Our Racial and Social Justice Team actively engages in advocacy work especially related to immigration reform, promoting diversity within both the staff and curricula of our public schools, working to enhance gun safety in our state, and advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples. We recognize that economic inequality, disability, racism, sexism, and prejudice toward LGBTQA+ people and gender non-conforming individuals are serious obstacles to the construction of an equitable and just society.

We look at the ways in which many groups are struggling in our communities, in our state, and across our nation, and we work with allied organizations to bring positive change. The rights of those for whom English is not their first language are also central to our work. As a group we spent many months working to understand our own biases, how we bring them with us unconsciously, and how they affect our perceptions and our actions. Our hope is that we can remove the blinders we have in order to be more effective advocates for change.

Current Projects

The four main Racial and Social Justice projects we are currently working on involve, promoting the rights of immigrants, fostering greater diversity within our classrooms, bringing more awareness to the ways we continue to devalue the identity and heritage of Native Americans, and raising awareness regarding ways to reduce gun violence.

Actions to Support the Rights of Immigrants

Grassroots Central Mass members actively advocate for important pieces of legislation, such as the Safe Communities Act which seeks to protect immigrants by preventing local and state law enforcement from reporting to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel the immigration status of individuals who report crimes or who are stopped for minor, non-violent infractions. If undocumented individuals fear the police they will not report crimes against them such as domestic violence. Lack of police involvement in such assault cases not only allows severe and continued injury to the survivor of the unreported abuse but also allows a violent perpetrator to walk freely in the community, potentially harming others. Passage of the Safe Communities Act and other legislative initiatives, such as creating a fund to help immigrants in danger of deportation pay for legal assistance and assuring that cell phone location data are not provided to ICE, are central to our work and crucial to allow the undocumented to live in less fear.

Grassroots Central Mass also took action to assure that the rights of immigrants housed by the state in a motel in Sturbridge were respected. In particular we advocated for these newcomers when the state proposed an abrupt move to a new location by contacting state oversight agencies and arguing that this abrupt relocation would be especially damaging to the school-aged children who had received excellent support and were doing well in the Sturbridge schools. We also actively participated in clothing drives and organized an initiative to provide boots and winter coats as the cold weather arrived. Christmas gift-giving for the children was also a highlight of our activism in support of the families new to our region. Currently the Racial and Social Justice Committee is active in organizing presentations in local libraries focused on the struggles immigrants face as a way to foster greater understanding of those who are newly arrived to our nation.

Grassroots Central Mass members also participated actively in support of The Work and Family Mobility Act, which went into effect in the summer of 2023. (This law is often referred to as the Driver’s Licenses for All). This law gives all residents of Massachusetts of driving age, including undocumented immigrants, the right to a license if they can pass the necessary driving tests. Granting driver’s licenses to the undocumented makes all of us safer because it increases the likelihood that people driving have demonstrated driving competence.

Transforming Our Public Schools by Fostering Diversity

Grassroots Central Mass partners with CARE (Coalition for Anti-Racism & Justice in Education) to enhance our schools by embracing diversity initiatives. CARE is committed to fostering social justice and equity in education. The organization works to empower students, educators, and communities by advocating for systemic change, promoting diversity, and creating opportunities for underrepresented voices to lead and thrive.

The Grassroots Central Mass partnership with CARE is focused on ways to support educators and students from underrepresented communities of color within our public schools. We join CARE in advocating for transforming how we teach so that our classrooms include and honor the experiences and identities of all individuals who form the fabric of our communities. We work to empower educators and communities by advocating for systemic changes embraced by CARE and by supporting the legislative initiatives of CARE.

Action to Support Indigenous Peoples

Throughout our Commonwealth there are many egregious ways in which the culture and heritage of the Indigenous Peoples of Massachusetts are harmfully misrepresented. Taking the lead from the Mass Indigenous Legislative Agenda, we work to assure that the bills backed by Indigenous leaders will find legislative support here in Central Mass and that, with our help, these bills will pass. In addition, we are working to bring awareness about the need to change the current flag and shield of Massachusetts, which shows a white arm holding a sword over the image of an Indigenous person, a symbol of shame that Indigenous leaders have been seeking to change for more than 50 years. We have worked to achieve the changes to the flag and seal by holding informational meetings in the libraries of some of our towns and introduced warrants at multiple town meetings in our region to assure residents are aware of the problematic nature of our state’s flag and seal and allowing them to vote on measures to change those symbols. We stand in solidarity with the local tribal nation, the Nipmuc, on whose unceded lands many of our towns in Central Mass have been built.

Initiatives to Reduce Gun Violence

At Grassroots Central Mass we support organizations active in Massachusetts dedicated to reducing gun violence in our communities. Grassroots for Gun Violence Prevention is actively engaged with programs to educate families and school administrators about the safe storage of firearms and other initiatives that reduce the likelihood of injuries and fatalities from guns. This organization strongly advocated for legislation recently passed in Massachusetts which clarified and strengthened the use of Emergency Protection Orders in cases of emotional crisis and improved other gun safety measures. The group places the experiences of those impacted by gun violence at the center of their work and they partner with the Center for Nonviolent Solutions to educate about non-violent conflict resolution approaches within schools and communities.

Looking Forward

Prior to the pandemic we had planned to bring presentations about many of these issues and legislative initiatives to our local communities using the “Sip and Solve” format previously used in our successful Climate Change Café. In this model participants are provided with information associated with a specific topic and then grouped together to brainstorm practical solutions to the problems presented by various aspects of the issue. This is a fun and engaged way to address matters that concern us. We now have scheduled presentations on the challenges being faced by immigrants in local libraries within our region.

Send questions or ideas to justice@grassrootscentralmass.org.

Social Justice Resources

Mass Call2Action works to bring forward progressive ideas on the state level and activate people by informing them on many issues of concern to progressive such as housing justice, health care, and addressing injustice within the legal system.

DEI in Education

Why We Need Diverse Books in Schools (Word in Black, Feb 2023)

Marking Black History Month with Connecticut’s Black and Latino Studies Course (New England Public Media, Jan 2023)

As red states target Black history lessons, blue states embrace them (Washington Post, Feb 2023)

Immigration

“‘Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor’—Hmm, Maybe Not: Immigration’s Thorny Struggles,” a presentation by Grassroots Central Mass leadership member Regina Edmonds, professor emerita of psychology, Assumption University (April 2021)

An Unlikely Couple: The Similar Approaches to Border Enforcement in H.R. 1417 and S. 744 (July 2013)

How the US legal immigration system works (Apr 2019)

Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Continues to Reshape the United States (Oct 2015)

Ten Myths About Immigration (Spring 2017)

What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand? (July 2020)