Announcements
- Indivisible Mass Coalition Election: Congratulations to Karen Nothe-Valley for being re-elected to the Board of Indivisible Mass Coalition from CD-1. We love having two Grassroots members on the IMC Board with Patricia O’Connor continuing to represent CD-2. We feel that this gives our rural region more visibility, especially on the state level issues.
- Southbridge Town Election: Four excellent candidates are running for office in Southbridge: Jacqueline Ryan (a strong advocate for those facing mental health challenges) for re-election to Town Council, Andrew Murch (currently on School Committee) and Maria Torres (fairly new to Southbridge, involved in housing issues, has students in the schools) for Town Council, and Carla Delacruz Davila for School Committee. Town Council is a competitive race, as there are many candidates; election is June 14th.
- New Oakham DTC: Congratulations to Oakham—a new DTC formed there; Patricia worked hard to make that happen.
- State Flag and Seal: Brookfield is going to try to put the resolution to change the Massachusetts state flag/seal on the warrant for the Town Meeting. Note that the next Brookfield DTC meeting is Thursday, March 2nd so this issue could be raised there. The Southbridge Town Council will vote on this soon and West Brookfield hopes to have this on their town warrant too.
GCM Calendar
Tomorrow’s Regional DTC meeting and the March 5 Racial and Social Justice Committee meetings are on the calendar. The next Climate Committee Meeting is March 9 at 4:30PM. (Note that the Climate Committee generally meets monthly, Thursdays at 4:30 but with Trees Are Treasures coming up, they are meeting more frequently.)
Upcoming Opportunities
- Regional DTC meeting is Sunday Feb. 26 at 1:00 PM hybrid at Ye Olde Tavern in West Brookfield. Two big items on agenda: Candidate to run in Worcester and Hampden State Senate district and Climate Town Hall. They are also discussing town elections and how to find good candidates in all towns for all positions. They will also talk about the new and newly reconstituted DTCs. They are helping with a new postcard campaign, writing for Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin; election is April 4th.
- Legislative Breakfast, Feb. 28 at 8:45AM at Eagle Hill School. Sen. Anne Gobi will be there as will other representatives from our area. Jeana signed up to attend and will report back unless the weather cancels the event.
- Mass Alliance Spring 2023, Grassroots Campaign Training, Mar. 11-12 on Zoom.
- Waking Up White presented by Debby Irving, Mar. 11 at 10:00AM (until 2:30 pm) at Douglas Library, Hebron, CT (not virtual). There is also an excellent book by the same name by Debby Irving.
- Progressive Mass Annual Gala (awards and fundraiser), Sun March 5th, 7 pm. Four people are being honored: Jordan Berg Powers, Dalida Rocha, Mallory Hanora, and Sashi James; State Senator Jamie Eldridge, along with NAACP Boston Branch President and former candidate for Secretary of State Tanisha Sullivan, will headline this year’s Gala.
Would it be fun to have a Grassroots Central Mass party? Several of us think so! Last time we celebrated together was on Zoom, but we’d like to meet in person this year. We might even be able to secure funds from Mass Indivisible Coalition. We are thinking of later in the spring, when the weather is nicer, maybe June 3rd. Karen, Lynne, Sherry, and Jeana can work on planning this. Jeana’s backyard might work.
Committee Reports
Website Committee
We met on Sat the 18th and had a productive discussion. The History, Highlights of our Activism, and the Racial and Justice page were updated. The Climate Committee can review and update their page if need be. A “People Page” will also be in place soon. Danielle has started working on changes. Stay tuned for great website changes; we’ll ask for feedback.
Climate Committee
- Trees Are Treasures Event: Trying to figure out the venue; now have a name and email address to contact about using Wells State Park; Sherry will follow up with Maureen, who may also have a phone number to text. We will be having sign-ups for volunteers to help.
- Climate Town Hall: The idea is to be non-confrontational; bring in experts on topics like farming, bee-keeping, solar installation, hazard mitigation. Discussion should be factual and focus on choices that homeowners/towns/farms/other businesses are facing. The administrative structure (who is sponsoring: DTCs, BFF, GCM or a combination of volunteers from all groups) is not yet established; now looking for a venue; looking at June time frame.
Legislative initiatives: There are so many: how do we focus? Colin is working on a bill that would ask for climate issues to be discussed in schools (HD4158) Janet spoke about the bills that the Mass Power Coalition has prioritized; they will soon have fact sheets for them.
Racial and Social Justice Committee
- Presentation of MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda: 5 bills currently on the docket. There is a letter that you can send (automatically) to ask your reps to co-sponsor this legislation. GCM will work to assure passage of these bills.
- Educational package of videos on Indigenous Peoples living in Mass: Jeana forwarded to the CARE team and recommends watching the videos. Note that one of the indigenous leaders is from Southbridge (Liz ColdWind Santana Kiser). The project began with Western Mass communities.
- Update on the flag and seal change process: David spoke on opportunities in our area for putting this question on the annual Town Meeting warrants. The current emphasis is on Brookfield, West Brookfield, Southbridge, Grafton, Leicester, and Monson. The goal is to keep pressure on the state legislature to get this done (after 50 years). Baker’s commission came up with clear and unambiguous findings regarding this racist and harmful symbol, but we’re not over the finish line. David will speak briefly at the regional DTC tomorrow (will try to bring in Belchertown as well). David suggested that towns who are reviewing their town seals should consult with native leaders as to what they think. Example: Stockbridge did this; he advised using an incremental approach. Note that Brookfield is celebrating an anniversary this year, so it may be a good opportunity to reflect on town history. A positive example of change is the town of Yarmouth, who are reviewing their town seal. David is also looking into reparations. There have been important healing ceremonies in several locations in conjunction with work to change the flag and seal. David mentioned that occurring in his town of Montague. He will keep in touch with us, letting us know how we can help. Thank you, David, for all your work.
- Immigration issues: on the national scene, we are not making progress; we might even be going backward. On the state level, MIRA has put together a list of legislative actions needed to support immigrants in Mass, such as passing the Safe Communities Act and other issues. Jeana noted that the Subcommittee has been exploring their own biases; now they are moving toward direct action.
- CARE’s bill for EduEquity: Zoom meeting on Tues Feb 21 presented their strategy for passing SD2008/HD3360: An Act To Promote Racially Inclusive Curriculum in Schools. The bill requests funding for curriculum development; sponsored by Adam Gomez and Tram Nguyen. A toolkit and form for emailing legislators will be forthcoming. They are looking for support state-wide, as this develops perhaps we can invite people from CARE to speak at one of our meetings.
- Updates on the Prison Moratorium actions: They also had a kickoff event for their bill: SD661/HD799. Note that this bill passed last session but was vetoed by Governor Baker.
- Future Events: We are hoping to re-invigorate our Sip ‘n’ Solve for some of these racial and social justice issues. For example, people really don’t know much about immigration and we could do something with that.
Political Initiatives
- Updates from Indivisible Mass Coalition: Patricia spoke about the Indivisible Rural Caucus which meets monthly; they have speakers from all over the country (some areas of the US are really rural!). One presentation focused on what you do about “bad bills” – some actions include flood your rep with mail, do stand-outs, partner with others, work with your reps by being a good constituent, write letters to the editor, hold MAGA reps accountable. Patricia also noted that “Grow Grants” are available again; also grants for IndivisiGathers (up to $1000) – restriction is that these get-togethers cannot support a particular candidate.
- Should we endorse the Mass-Care Medicare for All bill: We’ll discuss group support of HD1584/SD2182 at our next meeting.
- 2023 Grant cycle for Synergy Initiative from Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts will hold an information session March 9th, 10:00 am, Joshua Hyde Library in Sturbridge.
Next Meeting: Saturday, March 18, 2023, 9:30 am
Minutes by Sue Jordan, Sherry Zitter, and Regina Edmonds
