People seeking to stop logging of an 88 acre, publicly-owned forest of 110-year-old trees near Greenfield are asking the public to attend a training on how to use non-violent civil disobedience. "We strongly oppose logging the oak stand in Wendell State Forest," Michael Kellett told the Valley Post on December 15, 2018.

According to a September 5, 2016 article in the Lowell Sun daily newspaper, Kellett was a “key player” in the creation by President Obama of the 87,400 acre Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine. Logging is banned in national monuments. Kellett runs a group that has web site at www.restore.org.

The training will be on December 29 from 9:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. at the Wendell town hall, 9 Morse Village Road in Wendell, Massachusetts. Organizers are asking people to RSVP by e-mailing savebrookrdforest@gmail.com.

In other news from the Valley, a group of students at Umass Amherst is lobbying politicians to reduce train fares in the Valley. Wei Cai is a spokesperson for the group. “The fares are too high, especially for students with limited means,” Cai told the Valley Post in a phone interview on December 14, 2018. The group has a web site at www.umass.edu/sga.

In Deerfield, Massachusetts, near Greenfield, a corporate chain will not be allowed to build a store and parking lot where it wanted to. The victory over Dollar General Corporation was due to the work of activists who live in Deerfield. They were helped by a group that has a web site at www.sprawl-busters.com.

Harrisville, New Hampshire is about two miles from Keene. An existing dam there will now generate about $25,000 a year worth of electricity. The group that made this happen has a web page at www.facebook.com/HistoricHarrisvilleInc.

About 70 workers at the Hampshire Gazette and Valley Advocate newspapers formed a union on Decmber 12, 2018. The out-of-state corporate chain that owns both papers fought the workers and lost. The workers have a web site at www.newsguild.org.

When reporters have a union, they can fight for articles to get published. The following local newspapers are owned by out-of-state corporations: Amherst Bulletin, Brattleboro Reformer, Springfield Republican, and Greenfield Recorder.

Workers who join a union in the USA make an average of 27 percent higher wages. That's according to www.bls.gov.

Non-union workers can be fired at any time for no reason. Most union contracts say that workers can only be fired for a good reason. If the boss and the worker disagree, a neutral third party decides.

Millions of workers in the USA are union members, including all the workers at UPS and Stop & Shop.

The middle class in the USA is disappearing. There are more rich people and more poor people than there have been since the 1920s. This allows billionaires more influence over politicians. Unions are one way to expand the middle class and increase democracy.