On September 2, about 25 people from the Pioneer Valley and other parts of western Massachusetts traveled to the picket line of the nurses' strike in Worcester, Massachusetts. “It was great,” Rose Bookbinder told the Valley Post. She organized the trip and she works for the union that represents the striking nurses. The union's web site is www.MassNurses.org.

At 1:30 p.m. in Springfield on May 29 there will be a rally to protest racist police officers who kill black people. The rally will be outside 130 Pearl Street. It's being organized by Jobs With Justice and other groups. As of 9 a.m. on May 29, about 150 people had RSVP'd on Facebook. More information is at:

www.facebook.com/events/662147417698084

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There will be a car rally in Greenfield on April 24 at 2:15 p.m. The main goal is to get politicians to listen to workers who are calling for face masks and other safety gear. The car rally will be a caravan that will stop outside the hospital, a supermarket, and a factory. It starts at 101 Sanderson Street. Organizers are asking people to bring signs saying things like, “Masks for staff and customers.” More information is at:

www.facebook.com/events/229666348455907

Sixty-three workers are on strike in Greenfield. They are asking the public to join them on the picket line outside 34 Sanderson Street, 24 hours a day from now until August 14 at 11 p.m. There will be a mass rally at that location at 2 p.m. on August 12.

The below photo was taken on August 12. To enlarge the photo, click on it, then scroll down and click "see full size image." photo by Eesha Williams

On July 12 there will be rallies to protest Trump's treatment of immigrants. The rallies will be outside the Greenfield, Massachusetts immigrant jail, and in downtown Putney, Vermont. Putney is about 10 minutes from Brattleboro by bus. The Greenfield rally starts at 5:30 p.m. outside 160 Elm Street. The Putney rally, which includes a candlelight vigil, starts at 8:30 p.m. at the corner of Main Street and Kimball Hill Road.

In the past 17 years, Brattleboro police shot and killed two men in the town. During that time in Brattleboro, five other people were killed by people who were not police. So 29 percent of these people were killed by police.

In 2015, the most recent year for which data was available, in the USA there were 15,696 or so murders. That year, police killed 1,186 people in the USA. So 8 percent of these people were killed by police.

On May 20, public school teachers held a rally calling for the majority of the members of the local school board to resign. The rally was in Northfield, Massachusetts. The Connecticut river flows through Northfield. The town is on the Vermont border. “We like one of the committee members, the other dozen or so should resign,” Ariel LaReau told the Valley Post in a telephone interview on the day of the rally. She is a teacher and president of the teachers union.

About 200 nurses are planning to go on strike at the Greenfield hospital April 11, more than 3,000 people marched in the Valley for gun control, and 71 acres of farmland were permanently protected from development.

In a win for workers' rights, 43 workers at Trinity Health Corporation in the Massachusetts towns of West Springfield and Westfield formed a union. West Springfield borders Springfield; Westfield borders West Springfield. “Mandatory overtime, wages, and security were the big issues,” Chris Mangano told the Valley Post in a telephone interview on March 19. She has been a nurse at Trinity in the Springfield area for 22 years. “In terms of security, we want a security person to accompany us when we go to patients’ homes. Our patients are all ages.

In Keene, activists marched to stop a proposed fracked gas pipeline. They won last year when the pipeline was canceled. Now the activists are fighting a plan by the corporation that holds the city monopoly for gas used for heating buildings to switch from propane to fracked gas. Both are fossil fuels that cause climate change. “But fracked gas is full of chemicals that are even worse for people's health,” Terry Clark told the Valley Post in a telephone interview on November 25, 2017. He is a member of the Keene city council.