About 95 people attended a rally in Northampton on August 13. "We called for the resignation of the officers involved in the incident, Officer John Sellew and Officer Jonathan Bartlett, as well as the resignation of Police Chief Jody Kasper," Miranda Groux told the Valley Post. She works for the Amherst Survival Center, but was speaking as a private citizen, not on behalf of the Center. The incident in question happened on April 4, when Bartlett and Sellew of the Northampton police department tackled and pepper-sprayed a 60-year-old woman because her car had a broken headlight.

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About 80 people attended an August 15 rally on behalf of a wrongfully fired Pioneer Valley Trader Joe's worker. About 20 people at the Boston rally were from the Valley. The rally was outside the corporation's headquarters for the northeastern USA. The organizers have a web site at https://traderjoesunited.org.

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In 2014 the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor closed permanently because thousands of people marched in Brattleboro, and because hundreds of people were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience in Brattleboro and outside the reactor three miles from Massachusetts and a stone's throw from New Hampshire. Deb Katz was one of the main organizers of these protests.

On August 14, 2023, Katz told the Valley Post her reaction to an article in the August 12, 2023 edition of the New York Times. The article was headlined, “The Clean Energy Future Is Roiling Both Friends and Foes: Resistance to wind and solar projects from environmentalists is among an array of impediments to widespread conversion to renewables.”

The Times article said, in part, "Many nuclear power companies are seeking to develop a new generation of smaller, safer reactors, but outdated regulations could make approval difficult, experts warn."

Katz told the Valley Post, “The nuclear industry complains about 'outdated regulations.' These regulations protect people and the environment from the dangers of nuclear power and its waste. The industry is hyping small modular reactors as safer, smaller and less polluting -- a nifty answer to climate disruption. It wants less regulation but lots of federal money to resurrect itself. This is a bad idea. The industry has yet to create any viable, scientifically sound, or environmentally just, solution for the toxic contamination from the present generation of nukes. The 'new generation of smaller, safer reactors' potentially produce more waste (per unit of electricity generated, than Vermont Yankee did) not less. Ed Lyman said not only will it create more waste than older models, but also more deadly waste.”

Lyman's bio is at:

www.ucsusa.org/about/people/edwin-lyman

Nuclear waste is the deadliest material on earth and will still be toxic 1 million years after it is created, according to a federal study of the proposed Yucca mountain dump in Nevada. Thanks to Native American protesters, the Yucca dump will not open in the foreseeable future. Vermont Yankee's “high level” waste will stay where it was created, on the bank of the Connecticut river, for the foreseeable future.

Nuclear power plants are so dangerous that the insurance industry will not cover them. The federal government gives them free insurance, paid for by the USA's taxpayers.

Katz lives in the Pioneer Valley and runs a group that has a web site at www.NukeBusters.org.