
  • An Act relative to human rights and improved outcomes for incarcerated people (H.2608)
  • An act relative to justice for survivors (S.1256)
  • An act establishing a jail and prison moratorium (H.3422, S.2944)
  • An Act to Promote Public Safety and Better Outcomes for Youths (S.1061)

These six critical legal system reform bills have advanced to the committee on Ways and Means and are well positioned to be acted upon by the legislature this session. Each of these bills represents an opportunity to reduce incarceration, redirect spending to where it is most needed, and improve conditions for particularly vulnerable carceral populations, specifically young people, families, survivors of abuse and sexual violence, and elders. More details on the bills are in the letter.  

Please contact your legislators with a copy of the letter via email, phone, or the form below and ask them to express their support to the Committee on Ways and Means as well as House or Senate leadership.  

Email Your Legislators

“How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts” Follow-up Links

Thank you so much for joining for last night’s webinar “How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts”! 

You can find Phineas Baxandall’s slides from his excellent presentation here. 

A Few Other Links: 

Unfortunately, although I thought I had clicked record, I had missed the final step in getting it to start. My apologies. A decoupling of action and intention, if you will. But I’m glad we have the slides to share. 

This Wednesday: How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts

Budget season is coming up soon in the Massachusetts Legislature, and if legislators don’t act quickly, damaging cuts could be on the table.

Tax policy can get wonky fast, so let me give you the gist of it. When the federal government changes the tax code with new deductions and exemptions, Massachusetts incorporates those into our tax code. In last summer’s Big Ugly Bill, Trump and Congressional Republicans created a whole list of new, costly, regressive giveaways to the richest corporations. That means that unless Beacon Hill acts, those giveaways get added to MA’s tax code too.

That would mean a loss of almost half a billion dollars in the coming budget, with cuts to essential services on which we all depend. States across the country are already saying NO and opting out, protecting essential revenue, and Massachusetts needs to join them.

Join us on Wednesday for our next Spring Forward webinar where we will hear from Phineas Baxandall of MassBudget about what’s at stake and what you can do.

Spring Forward: How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

7 pm, Zoom, RSVP here

Can’t make it? You can still email your state rep and state senator about taking action.