From Other Sources:  News For And About Amherst.  This Week – Local News Roundup And A Potpourri On Guns, Democracy, Housing, And Public Health.

This feature offers links to selected articles that might be of interest to Amherst readers. 

April is always an especially busy news month here in Amherst. Here are some local stories from the last few weeks that we were unable to cover in the Indy as well a mix of interesting news and commentary that is worth checking out.. Have you read something that you think is worth sharing? Share the link in the comments section below and tell us why you are sharing it.

Amherst News
State Officials Criticize UMass Privatization Plan by Sarah Robertson (4/6/23). The University of Massachusetts Amherst is still pursuing plans to move about 100 public, unionized jobs to the non-unionized private nonprofit UMass Amherst Foundation, despite recent statements by elected officials urging the school to consider other plans. The affected employees work on fundraising and marketing projects for the school’s Advancement office, and are represented by two unions, the Professional Staff Union (PSU) and the University Staff Association (USA). University officials announced the proposed change in an email to Advancement staff earlier this year, saying the move was necessary to keep the university in compliance with state and federal pension laws, and to secure the retirement accounts of employees already enrolled in the state system. Both claims have been disputed by the unions.US Congress member Jim McGovern, state senator Jo Comerford, and state representative Mindy Domb released a joint statement last week urging the university to drop the plans to privatize the jobs. (The Shoestring)

Students Gather To Call For Abolition Of  UMass Police Department by Shliha Bayrak (4/6/23). On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 5, a group of around 100 students gathered in front of the University of Massachusetts Student Union in response to the latest University update regarding the arrest of an engineering student of color this past November. Those in attendance advocated for the abolition of the UMass Police Department. The demonstration was organized by a coalition of student groups including UMass Amherst Cops Off Campus, Revolutionary Student Action, Prison Abolition Collective and Revolutionary Marxist Students. Markers and cardboard were provided for demonstrators to make their own signs, including one which read, “UMPD: F*** off and never come back!” (Massachusetts Daily Collegian)

Craig’s Doors Launches Free Bus Pass Program To Overcome Transportation Barrier by Emily Thurlow (4/5/23).  Craig’s Doors leaders …began working out the details for a so-called “Fare Access Program,” which is now providing free full-day, unlimited bus passes for its guests. The pilot program launched March 1 and continues until July 26, giving clients the ability to take public transit to work, medical appointments, and the grocery store, among other trips. “The people who stay with us are at the bottom of the economic ladder. And while a lot of people think that public transportation is cheap and accessible, for a lot of people who stay here, the fare is too much of a barrier for them to actually use it to get where they need to go and to get the resources they need to get out of homelessness,” Myers said. (Amherst Bulletin)

Amherst Hosts Reparations Trailblazer by Scott Merzbach (3/30/23). A photograph from around 1900 of Amherst resident Leilah Bridges depicts her in her Sunday best, sporting a cravat and fancy hat that shows her love for millinery. It’s a striking image of a woman that Robin Rue Simmons, the architect of the nation’s first city-funded reparations program in Evanston, Illinois, says captures a community’s entrepreneurial spirit and a woman’s strength and pride in her heritage. The image is part of the Ancestral Bridges exhibit that serves to inform people of the often hidden history of Amherst’s Black residents, and the challenges they faced. “People need to be given the opportunity to stand in the spaces where people were treated as less than others,” Simmons said.For Simmons, who was provided a guided tour of the pictures displayed at Frost Library on the Amherst College campus Thursday, such projects are critical to building support for reparations initiatives like that being undertaken in Amherst, where the Town Council has committee $2 million in revenue from recreational marijuana sales for its program.“The practice of reparations has to be led by the harmed community,” Simmons said. “But what I have found is that there is strength in partnerships, collaborations and allies being in partnership.” (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

DP Dough Will Return To Amherst Where National Chain Started by Will Katcher (3/29/23). National calzone franchise D.P. Dough will return to its birthplace in Amherst later this year, according to a representative of the local business community.The calzone joint, famous for supplying late-night sustenance in college towns across the country, began in Amherst in 1987 before spawning a national franchise. The original D.P. Dough in Amherst Center has since closed. But a new franchise location is expected to open in the downtown area by the fall of this year, said Gabrielle Gould, the executive director of the Amherst Business Improvement District. (MassLive)

Amherst Advocacy Group Continues To Push For Town-wide Trash Pickup by Scott Merzbach (3/28/23). An average Amherst household is paying upward of $550 per year to have curbside trash and recycling pickup, but is getting no incentive to reduce what is being put into the waste stream, according to results of a survey presented to the Town Services and Outreach Committee. The advocacy group Zero Waste Amherst recently gave the Town Council subcommittee information from its “Trash, Recycling and Compost Services Survey and Data” as it continues to push for changes to the current system where residents are either obligated to hire a hauler, approved by the town, or to bring their trash and recyclables directly to the transfer station on Belchertown Road. That group’s preference, through a revised solid waste bylaw it is proposing, is to institute a townwide contract for waste and recycling hauling services.“The intention of this bylaw is to dramatically reduce waste and its associated pollution and emissions, and to reduce waste and recycling costs for residents, as well,” member John Root said. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

‘We Need Each One Of You’: UMass Ceremony Welcomes 229 Freshly Minted And Appreciative Citizens by Scott Merzbach (4/5/23). Shaifeeen and Oforah were among immigrants from 69 countries, living in 52 communities throughout the region, who were part of the naturalization ceremony in which the oath was administered by U.S. District Court Clerk Tamara Figueroa. Each had been duly examined and found well qualified for U.S. citizenship. U.S. District Court Judge Katherine A. Robertson welcomed the new citizens. Robertson said they will enrich and strengthen democracy, adding that the country wouldn’t be what it is without them.“You are now American citizens,” Robertson said. “Today we’re celebrating the choice you have made and the commitment to this country.” (Amherst Bulletin)

Department of Labor Will Hear Teachers’ Union Complaint Against Amherst School District by Jim Russell (2/1/23) The Amherst-Pelham Education Association said the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations will hold a full hearing regarding its allegations that the School Committee unlawfully transferred work to non-bargaining unit employees and retaliated against a union representative during the 2021-2022 academic year. According to the union which is part of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, a full hearing on its charges against the district will occur Oct. 3. In a Jan. 5 letter, Philip T. Roberts, director of the Department of Labor Relations, said a department investigator “alleged that the School Committee unlawfully transferred bargaining unit work to non-bargaining unit employees; retaliated against employee Lani Blechman for engaging in protected, concerted activity; and independently interfered with, restrained, and coerced its employees in the exercise of their rights under … the Law.” (Masslive)

Amherst Adjacent News
The Pandemic In Western Mass. The Long March 2020:  An Introduction And Images by The Shoestring Staff (3/30/23). In this series, The Shoestring will explore and remember the impacts of COVID pandemic on different aspects of life in western Mass. (The Shoestring)

Potpourri Of News And Commentary
Guns: Deaths Among Children Are Now Driving The Country’s Life Expectancy Decline by David Wallace Wells (4/6/23). Firearms account for almost half of the increase. Homicide accounted for 6.9 percent of deaths among that group, defined as those 19 years old or younger, and suicide accounted for 6.8 percent, according to a January analysis published in JAMA Network Open. Car crashes and accidental drug overdoses — which the National Center for Health Statistics collates along with other accidental deaths as “unintentional injuries” — accounted for 18.4 percent. In 2021, according to a JAMA essay published in March, more than twice as many kids died from poisoning, including drug overdoses, as from Covid-19. More than three times as many died of suicide, more than four times as many died from homicide, and more than five times as many died in car crashes and other transportation accidents (which began increasing during the pandemic after a long, steady decline). (New York Times)

Democracy: Tennessee Republicans Live Up To State’s Hateful Legacy By Expelling Two Democrats by Melinda Henneberger (4/7/23). C’mon, doesn’t everyone know that the only polite response to the endless slaughter of American schoolchildren is silence and inaction? And of course we know, too, that nothing is more important than decorum to the party that continues to whitewash the Jan. 6 actions of those who assaulted 140 police officers, chanted “hang Mike Pence!” and left behind, as Nancy Pelosi put it that day, “the poo poo that they’re making all over” the U.S. Capitol. Young and not-young Tennesseeans from all over the state have been protesting, just as James Madison intended, ever since six people, including three 9-year-olds, were shot to death at a private Christian school in Nashville last month. (Sacramento Bee)

Democracy: Liberal Judge’s Supreme Court Win In Wisconsin Shows A Shakeup In US Politics by Sam Levine (4/5/23). Janet Protasiewicz’s victory in the Wisconsin supreme court race on Tuesday amounted to a political earthquake in Wisconsin, one of America’s most volatile political battlegrounds.Her victory underscores the continued political salience of abortion rights for Democrats. Her election to the court means that the Wisconsin 1849 abortion ban will be struck down (a case is already coming through the courts). Just as they did across the country in 2022, Democrats made it a central issue in the supreme court campaign and voters turned out. “Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They’ve chosen to reject partisan extremism,” Protasiewicz said during remarks at her election night party in Milwaukee. “It means our democracy will always prevail.” When Protasiewicz is seated in August, the ideological balance of Wisconsin’s seven-member supreme court will shift from conservative to liberal. A challenge is expected shortly thereafter to Wisconsin’s electoral maps, which are so heavily distorted in favor of Republicans that it is virtually impossible for Democrats to ever win a majority. Protasiewicz has said the maps are “rigged” and the court is likely to strike them down, making elections much more competitive in the state. (The Guardian)

Democracy: Brandon Johnson, A Win For People Power In Chicago by Miles Kampf-Lassin (4/5/23). In Chicago’s mayoral runoff Tuesday, Paul Vallas’s vision of budget cuts and law and order lost to Brandon Johnson’s promises to tax the rich and invest in social services. (Jacobin /Portside)

Democracy: Abortion Rights Are A Winning Issue Again by Madison Pauly (4/5/23). If history were any indicator, yesterday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin should have been a dud. Voters notoriously stay at home when there isn’t a presidential race and when the election isn’t in November—and that’s saying nothing of the storms that barreled down on southeastern parts of the state this week, wiping out power for thousands of Wisconsinites and flooding the streets of Milwaukee. And yet, more than 36 percent of Wisconsin’s voting age population cast a ballot in the state Supreme Court election yesterday, shattering past turnout records. The result—the election of pro-choice Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who will tip the ideological balance of the court leftward for the first time in 15 years—is a compelling answer to the open question of whether abortion rights will remain an election-winning issue for liberals as time passes since last summer’s US Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. In Wisconsin, where abortions are currently unavailable except to save a patient’s life, Protasiewicz and her supporters had largely billed the race as a referendum on reproductive rights—and voters responded. (Mother Jones)

Democracy: Democrats Won A Vital Wisconsin Judgeship But Voting Rights Are Not Safe by Dave Daley (4/7/23). It’s been a long time since Wisconsin could feel anything close to hope. More than a dozen years ago – when the first Harry Potter movie still played in theaters, and Katy Perry’s Firework and Bruno Mars’s Grenade topped the pop charts – Republican operatives and lawmakers locked themselves in a Madison, Wisconsin, law office and then locked themselves into power. They haven’t lost since. That painstakingly designed gerrymander gutted majority rule in a closely contested purple state. Sure, they still hold elections for state senate and assembly every two years. The Republican party simply can’t be defeated – indeed, they approach veto-proof supermajorities – even when voters award Democrats hundreds of thousands more votes. The entrenched Republican legislature, immune to voters and proven protected from public opinion, has run roughshod over labor unions, public employees and the state university system. When Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, has called the legislature into special session to enact overwhelmingly popular provisions on gun violence and reproductive rights, among other issues, Republican leadership gavels in and out in mere seconds. The rigged maps explain why an 1849 law that criminalized abortion in almost every circumstance reverted into effect after the Dobbs decision – even though more than 70% of Wisconsinites want it changed. (The Guardian)

COVID: FDA Will OK Second Omicron Booster For Seniors by Rob Stein (4/4/23). The Food and Drug Administration has decided to allow some people to get a second booster with one of the COVID-19 vaccines that have been updated to target the omicron variant, NPR has learned.The second shots will be limited to those age 65 and older who got their first shot of the bivalent vaccine made by Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech at least four months ago, and to those with weakened immune systems who got one of those shots at least two months ago, according to a federal official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to authorize a second booster is expected to be officially announced within the next two weeks.While demand for another shot may not be high, the opportunity for extra protection will be welcomed by some people who got their first shot with one of the bivalent boosters last year. (NPR)

Housing: New Deal-era Leftists Tried To Win Beautiful Social Housing For The Masses an interview with Gail Radford by Daniel Denvir (4/3/23). Few things so define US society, politics, and economy like housing. It is an asset unlike any other, an unrivaled motor of the real and financial economy around which wealth, power, status, and security orbit. It powers the system at the highest level and commands allegiance to it from below. The United States has a two-tier housing system, with a dominant private market organized around private homeownership and a much smaller and heavily stigmatized, underfunded, and — in recent decades — increasingly privatized public housing system reserved for only the very poorest. In her 1996 book, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era, Gail Radford tells the story of Catherine Bauer, the Labor Housing Conference, and the New Deal–era struggle to make the American housing system a radically social one. In place of the two-tier system that won out, Bauer and her allies proposed a massive federally backed system of noncommercial housing that would appeal to and house the majority of Americans in beautiful homes and vibrant, socially connected communities. (Jacobin)

Plastic/Public Health:  Microplastics Are In Our Bodies.  Here’s Why We Don’t Know The Health Risks by Anne Pinto-Rodrigues (3/24/23). Tiny particles of plastic have been found everywhere — from the deepest place on the planet, the Mariana Trench, to the top of Mount Everest. And now more and more studies are finding that microplastics, defined as plastic pieces less than 5 millimeters across, are also in our bodies. “What we are looking at is the biggest oil spill ever,” says Maria Westerbos, founder of the Plastic Soup Foundation, an Amsterdam-based nonprofit advocacy organization that works to reduce plastic pollution around the world. Nearly all plastics are made from fossil fuel sources. And microplastics are “everywhere,” she adds, “even in our bodies.” In recent years, microplastics have been documented in all parts of the human lung, in maternal and fetal placental tissues, in human breast milk and in human blood. Microplastics scientist Heather Leslie, formerly of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and colleagues found microplastics in blood samples from 17 of 22 healthy adult volunteers in the Netherlands. The finding, published last year in Environment International, confirms what many scientists have long suspected: These tiny bits can get absorbed into the human bloodstream. “We went from expecting plastic particles to be absorbable and present in the human bloodstream to knowing that they are,” Leslie says. (Science News)