community action

Boston's City Councilor Charles Yancy just keeps on going -- working with parents fighting for the kids in his district (and mine) to have an Opportunity to Learn: Quality Education, Safe Buildings. 

From the Dorchester Reporter:

City Councilor Charles Yancey has a new tactic in his long-running battle to get a high school built in Mattapan: Blasting the city's plan - which he voted for - to spend $115 million moving BPS headquarters from Court Street downtown to the old Ferdinand building in Dudley Square, when nearly 4,000 high-school students attend classes in "substandard" buildings originally built for elementary students or as warehouses.

At a hearing tonight, Yancey asked for the city to borrow $110 million to build a high school on a college-like 15-acre campus on the grounds of the former Boston State Hospital. Students and their parents have waited long enough for a modern high school like the ones that have sprung up in surrounding suburbs, he said.

Ah....the pristine waters of Cape Cod -- in your dreams 

This article in the Globe describes a "really gross". situation that affects not only the quality of life for Cape Cod residents, but threatens their public health.  Never mind the tourist industry.

“There can be so much algae in the water that they look like huge lily pads, like you can walk across them on the water,’’ said Scott Zeien, owner of Kingman Yacht Center, who has been swimming and sailing off this Bourne village since he was a child. “It’s really gross. It looks like a bad day on the Mississippi River - not a place anyone would want to swim.’’

The problem, a growing body of evidence suggests, stems from the dramatic rise in development on the Cape and the lack of sufficient waste-disposal systems.

The remnants of sewage from septic tanks of the more than 200,000 full-time Cape residents is seeping into the ground water and polluting estuaries, bays, and other bodies of water from Bourne to Orleans. Tides flush out the pollution on the northern side of Cape Cod.

At last -- local community activists' good work doing public education that made the decision process open and transparent was successful.  Here is the article from the Globe in part. 

After more than 12 years of planning, Concord and Carlisle may have a new high school in 2015.

Residents in the two towns voted yesterday to support a tax increase to pay for a new $92.5 million Concord-Carlisle Regional High School.

In both towns, 84 percent of the voters supported the Proposition 2 1/2 debt exclusion, while 16 percent were opposed. In Concord, the vote was 3,571 to 659 in favor, while Carlisle voted 965 to 184.

“On behalf of all the building committee and School Committee members over the past 12 years, I would like to thank the citizens of Concord and Carlisle for their overwhelming support of education,’’ said Jerry Wedge, a member of the Concord-Carlisle Regional School Committee and the high school building committee.

From the Chelsea Collaborative  WHEN WE ORGANIZE WE WIN!- 

You may not have even heard yet about the proposed relocation of Chelsea's Ward 1, Precinct 2 to a new district with East Boston. 

In a true testament to the strength of community organizing, the Chelsea Collaborative's Chelsea Voter Initiative (CVI)  responded by mobilizing the Latino and larger community to this late addition to the redistricting plan which would have been a huge blow to the voice and the voting power of the Latino community in Chelsea. 

After 2 days of the release of the report, a delegation of 15 Latino community leaders were meeting with Representative Michael Moran, the head of the Redistricting Committee, to express their serious concerns about the potential relocation.  We brought this to the city's streets, the churches, the Spanish and English language media and to local and state government.  Within 3 days we collected over 800 signatures on a petition and over 150 individual letters from voters of that neighborhood.  We organized 100s of phone calls and dozens of emails to the Redistricting Committee.  At the CVI City Councillors Candidates' Forum, the candidates were asked their position on the proposed redistricting plan.  Out of this came a unanimous Chelsea City Council resolution against the relocation.  The Collaborative called   on Representative O'Flaherty to meet with concerned voters and political leaders to urge that he advocate to keep the district in Chelsea. Representative Eugene O'Flaherty wrote a letter opposing the late redistricting proposal which complemented the groundswell of community opposition.  We are grateful for the support of former City Councillors Roy Avellaneda and Juan R. Vega and our partners ¿Oiste? and NUBE.

A Mansfield Selectman didn't get his initiative petition approved by the AG, Martha Coakley.  He wanted everyone to show ID before they could vote.  We already have procedures in place to detect voter fraud...why the need to impose hardships on those who may not be able to afford the costs for acceptable ID before they're able to vote?  Especially when voter fraud has not been proven an issue in MA...

“This petition simply does not meet the required legal standards,” said AG spokesman Brad Puffer. “Forcing voters to incur an expense in order to cast a vote infringes on the freedom of elections. We have applied the same standard to all petitions."  [Full Article: Boston Herald]

Judy Meredith and Lew Finfer are pooling their collective organizing, advocacy, and leadership experiences to form the Massachusetts Policy and Organizing Leadership Training Academy.  There's a wealth of knowledge to pass on to the next group of organizers and advocates and the current group of aspiring leaders.

State Representative Linda Dorcena Forry said the pair’s new focus on educating future activists comes at a critical time as non-profits struggle through a sluggish economy and new ethics reforms which she said has left many organizations scrambling to adjust...“I think it’s great what they’re doing,” Forry said. “There are a lot of non-profits that feel they don’t have the skills to address legislators. They find themselves paying out for a lobbyist when they could be doing much of the work themselves.”  [Full Article: Dorchester Reporter]

Some people want to use the get out the vote grassroots-organizing expertise of the activist group Neighbor to Neighbor as an excuse to suppress voter participation by claiming voter fraud and then trying to push through legislation making voting less accessible.

... Neighbor to Neighbor, built on a foundation of strong, persistent and successful political grass-roots organizing, primarily in low-income and under-represented communities, has become a major player in political races...The group's power has grown exponentially as the overall participation in the voting process has declined over the years... makes friends of politicians it endorses and enemies of those it does not.  [Full Article: Worcester Telegram & Gazette]

There's a struggle in our country about immigration.  Without a comprehensive, thoughtful national immigration policy, individual states are drafting their own legislation...some more egregious than others.  Alabama legislature and the Governor have the dubious distinction of being the leader in passing and signing the cruelest immigration law in our country.  Most importantly though, people in Alabama are protesting this horrible legislation and have sued to block it.

Just how bad is this legislation.  Not only it is a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Alabama, but Americans are not spared.  Anyone knowingly “concealing, harboring or shielding” an illegal immigrant could be charged with a crime, say for renting someone an apartment or driving her to church or the doctor.   [Full Editorial:  The New York Times]

At a town meeting [Sunday]..., [Governor] Patrick spoke to about 200 people - mostly residents of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan - about his dismay at the violence plaguing many of Boston’s largely black neighborhoods, and his commitment to finding solutions to the violence. ... The town meeting was sponsored by the Statewide Black Clergy for Unity, a network of black religious leaders. The discussion was broadcast live on the radio and over the Internet.  [Full Article: Boston Globe]