ORGANIZING NOTES
January 27, 2026
|
Where Is The 2025 Massachusetts Democratic Party Platform?
|
You may be surprised to learn that the Platform, as passed by the September Democratic Party Convention, is not published on the Party’s website. The version of the 2025 Platform published on the Party website lacks two of the passed amendments: Empowering Youth and Science and Research. Furthermore, the published version of the Platform lacks coherent formatting. For instance, the Table of Contents on page 1 is presented as a paragraph rather than an organized list Additionally, the Party Platform website misleadingly says, ”At the Platform Convention in Springfield, on September 13th, a group of delegates, committed to the 2021 platform, offered a number of amendments and voted to retain much of the 2021 platform.” This framing suggests that a small group of delegates managed to approve the 2021 platform, whereas the convention voted overwhelmingly to support the 2021 platform. If you wish, watch the official video of the convention. (The Platform is introduced at 3:43.) The needed website changes have been brought to the attention of Chair Steve Kerrigan on numerous occasions. Each time, he promised to correct the problems, but no corrections have been made. What has emerged is a rumor concerning the origin of the draft 2025 Platform. The idea is that Governor Healey would like to run for national office. Her campaign considered the 2021 Platform had too explicit in its support for single payer, abortion, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and economic benefits for people living from payroll check to payroll check. Therefore, they wrote and brought to the Platform Committee the tepid 2025 version and insisted on its adoption. This draft was rejected at the Convention.
Regardless of the story behind the 2025 draft, all Democrats and Democratic Ward and Town Committees should write to Chairman (contact@massdems.org) and demand that the Party’s website present the endorsed, real 2025 Platform.
|
Why Are Massachusetts Energy Bills So High?
|
Massachusetts has some of the highest energy costs in the nation, driven by volatile gas supply costs and utilities overbuilding infrastructure. Both the electric and gas systems have profit incentives to invest in expensive capital projects rather than building smarter and repairing prudently. 1. The “Gas Trap”: We rely too heavily on natural gas to generate electricity and for heating buildings. - Volatile Prices: As gas prices spike globally, electric and gas bills rise.
- False Promise: Adding more gas capacity does not lower costs. We’ve increased interstate gas transmission capacity by 30% since 2010, prices have not come down and the cost was passed on to customers.
2. The Billion-Dollar Pipe Problem: Utilities are spending billions replacing old and leak-prone gas pipes with brand-new ones instead of doing cheaper, targeted repairs. - Skyrocketing Costs: Gas System Enhancement Program (GSEP) spending has tripled since 2015, hitting $901 million in 2025 alone.
- The Tab: Experts estimate this program will cost every customer more than $31,000 over its lifetime.
3. Outdated Profit Models: Right now, state law allows private utility companies to make more profit when they build “stuff” (pipes, poles, wires). - Bad Incentives: Utilities are incentivized to choose the most expensive. construction projects because that’s how they make money for shareholders.
- The Proof: Private utility rates have increased 49% more than inflation, while local, publicly-owned utilities (which don’t have these profit motives) saw rates stay below inflation.
4. We need a Cleaner, Cheaper Grid: We don’t always need to build expensive new power lines or peaker plants. Less reliance on fossil fuels means more energy independence. We can upgrade the grid and lower costs by using: - Virtual Power Plants: Using distributed energy resources during peak times.
- Enhancement: Upgrading wires and software to increase capacity and efficiency.
- Renewables: Prices increase slower in states with more renewable energy.
The Takeaway: To lower bills, we must stop the “blank check” for energy infrastructure, reform how utilities make a profit, and build a smarter grid. Real Solutions for Energy Affordability Energy Affordability Policy Priorities for MA House Energy Package *Legislation and fact sheets about the Mass Power Forward policies below can be found here: tinyurl.com/MPFHousePriorities
1. Stop Overspending on Gas InfrastructureWe must shift away from billion-dollar construction projects to stop the hikes in monthly delivery fees. - Stop new intrastate gas pipeline expansion within 5 miles of Environmental Justice Communities and make a just transition for gas workers.
- Stop utility companies from lobbying and advertising with ratepayer funds.
- Cut GSEP spending on costly pipe replacement and move toward phasing out the program entirely.
- Don’t make all gas ratepayers pay for new customers’ gas line extensions.
2. Strengthen Mass Save to Reduce Energy UseMass Save is a great deal—returning over $3 in benefits for every $1 spent. Everyone saves when energy use goes down because the utilities need less new infrastructure. There are ways we can strengthen the program to serve renters and middle-income families to help lower their energy bills. - Maintain the new Environmental Justice and affordability commitments in the Mass Save 2025-2027 plan,like the low/middle income and tenant protections.
- Make a Zero Carbon Assessment the default audit, incorporating solar/ storage/ load management recommendations.
- Create a new incentive package for tenants so they can own portable solar, window heat pumps, and access community solar.
3. Lower Rates with Renewables Relying on out-of-state fossil fuels makes our utility bills unpredictable; for example, natural gas prices recently jumped 83%. The solution is to build more solar and wind power. These sources don’t have “fuel costs,” which stabilizes the market and permanently drives down the wholesale prices that make up the bulk of electricity bills. - Keep our climate commitments.
- Eliminate municipal caps on solar development and simplify permitting to allow municipalities to build and provide low cost solar to residents.
- Site clean energy facilities responsibly, protecting wild lands.
- End toxic biomass, stop subsidizing biomass for Municipal Light Plants.
- Keep our 1982 democratic protections from new nuclear power.
- Accelerate connection of distributed energy resources to bring more lower cost clean energy on-line.
- Stop 3rd Party Suppliers from ripping off vulnerable communities.
- Protect residents from the environmental and financial impacts of data centers, particularly rate and tax increases from utility infrastructure build out.
Pieces of the Costly House Energy Bill H.4744 that would not improve affordability and need to be removed: - Don’t Weaken Mass Save by:
- Making 2030 Mass Save greenhouse gas target merely advisory;
- Cutting another $330 million from the 2025-2027 Mass Save plan budget;
- Limiting future three-year Mass Save plans with an arbitrary budget cap
- Adding natural gas heating rebates back into the program;
- Removing demand management, beneficial electrification, and decarbonization from the program;
- Don’t Include these Give-Aways to the Utilities:
- Eliminating the newly created moderate-income discount electricity rate
- Lowering the yearly increase in the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) from 3% to 1%
- Targeting greenhouse gas reductions, clean energy, workforce development, and electrification in a customer bill-impact analysis assessment
- Reviving the banned pipeline tax
|
Support Resistance in Portland: - Write cards to immigrants or donate books, coloring books & crayons, puzzles or other small craft/toys to let these families know we care. The cards will be translated as needed.
- Donate
|
Demand Congress Stop Funding The Inhumane and Lethal Tactics of the DHS and ICE!
|
This week, Congress is voting on a sweeping appropriations bill that would pour billions more into Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lawmakers must hear from constituents now: do not increase ICE funding. ICE is already one of the most heavily funded law enforcement agencies in the country. Instead of accountability, Congress is being asked to expand an agency with a documented record of abuse, racial profiling, and lack of oversight. More money will only accelerate harm. This is not only an immigration issue. ICE has repeatedly detained, arrested, and intimidated U.S. citizens. Investigations by ProPublica and reporting from the Guardian and CBS News document citizens being stopped, handcuffed, and even taken from their homes at gunpoint despite clearly asserting their citizenship. In Minnesota and elsewhere, ICE actions have swept up people who were never subject to immigration enforcement at all.
Funding an agency that targets citizens, operates without warrants, and traumatizes families is unacceptable. Members of Congress from both chambers have raised alarms about unchecked ICE funding, yet this bill moves forward anyway under the pressure of a shutdown deadline. Congress must reject any increase to ICE’s budget and demand real limits, oversight, and accountability. Constituents are watching this vote closely. Send a letter today to demand that Congress oppose increased ICE funding. Send A Letter Today erms of Service
|
Call on Governor Healey to take immediate action: Post on social media using this template, which you can tweak as you please as long as it includes the hashtags at the end. Call your state reps (find them here) asking them to move our immigration bills through committee where they’re stalled: Ask them to support the Protecting Massachusetts Communities Coalition’s three priority protections: (1) Don’t collaborate with ICE, (2) Don’t let police be ICE agents, and (3) Fund legal aid; and to support these specific bills: Safe Communities (H2580, S1681), Dignity Not Deportations (H 1588, S1122) , and Immigrant Legal Defense Act (H1954, S1127)
|
Verizon is profiting from immigration detention and deportation through a 10-year, $176 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE. Through that contract, Verizon fuels raids, detention centers, and deportations at a moment when immigration enforcement is turning openly lethal. In Minneapolis, federal immigration agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti in broad daylight. Just weeks earlier, ICE agents killed Renee Nicole Good in her car during another operation. In both cases, officials rushed to brand the victims as threats, claims that quickly fell apart once video and witness accounts surfaced. Reports say agents failed to provide immediate medical aid and even blocked others from helping. Across the country, immigration enforcement keeps ending in death, followed by rushed justifications, exposed falsehoods, and a total absence of accountability. This is the system Verizon is choosing to support. Communications infrastructure is not neutral. It is essential. By maintaining this contract, Verizon is enabling raids, detention, and deportation while people are being killed on the streets and dying behind barbed wire. This is corporate complicity, plain and simple. Tell Verizon to end its contracts with ICE and stop profiting from violence and abuse.
|
Local Visibilities Schedule
Watch for weather and wind chill cancellations here! But another good way to keep up with day to day and weekly changes is to join a Signal Group
|
Folks can sign up for De-ICE Hanscom’s contact list at this link.
|
A herd of 6 American bison—3 males and 3 females—have been released onto native Illinois prairie. There, to the sound of drumming, songs, and cheers, they began to acclimate to their new surroundings—surroundings that had missed them for 200 years. A large crowd of Santee Sioux, herded together in their woven blankets and synthetic down jackets, had arrived at sunrise on Burlington Prairie Forest Preserve in Kane County, 60 miles northwest of Chicago, to witness something of a homecoming. The American Indian Center, the oldest urban Native American cultural establishment in the United States, will look after the animals in partnership with Kane County Forests Persevere staff, and a designated herd manager. The reduction in bison from 35 million to several thousand had a profound effect on the North American prairie even without the conversion of so much of it to farmland. Bison engineer grassland ecosystems with much the same impact as beavers on a stream.
|
If you would like to work with ORMA Members on
- Climate Change
- Housing Justice
- Medicare for All
- Communications/InformationTechnology
|
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.
If you value Organizing Notes and its twice a month distribution schedule, please make a donation to ensure its continued existence.
Invest in Change Now!
|
Please send requests for action items, articles or upcoming events
for the next Organizing Notes to
beccobrien.orma@gmail.com by Saturday, February 7th.
We’d love to have you send us your favorite pictures of Bernie here in MA!
|
Campaigns End, Movements Endure
|
|
