When Candidates Are on a Listening Tour, Give Them Something to Listen To

TL;DR: Start thinking about what you want in a progressive governor, and start questioning and pressuring candidates and prospective candidates before committing.

One year from now, Democrats across the state will have elected delegates to go to the state party convention where gubernatorial candidates will vie with each other for the party’s endorsement.

The primary field is not settled yet—there’s some time to go, and candidates may yet emerge.

But, already, candidates and prospective candidates have begun listening tours–speaking at local caucuses, at house parties, at activist events.

When the field is settled, Progressive Massachusetts will invite all candidates to fill out our detailed candidate questionnaire, as we did in 2014.

We will ask tough questions about where they stand on the key elements of our Progressive Platform–shared prosperity, racial and social justice, open government and strong democracy, and sustainable infrastructure and environmental protection–and the Legislative Agenda that seeks to translate principles into policy.

And once they fill out those questionnaires, YOU–our grassroots members–will get to vet them and get to decide whom we endorse.

No smoke-filled rooms, just grassroots democracy.

But, the member endorsement is still a way off.

In the interim — what can you do to strengthen the field and ensure the boldest progressive platform is being talked about at every coffee, every house party? 

SOME IDEAS —  

We want them to understand that a progressive message is the winning one.

So get the candidates (and prospective candidates) on record about the issues that matter.

Ask them tough questions, don’t accept evasions, and see if those answers hold when they go before different crowds.

Charlie Baker has managed to coast with high approval ratings because the Legislature tries to minimize conflict, avoiding taking votes on anything he might veto and showering him with praise for small-bore accomplishments. But if we are to have a chance of defeating Baker next year, then we need to be drawing a clear contrast with an inspiring and affirmative progressive policy agenda. Not being Charlie, not being a Republican simply isn’t enough.

So what should you be asking declared and prospective candidates if you encounter them on a listening tour. Here are some ideas:

Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to make the minimum wage a living wage of $15 an hour. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to guarantee health care as a right through a Medicare for All system. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to invest in our public schools to give all students the best opportunities we can. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to make public higher education tuition-free. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting comprehensive changes to our criminal justice system to end mass incarceration and inhumane practices like solitary confinement. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to protect our immigrant family, friends, and neighbors by preventing the use of state resources for a mass deportation regime. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to expand voting rights through things like automatic voter registration and Election Day registration. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to aggressively shift away from a fossil fuel-based economy to one powered by renewables like solar and wind. Do you?


Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to raise the revenue needed to upgrade and expand our public transit system. Do you?

A contested primary can give YOU, the voter, leverage–but only if you use it. No candidate is owed your vote. Public servants work for you, and anyone running for such an office should have to work for your vote.

And when all Democratic candidates are arguing about who’s the bolder progressive, and not who’s friendlier to some supposed centrist ideal, that’s when we will have a policy debate worth having.

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. 

Election 2016: The Ballot Questions

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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.

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 

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)

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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.