Massachusetts needs a strong revenue stream to support cities and towns, pay for health and education, and at least partially make up for deep federal cuts. But corporate interest groups like the Mass High Tech Council are trying to strong-arm the legislature into reducing taxes for millionaires and corporations by threatening a ballot initiative that would cut $5 billion from our schools and healthcare. They want to reverse all of the strides and success we’ve made with the Fair Share Amendment. More info here, and here’s what you can do:
Email or call your legislators to urge them to OPPOSE any negotiated deal with the Massachusetts High Technology Council and the Massachusetts Competitiveness Partnership in response to their reckless tax cut ballot proposals to slash important and necessary state revenue. Follow the conversation guide here.
Spread the word to your friends, family, and followers on social media! Share Rise Up Massachusetts’s recent ad explaining the ballot questions.
Follow the money - people over utility profits
Energy utility companies are raking in record profits while families are struggling to pay energy bills. This Wednesday at 1pm, the climate coalition Mass Power Forward is leading a “Follow the [utility] Money” march and rally — from Eversource HQ at 800 Boylston St, past banks that fund fossil fuel industries, to the State House. They will rally at 2:30 at the State House, asking legislators to cut the state’s ties to utilities and pass a climate bill that puts people over utility profits. RSVP here.
If you want to sing out, sing out!
Looking for a way to build more connection with others who care about our climate and democracy? Host a Watch Party at your home for Rise Up, Sing Out, a concert on June 14 in NYC featuring Bette Midler, Rufus Wainwright and Patti Smith. Link to register for the stream or learn more.
Summer Reading: Memoirs
Readers have sent us great summer reading recommendations, and we’ll start this week with memoirs.
Katherine Ann Power, who was part of the famous 1970 bank heist in Brighton where Officer Walter Schroeder was killed, narrates the gripping story of her 23 years as a fugitive and why she decided to eventually turn herself in, in Surrender: My Journey from Guerilla to Grandmother.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn, the son of two other members of the Weather Underground, tells his story growing up in a family whose past and present was thoroughly enmeshed in the radical anti-war movement of the 60s and 70s. You can read the story in Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young or listen to the podcast Mother Country Radicals.
The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride by David J. Dennis, Jr is a moving dialogue between two generations. He writes about his father’s involvement as a key figure in the civil rights movement followed by his withdrawal after the brutal murders of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman in 1964.
In The Flag, the Cross and the Station Wagon, Bill McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race, inequality, the religious right to explain how we got to this point, and what we need to do now.
We’ll have more recommendations in the weeks to come. Don’t forget to share your favorite for summer reading or listening here.
This newsletter is brought to you by the Don’t Mourn, Organize affinity group. Here is how we decide what actions to include here. Email us at DontMournOrganizeEasternMass@gmail.com.
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Pro-Democracy Organizations we are monitoring
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On this Date: On June 9, 1954, one person’s courage suddenly turned the tide against Sen Joseph McCarthy’s red scare. During televised hearings, Army chief counsel Joseph Welch asked: “At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency”? The courtroom erupted in applause and the public turned heavily against McCarthy.