On March 24 at 4 p.m. in Holyoke, there will be a two-hour rally for justice. Workers at Stop & Shop throughout New England are asking the billion dollar company for fair wages and benefits. Stop & Shop workers in the Valley are union members. They have a web site at www.ufcw1459.com.
The rally will be at 28 Lincoln Street. The public is invited. Details are at:
On January 1, the Massachusetts minimum wage went from $9 an hour to $10 an hour. About 280,000 people got a raise. This happened because thousands of people volunteered to gather signatures on petitions. That effort was coordinated by Raise Up Massachusetts. The same group last month submitted to the Massachusetts Secretary of State about 157,000 pen-on-paper signatures intended to raise taxes on people who make more than $1 million a year. About 13,000 people in Massachusetts made over $1 million in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.
Unions in the Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke are asking the public to attend rallies for justice in Springfield and in the nearby towns of Amherst, Chicopee, Westfield, and West Springfield. On Labor Day, September 7, from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m., there will be a rally in Amherst for workers' rights. The public is welcome for all or part of that time. For more information, contact Jocelyn Silverlight by phone at (908) 601-6342 or by e-mail: jocelyn@uaw2322.org.
There will be a march in Holyoke April 27 to protest plans by governor Charlie Baker to take away control of the city's schools from people who live there. The march will start at 3 p.m. at Salsarengue Restaurant, 392 High Street.
Eduardo Melendez is a teacher at Holyoke public schools, a position he has held for 20 years. “In Puerto Rico, we do rallies with live music,” he told the Valley Post on April 24. “That's what we'll do on Monday. We will have a whole bunch of musicians.”
Recent rallies in Holyoke and Boston for better education were attended by Valley residents. On September 8 in Holyoke, activists held a rally in support of a public school teacher who the teachers' union says was fired for his union activism. Until he was fired, Gus Morales was a full-time English teacher in Holyoke, and part-time president of the Holyoke teachers' union, which is part of www.MassTeacher.org.
Free round-trip bus tickets from Holyoke to a September 21 climate march in New York City are available. President Obama and the leaders of other nations will be in New York City that day to try to come up with an agreement to reduce pollution. The march is being organized by the Service Employees International Union, the Sierra Club, and other organizations. More information about the march, including how to get bus tickets from the Valley, is at www.PeoplesClimate.org. The Sunday march starts at 11:30 a.m.
In a grassroots victory, a coal fired electricity generating facility in Holyoke will close permanently in October. The Mount Tom Power Plant currently burns about 1,200 tons of coal every day. “Now we will have less air pollution,” said Vilma Vazquez, a Holyoke resident who attended rallies to close the facility.
The movement to close the coal facility was organized by www.n2nma.org and www.ToxicsAction.org.
In a victory for poor people and the environment, activists got a group of local governments in the Valley to reverse its plan to raise the local bus fare. The Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) wanted to hike the fare from $1.25 to $1.50. About 370 people attended public hearings about the scheme. The vast majority spoke out against the fare boost. At the most recent hearing, on June 27 in Springfield, city resident Aunush Dawidjan led the audience in a chant: “Tax Mercedes,” she said. “Not old ladies,” the people replied. Mercedes Corporation makes cars for rich people.
On September 27 at 4 p.m. there will be two rallies to save the jobs of post office workers. The rallies will be at Congressman Richard Neal’s office at 300 State Street in Springfield, and at Congressman John Olver’s office at 57 Suffolk Street in Holyoke. The rallies will last 90 minutes.
The organizers of the rallies are asking the public to contact their members of Congress in support of House Bill 1351.
More information is available at www.SaveAmericasPostalService.org or by calling Michael Harazmus, president of the Letter Carriers Union in the Valley, at (413) 737-0640.
On September 24, in Northampton and Amherst, there will be marches to protest the use of fossil fuels. At 11:30 a.m., marchers will leave from the site of a proposed large group of solar panels at the UMass horse farm at 111 North Maple Street in Hadley. They will march to the park in front of the Amherst Town Hall. The march is scheduled to arrive at the town hall at 12:30 p.m.
At noon in Northampton, a march will start at 210 Main Street (in front of City Hall) and end behind the building at 150 Main Street. The march will go via Pleasant and Armory streets.