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Massachusetts

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.

Boston Rally Demands: Indigenous Peoples Day Now!

Boston, Massachusetts - Nearly 200 Indigenous protesters and their allies gathered outside Park Street Station in Boston on Oct. 12 to demand that Massachusetts immediately designate the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day. An Indigenous-led coalition of United American Indians of New England (UAINE), the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB), Cultural Survival, the New Democracy Coalition, Workers World Party-Boston and Italian Americans for Indigenous Peoples Day organized the Oct. 12 action, which bolsters the longstanding effort to demolish the cult glorifying Christopher Columbus, whose lifework was characterized by conquest, slavery and genocide.

BU Graduate Students Reach Deal End Seven-Month Strike

Boston University and its graduate student union have agreed on terms for a new contract that would raise the graduate students’ pay, benefits, and job protections and end the longest such strike in American history. The agreement, announced jointly on Friday afternoon, concludes seven months of sparring between the administration and the union that represents 3,000 graduate students. Many teach classes, grade papers, and conduct research, and argued the school severely underpaid them for essential work. Now the first-of-its-kind contract includes provisions to raise the annual stipend PhD workers receive to at least $45,000, or $20 an hour for graduate students, which would be as much as a 60 percent bump for the lowest paid PhD students.

Boston Coalition For Palestine Shuts Down Highway

Some 5,000 protesters turned out Oct. 6 on Boston Common in a massive show of support for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to the genocidal Zionist state and its U.S. sponsor. Organized by the Boston Coalition for Palestine — whose 45 member organizations include Palestinian House of New England, Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace and Workers World Party — Sunday’s action observed the one-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood, when Hamas fighters broke out of besieged Gaza and attacked Israeli settlements on October 7, 2023. On that day, rally emcee Lea Kayali of the Palestinian Youth Movement explained the people of Gaza “broke down the prison doors” and exposed the weakness and complacency of the Zionist apartheid regime.

Nearly 50,000 US Dockworkers Strike And Flex Collective Power

At midnight on October 1, nearly 50,000 dockworkers across the US’s East Coast walked off the job, shutting down ports across the coastline across cities including Boston, New York, Miami, and Houston. This is the International Longshoremen’s Association’s (ILA) first strike since 1977. ILA dockworkers are a lynchpin of the US economy. Ports affected by the strike include the Port of New York and New Jersey, the nation’s third largest port in terms of the volume of cargo. “When my men hit the streets from Maine to Texas, every single port will lockdown,” said ILA President Harold Daggett. “Everything in the United States comes on a ship.”

Self-Charging E-Bikes Bring Mobility To Low-Income Communities

Buying an e-bike is expensive. Starting last year, a local startup is providing low-cost, self-charging e-bike libraries to low-income communities in eastern Massachusetts. Funded by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center as part of a three-year pilot, the Cambridge-based company Metro Mobility provides income-qualified residents with an e-bike for as low as $1 per day. Working directly with cities, housing authorities and non-profit housing providers, the company installs e-bike docks for residents who live in subsidized housing and low-income communities. There are currently 85 docks in 10 communities across Boston, its Dorchester and Mattapan neighborhoods, and the nearby cities of Medford, Malden, Quincy and Lawrence.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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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.

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