Recent
News |
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.
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Be
a MCHC Member |
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. |
Opinion
and Analysis |
Eli Beckerman’s June 8th, 2010 testimony to the Mass. Senate Ways and Means Committee on their proposed legislation to bring casinos to Massachusetts.
NASW Testimony in Opposition to Casino Gambling
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.
Loser-friendly casinos
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.
Act Now to Stop Private-Benefit Eminent Domain
MCHC Board member Shirley Kressel’s March 12, 2010 letter to the Joint Judiciary Committee of the MA Legislature.
Small Is Beautiful: Help promote small-plot farming in MA
State Rep. Steve D’Amico sponsoring an important bill to extend protections to agricultural plots down to 1 acre in size.
David Korten: The Speech
President Obama Should Deliver… But Won’t
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.”
Paul Hawken to the Graduates of 2009:
This is your century
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.
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?
Experts are of opinion that an economic stimulus will have great impact on bitcoin prices and automated trading apps play an important role too. Visit https://coincierge.de/bitcoin-up/ for details.
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?
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Insight
and Information |
Well worth reading . . .
Thought-provoking essays, useful
insights, and just plain interesting links….
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Keep Surplus Lands in Our Hands!
Boston area residents shared community-based solutions for sustainable,
just development at MCHC workshop. (Photo: Adam Sacks)
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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.
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Current Projects |
Stand
up for a Secure Green Future!
Our Secure
Green Future project is seeking 350 Climate Minutemen & Minutewomen
who will join together to fight for climate action and climate justice.
At a minute’s notice, these Climate Minutemen and Minutewomen will speak truth to power,
and demonstrate that through collective action and cooperation we can reshape our society
and rebuild our communities. They will point the way to endless possibilities of living
lightly and joyously on this Earth, and leading complete, fulfilling lives doing so.
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.
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Upcoming
Events |
Please send us your events for posting.
· 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
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Reports |
Environmental
health report,
co-authored by MCHC’s Jill Stein.
Listen to Jill Stein talk on Environmental Threats to Healthy
Aging from an interview on Corporate
Watchdog Radio – 11/12/08
Listen to Jill
Stein on Seattle Public Radio (3/21/09 KEXP) explaining the concept of environmental
drivers of chronic disease.
Read
more on the report on the Huffington Post.
Listen to interview with Jill Stein: AARP Prime Time Radio interview on ETHA is now
online. Click here.
MCHC is very excited to add this powerful new public health argument to our push
for the healthy communities and revitalized, relocalized economies of our post-carbon
future.
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Quote
of the Week |
“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 |
Sounds of Dissent
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. |
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