Our Racial and Social Justice Team actively engages in advocacy work especially related to immigration reform, re-imagining policing, promoting diversity within both the staff and curricula of our public schools, 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 have 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 ways to reimagine policing, promoting the rights of immigrants, fostering greater diversity within our classrooms, and bringing more awareness to the ways we continue to devalue the identity and heritage of Native Americans.

Re-Imagining Policing

The first initiative is spearheaded by members of one of our partner groups, Brookfields Fight Fear, with the active participation of several Grassroots Central Mass members. The goal is to assist police departments in our local area by adding mental health professionals to their departments. These individuals would both train officers in effective ways to respond to highly charged emotional situations and also to accompany them on calls involving problematic behavior associated with addiction or psychiatric emergencies. Ongoing discussions with police departments in our region have been very positive and productive.

Actions to Support the Rights of Immigrants

Grassroots Central Mass members have actively advocated for two important pieces of legislation, namely the Safe Communities Act and the Work and Family Mobility Act. The Safe Communities Act 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 is crucial to allow the undocumented to live in less fear.

The Work and Family Mobility Act, which recently became law and will go into effect in the summer of 2023, is often referred to as the Driver’s Licenses for All. This new 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.

Assuring that everyone who qualifies for a driver’s license will actually be able to obtain one without undo barriers being placed before them is part of our current work.

Transforming Our Public Schools

Here we partner with CARE (Coalition for Anti-Racism & Justice in Education) to focus on ways to increase the number of BIPOC and LGBTQA+ educators within our public schools and advocate for effective ways to support them in their work. Transforming how we teach so that our classrooms include and honor the diverse experiences and identities of all individuals who form the magnificent fabric of our communities is another important goal of this work.

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 stand in solidarity with the local tribal nation of the Nipmuc, on whose unceded lands our towns in Central Mass have been built.

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 hope to return to our “Sip and Solve” series of events when the Covid crisis is fully behind us.

Send questions or ideas to justice@grassrootscentralmass.org.

Social Justice Resources

A progressive look at people-first state policies

Mass Call2Action works to bring forward progressive ideas on the state level and activate people by informing them. Three recent webinars are available, on Housing Justice, Health Care in the Age of COVID, and Transforming an unjust legal system in Massachusetts. Watch the videos for any or all three here.

DEI in Education

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

Coalition for Anti-Racism, Equity and Justice in Education

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 2011)

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