BOSTON/State House - In a resounding majority vote of 139 to 17, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a much anticipated bill late Wednesday to reform the state’s criminal record system—known as CORI. The comprehensive reforms followed the Senate’s passage of a similar crime bill last November.
Striking workers at the Supervalu-owned Shaw's Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., have been marching from Methuen to Boston for justice since Sunday, May 23.
The 310 workers, members of the UFCW Local 791 (www.ufcw791.org), have been on strike since March 7 over the company's insistence that the burden of increasing health care costs be borne by workers.
BOSTON/State House - Half a dozen top law enforcement officials held a press conference Tuesday expressing wide ranging support for CORI reforms passed by the Senate last November and pending vote in the House.
"Police chiefs don't sign on to this bill easily, because it appears to be soft on crime," said Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis. "But it's anything but soft on crime...It's smart on crime."
BOSTON/Boston Common - UJP was among a range of progressive groups that challenged the war- and hate-mongering that Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express brought to Boston Common on April 14. Only about a third of the 5,000 people on the Common were staunch Tea Partiers; another third were sympathizers, and a final third were progressives, liberals, and the curious.
Cambridge, MA - About 30 union members gathered at Boston's British Consulate on April 16 to demand justice for 570 California miners who have been locked-out of work by the Rio Tinto mining corporation since January 31, 2010 at the world’s 2nd largest borax mine in Boron, CA.
Two representative of the group went inside the Consulate's offices and met with Chris Henderson, the Deputy Consul General and his staff.
Over 30 people attended an informal lunchtime debate on Climate Justice, South Africa and the World Bank last Friday between Prof. Patrick Bond of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa and Prof. William Moomaw of Tufts University and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The event took place at the encuentro 5 movement space in Chinatown, and was chaired by Jason Pramas of Open Media Boston.
When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts put forward a new Economic Development bill, Verizon and Comcast inserted a little known provision to deregulate "Voice Over Internet Protocol" technology, often called VOIP.
VOIP is the communication technology of the future. Soon nearly every telephone call will be made using an internet protocol instead of the traditional wireline network.
What ever happened to the noble ideals of journalism? Newspapers have a critical role to play in our democracy, to provoke critical thinking and provide the information we need to preserve our freedoms. But the opinion page of the April 8th edition of the Boston Herald projects more hate than light.
For many months I have been astounded by the absurdity of those Americans who equate Obama’s Private Insurance Bailout Bill with Communism or Socialism. A reader of an op-ed piece of mine wrote me explaining she had demonstrated against Obama’s health plan because she was opposed to Socialism. I said she must mean “National Socialism,” and I’d protest that too.
WASHINGTON - A full bus of 55 people from Boston joined thousands of other anti-war protesters in the nation's capital on Saturday March 20 for the ANSWER Coalition's protest against the Iraq and Afghan wars - held on the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
