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

About 250 people attended a Black Lives Matter rally in Putney, Vermont on July 22. Putney is about 10 minutes from Brattleboro by car. Vermont has the nation's most racist prison system, which may help explain why it is one of the whitest states. Vermont sends prisoners to a private prison in Mississippi.

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Sixteen people were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience between August 22 and August 27 at Wendell Massachusetts State Forest near Greenfield, bringing the total number of arrests to 25 since August 6. The goal was to stop planned logging of 80 acres of 110 year old oak trees on publicly owned land.

The USA is losing 6,000 acres of open space to development every day. Stopping logging on publicly owned land forces logging companies to buy their own land. If the loggers want to grow new trees after logging, the land can't be paved.

In Springfield, pedestrian rights activists had a win May 30 when construction started on a $4 million project. “It's hard to imagine an intersection that is less friendly to pedestrians,” Stacey Beuttell told the Valley Post on June 3. She works for Walk Boston, a group that, despite its name, works statewide to make walking safer. Beuttell said the Springfield project is a victory. The intersection that will be fixed is at the corner of Alden, Walnut, Hancock, and Ashley streets. The mayor says it will be done by the end of next year.

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