When East Coast members of Higher Education Labor United (HELU) got together in January, they set their sights on developing a national plan to improve working conditions for university and college faculty and staff, enhance learning conditions for students, and build lasting partnerships with local communities to promote the common good. Together, they drafted a document called the Amherst…
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A new Massachusetts state law passed in November 2025 will make records from state institutions for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities or mental health conditions accessible for the first time. Generations of disabled people lived and died in those institutions beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Many experienced horrific abuse, and their histories have long been obscured.
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On November 18, 2025, Massachusetts advocates gathered for hours at the State House as they have, year after year, to beat back yet another legislative proposal for involuntary outpatient commitment, or IOC. Involuntary outpatient commitment laws create a layer of specialized courts that use the so-called “Black Robe Effect,” which uses a judge’s authority to compel people with diagnoses of…
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When voters across the country filed into polling stations on November 4, making choices that could shape their communities over coming years, residents of Somerville, Massachusetts, also had the opportunity to vote on a question of international significance: whether their city should boycott and divest from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza.
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New legislation in California is poised to rein in the financialization of healthcare — part of a growing trend of states taking action while federal legislation struggles to move forward. On October 6, California enacted legislation (Senate Bill 351) that restricts financial firms’ ability to influence how physicians in practices they own treat patients. It prohibits the firms from setting…
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