Progressive Worcester endorses tonight’s rally in support of the immigrant and refugee community.
Please show up in solidarity and reject the toxic policies of Trumpism from creeping into Worcester. After the Rally, see it through, stay for the City Council meeting. City Council must hear from you.
And remember,
We can take action as a state. But the Legislature must act.
The Legislature can pass the Safe Communities act, to establish ‘sanctuary’ in Massachusetts, and protect vulnerable communities under Trump’s coming policies. Right now, Legislators are choosing which bills they will choose to highlight with their co-sponsorship.
Tell your State Rep and State Senator to co-sponsor the Safe Communities Act, and to push a bold progressive agenda — to resist, to protect the vulnerable, to build a stronger future with shared prosperity and justice for all. Rally. Show Solidarity at the Council meeting. Send a message to your legislator for #SafeCommunities.
RALLY DETAILS
We urge everyone to come out and support our immigrant and refugee community and tell Worcester City Councilors to reject Councilor Gaffney’s anti-refugee, anti-immigrant City Council proposal.
Worcester will not be bullied into turning in our undocumented neighbors, friends, families, young people, and coworkers. We expect that our elected officials remain committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all members of this community, regardless of their citizenship status. We urge our fellow community members to stand in solidarity with all those fleeing persecution, poverty and violence. Worcester cannot be a welcoming community for some of us, while turning its back on others.
Location: City Hall Day, time: Tuesday, January 31st from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the rally at 6pm today. A Declared Parking Ban is in effect for Worcester beginning at 2pm. Organized by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Worcester.
Endorsed by: 350 Central MA ACLU of Central Massachusetts American Muslim Democratic Caucus Black Lives Matter Worcester Carpenters 107 Casa Cultural Dominicana de Worcester Central Massachusetts AFL-CIO Christian Community Church Clark University Geographical Society (PhD Students) Educational Association of Worcester EnjoinGood.org Episcopal Churches of Worcester (ECOW) Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement (EPOCA) HOPE Coalition Just Paint Studio Main South Community Development Corporation (CDC) Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office Massachusetts Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State Massachusetts Human Rights Committee Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition Central Region Mosaic Cultural Complex Muslim Community Link NAACP New England VegFest Progressive Worcester SEIU Local 32BJ SEIU Local 509 SEIU Local 1199 The Sierra Club SS. Francis Therese Catholic Workers Socialist Alternative South East Asian Coalition Stone Soup Temple Emanuel Sinai Transformative Culture Project UFCW 1445 UNITE HERE! VegWorcester Worcester Common Ground Worcester Community Labor Coalition Worcester Interfaith Worcester Islamic Center Worcester Refugee Assistance Project (WRAP) YWCA of Central Massachusetts
Do you know what North Korea and the United States have in common? They have similar per capita rates of incarceration, among the highest in the world. But lately some states have used an approach called justice reinvestment to dramatically cut the number of people in prison while continuing to lower crime rates, saving money in the process. In Massachusetts, a few bills are up for a vote this legislative session that take this approach to justice reform.
The “Tough on Crime” approach that came into vogue in the 80s and 90s led to an explosion in the prison population (especially when applied to non-violent drug crimes) but only a limited reduction in crime. It just isn’t a very efficient use of taxpayer money.
Justice reinvestment takes a different approach. It shrinks the number of inmates by reducing sentences and removing mandatory minimums for some crimes, restoring judicial discretion in sentencing, and expanding the use of parole. In contrast, over the past few decades Massachusetts has drastically cut the number of prisoners receiving parole, instead letting half of former inmates be flung back into society without any form of supervision. This makes them more likely to reoffend. Other proven ways to reduce recidivism are counseling, education, reentry, and jobs programs.
A few pieces of legislation have been proposed in the Massachusetts legislature that take this approach. HD.2714/SD.1128, An Act for justice reinvestment, is a comprehensive justice reform package. Among other things, it reduces sentences and calls for funding of jobs programs, not only for former inmates but also for people who fit at least two of these categories:
“is under 25 years of age; is a victim of violence; is a veteran; does not have a high school diploma (if over 18 years of age); has been convicted of a felony; has been unemployed or has had family income below 250% of the federal poverty level for six months or more; or lives in a census tract where over 20% of the population fall below the federal poverty”
HD.1794/SD.500 An Act to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences with regards to drug crimes, is a bill with just a few parts of HD.2714/SD.1128. It gets rid of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and gives judges discretion in sentencing for nonviolent drug offenses.
A related bill is SD.1389: An Act to reduce the criminalization of poverty, that reduces court fees and bans sending people to jail for inability to pay the fees.
At the national level, the appointment of Jeff Sessions warrants some concern for those who value justice.
The power of the U.S. Attorney General lies in three things:
Setting priorities for federal law enforcement about what kinds of things to investigate.
Deciding what laws to defend and which cases to bring to federal court.
Selectively giving money to states and towns.
Sessions is unlikely to devote many resources to issues progressives care about. For instance, he may not investigate excessive use of force by police. He holds the view that bad behavior is caused by a few bad apples rather than any systemic problems. To his credit, he has admitted that there is some racial bias in policing, but he has regularly opposed federal investigation into police misconduct. With a president who has called Black Lives Matter a “threat” that should be investigated by the Attorney General, this is not an encouraging sign.
He will likely not do much to uphold civil rights, especially not LGBT rights–he is a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage. Although the Constitution and federal law bans discrimination of various types, it doesn’t matter what the law says if it isn’t enforced.* Fortunately Massachusetts and other states can take it upon themselves enforce to enforce similar state-level protections.
So what will he focus on instead? We can expect that he will vigorously support Trump’s policies on deporting undocumented immigrants and probably enforce the Muslim ban. (He’s no Sally Yates, bless her heart.) He twice tried to pass legislation to make English the official language of government, i.e. removing your right to get government services in a language you understand. I think it’s fair to say he’s not a friend to immigrants.
Many have been upset over allegations that he is racist but less attention has been given to his opposition to legalizing marijuana. He has even said that “Good people don’t smoke marijuana”. Massachusetts and the other states and cities that have legalized or decriminalized marijuana could face increased federal interference. The Obama administration generally declined to enforce the federal laws in such places, to allow the fledgling experiment in legalization a chance to show results. Left alone, it may succeed or it may fail, and in either case we will have a better sense of what works. Under Sessions, as marijuana business owners and employees face prison and banks risk having their assets seized if they loan to these businesses, the prospects for success are dim. It would be a shame to undo decades of work, especially now that even many Republicans have become open to a softer approach to drug enforcement.
Sessions has many other troubling positions, too many to name here. For instance, he favors private prisons, so he may undo the DOJ’s recent moratorium on private federal prisons.
There are many threats to civil liberty under Sessions and Trump, so it is up to us at the state and local levels to defend and make lives better for our fellow citizens. We can start by passing HD.2714/SD.1128, HD.1794/SD.500, and SD.1389.
*As a fun example, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder stopped defending Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in court, before the Supreme Court finally declared it unconstitutional. That made Jeff Sessions really angry.
During his State of the State speech last Tuesday, Governor Charlie Baker congratulated himself on his commitment to addressing the opioid epidemic. He also congratulated himself on curtailing public spending in order to reduce the deficit without raising taxes. These priorities, however, are in fundamental conflict.
In December, in an act largely buried by the news around the presidential transition, Governor Baker unilaterally cut $98 million from the state budget, taking the axe to a wide range of programs. Among the agencies hit was the state Bureau of Substance Abuse Assistance (BSAA), which faced cuts of nearly $2 million. This money is neither an abstraction nor a rounding error: this is money that would be used to hire treatment and prevention coordinators, as well as to fund various treatment and community programs that directly combat addiction in local communities.
As a working paramedic, I see the devastating effects of opioid addiction on a daily basis. Opiate overdoses have become some of the most common emergencies we respond to, and many of the patients we treat have overdosed multiple times. While many of these people are successfully resuscitated (usually through the prodigious use of Narcan), an estimated 987 Massachusetts residents died of opioid-related causes the first six months of 2016 alone.
Baker made a step in the right direction last year when he provided $700,000 in Narcan grants to communities around the state. These grants allowed communities to supply Narcan to their first responders, which undoubtedly saved lives. While Narcan grants save lives in the short-term, the only way to effectively combat the opioid epidemic is to provide lasting solutions for addicts and to develop strong prevention programs that are visible to community members. By slashing funding to the BSAA, Baker removed resources intended to provide long-term treatment and rehabilitation to addicts across the state. These resources were also aimed at stemming the epidemic at its source, through the use of school prevention specialists and community outreach programs that can help prevent people resist the pull of opiates altogether.
Such short-termism has been a pervasive problem in state budgeting, as our elected officials fail to make the long-term investments in public health, education, and transportation necessary to guarantee that the Commonwealth for all of its residents. The Fair Share Amendment (“millionaire’s tax”), which will be on the ballot next year (and for which many Progressive Mass members are volunteering), will be a step in the right direction, but there is much more work to do.
By cutting funding to long-term solutions, Baker has shown he has little interest in concrete measures to end the opioid epidemic. People are still dying, and most of them are young. Telling a mother that her child has died from an overdose is one of the hardest things I have had to do. I doubt that Governor Baker can say the same.
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.
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.
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:
that Massachusetts voters absolutely cherish their traditional public schools and reject any expansion of charters at the expense of traditional district budgets, and;
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.
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.
We need to stop closing and/or taking over schools based solely on student test-scores.
We need to stop forcing schools to compete against each other for dollars and students.
We need to stop demonizing urban school teachers for problems that these brave educators have dedicated their entire professional careers to trying to solve.
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.
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;
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.
The national news on Tuesday was quite grim (I didn’t actually learn the ultimate results until Wednesday morning, avoiding the news late Tuesday night for the sake of mental health). And although those results have left me—and many of you, I’m sure—feeling rather hopeless, the results in Massachusetts earlier in the night can give some grounds for hope.
Here, I’m talking about the ballot questions. On all four statewide ballot questions, the progressive position won: the Progressive Massachusetts endorsed #NNYY. Massachusetts said no to expanding slots gaming, no to a rapid expansion of charter schools, yes to protecting farm animals, and yes to legalizing recreational marijuana and rolling back the drug war. The importance of these victories should not be lost on us.
Question 1 (slots) was always expected to fail, and Question 3 (farm animals) was always expected to pass. Question 4 (retail marijuana) had been trending to victory as well. Question 2 (lifting charter cap), however, was always expected to be close. Some recent polls had it tied, or with only narrow leads for the NO side. Earlier this year, Question 2 looked like it would pass easily.
And “Yes on Question 2” definitely had the money to achieve that victory.
As of late October, the YES side was outspending the NO side by over $6 million, with 82% of its money out-of-state (largely New York-based hedge fund managers and their ilk) and 76% of it dark money. On ballot questions, the side that spends more money almost always wins.
But here, the people won—and with a crushing victory, too. NO on Question 2 prevailed by a vote of 62-38, winning almost every city and town across the state with the exception of a handful of wealthy suburbs.
The success of Save Our Public Schools can serve as a testament to the power of grassroots organizing.
SOPS assembled a diverse coalition of groups committed to social justice and, because of the work of this coalition, was able to secure the endorsement of a majority of the State Legislature, most mayors, and more than 200 school committees. Parents, teachers, students, union members, electeds, and community members across the state spent months making phone calls, knocking on doors, and educating their friends and neighbors with a clear message about the importance of protecting our schools and investing in all our children.
Education funding can be a complicated issue, but we realized that, if we could just get our message to people, it would click. Those countless one-on-one conversations are key to organizing.
The Save Our Public Schools campaign energized many parents and students to be more vocal and to stand up for what they know is right—and helped them build skills to continue the fight.
To paraphrase MTA president Barbara Madeloni, this wasn’t just a victory for Massachusetts, but a victory for all the teachers, parents, students, and union workers who wanted to know if we could beat big money. And the fight doesn’t end with Question 2, which was always defensive in nature. We need to continue to organize to make sure that we invest in all our children and fight to reclaim democracy and the commons. We’ve only just begun.
Jonathan Cohn is a Progressive Mass member and is co-chair of the Elections and Endorsement Committee. In the 2016 campaign season, he has spent hundreds of hours volunteering for the progressive candidates and campaigns endorsed by Progressive Mass members.
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
