On September 2 in the Pioneer Valley town of South Hadley, about 170 janitors, dishwashers, and other workers went on strike. “I've worked as a cook at Mount Holyoke for seven years – it will be eight years in August,” Rich Sugrue told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview on May 16, 2025. He is one of 170 workers at the college who are members of a union, SEIU Local 32BJ.

The strike lasted one day. That day, a union spokesman emailed the Valley Post, “Below is a link to a video we received late this morning from a campus worker who was at today's college convocation, showing Mount Holyoke president Danielle Holley making remarks about the negotiations. Notice that the faculty on stage have turned their backs and she is receiving jeers from students. It seems a significant demonstration of the campus support for the striking workers.”

The video is at:

https://youtube.com/shorts/n_K4Y0dV3k4?feature=share

In May, Rich Sugrue said, “About one-third of my coworkers are immigrants from east Africa and other parts of the world. Next month our union contract will expire. We're negotiating a new contract. One thing we're fighting for is legal help for the immigrants. The entry wage for dishwashers is about $17.50 an hour. That is not enough to live on in this area. Other local colleges pay more. We want to increase wages.”

As of 2023, the college's endowment was more than $1 billion.

Sugrue told the Valley Post, “I have lived in western Massachusetts all my life. I now live in Holyoke.” The workers have a web site at www.seiu32bj.org.

Philip Bernashe is one of the workers. He told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview on May 21, 2025, “This is my second year working at Mount Holyoke college. Our union contract expires on June 30. I work in the kitchen, mostly receiving food deliveries and keeping the storage area organized. I also receive deliveries of silverware and plates. If they're busy I help with washing the dishes. They don't pay enough for me to pay my bills. I work for DoorDash on the side.”

Bernashe said, “There are three shifts a day in the kitchen. There are people working there from 6 a.m. until midnight. Sometimes the dishwashers work until 1 in the morning. Some workers take the bus to get to work. I'm from Chicopee (Massachusetts) originally. Now I live in Holyoke. Going on strike is the last resort but we will do it if we have to.”

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In Brattleboro, on September 1, workers had a victory when a giant corporation ended its lock out. Gretchen Harvey has been a school bus driver in Brattleboro for 21 years. She works for the corporation. On September 2, she told the Valley Post, “I have mixed feelings. I am happy to be back to work, but the last-minute change of heart was not all that reassuring. Informing drivers the evening before that they want you to return to work and not giving them time to properly prepare is frustrating. Some of the routes changed a lot over the summer and for one of the drivers the route is totally new.”

On average, workers make higher wages when they belong to a union. Contract negotiations are underway in Brattleboro. The 40 or so workers have a web site at www.teamsterslocal597.net.

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Robert Oeser is an elected member of the Brattleboro Board of Civil Authority. The board oversees elections and hears tax appeals.

On September 3, he told the Valley Post, “Town meetings, whether open (to the public to vote) or representative (in which only elected officials make decisions) are one of the vehicles to move conversations forward. Neither type of meeting will be perfect, yet the meeting itself is a forum for progress in the right direction.... The Australian ballot, as efficient as it may feel, simply doesn't cut it. It keeps us isolated and confines our answers to simple yeses and nos.... There is a group circulating a petition to make sure that the option of Open Town Meeting stays on the table.... For more info on that, please email: otm4bratt@gmail.com.”

Dummerston, Vermont borders Brattleboro. In 2023, the Dummerston select board proposed eliminating the annual town meeting. For thousands of years, Native Americans lived on the land now known as Dummerston and made decisions by consensus. Since the town of Dummerston was founded by Europeans about 250 years ago, and since women won the right to vote about 100 years ago, virtually direct democracy has continued through annual
town meeting. In 2023, the select board was seeking to drive a “dagger into
the heart of town meeting.” Those were the words of University of
Vermont politics professor Frank Bryan to the Valley Post, when he learned in 2017 of a similar failed plan in Dummerston. Bryan is the author of a book
about Vermont town meetings.

Since 2003 the people of Dummerston repeatedly overruled the select board and voted to tax themselves to protect farmland. As a result three farms
were saved.

The USA is losing 6,000 acres of open space to development every DAY.
The number of houses in Dummerston went from about 300 in 1960 to
about 900 today. Very few of those homes are the kind of multi-family
housing that exists in the Brooks House in Brattleboro. The state is funding the construction of new multi-family housing in
Brattleboro. Investing in farmland protection will reduce Dummerston's
taxes in the long run. In Vermont, the towns with the most protected
open space have the lowest property taxes.

Protecting open space is one of the best ways to stop climate change,
which the world's leading scientists say is a major threat to earth's
ability to support human life.