Real Solutions for Our Current Crisis, New Possibilities for Our Future
Green-Rainbow Party Co-Chairs’ Statement:
April 26, 2020:
We are living in a time of escalating crisis: pandemic, environmental collapse, perpetual wars, and an economic and political system incapable of meeting the needs of the people. This shocking reality has been decades in the making.
The Democratic and Republican Parties long ago abandoned working people to serve the wealthy 1%. They cannot lead us to a better future.
We urgently need a government that leads by listening to those who are suffering the most, and understands we are all connected. For this to happen, local, state, and national officials must be independent of the corporate parties and oceans of ‘dark money,’ that continue to block positive system change.
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MA Indigenous Agenda
The Green-Rainbow Party has endorsed the MA Indigenous Agenda (http://maindigenousagenda.org/) --five bills that work to counter centuries of erasing or debasing Indigenous people and presence in the Commonwealth. We urge Green voters and supporters to call their legislators now in support of the bills, especially if you are a constituent of a committee chairperson.
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Eliminate the U.S. Military
WHEREAS THE U.S. MILITARY SERVES NO USEFUL PURPOSE AND IS USED SOLELY FOR IMPERIALIST WAR AND TO ENRICH ARMS MANUFACTURERS; AND WHEREAS THE U.S. MILITARY WREAKS TERRIBLE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION WHICH IS THREATENING THE FUTURE OF LIFE ON EARTH; AND WHEREAS THE U.S. MILITARY CONSUMES ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF RESOURCES THAT COULD BE USED TO SUSTAINABLY PROVIDE FOR HUMAN NEEDS, THE GREEN-RAINBOW PARTY OF MASSACHUSETTS RECOGNIZES THAT CUTTING U.S. MILITARY SPENDING IN HALF (OR SOME OTHER ARBITRARY AMOUNT) IS NOT ENOUGH.
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GRP endorses the Climate Strikes
Statement from Green-Rainbow Party of MA co-chair, Charlene DiCalogero:
“The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts, the state’s affiliate of the Green Party of the US, is proud to endorse the Boston and Worcester Climate Strikes.
As the only national political party founded on principles of environmental and social justice and sustainability, we particularly applaud the member groups of the Worcester Climate Strike Coalition (WCSC) who decided to “pump up the volume” in the city of Worcester and the region in response to the climate emergency.
Through multiple demonstrations and actions that have already taken place this summer, and continuing through September, the 9/20/19 Youth Strike and the 9/27/19 General Strike groups will inform, educate and activate people in our region.
As part of this coalition, the GRP demands that local, state and national governments act decisively to stem the crisis within the next ten years. Together, we can insist that our public officials accelerate the conversion to 100% renewable energy, end sacrifice zones that hurt poor and Black and Brown people first and worst, and create the Green and just economy and society we need.
I warmly invite you to join the millions worldwide who will walk out of school and work on September 20th and September 27th to demand action now. And I do mean you, and everyone you can bring with you, because to change everything, we need everyone.”
For more information on the Worcester Climate Strike:
www.350centralmass.org/climate-strike-2019 .
The Value of Mental Healthcare
Letter to the Editor published in The Republican and Masslive.com
by 2018 GRP Candidate for Secretary of the Commonwealth, Juan G. Sanchez
I often wonder about my mother who suffered with drug addiction beginning in her early teens and whether she had the support she needed. I wonder if anyone ever reached out to her to make sure she was OK. I’ve wondered what kind of person she would’ve been had drugs not been a part of her life. Would she have been a good mom? A good friend? These are things I will never have an answer to as she left when I was 2 years old and passed when I was 10. She was 28.
Some things have a price such as homes, products, etc., and those are very important things to many people but what price do we put on a life? What do you tell a parent, a child, a loved one when the person they love passes from an overdose? The help wasn’t there when I was a child. Opioid abuse wasn't considered an epidemic in the 90s but today services are available, and we have a state government that is trying to strategically target drug addiction so that no other family needs to end up broken again.I have heard neighbors argue that the new group home that the Mental Health Association (MHA) is planning on Yale Street in Holyoke is about safety, property taxes, and comfort but what’s safer and better for property taxes than helping someone become a productive member of their community? What’s more comforting than knowing that by being a good neighbor you are helping someone reunite with their loved ones and become healthy again? People argue that Holyoke is a nonprofit haven and should stop being ground zero for so many non-tax paying services yet offer no plan, just fear and judgment of the most vulnerable in our community.
I’m open to dialogue on growing the tax-base, but we can do that together and still welcome our new neighbors. I have full confidence that our new neighbors will cause no problem in Holyoke or the neighborhood they have chosen and look forward to welcoming them as members of our community.
Juan G. Sanchez, Holyoke
Letter on Masslive
https://www.masslive.com/opinion/2019/06/group-home-planned-for-holyoke-good-for-community-letters.html?fbclid=IwAR19sfzrG_ewN2tuaBQDdxr-jNDyHs5knsOdzIXZmI97PVjvyN4eGJZQxG4
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