The Enterprise: Rent Control on Beacon Hill

Ben Berke of The Enterprise wrote about the upcoming hearing on rent control on Beacon Hill — as well as the state of housing politics in MA:

Jonathan Cohn, who helps lead the advocacy group Progressive Massachusetts, said the bill will likely need broader support than it currently has to pass.

However, with House leadership considering plans to pass an omnibus housing bill this session, Cohn said legislators could force a vote on rent control and other tenant protections by adding them to the broader piece of legislation as amendments.

Boston Globe: A Contested Mayoral Campaign?

Milton Valencia, “Will Michelle Wu run for mayor of Boston? And can she win?,” Boston Globe (11/26/2019)

“I get the sense that there’s some bubbling up of energy,” said Rachel Poliner of the Roslindale and West Roxbury chapter of Progressive Massachusetts, which endorsed Wu. She pointed out efforts to organize new slates of progressive-minded candidates for ward committees in Hyde Park and East Boston, to unseat the traditional Democratic establishment.

“If we’re talking about the challenges the city faces and what needs to be done,” she said, “then we need people who think big.”

MassLive: MA’s Struggling Higher Ed Sector

PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn was quoted in MassLive‘s Shira Schoenberg’s write-up of a bill passed by Beacon Hill to keep a closer eye on the financial conditions of the state’s colleges and universities in light of a spate of recent closures:

While the bill passed unanimously with no debate, the liberal advocacy group Progressive Massachusetts criticized lawmakers for not going far enough. Jonathan Cohn, chair of the issues committee for Progressive Massachusetts, said in a statement, “Making sure that students and the state are aware of a college’s imminent closure or tenuous financial status is great, but it doesn’t do anything to make higher education more affordable for Massachusetts families.”

CommonWealth: Election Day voter registration is good for democracy

PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn penned an editorial for CommonWealth in honor of National Voter Registration Day today:

TODAY — THE FOURTH Tuesday of September—is National Voter Registration Day. It’s also the day that Boston voters will go to the polls for hotly contested preliminary elections for City Council.

If the past is any guide, turnout will be low (we’ll be lucky if it passes 10 percent), a product of both apathy and design.

We all have work to do to counter the apathy that drives low voter participation and to build a stronger civic culture. However, that’s a multi-year, ongoing process. Eliminating the barriers that exist by design is much simpler.

Take, for example, our 20-day voter registration cutoff date….

The Appeal: Why Does MA Still Have 287(g)s?

As Daniel Nichanian of The Appeal wrote, Illinois has banned 287(g) agreements (which deputize state and local law enforcement to ICE), but other states have yet to catch up:

And in Massachusetts, where Democrats enjoy a veto-proof legislative majority, lawmakers have repeatedly ignored or killed the Safe Communities Act, which includes a measure that would ban 287(g) within the state. “As long as the Massachusetts legislature continues to punt, they are being complicit in Trump’s racist deportation agenda,” said Jonathan Cohn, the chairperson of the issues committee at Progressive Massachusetts, a group that advocates for this bill. “Inaction is the result of a legislature and leadership that is unrepresentative of the diversity of the state.”

Boston Globe: The Stirrings of a Primary?

The Boston Globe‘s Victoria McGrane and James Pindell analyzed the dynamics of a contested Senate primary between Markey and Kennedy within the Massachusetts Democratic Party. PM issues and elections committee chair Jonathan Cohn weighed in:

“A challenger needs to make the case that there’s some issue that hasn’t been addressed and some urgency that’s lacking,” said Jonathan Cohn, chairman of the issues committee of Progressive Massachusetts, a grass-roots advocacy group. If there’s such a case to be made against Markey, he said, “I haven’t heard it.”

Bay State Banner: An Issue-Focused Council Race

JP Progressives’s Ziba Cranmer was quoted in a new article by Yawu Miller in the Bay State Banner about the year’s Boston City Council elections:

JP Progressives’ Cranmer said interest in this year’s races is already ramping up. Between in-person attendance and online views, 300 people watched the group’s at-large candidates forums.

“It’s about at the same level of interest as the DA’s race was last year,” she said.

Bay State Banner: A District 5 Forum hosted by PWRR

“District 5 candidates gather for West Roxbury forum” — Yawu Miller, Bay State Banner (5/30/2019)

In a prelude to what promises to be a hard-fought eight-way race for the District 5 City Council seat, four candidates squared off during a recent forum sponsored by the West Roxbury/Roslindale Progressives group.

The forum, held at the St. John Chrysostom Church in West Roxbury, brought out candidates Ricardo Arroyo, Maria Esdale Farrell, Alkia Powell and Mimi Turchinetz. To participate in the forum, candidates were required to respond to a questionnaire by the organizing group and to have submitted enough signatures to appear on the Sept. 24 preliminary ballot.

The Appeal: Felony Disenfranchisement across States

“Debate on Felony Disenfranchisement Is Already Here in State Legislatures Around the Country” — Daniel Nichanian, The Appeal, 5/2/2019

The committee vote was not public. Only four of its 17 members answered my multiple requests for comment about how they voted.

All those who replied told me that they voted to advance the reform. They are state Representatives Russell Holmes and Lindsay Sabadosa, and state Senators Sonia Chang-Díaz and James Eldridge. All four are Democrats, but so are 14 of the committee’s 17 members. “It’s very easy for prisoners to lose hope and their connection to society, and restoring the right to vote would provide an enhanced capacity to stay connected,” Elridge told me. State organizers have taken issue with the secrecy of this process. “When legislators vote behind closed doors to continue to a racist history of disenfranchisement, with no public record of how they voted for their constituents, that’s a fundamental failure of democracy,” Jonathan Cohn, an organizer with Progressive Mass, an advocacy group that supported the proposal, told me in a written message. He added that the lack of public votes is “a systemic problem for activists in Massachusetts because bills can be killed with everyone having ‘clean hands.’