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Boston

Setting Our Sights On The Equality Of Women

March 5, 2023 Patricia Hynes, Portside. , , ,
Boston, Massachusetts - A month ago, I heard on the news that Boston public schools would be closed on February 3 because of the severe Arctic cold and wind chill forecast for that day and the next.  My first thought was: what if the students’ mothers are working single mothers, what if they cannot take off or cannot afford to lose the pay – given inflation of food, energy and rents and the impoverishing impact of Covid? Boston is a severely unequal city with an extremely segregated public school system: 80 percent of children in public school are low income; 90 percent are students of color, mainly Latino and Black; higher income families with children leave for suburbs when their children become of school age, according to the Dorchester Reporter. 

Six Arrested Protesting At An East Boston Electrical Substation Site

January 18, 2023 Miriam Wasser, WBUR. , , ,
Boston, Massachusetts - Six environmental activists were arrested early Tuesday morning while protesting the construction of a controversial electrical substation in East Boston. Jule Manitz of Extinction Rebellion, the group that organized the demonstration, said the group got to the site around 6:45 a.m., and within a few minutes, several Boston police officers arrived. “We were attempting to unfurl two banners and were barely able to do that [before] a lot of cops showed up,” she said. “People were arrested right away.” Manitz lives in Chelsea, about a mile away from the substation site, and has taken part in several protests over the years. She said she was surprised to see people arrested on the sidewalk and in a nearby parking lot — two areas where people have protested peacefully in the past.

Boston University Historic Union Win For Graduate Workers

December 26, 2022 Steve Gillis, Workers World. , , , , ,
Boston, Massachusetts - Over 3,000 new members of the Boston University Graduate Workers Union (BUGWU), Service Employees (SEIU) Local 509, celebrated a 98.1% NLRB election victory Dec. 7, which was months in the organizing. To punctuate that 2022 has been a wildly successful year of rank-and-file union organizing in the U.S., some labor researchers have characterized the 1,414 to 28 vote as “the most lopsided NLRB election win ever by a bargaining unit [of] more than 1,000 people.” (@dskamper, @gradworkersofBU, Twitter) Speaking at a Dec. 9 Boston rally marking the one-year anniversary of the first victory for Starbucks Workers United, rank-and-file BUGWU organizer Wu Nairan credited “the inspiration and solidarity of [this summer’s 64-day] strike of Boston Starbucks Workers United on the BU campus” with propelling BUGWU’s win.

We Can’t Allow The Far-Right To Take The Initiative Or Hold Public Space

March 31, 2022 It's Going Down. , , ,
Boston, Massachusetts - Last weekend in South Boston, around 50 people mobilized to counter a possible appearance by the neo-Nazi group the Nationalist Social Club-131 (a nod to both the ‘National Socialism’ of the Nazi Party and ‘Anti-Communist Action’), after public outcry grew following the group’s appearance at the yearly St. Patrick’s Day parade. At the parade, around a dozen neo-Nazis, all wearing masks and flying a flag with a white nationalist symbol, held a banner reading, “Keep Boston Irish,” and handed out flyers promoting the group and attacking non-whites.

Malden Residents Can’t Get Through To Housing Management, Form Coalition

March 26, 2022 Sophia Paffenroth, The Scope Boston. , , ,
Rhina Sorto, who has been filing complaints to Carabetta Management for months about mold, flooding and rodent infestation, was joined in a protest yesterday by other Malden Towers residents, as well as tenant advocates showing solidarity. Gathered in the parking lot of Malden Towers apartment complex at 99 Florence St., those present witnessed three Malden tenant associations come together. The event, which started at noon, was organized by the City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) housing nonprofit. The nonprofit brought together the Malden Towers Tenant Association, the United Properties Tenant Association and the Maplewood Square Tenant Association into a coalition with one mission: dignified housing.

Court Protest Aims At Boston Covid Housing Crisis

October 30, 2020 Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Boston, MA - Thousands of families in eastern Massachusetts face renewed risk of eviction. Governor Charlie Baker opted on October 17 to cease emergency measures to protect shelter that have been in effect throughout most of 2020, triggering a huge surge in “notices to quit” from landlords. A rally downtown outside the Eastern Housing Court near Haymarket on a rainy Thursday morning called for an alternative program at the state legislature, among other policies that have been proposed including a rent freeze.

Black Workers Protest Union-Busting Boston Gentrifier

July 1, 2020 Boston Bureau, Workers World. , , ,
A June 16 action for eight laid-off workers — organized just four days after the announcement they had been fired — drew about 100 people. They were protesting at their place of work, College Bound Dorchester/Boston Uncornered, on a quiet residential street on Tuesday morning. With these latest layoffs, CEO Mark Culliton targeted one-third of the remaining youth services employees working for his company, College Bound, after workers declared their intention to unionize as Uncornered United-Service Employees (SEIU) Local 888 on June 2. College Bound is a “further education” preparation program, while Boston Uncornered hires neighborhood leaders impacted by violence to be mentors in the program. The company website advertises the programs as “opportunities to turn away from the ‘street corners’ for good.” The UU mentors are Black and Brown neighborhood leaders who have demonstrated social influence and skill at developing young people by drawing on their own challenges and experiences. These workers are demanding that Culliton recognize the union and that he reinstate those illegally fired.

Boston School Bus Drivers Win Emergency Full Pay During School Closure

March 25, 2020 By Steve Gillis, Workers.org , , , ,
On March 16, elected officers of United Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, conducted mass meetings in the bus yards over loudspeakers with hundreds of drivers, monitors, dispatchers and support staff. They presented a multipart agreement reached with Transdev — a division of the Paris-based transnational conglomerate Veolia, which employs over 170,000 workers in 104 countries and specializes in contracting with neoliberal governments to privatize water, waste, energy and transportation.

Iranian Student Deported From Boston Despite Court Order; Federal Judge Dismisses Case

January 23, 2020 By Shannon Dooling, Wbur.org , , , ,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at Logan International Airport denied entry to an Iranian national who was set to study economics this spring at Northeastern University. Despite a federal court order to delay the man's removal, CBP placed him on a plane Monday night. Kerry Doyle, an attorney for Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, said the 24-year-old was traveling to the U.S. with a valid F1 student visa before he was held for secondary questioning by CBP at the Boston airport.

Protests Target A ‘Carbon Bomb’ Linking Two Major Pipelines Outside Boston

January 20, 2020 Phil McKenna, Insideclimatenews.org , ,
WEYMOUTH, Massachusetts — After endless public hearings, drawn-out government appeals and fruitless legal proceedings, a band of community and climate activists was left to this: Sitting in the path of a concrete truck at the site where a large natural gas compressor is being built outside Boston. They were five years on in their bid to block a facility that would play a crucial role in completing a pipeline project that seeks to ship hydraulically fractured gas from New Jersey to Canada.

How One Boston Hospital Is Feeding Patients Through Its Rooftop Farm

September 12, 2019 Lindsay Campbell, Modernfarmer.com , , ,
Carrie Golden believes the only reason she’s diabetes free is that she has access to fresh, locally grown food. A few years after the Boston resident was diagnosed with prediabetes, she was referred to Boston Medical Center’s Preventative Food Pantry as someone who was food insecure. The food pantry is a free food resource for low-income patients. “You become diabetic because when you don’t have good food to eat, you eat whatever you can to survive,” Golden says. “Because of the healthy food I get from the pantry… I’ve learned how to eat.”

Movement To Build National Support For Green New Deal Starts In Boston, ‘City Of Revolutions’

April 27, 2019 By Zach Roberts, Desmogblog.com , ,
The past two years, 2017 and 2018, brought the U.S. two major youth-led movements. The first was borne out of the March for Our Lives, which saw hundreds of thousands rallying for gun violence prevention in D.C. and across the country. The second was the Sunrise Movement. While founded in 2017, the Sunrise Movement came to prominence in late 2018 with its news-grabbing protests demanding climate action on Capitol Hill. But rather than railing against Congress’s many climate science deniers, this environmental group gained attention with a sit-in of the office of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, where dozens of youth, joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for a Green New Deal to rise to the challenge of climate change.

Victory! Boston Challenges Corporate Control Of Our Food System

March 22, 2019 By Alexa Kaczmarski, Corporateaccountability.org , , ,
Boston has taken a critical step forward to rebuild our broken food system and advance food justice across the city. On March 20, the city became the first on the East Coast to adopt a city-wide Good Food Purchasing Policy (GFPP) — a groundbreaking policy that helps build an equitable, local, sustainable food system. The policy directs the city to purchase food that meets robust labor, health, and environmental standards. This includes Boston Public Schools (BPS), one of the largest purchasers of food in the city — meaning that 56,000 schoolchildren in Boston will have healthier, more nutritious food available to them at school each day.

The Boston Ujima Project Is Working To Create Economic Equity For Artists

November 2, 2018 By Nicole Rupersburg, Springboardexchange.org , , ,
The Boston Ujima Project is a community-led organization with a mission of growing a people’s economy in Greater Boston, one that is controlled by the community with neighbors, workers, business owners, and investors all working together on a shared vision of collective work and responsibility. From Ujima’s citywide assembly “Old Roots, New Rules,” October 2018. The idea is to challenge poverty and develop local neighborhoods by organizing individual savings, businesses, and customers to grow their own wealth and meet their own needs. The word ujima is a Swahili word that refers to the Kwanzaa principle of collective wealth and responsibility.

8 Boston Jews Arrested As They Shut Down Israeli Consulate To Protest Violence On Gaza

April 4, 2018 Yonah Lieberman, Ifnotnowmovement.org , , , , , ,
BOSTON, MA: This morning, on the fourth day of Passover, Boston Jewish Millennials locked themselves to the Israeli Consulate of New England and called for an end to Israeli violence against Palestinian protesters in Gaza, which resulted in the death of 17 protesters while injuring more than 1,000 others last week — the deadliest day in Israel/Palestine since the 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge. “At the Passover Seder, my family and I talk about our community’s journey toward freedom as part of an ancient ritual done in Jewish households across the world. After over a decade of the Israeli blockade and three bombardments, that is exactly what Palestinians in Gaza want: freedom,” said Sarah O’Connor, who was one of eight IfNotNow members that chained themselves to the doors of the Israeli consulate.
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