On July 30, the workers at the food co-ops in Northampton and the neighboring town of Easthampton announced they had a victory when they signed a new union contract with management. A total of about 240 people work at the two co-ops. “Every worker has received a $2 per hour pay bump, raising the starting wage from $18 an hour to $20 an hour,” a spokesperson for the workers said. There are other victories in the contract. Photos of picket lines that helped win the contract are at:

https://imgur.com/a/river-valley-co-op-informational-pickets-J4iqoOj

When N.L. Dennis was singing in a recording studio with Toots and the Maytals, Bob Marley stopped by to listen. Marley praised Dennis's delivery. Today, Dennis lives in his native Jamaica and joins hundreds of Jamaicans who come to Vermont every summer in search of better paying work. Most of them work on vegetable farms and at apple orchards. Dennis works as a reggae musician.

On July 19 at 11 a.m. Dennis and the Thunderballs will play the Brattleboro farmers' market.

In Amherst, Brattleboro, Greenfield, and Northampton on July 17, there will be protests against Trump. The Brattleboro protest is a march starting at 5:30 p.m. outside 100 Flat Street. The web pages for the other events don't say whether they are marches and/or rallies. The start times and addresses for all the protests are at:

https://GoodTroubleLivesOn.org.

There will be a rally to protest Trump on July 17 at 4 p.m. at the gazebo in Park Square in the Pioneer Valley town of Westfield, which borders Holyoke. One of the groups that's promoting the event is the Women's March. In 2017, the group organized what, at the time, was the biggest one-day protest in US history. About 1 million people marched in Washington, DC and another 2 million marched in cities like LA and New York and in small towns like Brattleboro, and towns and cities throughout the Pioneer Valley. Details about the 2025 Westfield rally are at: https://GoodTroubleLivesOn.org.