A dozen people attended a Greenfield rally February 14. They were calling on Biden and congress to do more to help poor people in Afghanistan. It was very cold in Greenfield that day, Patricia Hynes told the Valley Post. She was at the rally and she's on the board of a group that has a web site at www.traprock.org.

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Also on February 14, the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper published a news article about the murder of Isaiah Rodriguez. The 17-year-old resident of Springfield, Massachusetts was killed on or around February 2 in Danby, Vermont. Danby is about 35 miles northwest of Brattleboro. The article makes it sound like he died because of bad choices he made. While that may be partly true, it ignores the big picture. “Poverty is violence,” Tanisha Arena told the Valley Post when asked for her reaction to the Reformer article. She runs a Massachusetts group that has a web site at www.AriseSpringfield.org. “Poverty is not as much about the individual as it's about the system. I sent kids through the Springfield public schools. They had substitute teachers almost every day.” Arena asked the public to donate to, and/or volunteer for, her group. Arise fights to change the system that keeps many people of color poor, even as rich people -- most of whom are white -- pay little or no taxes.