On September 3 in Springfield, PVTA bus drivers voted 125 to 68 to approve a new union contract. Thirty-two workers did not vote. The national union posted on its Facebook page a link to an August 30 WWLP report. The local union has a web site at https://atulocal448.com. The vote total is from a later WWLP report.

The workers voted 181 to two on August 22 to give their elected union leaders permission to call a strike. Forty-two drivers did not participate in the August 22 vote. The strike would have started September 1. Issues are wages and bus schedules that are impossible for drivers to keep up with, leading to angry passengers.

In the 1930s, workers went on strike around the USA, forcing politicians to pass the first minimum wage laws. To this day, unions lobby to raise the minimum wage. On average, union workers make $191 more per week than non-union workers. Inequality is bad for democracy. Billionaires buy politicians.

Journalists from the Valley Post, and from a group of local commercial TV stations, got no reply when they left voicemail at the number listed on the local union's web site. The Valley Post also left voicemail and emailed the union's headquarters in Washington, DC to no avail.

Like politicians, some union leaders are more progressive than others. A group that works to promote union democracy has a web site at www.LaborNotes.org.

Leaders of the biggest union in the Valley, UFCW Local 1459, always respond to Valley Post requests to interview them, and their members.

*********

In Brattleboro on September 7 there will be a rally to protest the USA's support for Israel's war on Gaza. The rally starts at noon outside the main post office. A group that's promoting the event has a web page at:

https://grassrootsfund.org/groups/upper-valley-action-affinity-group

*********

Shutesbury, Massachusetts borders Amherst. On August 23, the Greenfield Recorder daily newspaper published an article about three Shutesbury residents who were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience at a climate protest in New York City. One of them is Bert Fernandez. On August 24, the Valley Post wrote to Fernandez via his Facebook page to request an interview. He replied on August 30, and the voice phone interview happened on September 2. Fernandez said about 60 people were arrested at the protest. He said the Recorder's article about the July 27 New York City protest was accurate, except for the part where the Recorder reporter wrote, “Citigroup is the worst funder of fossil fuel expansion since the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change signed in 2016. Citigroup has reportedly provided $204 billion since that time to the companies building the most new pipelines, oil rigs and gas terminals.” The correct number is $396 billion, Fernandez said. The rest of that quote is accurate. The protest was outside the home of the CEO of Citigroup.

The other Shutesbury residents who were arrested are Fernandez's wife Elizabeth Fernandez O’Brien and their friend Carlos Fontes. All three were charged with failure to disperse and blocking pedestrian traffic. The protest was on a sidewalk in Manhattan.

Fontes's daughter was one of the main organizers of the protest.

Bert Fernandez told the Valley Post that Climate Defenders is one of the groups that organized the protest. “In 1970, when I was 20, I moved from Puerto Rico to Kentucky to study medicine. I moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts in 1980 to be a pediatrician. I did that for 40 years. My wife was a physical education teacher in Amherst, and a dance performer. Marlena Fontes (who runs the group Climate Defenders) grew up in Shutesbury and went to Amherst high school. She grew up with our kids. She went to Cornell University and became a union organizer in New York City.”

Bert Fernandez told the Valley Post, “We hear that the protests are getting to Citigroup's CEO. Carlos (Fontes, the protester) is a big part of the group Smart Solar Shutesbury, which is fighting to save forests. He is a professor and he will retire at the end of this year. He is a professor of Communications and has brought his students to work with the Sarayaku tribe in the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador. Carlos is originally from Portugal.”

An August 21, 2024 New York Times news article says, “Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington... made climate change the centerpiece of his own 2019 bid for the presidency... (He) said he believes it is more important for Ms. Harris to draw a distinction between her and her Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump, than to drill down on policy nitty-gritty. 'I am totally confident that when she is in a position to effect positive change, she will,' Gov. Inslee said.”

Solutions to climate change are in the Venn diagram at:

www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/climate/