Lucinda Williams will play in Northampton on March 9 at 7 p.m. The venue is the Academy of Music. Tickets cost $71 to $82 including fees. A video of her performing one of her songs with a band is at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRtMZDJdIIU&ab_channel=LiveFromAustinTX
About 150 people marched in Brattleboro on February 17, despite extreme cold and deep snow along some of the route. They were protesting Trump's policies. Emilie Kornheiser of Brattleboro chairs the Vermont House Ways and Means committee. She wants to tax the rich and help the poor. She was at the march and helped promote it.
In Northampton and the Pioneer Valley town of Westfield, workers at Starbucks are forming a union. Since June 2024, Ari Vaccaro has worked at the Northampton Starbucks that's not inside Stop and Shop. “We get $15.49 an hour,” Vaccaro told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview on February 10. “We can't live in our town on that. The CEO of Starbucks makes $50,000 an hour.”
In Springfield a total of about 120 people attended protests on February 4 and 5. The goal was to get Democrats in congress to try to stop many or all of Trump's plans. “It was a success,” Wendy Penner told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview on February 6. She was one of the organizers of the second protest and she is part of the group Greylock Together. “There were about 60 people there even though it was really cold. Staff people from both our U.S. senators' offices were there. We told them we want the senators to disrupt what Trump is trying to do.
Baystate Medical Corporation is refusing to sign a union contract for visiting nurses in Springfield. The nurses are members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association union. The nurses care for immigrants and low income people in Springfield's North End and Forest Park neighborhoods.
Matt Haimovitz will play a concert in Amherst on Sunday, February 2 at 4 p.m. Tickets cost $15 in advance, $20 day of, and $5 for students. The venue is the Drake. His cello was made in 1710. You can see one of his concerts at:
About 200 people marched in Brattleboro. The event was organized by local resident Vera Riley, and by the Women's March, a national group.
“It was wonderful,” Riley told the Valley Post. “Mollie Burke, Isaac Evans-Frantz, and others spoke of alternative media; nuclear delusion; military budget in the trillions; Palestine; gun control; Black Lives Matter; bi, gay, trans, etc; and more. George Carville sent us off with a story from 1982 about the Ku Klux Klan's unsuccessful event at the gazebo where people sang 'We Shall Overcome.' Then George led us in singing to close.”
On November 21, 2024 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Prime Minister of Israel. In Brattleboro on January 4 at noon there will be a rally to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The rally will be outside the main post office. A group that's promoting the rally has a web page at:
https://grassrootsfund.org/groups/upper-valley-action-affinity-group
A rally for the same cause will happen in Northampton on January 10 at 3:30 p.m. Details are available via:
www.instagram.com/jvpWesternMass
The ICC arrest warrant is at:
Flix, a German company, runs buses between the Springfield Amtrak station and downtown Boston that take 1 hour and 35 minutes. Tickets are $17. There are multiple Amtrak trains per day to Springfield from Holyoke, Northampton, Greenfield and Brattleboro.
Shutesbury, Massachusetts borders Amherst. On December 14, Kestrel land trust posted on its Facebook page, “We're grateful that we've been awarded a $327K grant from the MA Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ Acquisitions for Forest Reserves to protect 200 acres in Shutesbury next year.” The forest is on Montague Road. The plan is to never log the land.