Skip to content

Massachusetts

How Somerville Organized To Win Ballot Question To Divest From Israel

Organizers with Somerville for Palestine hosted a rally outside of City Hall on Nov. 13, demanding that city councilmembers follow the will of voters and pass a resolution to implement a strategy to boycott and divest from Israel within the next calendar year. The rally came after voters in the Massachusetts city’s Nov. 4 election overwhelmingly supported nonbinding Ballot Question 3, also referred to as the “Palestine Solidarity Question,” which asked whether Somerville should divest from companies that “engage in business that sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine.”

Do Millionaire Surtaxes Lead To Millionaire Exodus?

November 2025 marks the three-year anniversary of Massachusetts voters approving a four percent surtax on annual incomes above $1 million.[1] The ‘Fair Share’ amendment has been a reference for New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who has called for an additional 2% tax on city incomes over $1 million to fund his affordability agenda. Predictably, critics make gloomy prophecies of economic blight and elite exodus: Bill Ackman and 26 other billionaires spent big on Mamdani’s opponents, the Cato Institute called his tax plans ‘wishful thinking,” and Andrew Cuomo threatened to depart for Florida.

Somerville For Palestine Initiative Is On November Ballot

Somerville, Massachusetts - “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” This chant rang out loud and clear at the Somerville for Palestine (S4P) meeting in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Oct. 6, when members and friends learned that 8,000 of their 11,400 petition signatures were legally certified by the Election Commission. The Commission also overruled an objection by the right wing to the ballot initiative. It will be on the ballot in November as Question 3. For the past seven months, 288 volunteers have been canvassing people to sign a petition directing the Somerville City Council to stop using taxpayers’ money to fund Israeli genocide.

River Valley Co-Op Workers Opened Up Bargaining And Won Big

River Valley Co-op is a consumer-owned cooperative grocery store with two locations in Western Massachusetts. We have been unionized with Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1459 for the last decade with 175 workers in our bargaining unit. This year, beginning in January and ending in June, we held thirteen bargaining sessions with RVC management and their attorneys in a process that was transformative for our union. Negotiations were tense and at times, adversarial. Workers took a stand in ways they never had before, strengthening our relationships and faith in our ability to fight and win. We made significant strides in the contract, including $2 an hour raises across the board, union orientation for new hires, and protections for our immigrant co-workers. Our contract was ratified with 77 percent of workers turning out for a nearly unanimous ‘yes’ vote.

This Job Is Trash But Everyone Loves It

They ride like the pro cyclists you see on TV, logging long hard miles, day in and out, but you won’t see them at the Tour De France. Instead, they tow 8-foot trailers stacked with over 300 pounds of trash through the streets, 365 days a year. Will Malcolm is a professional cyclist at Pedal People, a bike-powered garbage collection business combining human power, zero-emissions transportation, and a worker-owned cooperative model, making it one of the most unconventional jobs in America. This is the story of how Pedal People is changing the way we think about waste management, cycling careers, sustainability, and what it means to take out the trash.

High School Student Detained By ICE Released From Inhumane Conditions

The high school student in Massachusetts who was arrested and kidnapped by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) on his way to volleyball practice was released after six days of detention on Thursday after a judge granted him bond. Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, who came to the U.S. from Brazil at the age of 7, was detained by ICE last Saturday. The agents were looking for Marcelo’s father, who owns the car that his son was driving. He had parked in a friend’s driveway and was headed to practice when ICE agents pulled him over, arrested, and detained him. The student did not even know about his own immigration status because he was so young when he arrived in the United States.

Zionist Militants Responsible For ICE Arrest Of Pro-Palestine Student

A Massachusetts court ruled that the detention of a former student who expressed pro-Palestine views was unconstitutional and that it was a punitive measure triggered almost solely by a complaint from the Zionist militant group Betar. Late last week, a judge ruled that a former student at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), detained unlawfully by ICE, be released, providing the first court admission that Zionist extremist groups are working with U.S. authorities to violate free speech rights. The former student in question is Efe Ercelik, a Turkish national who entered the U.S. on an F-1 student visa. After a physical altercation with a Jewish student during a protest in late 2023, the American corporate media and pro-Israel groups pointed to his case as evidence of rampant attacks against Jewish students on campus.

I Faced Censorship And Attacks For Trying To Teach About Palestine

At MIT, I have witnessed firsthand how institutional priorities shift under the weight of political pressures and personal allegiances. My proposal for a course that critically engages via language and linguistics with the realities of settler colonialism vs. decolonization was not simply met with skepticism; it was censored and actively surveilled, doxed, and it is still being delegitimized. My experience is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, systemic issue that permeates education across the United States. It is a symptom of what I have come to understand as the “Palestine exception,” where conversations surrounding Israel/Palestine are subjected to unique levels of scrutiny and suppression, from academic units, to students’ newspapers and faculty newsletters, to Executive Orders and Homeland Security.

Student Activists Pass Municipal Resolution To Make Polluters Pay

Northampton, MA. – Sunrise Movement activists at Smith College and local advocates passed a Climate Superfund Resolution in Northampton last Thursday. On Earth Day dozens rally in Amherst, calling on the Amherst Town Council and other municipalities in the Connecticut River Valley to join the call to make polluters pay. Thursday’s resolution in support of H.1014/S.588, “An Act to Establish a Climate Change Superfund”, was the first to pass in Western Massachusetts, following previous resolutions in Boston, Cambridge, Medford, and Malden. “I’ve watched my generation strike, resist, campaign, lose hope, and get back up again,” said Emma Coopersmith.

Massachusetts Organizers Fight For A Sanctuary State

Grassroots organizers in Massachusetts are demanding that their state stand with immigrant communities in declaring Massachusetts a sanctuary state—ensuring that state officials will not collaborate with Trump’s policy of mass immigrant detentions and deportations.  Spearheaded by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the campaign outlines a set of four demands of the Massachusetts state government: ending law enforcement collaboration with ICE, stopping racist demonization against immigrants, stopping any new restrictions on housing assistance, and keeping ICE out of the state’s public schools and other institutions.

Removing Obstacles For Small-Scale Manufacturers In Boston

Jen Faigel stood in the production line watching a rush of mini-pies bake to a golden brown. Around her, 10 people stood at different spots, each responsible for a different process: pouring in the apple and blueberry filling, sprinkling a generous helping of crumb topping, sliding the pies in to bake, pulling pies off the cooling rack and into custom-designed packaging. After seven days of baking, it smelled like her grandma’s kitchen. Teresa Maynard, owner of Sweet Teez Bakery, and her team were busy filling the largest single order they had ever received: 42,000 pies, going to 25 Whole Foods stores.

No More Research For Genocide At MIT

On November 7th, we published an op-ed titled “Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research for Genocide” in the MIT Tech. Our piece detailed how Prof. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, uses Israeli Ministry of Defense money to develop algorithms with applications in “multirobot security defense and surveillance.” Rather than engage with these publicly verifiable facts, the Tech’s editorial board (under the guidance of Prof. Rus) retracted our op-ed. MIT sent several of us “no contact” and “no harassment” orders for Prof. Rus, disciplining one student for simply writing our Op-Ed’s title on a public chalkboard!

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Targeting Pro-Palestine Activists

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken severe measures to suppress the voices of two prominent pro-Palestine activists on campus: PhD student Prahlad Iyengar and Dr. Michel DeGraff, a professor who has taught linguistics at the university for over 28 years. Iyengar has been banned from campus, which is also his place of work, without due process. He has also been denied union representation by MIT’s administration, despite himself being a union steward. He faces imminent threat of suspension as well as expulsion. MIT prohibited Dr. Degraff from teaching a course on Palestine, suspended his annual pay raise, and had his official status at the university changed from “Professor of Linguistics” to “Faculty-at-Large,” also without due process.

Want More Equality Of Opportunity And Social Justice?

This past summer, the Governor of Massachusetts Maura Healey signed a budget bill that guaranteed universal access to in-state community colleges. No matter age or socioeconomic background, irrespective of the degree or certificate sought, the tuition and fees at these fifteen institutions of higher learning are waived. The $117 million public investment allocated to the MassEducate program was made possible two years ago when, in an exercise of direct democracy, Bay State voters defied the tenets of neoliberal ideology. They approved a landmark progressive tax bill – known as the Fair Share Amendment – that imposed a four percent surtax on annual incomes above one million dollars. 

Striking Hotel Workers Fight BlackRock

Boston, Massachusetts - For almost two months, UNITE HERE! Local 26 hotel workers have been striking to demand the living wages and expanded benefits that management has denied them for years. The strike wave began on Sept. l when over 1,000 Boston and Greenwich, Connecticut, hotel workers walked off the job. Rolling strikes in nine other cities — including Baltimore, Honolulu and San Francisco — have followed. UNITE HERE! demands include: increased wages to offset rampant inflation, fair staffing schedules and an end to the staffing cuts made during the first wave of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Over 5,000 hotel workers have gone on strike across the U.S since September.
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.