About 200 people marched in Amherst on December 5. They were asking the governor and legislature to pay janitors and other workers at UMass higher wages. A spokesperson for AFSCME, one of the unions that organized the march, did not immediately reply to an email from the Valley Post seeking comment for this article. A video of the march is at:

www.instagram.com/professionalstaffunion

As of last year, 22 billionaires lived in Massachusetts.

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In Brattleboro, population 12,000, the select board is the equivalent of the mayor and city council in cities like Northampton. Brattleboro has a “representative town meeting” that can over-rule the select board. Representative town meeting has 138 elected members and meets annually and when, as happened last month, townspeople petition for a special meeting. The special meeting will be on December 12 at 6 p.m. Details are at:

https://brattleboro.gov/blog/special-rtm-12-12-24

The topic is how to deal with crime. The select board wants to hire more police. The people who petitioned for the special meeting want the money spent on housing and social services instead.

In 2021, the town hired the current police chief Norma Hardy. An African American, she had worked for 26 years at the police department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. By all accounts, she has improved the Brattleboro police department. But the record of the Brattleboro police before Hardy was hired leaves some wondering what will happen when she retires. In 2001, at a Sunday church service, Brattleboro police shot and killed Robert Woodward who was armed only with a pocket knife. Many witnesses said he was a threat to no one but himself. The select board later fired the chief and paid an undisclosed amount in a legal settlement to Woodward's family.

In 2007, Brattleboro police used Tasers on two peaceful protesters who were trying to protect a farm field from being converted to a gas station. The protesters were Jonathan Crowell and Samantha Kilmurray. Tasers can kill people.

In 2009, Brattleboro paid a settlement to the ACLU and four anti-nuclear protesters when police arrested them for silently holding signs at a speech by the governor.

In 2018, the Valley Post published a special investigation that found Brattleboro police were killing people at a much higher rate than the national average. It is at:

https://valleypost.org/2018/07/17/brattleboro-police-kill-high-rate

No nation keeps such a high percentage of its people in prison as the USA. Europe's rate is a third of ours. Vermont's rate is double Europe's rate. The USA's prison system in racist, according to the book The New Jim Crow.

Kate O'Connor is the former director of the Brattleboro Chamber of Commerce. She is currently trying to weaken the power of the representative town meeting. On December 19, the Brattleboro Charter Revision Commission will meet to consider the proposed change. The Brattleboro Chamber of Commerce is part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies against Bernie Sanders' plan to raise the federal minimum wage which is now $7.25 an hour. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also lobbies against any efforts by congress to deal with climate change.