On October 13 in Amherst about 20 people attended a rally. “We're asking the UMass administration to disband Theta Chi (fraternity) due to the countless stories that have shown their violence towards UMass students,” Anna Morel-Paletta told the Valley Post. She organized the rally. Morel-Paletta said, “Additionally, we're asking for the Survivor's Bill of Rights to be enacted to ensure that UMass starts taking claims of sexual assault seriously. Multiple people have claimed that UMass didn't do anything when they reported an experience of sexual assault.”

She said for more information people should go to:

www.instagram.com/disband.theta.umass

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Anna Gyorgy is on the board of a group that has a web site at https://traprock.org. She told the Valley Post that on October 9, about 20 people attended a rally near Greenfield on the Turners Falls-Gill bridge. The goal was to get politicians to “stop the massive destruction of fish and related river life by the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station,” on the Connecticut river near the Vermont – Massachusetts border.

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On October 12 the Massachusetts governor ordered the National Guard to deal with a shortage of workers at the state's prisons.

Vermont sends prisoners to a private prison in Mississippi to save money.

No nation keeps such a high percentage of its people in prison as the USA. Europe's rate is a third of ours.

The USA's prison system is racist. That's according to the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander.

While the chances of dramatically reducing the USA's prison population may seem small, in 1989, the chances of Nelson Mandela -- who was then seven years into a life sentence in prison -- becoming president of South Africa were also small. In 1994, Mandela was elected president and one of the world’s most brutal and racist governments was overthrown.

In the United States, 160 years ago, ending slavery and granting women the right to vote both seemed unlikely. Mass movements of ordinary people won justice.