Flix, a German company, runs buses between the Springfield Amtrak station and downtown Boston that take 1 hour and 35 minutes. Tickets are $17. There are multiple Amtrak trains per day to Springfield from Holyoke, Northampton, Greenfield and Brattleboro.

Shutesbury, Massachusetts borders Amherst. On December 14, Kestrel land trust posted on its Facebook page, “We're grateful that we've been awarded a $327K grant from the MA Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ Acquisitions for Forest Reserves to protect 200 acres in Shutesbury next year.” The forest is on Montague Road. The plan is to never log the land.

On December 10 in Amherst there was a march and rally for abortion rights, among other issues. Marisol Pierce Bonifaz was one of the organizers. She told the Valley Post that the marchers chanted, “Abortion is a civil right, war on health care, we will fight.” About 40 people were there. The organizers have a web site at:

https://generationratifyam.wixsite.com/website

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In 2014, the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor closed permanently because
thousands of people marched in Brattleboro, and because hundreds of

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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By threatening to go on strike, about 200 workers in the Pioneer Valley won big raises. They are ambulance drivers and workers. “The people who run this company are not nice people,” Bryan Donovan, Junior told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview. He is president of Teamsters Local 404, which represents the workers. The company is American Medical Response. The strike would have started November 24. The raises will be about 28 percent. Unions are good for democracy. That's because they reduce inequality. Billionaires buy politicians.

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There will be a march from Northampton to Springfield on December 7 and 8. The goal is to get congress and Biden to stop funding Israel's war on Gaza and instead spend the money on helping people in Gaza. The organizers have a web page at:

www.facebook.com/WMC4P

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In Brattleboro on November 16 at noon there will be a rally to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The rally will be outside the main post office. A group that's promoting the rally has a web page at:

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

Gaza news is at:

Women's marches are set for January 18, 2025 in DC and everywhere. In Northampton, thousands of people attended women's marches during Trump's first term. Photos are at:

https://valleypost.org/node/1472

and

https://www.valleypost.org/2018/01/20/photos-thousands-march

Details about the 2025 marches are at:

www.facebook.com/WomensMarchOnWash

According to

https://RachelMaiore.com/about

Thanks to the work of environmental activists, the state will plow snow off the rail trail between Amherst and Northampton. The state will put sand on ice. On average, even electric cars are worse than busses and trains for the environment. That's because cars so often have just one person in them. Electric cars still require roads. Asphalt is made from oil and gravel. Train tracks are narrower than roads and they are built on plain crushed stone. Eliminating roads could create space for forests to grow. The activists have web sites at https://walkmass.org and www.massbike.org.

In Northampton on October 7 about 100 people attended a rally to protest police efforts to force people out of their campsites in a city-owned forest. “I issued the trespass order,” Alan Wolf told the Valley Post on October 9. He is the mayor's “chief of staff.”

In Amherst, organizers say they expect hundreds of people to attend an October 5 rally to protest the USA's support of Israel's wars on Gaza and Lebanon. The rally starts at 1 p.m. at the Amherst town common. Organizer Hoang Phan said, “Israel has expanded its nearly 12-month genocide and war of aggression in Palestine to Lebanon. The weapons and planes used in Israel’s military assaults on civilian populations have been supplied and funded by the United States government.