News

What is the Role of Healing in Resisting Police Oppression?

MIT CoLab: You primarily identify as a healer. How does that identity fit into your work with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition ? Mariella Saba: The Los Angles Police Department (LAPD) is the most diverse department in the nation. They have been very strategic in hiring many people of color. That’s their way of saying “we’re not racist.” But in reality they’re just enacting their...

Residents and Affordable Housing Activists Rally to Save Their Homes

More than 100 affordable housing activists, including residents of the Museum Square Apartments, cheered and rallied outside the Mount Vernon complex on June 14 to save their homes. Since 2013, tenants of 401 K Street NW have been fighting against Bush Companies, which owns their building and plans to demolish it to pave the way for new luxury apartments in its place. The apartments currently...

Nine Arrested At DAPA Protest

Calling for a moratorium on deportations in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling, more than two dozen people Monday evening blocked Main Street downtown. What started as a rally on the sidewalk outside the Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Courthouse on Main Street turned into civil disobedience shortly after 4 p.m. when the protesters entered the road at the intersection with Linden Place. Hartford...

Grassroots Effort Spurred Good Change to Low-income Energy Policy

In June 2015, the state Public Service Commission created a proposal to modify low-income energy assistance programs — without soliciting input from low-income people. Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson anchored a committee within the Energy Democracy Alliance (EDA), a statewide energy justice coalition, to organize a grassroots response. We convened in Albany in August 2015, and low-income members of EDA organizations interrupted a meeting for the proceeding...

Bunker Hill Superfund Site is Still a Toxic Mess, with Legacy of Suffering

“This place stunk so bad,” says Paul Flory, “and you had that metal taste in your teeth.” Flory was born in 1970 and grew up in the same part of the country he lives in today: the Coeur d’Alene River Basin of northern Idaho. Beginning in the 1880s and for more than a century, locals have mined this region—also called the Silver Valley—for its abundance...

Community Packs Hearing on “LaSalle St” Financial Transaction Tax

CHICAGO - The Senate Revenue and House Revenue and Finance Committees held a joint hearing Tuesday to discuss the impact and implementation of a "LaSalle Street" tax on trades occurring at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (named for the street on which they reside). The LaSalle Street Tax (LST) campaign turned out in force with...

'I Like the Way They Help People'

URBANA — It wasn't just driving on the other side of the road that Scotland native Paul Montador had to adjust to when he first began making his home in the U.S. It was all the friendliness. Back in the UK, he'd go into stores and encounter grumpiness, he recalled, and when he went into stores in Champaign-Urbana he found friendly faces and people telling...

Activists Voice Opposition to Springfield Biomass Plant

SPRINGFIELD -- City Council Vice President Orland Ramos and environmental activists voiced opposition to the long-debated plan for a biomass energy plant in East Springfield at a press conference outside City Hall Monday evening. The City Council tonight is considering a nonbinding resolution, initiated by Ramos and sponsored by Councilor Timothy Allen, to encourage the city's Public Health Council to hold site assignment proceedings on...

Alarming Suicide Rates At A Women's Prison Spur Calls For Action

Over an 18-month period from 2014 to 2015, there were four suicides and at least 20 attempted suicides at a female-only prison in San Bernardino County. There had been a total of three suicides at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in the 14 years prior. Multiple groups, including the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), are demanding that CIW and the California Department of...

Immigration Rights Group Wants Joe Arpaio Arrested for Contempt of Court in Racial Profiling Case

Migrant justice organization Puente Human Rights Movement is demanding a federal judge to charge Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio with criminal contempt of court in a case that proved the sheriff's office racially profiled and unlawfully apprehended Latinos in immigration enforcement operations. On Friday, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow found Arpaio and three of his top deputies guilty of civil contempt, saying they have not...

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