MCHC was founded with the belief that truly healthy communities exist only when all their constituent systems are healthy and working together. For this reason, we believe that people concerned with different aspects of our continuing economic, environmental, and democracy crises should work together on the fundamental issues that are impeding progress toward the readily available solutions.
Read the full note here.

MCHC intern Michelle Skolnik discusses the emerging relocalization movement, and begins her quest for some historical context as part of her “Roots of Relocalization” project.

This exciting news from the E.F. Schumacher Society in Great Barrington, MA promises to change the way we all conceive of our economic relationships, decision-making, policies and paradigms. These challenging times scream out for a new economics, from the theoretical level down to the very bills we keep in our wallet, and the E.F. Schumacher Society has crucial experience across that entire spectrum.

The 2009 Massachusetts Relocalization Conference was an incredible day at the Reggie Lewis Center, with about 250 people participating despite the October 18th SNOW!

Read how one Massachusetts farm is affected by the Northeast’s tomato and potato blight, and the ways in which the Community Supported Agriculture model helps them thrive with or without tomatoes.

Secure Green Future volunteer Maggie Zhou boarded an overnight bus to Washington D.C. to attend a U.S. Senate hearing on carbon pricing policies. Zhou feels that the science shows that we may have a critical window of only a few years to take action before planetary processes take the matter out of humanity’s control and bring on catastrophic warming. “Congress needs to get this right now if children like my own are to have a future.”

The Waxman-Markey bill, or the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), that passed the US House on Friday, is a false climate-protection solution more appropriately characterized as a polluter-protection bill, according to leaders of Secure Green Future (SGF). Read more to see how it’s a big win for the fossil fuel industry, how it will delay the urgently needed transition to a low carbon economy, and how it will hurt our chances for any meaningful international agreement on climate action this December.

Massachusetts rallies to stop coal and start building the secure green future. Read the reports and see photos and video!

Drawing from the recent report she co-authored for Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, Jill Stein breaks down how eating unprocessed foods, especially plant-based foods, can lower your risk for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other chronic diseases, at the same time it lowers your environmental footprint.

Our continued national dependence on fossil fuels is creating a dangerous vulnerability to both long-term fuel scarcity and catastrophic climate change. The current economic crisis requires substantial national policy shifts and enormous new government injections of capital into the economy. This provides an opportunity for a project whose scope would otherwise be inconceivable: a large-scale, fast-track transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Thanks to a wonderful grassroots effort, and some fortuitous timing, the Secure Green Future ballot question won in every single district it appeared, and by a total landslide margin! At least 153,252 voters said YES to a Secure Green Future on November 4th, netting the ballot question an astounding 81.4% of the vote!!!

A new report co-authored by MCHC’s Jill Stein suggests that a deteriorating environment and poor nutrition are behind the rise of many chronic diseases of modern life. The good news: we can restore health by protecting – and cleaning up – the environment. Towards that end, moving to more sustainable, localized food systems and clean renewable energy would go a long way to improve health, the environment and the economy.

Out of a profound sense of both crisis and opportunity, we are asking you to become a member of the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities (MCHC). In doing so, you will help advance sustainable, just solutions to the unprecedented economic and environmental crises we face. And you will help establish MCHC as a permanent, vital presence in the debate over our future.

Eli Beckerman’s June 8th, 2010 testimony to the Mass. Senate Ways and Means Committee on their proposed legislation to bring casinos to Massachusetts.

Rebekah Gewirtz, Director of Government Relations and Political Action of the National Association of Social Workers MA Chapter, delivered powerful testimony against the casino proposal, asking the Senate Ways and Means Committee to think like social workers.

Globe Op-Ed by Leslie Bernal, executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, on the losing bet of introducing predatory gambling to Massachusetts as a revenue quick-fix. Bitcoin is a natural digital currency that suits casino betting. A few casinos transact only bitcoins while others add it as an additional currency. No doubt the bitcoin trading is increasing day by day due to novel inventions like bitcoin evolution; find more information at https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/the-bitcoinevolution.com.

MCHC Board member Shirley Kressel’s March 12, 2010 letter to the Joint Judiciary Committee of the MA Legislature.

State Rep. Steve D’Amico sponsoring an important bill to extend protections to agricultural plots down to 1 acre in size.

David Korten delivers the economic speech we’d love to see President Obama deliver, but never will. Korten’s dream speech doesn’t need the President’s bully pulpit to have an impact, it can serve as a grassroots rallying cry for all of us to spread:

“We have no more time or resources to devote to fixing a system based on false values and a discredited ideology. We must now come together to create the institutions of a new economy based on a values-based pragmatism… Let us henceforth measure economic performance by the indicators of what we really want: the health and well-being of our children, families, communities, and the natural environment.”

This commencement speech by environmentalist Paul Hawken was delivered at the University of Portland on May 3, 2009.

“Collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.”

Author and economist Hazel Henderson lays out the local-based initiatives that are emerging in the wake of an unraveling Wall Street economy. Relocalization efforts are gaining steam in Massachusetts and beyond, and just in the nick of time. The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the “too big to fail” culture of global money-center banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralize and democratize finance.

MCHC Board member Shirley Kressel’s December 3, 2008 testimony.

Climate Code Red: The case for a sustainability emergency

Friends of the Earth report reviewed by John Andrews.

Through relocalization, communities can prosper while fighting global warming.

What does California have to teach us about how to fund infrastructure needs through special assessment districts?

Governor’s tilt toward real estate industry unnerves a former supporter.

Context of the Supreme Judicial Court ruling that said the DEP erred in waiving a permit requirement for a Cambridge development.

When the choice is preventing tobacco deaths or pleasing tobacco lobbyists, where do our legislators stand?

New law seizes both land and tax revenues to benefit real estate developers.

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The state law that is supposed to promote affordable housing isn’t getting the job done. What are we doing wrong?

MCHC is a member of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, a citizen initiative in Massachusetts to establish new government policies to prevent harm to our health from toxic hazards.

With economies and ecosystems unraveling all around us, it’s clear we need bold and decisive action IMMEDIATELY for a healthy, just, green future. Thankfully there is a grassroots movement bubbling up from below, pushing for transformative action.

· December 16th, 2010 – Common Security Clubs: Building Resilient Communities (JP Forum) – Jamaica Plain, MA

· December 17th, 2010 – The Growing Menace of FBI Repression, Cambridge, MA

· December 18th, 2010 – Consilience – A Community Building Concert and Year-End Fundraiser for Encuentro 5 – Boston Chinatown, MA

· December 18th, 2010 – Northampton: The Growing Menace of FBI Repression – Northampton, MA

“If we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

– Our beloved People’s Historian, Howard Zinn

More Quotes

Join host John Grebe for a two-hour weekly radio program offering news and political reviews that often challenge the conventional wisdom and the packaged fare of the mainstream media. Tune in Saturdays 11:00-1:00 on WZBC, FM 90.2 Boston. You can listen live at http://www.wzbc.org.