Common Start Rally on Saturday + State House Staff Union

This Saturday, parents, families, child care providers and workers, and activists across the state will be joining the Common Start Coalition for a rally on the Boston Common to highlight the need for robust child care and early education infrastructure.
Date: Saturday, April 9
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm

Place: Boston Common at the Parkman Bandstand

RSVP at https://bit.ly/csrallyrsvp

The rally is family-friendly and free to attend. Bus transportation with snacks and beverages will be provided from key locations across Massachusetts.

Can’t make the rally? Send your state legislators an email in support of the bill!

Common Start Rally

Show Your Support for MA Senate Staff

Earlier this week, members of the MA State Senate staff announced that after years of staff organizing, they achieved the number of authorization cards necessary to form a MA Senate staff union. On Thursday, March 31, representatives of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2222 (IBEW) notified Senate President Karen Spilka of the successful majority and requested voluntary recognition of the Massachusetts State House Employee Union, which will become the 2nd state legislative staff union in United States history.

Show your support for the MA State House Employee Union here.

Actions, not just words, on the last day of Women’s History Month

Today marks the end of Women’s History Month, which should remind us of how far we’ve come and how far we have to go to achieve gender equity.

Gender inequities, especially at the workplace, are a result of policy or lack thereof. And by being intentional, legislators can—through policies, rules, and culture—remove systemic barriers that women face and build a better, more equitable world for all.

Everyone Deserves a Safe Workplace…And Yes, That Includes the State House

In 2018, amid the #MeToo reckoning, the Massachusetts House of Representatives created a new position, an “independent” Equal Employment Opportunity officer to examine allegations of harassment or discrimination while protecting the confidentiality of accusers and witnesses. They filled the job in June 2019, but the officeholder left for an new job in November 2020. It has been vacant ever since.

That’s right: for 15 months, this office, which remains essential in ensuring that the MA State House is a safe and welcoming workplace for all, has remained empty.

The House cannot run out the rest of the legislative session without filling this position. Let your state rep know that this isn’t acceptable–and that such an office needs more than just nominal independence.

Contact your state rep today.

RSVP Today! Saturday, April 9: Spring into Action for Common Start

Join the Common Start Coalition to celebrate the milestones of our campaign and to hear how YOU can help us ensure a stronger future for every child! For more information about the Common Start Coalition, please go to: www.commonstartma.org
Date: Saturday, April 9
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm

Place: Boston Common at the Parkman Bandstand

RSVP at https://bit.ly/csrallyrsvp The rally is family friendly and free to attend. Bus transportation with snacks and beverages will be provided from key locations across Massachusetts. With state Covid-19 mask requirements still in place on public and private transportation, including buses, please plan to wear a mask, except while eating snacks or drinking beverages provided to passengers.

Common Start Coalition

Letter: “Mass. House is not moving the needle on workplace harassment, abuse”

Check out Progressive Needham’s Jan Soma’s new letter in the Globe:

Mass. House is not moving the needle on workplace harassment, abuse

Many thanks to the Globe for reporting about the empty Equal Employment Opportunity officer position in the Massachusetts House (“Empty post has House staff doubting commitment to equity,” Page A1, March 18). The idea was a good one as far as it went. A number of states require harassment education for legislators and their staffs, and many more recommend it. If we are going to lead the way, though, training is far from enough. This training has not been found to move the needle significantly. Harassment and sexual misconduct are baked into our culture, and we are hard pressed to change unconscious tendencies that have gone mostly unnoticed and unpunished for hundreds of years.

What’s more, it is common sense that staff are unlikely to confide in someone who is hired and fired by the Legislature, the very body that must be scrutinized. This position must be fully independent. And there must be transparency and data to assess whether progress is being made. The best way to measure the degree of the problem and whether improvements are being made is an anonymous survey of the workplace climate. The results should be made public to improve trust.

Most leaders have little to no information about the degree of harassment or abuse in their workplaces. Workers who are harassed tend to be those with the least power, and most historically have remained silent. This silence encourages leaders’ complacency. The recently passed federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021will eventually give employers more information because workers will have additional tools to stand up and fight.

I would challenge our Legislature not to wait, and to lead the way to increasing the safety and dignity of our workforce.

Jan Soma

Needham

News Roundup — March 27, 2022

“Beacon Hill Lags on Sexual Harassment,” Boston Globe

“The bottom line is that State House staffers — now that most are making their post-pandemic return to the building — need someone they can turn to and trust if they are experiencing harassment or discrimination. That person needs to be a visible and accessible presence on Beacon Hill.”

“One Tool to Help Create Affordable Housing — Real Estate Transfer Fees,” Boston Globe

“We have the opportunity to arrest the statewide housing crisis, bolster our economic sustainability, and protect public health. The Legislature must pass the transfer fee and hand municipalities across the state the right tool so we can get to it.”

“Letter: Millionaires’ tax no ‘blank check’,” The Salem News

“Massachusetts is one of the few states without a higher tax on its uber-wealthy. Without that tool, Massachusetts voters know any other option will hit them directly in higher sales or property taxes, even more tuition and fee hikes, cuts to our children’s already understaffed and overstretched schools, or further deterioration of our crumbling infrastructure.”

“Rich Countries Must Stop Producing Oil and Gas By 2034, Says Study,” The Guardian

“The report, led by Prof Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, found that wealthy countries such as the UK, US and Australia had until 2034 to stop all oil and gas production to give the world a 50% chance of preventing devastating climate breakdown, while the poorest nations that are also heavily reliant on fossil fuels should be given until 2050.”

“Blue States Must Do More to Protect Democracy,” Democracy Docket

“Too often we have ignored the problems facing voters in blue states, focusing exclusively on the voter suppression laws passed by Republican legislatures. This is a missed opportunity. By improving voting rights, Democrats can improve voting rights for their citizens and raise the bar for what is considered normal and acceptable elsewhere. Finally, showing that expanding voting opportunities works undercuts the Republicans’ false narrative of voter fraud.”

“Wu, Janey, Pressley tout benefits of new fare-free bus service in Boston,” Boston Globe

“I’m very excited that now making those multiple trips to school, to home, to pick up the kids without having to worry about how that will add up or take away from your ability to pay for food, or medicine or rent, that is the ultimate goal here,” Wu said.

“Letter: Access to legal representation changes lives for domestic violence survivors,” Patriot Ledger

“Too often domestic violence survivors face eviction due to violence, and most are unaware of how to protect themselves in court. For too many, eviction means homelessness. All people deserve the right to live without fear of abuse or that they would be unfairly removed from their homes without representation.”

“Healey’s positions on criminal justice give some Democratic activists pause,” Boston Globe

“When you are an attorney general, there tends to be a built-in relationship [with police] and she has definitely been too deferential to state and local police,” said Progressive Massachusetts policy director Jonathan Cohn. “There are many good things she has done as attorney general, but she has not been a leader on criminal justice issues.”

“PILOT payments should be standardized statewide,” CommonWealth

“Given our communities’ needs—in such critical areas as housing, transportation, public schools, and public health—the legislation’s value is obvious. For institutions too, there is a value to having universal standards evenly applied across the board—offering a chance for them to restore public trust through deeds, and not just words.”

“Reform laws only as good as those who enforce them,” Boston Globe

“These fixes shouldn’t wait. When new and trailblazing laws are passed, politicians and advocates too often pat each other on the back and move on. But reforms are only as good as those willing to enforce them and those committed to make them work — not just on paper but on the ground.”

“No, COVID Isn’t Over,” Boston Globe

“Perhaps there will come a time for post-pandemic victory laps. But this moment needs more vigilance, not fewer protocols or threats to federal funding for virus treatments. COVID is still here, but what seems to be all but gone is the leadership on every level to do everything possible to eradicate it.”

“Letter: Fair Share Amendment could boost quality of life for all in Massachusetts,” Berkshire Eagle

“The current state income tax burdens lower-income taxpayers more heavily than it does the wealthy. Here is an opportunity to reduce the inequities of our system when thousands of working families in our state have lost jobs and housing and otherwise have had their lives upended as a result of the pandemic, while the wealthy have seen their incomes soar. As President Joe Biden remarked in his recent State of the Union, it’s time that “wealthy American start paying their fair share.””

“Mass. House leaders heralded the creation of an Equal Employment Opportunity officer. They’ve left the position empty for 15 months.,” Boston Globe

“Ten current and former House staff, most of whom spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation, told the Globe that they believe the unfilled role signals a lack of commitment to workplace safety by House leadership, and alleged that a self-evaluation McLafferty had conducted regarding staff pay and job descriptions was never finished or discussed after he left the House.”

“Inflation blunts impact of school aid increases in Baker’s budget,” WBUR

“More than 40% of the state’s school districts would receive the smallest possible bump in funding under the governor’s budget plan, and administration officials and lawmakers alike agreed Tuesday that the minimum aid increase is not really much of an increase thanks to the high rate of inflation.”

“Cheap fares, trains to more suburbs: This is what the MBTA was supposed to look like,” Boston Globe

“I think we’d have a city and a region far less dependent on cars,” Johnson said. “Far fewer folks would be impacted by high gas prices or terrible traffic. We’d likely be having fewer fights over parking in new developments.”

“Suspending the gas tax doesn’t make sense,” CommonWealth

“Let’s face facts folks. The problem is not high state gas taxes. They have not gone up since 2013. They don’t even keep pace with inflation. The problem is unbridled corporate greed coupled with US energy insecurity that makes us all economic victims of Russian aggression and self-interested oil cartels. Why, then, would we deprive ourselves of much-needed public revenue, why would we deplete the amount of funding available for investments that will improve our lives, as a response to these unstable, unpredictable, and unmanageable global forces? And why would we do so in a way that helps the wealthiest and not the neediest?”

“Wind down of housing assistance raises concerns,” CommonWealth

“Homes for All Massachusetts and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a report which found that evictions are disproportionately occurring in Black and Latino neighborhoods, neighborhoods with more single mother heads of households, areas with absentee and corporate landlords, and in central and southeast Massachusetts. Of all evictions filed between October 2020 and October 2021, 43 percent were in neighborhoods where a majority of residents are non-white, even though only 32 percent of rental housing is in these areas.”

“Massachusetts House OKs Bill Banning Bias Based on Hairstyle,” NBC News

“Eighty percent of Black women are more likely to change their hair from its natural state to fit a workplace setting and changing to fit your workplace simply suppresses your creativity,” Tyler said.

PM in the News: What’s the Matter with Mass?

Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn was quoted in a recent article in The New Republic on the state of the Massachusetts Democratic Party:

Jonathan Cohn, an organizer with Progressive Mass and dedicated chronicler of the state party, tells The New Republic that in order to understand why it’s so difficult for progressives to build power in the Bay State, one must first come to grips with Massachusetts’s underlying political ideology. “People think Massachusetts isn’t a terrain of conflict or struggle because they conceptualize conflict only through nationalized fights of Democrats versus Republicans, and we don’t have those kinds of fights because we have a nonexistent Republican Party and plenty of Democrats in our legislative supermajority whose voting records align with moderate Republicans,” he says.

…“You don’t have big donors or outside progressive groups mobilizing electorally here, because everyone’s under the impression that we’re all just living happily in this liberal utopia,” Cohn says.

“Then you also have Charlie Baker, who nobody is willing to attack outright,” he says. “Whether for his vetoes, or for his regressive stance on basic social welfare policies, everybody in the state is terrified of his approval rating, and so it keeps growing even as he continues to attack progressive policies and voices.”

…..

“If you are a wealthy, educated, socially liberal person, you align with the Democratic Party in most places, but Baker is a great asset for your fiscal conservatism,” Cohn says. “This is the kind of person that really defines the voice of The Boston Globe editorial board: They represent the mindset of white, upper-middle-class, inner-ring suburbia—socially liberal but into the idea that a friendly Republican governor is a check on a runaway Democratic legislative branch.”

Let’s Talk about the House

With the retirement of Speaker Bob DeLeo imminent, news reports have asserted that House Majority Leader Ron Mariano (D-Quincy) already has the votes lined up to be Speaker–something that has been an open secret for years.

If you’ve been worried about the conservative and authoritarian drift of the MA House under Speaker Bob DeLeo, you should be even more worried about what’s to come under a Speaker Ron Mariano, who is more conservative than DeLeo and no less top-down in his approach to legislating.

Legislators who have not yet pledged their support should be asking hard questions about whether Ron Mariano plans to ensure a vote on the Fair Share Amendment next year (given his past opposition to it), whether he plans to diversify the all-white and almost-all-male House Leadership team, and whether he will ensure that important climate and housing legislation gets passed before this year’s session runs out.

With the economic depression we’re facing as a Commonwealth, progressive legislators need to work together to make concrete demands on Leadership for both bold policy and open process, or we’ll just end up seeing more of the same.

CommonWealth: A New Rules Fight

CommonWealth’s Shira Schoenberg wrote about Speaker Robert DeLeo’s short-lived effort to take advantage of the pandemic to make a more top-down House:

Several progressive activists also voiced their concerns about the proposal, even as they generally praised the decision to move to remote voting. Jonathan Cohn, issues chair of Progressive Massachusetts, a group that frequently calls for more transparency at the State House, said requiring the approval of 16 members for a roll call vote is already a higher threshold than what most other states require. “Raising it to 40 is just a way of saying we don’t want these to happen, period,” Cohn said.

Boston Globe: A Legislature as Slow as Ever

The Boston Globe‘s Matt Stout and Victoria McGrane wrote about the glacial pace of lawmaking in Beacon Hill during the pandemic:

That glacial law-making pace has long defined Beacon Hill, said Jonathan Cohn of the group Progressive Massachusetts. “But it’s especially striking when you have a moment of crisis that requires bold action . . . and it’s just slow moving.”

CommonWealth: A Secretive Committee Process

PM Issues Committee chairman Jonathan Cohn was quoted in Shira Schoenberg’s new CommonWealth piece on the MA House’s secretive committee process:

Jonathan Cohn, head of the issues committee for the liberal organizing group Progressive Massachusetts, voiced dismay at the lack of transparency and said he has also had mixed experiences – able to get vote totals from some committees, but not from others.

“The problem with the system as it exists is that legislators are able to kill bills giving everyone clean hands afterwards,” Cohn said. “It’s people’s jobs to take votes. They should be willing to defend those votes to their constituents.”

According to Cohn’s research, 26 states make committee votes public on a legislative website.