On November 30 in Amherst, about 110 people attended a rally for human rights in Iran. The event was organized by the Persian Student Association at UMass, and other groups. A spokesperson for the Association did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment. The Valley Post will publish their response in a future article.

In 1953, to get cheap oil, the USA's CIA organized riots in Iran's capital, Tehran. The democratically elected leader of Iran was forced out.

The USA overthrew democratically elected leaders of Guatemala (1952), Congo (1961), and Chile (1973).

About 200 people attended rallies in favor of abortion rights on the Fourth of July in the county that's home to Greenfield. Susannah Whipps is a member of the Massachusetts legislature and she was at the rally in Orange. “A quick count of folks in Orange was over 90 participants,” she told the Valley Post. Other rallies on July 4 were in Greenfield and Shelburne Falls.

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About 40 people attended a rally in Springfield on May 31. The goal was to stop a proposed fossil fuel pipeline that would go about six miles from Springfield to Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The pipeline would cost around $40 million.

Naia Tenerowicz is a spokesperson for the two groups that organized the rally. On June 1, she told the Valley Post that the groups were the Longmeadow Pipeline Awareness Group, and the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition.

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About 50 people marched in Northampton on December 4 to protest mass incarceration. No nation keeps such a high percentage of its people in prison as the USA. Europe's rate is a third of ours. "We took over Main street from Smith college to the post office and back. We got a ton of positive honking responses and handed out lots of fliers along the way,” Yoav Elinevsky told the Valley Post. Elinevsky lives in Amherst and is on the board of Massachusetts Peace Action. That's one of the groups that organized the march.

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On October 31 a land trust announced 150 acres of open space in Amherst has been permanently protected from development. The USA is losing 6,000 acres of open space to development every day. Kestrel Land Trust said the town of Amherst had saved the land. The land is along West Pomeroy Lane.

In Amherst more than 300 people attended a rally on September 19 demanding that the University of Massachusetts do more to stop sexual assaults. In Amherst 200 or so people attended a rally on September 20 for the same issue.

In Brattleboro on May 18 at 7 p.m., there will be a rally calling on local, state, and federal politicians to do more to address the series of murders and assaults against Asian Americans that have occurred around the USA in the past few months. The rally will be at Plaza park, 1 Main Street, between the food co-op and the art museum. One of the speakers is Emma Allen. She is from the Brattleboro area and is a University of Vermont student. A photo of Allen is below. Another speaker is Lisa Chen. She is on the board of the group that has a web site at www.sevca.org.

There be a peace rally in Brattleboro on May 17. The rally will be outside 2 Main Street from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. With 4 percent of the world's population, the USA spends as much money on war as the rest of the world combined. This year the USA will spend $1.7 trillion on war. That's 48 percent of the federal budget, meaning about half your income taxes go to war. This data is from:

https://www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/fy2022pie_chart-low_res...

More information on the Brattleboro rally will be posted soon at:

https://nwtrcc.org/tax-day-actions-2021

Two thousand acres of forestland in three towns, all of which border Amherst, has been protected from development. Kristin DeBoer confirmed the 2,038 acre deal in a December 30 interview with the Valley Post. She runs an Amherst-based land trust that has a web site at www.kestreltrust.org. The USA is losing 6,000 acres of open space to development every day. Local, state, and federal politicians decide how much to tax rich people, and how much money to give to land trusts.

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The out-of-state corporate chain owner of the Daily Hampshire

In a victory for workers in Amherst, hundreds of people will get to keep their jobs. The workers used rallies and a petition to beat back their boss's layoff plans. They work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The workers are union members. They have a web site at www.MassTeacher.org. The victory came on September 15.

By going on strike, workers created the middle class in the 1930s. As the percentage of workers who had a union grew, equality increased. That's according to:

www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-charts