ORGANIZING NOTES
September 17, 2024
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Support the Extinction Rebellion Week of Rebellion
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For over a year, XR Boston has held a Stand-Out in front of the State House, urging our government to make the right move for our future, and commit to No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in Massachusetts. Despite this, our leaders have failed to listen to us. Despite bringing a climate bill to the floor, our leaders failed to do their job. So, it’s time to get loud.
After this devastating failure, we need to let our government know that the crisis we face can’t be “kicked down the road” for another two years. It is a crisis that demands bold action. It demand’s No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.
Join XR to celebrate their determination to win the bold action we need. From Sunday September 22 through Saturday September 28 the XR Week of Rebellion is the place to be.
The “main” Week of Rebellion event is the Rally, Die-In, and Dance party on Thursday September 26. Be sure to check this webpage between now and then, because events might be added. Take a look and sign up and we will see you soon!
ORMA’s Climate Crisis Working Group is committed to supporting the important work of XR and we encourage people to participate in as many of these activities as possible. RSVP here, and we look forward to seeing you at the Rally and Die-In on Thursday September 26th.
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5 Ballot Questions in Less Than 300 Words
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Question 1 Authorize the state auditor to audit the state legislature, and remove some existing regulations regarding the auditing process
ORMA endorsed the legislative audit. It is very popular and likely to pass. Speaker of the House Dan Mariano and his leadership team are unlikely to oppose it publicly. Instead, they will act to create legislation that will block any audit. They will use the strategy that gutted the Fair Share Amendment
GET INVOLVED https://www.malegreform.org/auditing-the-legislature/
Question 2 Repeal the requirement that students must achieve a certain competency level on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exam to graduate high school
ORMA supports this initiative that was introduced by the Mass Teachers Association. This measure would not stop MCAS testing, it would end the requirement that students must pass it to graduate. As the economic status of students correlates with scores, the MCAS doesn’t help evaluate student, school, or teacher performance.
GET INVOLVED https://massteacher.org/current-initiatives/high-stakes-testing
Question 3 Provide for unionizing and collective bargaining for transportation network drivers
Another ORMA endorsed initiative. This allows workers at Lyft, Uber, Amazon, and many other contingent workers to join a union. This is a big deal. Industry will spend big bucks to defeat it, as they did in California.
https://www.massclu.org/gig-employee-solidarity-ma/
Question 4 Allow persons 21 years of age or older to grow, possess, and use natural psychedelic substances, as well as establish a commission to regulate the licensing of psychedelic substances and services
ORMA has not taken a position on this issue.
Question 5 Increase the minimum wage for tipped employees to meet the state’s standard minimum wage
The fourth of our endorsed initiatives. Passing this is critical for service staff to obtain a living wage.
GET INVOLVED https://www.onefairwage.org/
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Mass. Legislators Can’t Pass Legislation They Agree On!
Fails to Take Action on Private Jet Expansion – What’s Next?
Lost in all the attention paid to the recent failure of the Massachusetts legislature to agree on climate legislation was its failure to pass legislation that they DID agree on! While both the House and Senate agreed on versions of legislation that would have required MassPort to consider climate impacts when deciding on any project (including the proposed expansion of Hanscom Field,) they failed to put a bill on the Governor’s desk.
Private jet traffic emits more carbon per traveler than any form of transportation, and MassPort is currently considering a massive expansion of private jet capacity at Hanscom field. So massive that if approved it will negate a decade’s worth of progress in reducing climate change causing carbon emissions.
What’s next for the campaign to prevent expansion of Hanscom? To find out, join our allies at Stop Private Jet Expansion for a webinar this Thursday, September 19th @ 7pm, for a report on of what has been accomplished and what the next steps are. You might hear some surprises! Register here.
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Would a Community Land Trust Work In My Town?
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This is part one of a highly edited discussion that Organizing Notes organized in July 2024.
Garret: I live in Concord, a town 16,000 24 miles northwest of Boston. More than 40% of renters here are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income for housing. About 25% of homeowners spend more than 30% of their income on housing. So, like many towns in the state – even ones we might think of as prosperous – we need more affordable housing.
Years ago some friends started a Community Land Trust (CLT) near Seattle. Since then I’ve been curious about them as a way to address our housing problems.
Garret: So, Martin, you’ve been helping people to create CLTs in western Mass. What is a CLT? And how does it differ from other forms of home ownership?
Martin: Typically, a CLT is a non-profit organization that buys or acquires donated land in a small geographic region to build or renovate houses to be sold (sometimes rented for a long term) at low prices. This is possible because the cost of the land is excluded from the sale. The land is not sold with the house but instead, it is put into a 99-year lease (known as a ground lease) for a nominal monthly fee that funds the CLT’s operations. This is a mechanism to increase the number of affordable homes in the area. Projects can be as small as one unit, for instance, a home left by will to a CLT, or projects of a hundred or more units. (A graphic showing how CLTs work can be found here.)
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Single-family home in Forest Row neighborhood, Berkshire Community Land Trust in the Southern Berkshires.
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Martin: Because the CLT is a non-profit it can obtain services and infrastructure at a lower cost than a for-profit company. This contributes to the affordability of CLT housing, along with homeowners not paying for the land, and financial donations & government subsidies that can be forever recycled into the home for the next generation. Because a CLT lasts in perpetuity, governments make much more efficient use of taxpayer money through this subsidy recycling mechanism Instead of subsidies only affecting one household for 15-30 years, the lower price – via a deed-restricted sale – is maintained by the CLT to dampen and slow the effect of rising speculative market priced homes. This builds wealth savings for everyone in the community (since buying a home is cheaper) and allows people in all work sectors to live closer to their jobs.
Garret: Do the leaseholders have the right to sell at a profit?
Link to rest of article here.
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The People Frighten the Legislative Leadership
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Tuesday’s primaries scared the conservative, autocratic leadership of the Massachusetts House. In Somerville Erika Uyterhoeven, an outspoken supporter of democracy and transparency was elected to a third term. She beat her challenger, the former aide of Cambridge’s anti-transparency Representative, Marjorie Decker. But, the biggest challenge to autocracy was in Decker’s bid for re-election. She had the advantage of 12 terms as a Rep, is a native of Cambridge with deep roots in the city, and had a huge treasury. What she, and many supporters had seen as her greatest strength, her close ties with House Speaker Dan Mariano and Governor Maura Healey, turned out to be her biggest weakness. Evan MacKay, her challenger, focused his campaign on her strong support for the lack of democracy in the State House. MacKay brought voters’ attention to the ability of the Speaker to tightly control the legislative process because he determines the salaries, the committee assignments, and the parking spaces of each member of the House while refusing to allow most votes on legislation to be made public.
Conversations with voters on their doorsteps, letters to the editor, and discussions at the public debate sponsored by the Cambridge Democratic Party made the public’s enthusiasm for accountability, transparency, and democracy evident. Even the little information available about the vote seems to support this view. MacKay led Decker after the 4000 machine-read ballots cast on election day were counted. In contrast, Decker won most of the approximately 260 ballots submitted early. The timing of these two votes is important because most of the information about Decker’s record on transparency only got wide publicity in the last weeks of the campaign after many of the early votes were cast.
Another important lesson from the MacKay campaign is the demonstration of the enormous power of dedicated supporters. His campaign attracted people from his UAW trade union, and progressive organizations like DSA, OR, and Cambridge’s Residents Alliance. Whether the core of the MacKay support organization will remain active and continue in the struggle for democracy is to be determined. A bigger question is whether the movement for legislative democracy can be successful across the state.
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Transparency on the Ballot
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In addition to Evan MacKay, several other candidates emphasized the need for transparency and democracy in the legislature. Act on Mass co-founder Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven defeated Marjorie Decker’s former aide by a two-to-one margin: 69% of the vote to her opponent’s 31%. Tara Hong won his primary in Lowell against incumbent Rady Mom. Tara focused on his commitment to accountability in state government and to his community. Tara volunteered with the Act on Mass’ Transparency is Power campaign in 2020. Heather May lost to long-time incumbent Thomas Stanley in the 9th Middlesex district.
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Cultural Notes: Who knew?
A Novel Reveals A Shocking Part of Massachusetts History
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Well into the late 20th Century, there were Sundown cities and Towns in Massachusetts. Sundown cities forbid people of color from being in the city after dark. Most of the Massachusetts Sundown Cities were created around World War One, at the height of the Jim Crow Era. It appears that sundown policies were adopted to drive workers of color out of mills in small cities.
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The Millers Falls Factory in 1912. This town is near Greenfield in northwest Massachusetts
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Life in a former Sundown City is the theme of Swift River a new novel by Essie Chambers. The story, set in a fictional city, draws from Chambers’ experiences and those of her family in Greenfield.
The last documented Sundown City in the Commonwealth was Ashby, which adopted a sundown policy in 1973. It has since explicitly rejected that practice. The 2005 book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen provides a detailed history of this practice. The HBO drama series Lovecraft Country explored this history as well
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Grassroots4GVP (Gun Violence Prevention) is a group of volunteers committed to ending gun violence in Massachusetts and across the US. In February of 2024 a majority of long-time Massachuestts volunteer leaders with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America; the advocacy arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, felt that while we had learned and accomplished a lot as a part of that organization, we wanted to take a more grassroots approach to prevent gun violence, and respond quickly to our volunteers’ and partners’ interests and concerns. We are acutely aware of the complexities and importance of working alongside other gun violence prevention organizations and work closely with other groups so that we are supportive, not duplicative. Our new group has more flexibility and less bureaucracy that allows us to do more. Grassroots4VP is fiscally sponsored by Newtown Action Alliance and can accept both 501 (c) 3 and 4 donations and is a proud member of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence. The four pillars of our work are legislation, elections, strategic partners and public education. Please join us and help make all Americans free from gun violence
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Good Climate News You Haven’t Heard
Emerging Wave of Roof-Top Solar Changing Lives in Africa!
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Most of us are aware that the costs of solar panels, and installation of solar arrays on homes, have been significantly reduced over the past couple of years. In part the result of governmental polices across the world, and in part due to the advances in production, this has resulted in a significant increase in solar energy capacity world wide.
But, as Bill McKibben reports “… there’s something else going on behind the scenes—silently. And it’s happening in places where people need it most.
Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world. Without waiting for what are often moribund utilities to do the job, business and home owners are getting on with electrifying their lives, and doing it cleanly.”
This is a huge win for humanity. Most significantly McKibben notes that in countries across Africa, “Distributed Generation” is now making up a large portion of national energy production.
“In Namibia we uncovered they have about 70 megawatts of distributed generation—that’s rooftop solar pv that’s about 11 percent of Namibia’s installed capacity. Eswatini, it’s an old figure, but they’re already at 30 megawatts and it’s a very small country. That’s about 15% of Eswatini’s installed capacity. South Africa is the biggest market, and it has five gigawatts of distributed solar—about 9 percent of South Africa’s installed capacity.”
“You will not see these numbers anywhere,” he said. “They’re not reported in national plans, not anywhere in continental statistics. No one knows about them. It’s only when you speak to the utilities,” and even they know mostly about the larger installations—there are doubtless far more hut-scale systems across Africa.
Read the full McKibben article here for more details and more items of good news. (Britain is closing its last coal-fired power plant at the end of September, and it is expected that the massive increase in electric vehicles in China will soon result in a decline in the national demand for gasoline.)
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If you would like to work with ORMA Members on
- Climate Change
- Community-Based Alternative Emergency Response Teams
- Ranked-Choice Voting
- Housing For All
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ORMA depends on your support to continue Bernie’s Political Revolution to create a society, a politics, and an economy that works for everyone, not just billionaires, corporations and the political elite.
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Please send requests for action items, articles or upcoming events
for the next Organizing Notes to
beccobrien.orma@gmail.com by Thursday, September 26th.
We’d love to have you send us your favorite pictures of Bernie here in MA!
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Campaigns End, Movements Endure
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