About 50 people marched in Northampton on December 4 to protest mass incarceration. No nation keeps such a high percentage of its people in prison as the USA. Europe's rate is a third of ours. "We took over Main street from Smith college to the post office and back. We got a ton of positive honking responses and handed out lots of fliers along the way,” Yoav Elinevsky told the Valley Post. Elinevsky lives in Amherst and is on the board of Massachusetts Peace Action. That's one of the groups that organized the march.

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At least six people from the Pioneer Valley, and at least one from Brattleboro, were among 655 people arrested for non-violent civil disobedience outside the White House between October 11 and October 15. The protests were to call on Biden to do more about climate change. The six Pioneer Valley residents are Paki Wieland, Priscilla Lynch, Marty Nathan, Sofia Perrotto, Sue Donaldson, and Russ Vernon-Jones.

About 950 people attended women's marches in Northampton, Brattleboro, and Keene on October 2. The goal was to protect abortion rights. About 800 people marched in Northampton. That event was organized by Deborah Pastrich-Klemer, Planned Parenthood, and a group called the Valley Women's March.

About 125 people marched in Brattleboro. That event was organized by Tracy Donahue and others.

The number one cause of climate change is overpopulation.

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More than 200 people attended a rally in Amherst on September 24. “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 on September 26. 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.”

In Brattleboro on September 13 there will be a health care rally. It will be from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. outside 1154 Putney Road. The organizers said, in the USA, “over 600,000 people have died from Covid during this pandemic, many of them because our country denies health care to the poor. This pandemic has revealed more clearly than ever before that the 140 million poor and low-income people in the United States are united by the fact that we, our families, and our communities are in a life-and-death fight for health care. We take action together to say that urgent action is needed now.

In Greenfield on July 31 about 50 people attended a rally to protest cutting down forests in Massachusetts to put up solar panels. The panels can go on roofs of big box stores, warehouses, and other buildings, and on top of parking lots. To see a big photo of seven acres of solar panels over a parking lot in Amherst, click on the small photo of "Lot 44" at:

www.umass.edu/dcm/campus-solar

The Greenfield rally organizers said, “To date, the state has lost 4,000 acres to large ground-mounted solar, much of it pristine forest.”

They have a web site at https://savethepinebarrens.org.

With 4 percent of the world's population, the USA spends as much money on war as the rest of the world combined. This year the USA will spend $1.7 trillion on war. That's 48 percent of the federal budget, meaning about half your income taxes go to war. This data is from:

www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/fy2022pie_chart-low_res.pdf

On August 6, there will be peace rallies:

--in Brattleboro at noon outside the Main street post office. The organizer is Daniel Sicken (pronounced SEE-kin) dhsicken@yahoo.com or landline 802-387-2798;

This photo shows common mergansers on the Connecticut river in Northampton. It was taken on June 13. Common mergansers eat fish. Common mergansers sleep in hollow trees. To enlarge the photo, click on it, then scroll down and click “see full size image.” photo by Eesha Williams

The Connecticut river is dammed. In 2023, the USA's biggest ever dam removal project is scheduled to happen. Details are at:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201110-the-largest-dam-removal-proj...

In Brattleboro on May 18 at 7 p.m., there will be a rally calling on local, state, and federal politicians to do more to address the series of murders and assaults against Asian Americans that have occurred around the USA in the past few months. The rally will be at Plaza park, 1 Main Street, between the food co-op and the art museum. One of the speakers is Emma Allen. She is from the Brattleboro area and is a University of Vermont student. A photo of Allen is below. Another speaker is Lisa Chen. She is on the board of the group that has a web site at www.sevca.org.

As of April 15, the weather forecast looked good for the April 17 Brattleboro climate march. Longtime Brattleboro resident Ellen Schwartz is one of the speakers scheduled for immediately after the march. She is a retired teacher, former board chair at the Vermont Workers' Center, and is still active with that group. Nine-year-old Grace of Dummerston, Vermont has written a speech and will read it unless she feels shy. Her parents' last names are Rosa and McNamara. Dummerston borders Brattleboro.