On July 8, some 80 people told the Vermont Public Service Board at a Brattleboro public hearing to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant immediately and permanently. Only a few people spoke in favor of the reactor and they work for Entergy Corporation of Louisiana, the owner of Vermont Yankee.
"Now is our chance to close Vermont Yankee," said Sandra Levine of the Conservation Law Foundation www.clf.org
More than a third of some 11,000 eligible voters showed up to vote in Greenfield on June 8. They overwhelmingly vetoed the Greenfield mayor’s and city council’s support of plans by an incinerator corporation to build in Greenfield. The company is Madera Energy Corporation (MEC).
Janet Sinclair was a leader of the campaign against the incinerator. “This is a great victory,” she said.
An MEC spokesman said his company would seek to build an incinerator in Greenfield despite the will of the people.
On May 22, volunteers from the Greenfield-based group Co-op Power installed a solar water heater near Brattleboro. Farmer Elizabeth Wood showed one of the volunteers her dairy goats. To enlarge a photo, click on it, then scroll down and click "See full-size image." More information is at www.CoopPower.coop photos by Eesha Williams
On May 6, union iron workers built an addition at Greenfield Community College and the owners of the Greenfield Music Store sold and installed home and car stereos, while also gathering signatures on a petition seeking to slow down city approval of a new Wal-Mart. The iron workers said they are proud members of the www.IronWorkers.org union which has given them a middle class standard of living.
Gael Wakefield is a public transit bus driver in Greenfield. In 2008, she was elected president of Local 274 of the UE union. She still serves as president, while also working as a bus driver. The UE’s web site is www.UEunion.org
On May 5, Wakefield sat down with Eesha Williams of MassLaborNews.com to talk about her union.
On March 31 at noon, union activists around the Valley will hold rallies asking people to boycott Bank of America. They say the bank has done little to reduce the state’s unemployment rate despite receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money last year. The bank paid its CEO in 2008 some $9.9 million.
According to Jon Weissman, spokesman for Jobs with Justice www.jwj.org the activists will be at Bank of America branches in: Springfield at the corner of Main Street and Boland Way; Northampton at 144 Main Street; Amherst at 1 South Pleasant Street; and Greenfield at 208 Federal Street.
A group of Greenfield residents who are fighting a proposed “big box” store which they say would be a Wal-Mart, released the following statement on March 4. Contact information for the residents follows the statement. Valley Post articles about the proposed store are at:
www.valleypost.org/2009/04/22/pro-big-box-greenfield-mayor-voted-out
www.valleypost.org/2008/10/02/big-box-battle
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Every year on tax day, April 15, activists around the Valley hand out fliers at post offices showing people how much of their taxes go to war. To join the local actions, contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee www.nwtrcc.org and/or the War Resisters' League www.WarResisters.org
Out of a federal budget of about $2,900,000,000,000 about half goes to war. Details are at:
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant may be ordered to close immediately by state regulators, according to a statement released on February 25 by the Vermont Public Service Board, whose members are appointed by the governor. Vermont Yankee is three miles from Massachusetts and a stone's throw from New Hampshire.
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is leaking cancer-causing tritium, a form of nuclear waste, into the Connecticut River, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Health said on February 9. The river, a popular swimming and fishing area in summer, flows south from Vermont through Greenfield, Northampton, Holyoke, and Springfield. Vermont Yankee is three miles from Massachusetts and a stone's throw from New Hampshire.