Thank you so much for joining this evening for our forum “DC Attacks, MA Fights Back: The White House vs. Housing for All”! And thank you again to our amazing speakers!
Our speakers referenced a few bills at the MA State House:
Real Estate Transfer Fee(H.3056 / S.1937): An Act granting a local option for a real estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing Rent Stabilization(H.2328 / S.1447): An Act enabling cities and towns to stabilize rents and protect tenants Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (H.1544 / S.998): An Act to guarantee a tenant’s first right of refusal
Find out if your legislators are already co-sponsoring these bills by looking at our Scorecard website. If they already are, thank them, and if not, urge them to do so. You can find sample email text (as well as more info) for each bill in the links above.
We’ve heard a lot about “government efficiency” over the past few months.
Whenever Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or any of their lackeys in Congress use it, they are using code words for cutting valuable programs that serve the public, as opposed to corporate profit.
But there is an actual meaning to the word. Here’s an example.
Our criminal record sealing system is stuck in the last century.
Individuals seeking to seal records need to mail or deliver petitions to the Commissioner of Probation who processes them manually, one-by-one. This creates backlogs, with several months passing before people hear back when they have already waited years for the opportunity.
Moreover, many people do not know when their records are eligible for sealing, and only learn they might be eligible for record sealing after they lose the prospect for a job, housing, or other opportunity due to their record.
Record sealing has well-documented benefits, but these benefits in economic opportunity are only possible if people can get their records sealed.
That’s why we’re a strong supporter of Clean Slatelegislation that would create an automated record sealing process. Automating record sealing means fewer bureaucratic obstacles and more opportunity. It’s a win-win.
Over the past couple weeks, we have seen increased ICE presence in Massachusetts. ICE has been kidnapping people off the streets, harassing bystanders, and terrorizing communities.
The LUCE hotline has been doing amazing work to keep people alert and to document what’s happening. Bookmark https://www.lucemass.org/if you haven’t already.
Although we can’t stop everything ICE is doing in Massachusetts, we should not be making their work easier. We need our state elected leaders to pass legislation to limit the scope of ICE in Massachusetts and to better support our immigrant communities.
Thank you for all you do, and hope to see you on the 28th!
In solidarity, Jonathan Cohn Policy Director Progressive Massachusetts
FOUR STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TODAY
(1) Email Your State Legislators about Immigrants’ Rights Bills
We’re proud to be supporting the following bills:
Safe Communities Act (H.2580 / S.1681), which would end the voluntary involvement of our public safety officials in civil immigration matters
Dignity Not Deportations Act (H.1588 / S.1122), which would prohibit sheriffs from voluntarily renting beds to ICE and ban agreements to deputize state and local law enforcement to ICE
Immigrant Legal Defense Act (H.1954 / S.1127), which would ensure that immigrants navigating our complex immigration courts have legal representation
We need our state legislators to be co-sponsoring these bills and building support with their colleagues to bring them to the floor.
(2) Email Your State Senator about the FY 2026 Budget
The Senate released its draft budget proposal last week, and senators will vote on amendments next week. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts State Senate did not include funding for the Immigrant Legal Defense fund. State Senator Adam Gomez filed Amendment #847 to the budget to provide $10 million in funding for public and private-funded programs to provide no-cost immigration legal defense to immigrants in Massachusetts who are at imminent risk of deportation, especially those held in federal immigration detention.
RAPID RESPONSE: Join MIRA on Thursday, May 15th at 10AM at the 4th Floor Cafe in the Massachusetts State House for a lit drop in support of Amendment #847, the Immigrant Legal Defense Amendment. Please email organizing@miracoalition.org to confirm your attendance.
Support state legislation, to terminate every state contract funneling money and resources into the deportation machine, and ban new contracts (including the Dignity Not Deportations Bill – H.1588 & S.1122). This includes terminating the existing 287g contracts with the Department of Corrections, and doing everything in your power to end the Intergovernmental Service Agreement with Plymouth County Correctional Facility
Restore COVID-19 era remote participation in our courthouses
Create a reparations fund for families and communities shattered by these kidnappings, detentions, and deportations
I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday! It is a day to reflect on the invaluable role mothers and other caregivers play in our lives and in our communities. But not every mother was able to with her loved ones yesterday and not every mother is given the support and recognition she deserves. This is especially true of mothers impacted by the justice system. Massachusetts is planning to spend $50 million to build a new women’s prison to replace MCI-Framingham. As of January 1, 2024, the population in MCI-Framingham stood at 213. In part as a result of sentencing reforms, Massachusetts’s incarceration rate has been falling, which raises the question: Why expand a system that costs more than $200,000 per person and only causes further harm?
Join Families for Justice as Healing and allies across the state in showing what a five-year moratorium on prison and jail construction can mean: bringing women home; building housing and health care centers; creating what different looks like. Here’s how:
Join a testimony writing party tonight, Monday, May 12th at 6pm via zoom. Click here to RSVP and learn more.
Provide testimony and help pack the hearing room tomorrow Tuesday, May 13th at 1pm at the State House, Room A2.
Submit written testimony. If you can’t make it tomorrow, you can still submit written testimony by clicking here.
Thank you for everything that you do for a more equitable and just Commonwealth.
The Joint Committee on Education has two upcoming hearings where your voice matters.
TODAY, they are holding a hearing on a wide array of bills, including a trio of hateful bills to discriminate against trans kids in high school sports.
NEXT MONDAY, they will be holding a hearing on bills related to school funding, including one of our priority bills, which would ensure that schools are able to benefit from the full promised funding from the recent update to the state’s education funding formula and don’t lose out because of high inflation.
We’ve created easy tools you can use to submit testimony to these hearings:
As the Trump administration tries to dismantle critical environmental regulations and funding, it’s up to states like Massachusetts to step up even more in the fight against climate chaos.
The bad news: Every year, we continue to see record-breaking global temperatures.
The good news: We know the policy solutions that can work. That’s why we’re fighting this session to Put Gas in the Past and to Make Polluters Pay.
The Put Gas in the Past bill (H.3547 / S.2290) would prevent the expansion of gas infrastructure near Environmental Justice communities and require gas companies and the Commonwealth to undergo planning for a just transition to green energy.
The Make Polluters Pay bill (H.1014 / S.558) would require major polluters to pay a fee based on historic emissions to fund climate resilience work (e.g., flood mitigation, energy efficiency upgrades, improved transit).
It’s a simple message. Keep fossil fuels in the ground. Accelerate the transition to a green and just economy. Make those who got us into the mess pay to fix it.
Last week, Republicans in the US House voted to advance a budget outline that entails steep cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and other essential programs in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations.
Their priorities are clear. And so should ours in Massachusetts.
The federal budget fight isn’t over. But MA needs to ensure that, regardless of what Congressional Republicans do and regardless of Elon Musk’s illegal federal funding freezes, we are not cutting essential services. We need to do more to meet the needs of all, not less.
And we know how to raise such funds. It’s not by giving tax cuts to rich people and large corporations as our Legislature did two years ago. It’s by ensuring that large corporations are paying their fair share.
That’s why we’re supporting Raise Up Mass’s Corporate Fair Share campaign to ensure that billionaire global corporations like Apple, Google, and Walmart pay their fair share and can’t get away with tax-dodging antics.
Can you email your legislator in support of this important legislation?
Did you know that Massachusetts taxes a smaller share of offshored corporate income than New Hampshire? An Act Combating Offshore Tax Avoidance (H.3110 / S.2033) would fix that, bringing us in line with the federal government and other states and raising hundreds of millions of dollars in new annual revenues.
This Saturday, thousands of us rallied on the Boston Common and around the state (and the country) to protest the chaos, cruelty, and corruption of the Trump administration — with a message of “Hands Off.”
If you went to a rally this weekend, you know what time you arrived, when you left, and where you went next. Your friends and family might know that too.
But do you know who doesn’t need to know that? Bad actors like Elon Musk.
Right now, there is no law that prevents anyone with a credit card from purchasing cell phone location data.
The purchase and sale of cell phone location data empowers bad actors: right-wing extremists seeking to target individuals seeking abortion care or gender-affirming care, domestic abusers seeking to track their victims, predatory bosses seeking to spy on their employees. The list goes on.
Fortunately, the solution is clear: our Legislature can pass the Location Shield Act (H.86 / S.197), which would ban the purchase and sale of cell phone location data.
The bill has had overwhelming support in the Legislature this session, and it will be having a hearing this Wednesday.
Here’s what you can do:
Check here to find out if your state rep and state senator are already co-sponsors of the bill.
Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government, and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.
Sunshine Week celebrates a radical concept: that you deserve to know what your elected officials are doing.
In other words, what could be a better week to talk about the push for State House Transparency and our Scorecard Website?
Tomorrow, the three state representatives and three state senators who will negotiate a final set of Joint Rules for the legislative session will meet for the first time. There’s a lot at stake (they haven’t come to a deal in several sessions), including whether committee votes and testimony will finally be posted, whether we will see more timely advancement of legislation, and much more. Read on for what you can do to take action.
And *drumroll please* our Scorecard Websiteis now up to date with full data from last session as well as co-sponsorship data from this session. Want to know if your legislators are co-sponsoring the bills on our Legislative Agenda. We’ve got you covered.
The Fight for State House Transparency Continues
In February, both the House and Senate adopted a series of transparency reforms to make a more open, inclusive, and timely legislative process. They did not go as far as they could have, but the fact that they went as far as they did was only possible because of people like you who emailed, called, and met with your legislators.
A six-person conference committee was just appointed to oversee these negotiations:
Sen. Cindy Creem (D-Newton)
Sen. Joan Lovely (D-Salem)
Sen. Ryan Fattman (R-Sutton)
Rep. Mike Moran (D-Brighton)
Rep. Bill Galvin (D-Canton)
Rep. David Muradian (R-Grafton)
In recent sessions, these conference committees have stalemated. But this session can and must be different. Legislators have felt the pressure from the public that voters across the commonwealth want to see these changes. Let’s keep up the momentum, get this done, and then get to the important work across so many urgent issues facing the Commonwealth.
Last Session’s Votes…And This Session’s Co-Sponsorships
Our scorecard website is now up to date with our full data from the 2023-2024 legislative session.
The most striking thing about last session’s recorded votes in the State House? How few of them there were.
Last session saw only 203 votes in the MA House and 252 in the MA Senate, each approximately 50% below average and part of an ongoing decline. That’s bad for accountability. When all of the discussion and debate happens behind closed doors, voters are less aware of where their legislators really stand.
And not each of these recorded votes will be worth scoring: many are low-stakes votes where everyone agrees.
To account for the scarcity of votes last session—especially ones that were beyond unanimous or party-line—we included a few additional data points:
Whether your state legislators are visiting prisons and jails to serve as a force for accountability in the conditions there
Whether your legislators are holding office hours and town halls to engage constituents
Whether your legislators are co-sponsoring the bills that we are tracking on our Scorecard website
For the first two, we did our best to reach out to legislative offices to get information. If we’re missing something, just let us know.
But headed into the new session, our Scorecard website also has other important information: Co-Sponsorship. We’ll be tracking which legislators are co-sponsoring the bills on our Legislative Agenda. That’s a critical tool for you to be able to apply effective pressure — as well as to give credit to the legislators who are fighting the good fight.
The Donald Trump – Elon Musk administration has been unconstitutionally withdrawing funding for climate initiatives at the state and local level, and Republicans in Congress want to cut such funding in the budget. While the fight to block these cuts proceeds, here’s something that MA can do now: make sure the major polluters who caused the climate crisis start paying up to fund the solutions.
The very companies who lied to the public for decades about climate change are benefiting while all of us, especially the most vulnerable, bear the cost.
The Make Polluters Pay bill (H.1014 / S.588) would require these major polluters to pay a one-time fee based on their historic emissions to fund climate-resilient infrastructure upgrades.
That means more money for restoring coastal wetlands; upgrading roads, bridges, subways, and transit systems; preparing for extreme weather; energy efficiency upgrades and retrofits; supporting the creation of self-sufficient clean energy microgrids; and addressing urban heat island effects through green spaces and urban forestry.
New York and Vermont have already passed such a bill. Let’s make MA next.
The Make Polluters Pay campaign is going to have a campaign launch this Sunday. Join 350 Mass, Mass Youth Climate Coalition, and Mass Power Forward along with lead sponsors Senator Jamie Eldridge, Representative Steve Owens, and Representative Jack Lewis to kickoff the 2025-2026 Make Polluters Pay Campaign! RSVP here.
