C.O.R.I. REFORM ACTIONS ALERT
April 30 to May 14

Landmark reforms are so close!
We are calling on you to lend your support in what we hope will be the last leg of this campaign.

DO YOUR PART!
After years of tireless organizing and advocacy, the Massachusetts State Senate adopted a comprehensive CORI reform bill last November. Since then, Speaker DeLeo has made public commitments to address CORI in the House after the budget.

This creates a critical window to pass a CORI bill in the month of May.

Thousands of individuals and over 110 organizations have signed on as supporters of CORI reform. Community Change has been supporting CORI reform for years. We alert you to the following critical actions and ask you to participate as you are able:

CORI Coalition Meeting
Friday, April 30th, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Project Hip Hop
2181 Washington St. 3rd Floor, Dudley Square, Roxbury

Emergency update and briefing on the status of CORI reform, what was in the Senate bill, and immediate next steps in the campaign.

CORI Rally & Lobby Day
Thursday, May 6th, 12:00 to 3:00 PM
State House

We are calling for a major mobilization of CORI reform supporters to rally and lobby at the State House for passage of a House bill. Details are forthcoming, but all organizations in support of reforms are called to action!

Statewide Call-In Campaign
May 3rd - 14th
We will be contacting all endorsing organizations to help generate phone calls to the State House in the first 2 weeks of May. If you are interested in helping with this effort, please email atanaka@bostonworkersalliance.org

The reforms included in the Senate bill would make Massachusetts the first state to remove the CORI question from job applications, and would prevent dismissed cases as well as felonies over a decade old from being held against applicants.

CORI affects hundreds of thousands across the State, and represents a regressive barrier for low income communities and communities of color to build economic health and prosperity. Please help make CORI reform a reality!
Labels: CORI , Events

Vigil and Rally

TO PASS JUST CAUSE EVICTION

TOMORROW: APRIL 29, 2010
12:00 to 1:00 PM

in front of the Massachusetts State House
Join CITY LIFE/VIDA URBANA which has fought for over 2 years to win legislation that would protect occupants of foreclosed buildings against no-fault evictions by foreclosing lenders.

More than anyone, the Bank Tenants movement has focused on demanding an end to post-foreclosure, no-fault evictions. We have made that into an issue. We are very close to winning an important victory on this.

The Senate will vote on a measure giving just-cause eviction protection (eviction only for cause) to tenants in foreclosed properties. Although we are seeking small wording amendments, this central feature of Senate 2355 would be a huge victory. It would be the first piece of legislation protecting residents against large real estate owners in 16 years.

We were not able to win our goal of including former homeowners in this eviction protection. There is still prejudice about protecting former owners that we were not able to overcome. However, protections for former tenants gives important indirect protection for former owners in 3 important ways.
If an owner has tenants who are protected, the Bank can't clear the building and so has less incentive to evict the owner.

Organizations like City Life and participating lawyers can focus even more attention and resources on owners' cases.

The Banks general goal of mass eviction will receive a major defeat and hopefully open the door for more negotiations around owners. Therefore, we will be holding our vigil tomorrow to recommit ourselves to protecting everyone in foreclosed properties through our organizing, including former owners.
If you want to go from City Life's Jamaica Plain office, gather at our office at 11 am.
Labels: Events , Housing

Place Matters
May 12, 2010 - 12:00 to 1:30 PM
14 Beacon Street, Suite 604, Boston, Ma

Why is your street address such a good predictor of your health?

Living in a disadvantaged neighborhood leads to a 50-80% increase in risk for heart disease - the number 1 killer in the U.S. One reason is chronic stress. Worrying about violence, lousy schools, and unpaid bills; living in substandard housing or a polluted environment; not having good access to fresh food, reliable transportation, or safe public spaces - all of these have a negative, even toxic effect on health.

As Harvard's David Williams reminds us, "housing policy is health policy. Neighborhood improvement policies are health policies." Health of individuals is improved when residents, government agencies, local officials, foundations and private business work together and take health into account.

Join Community Change staff and friends for a screening of this film followed by a community conversation.

Please bring your lunch.
Beverages will be provided.
$5 contribution requested. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED.
RSVP at 617-523-0555 or janet@communitychangeinc.org.

Place Matters is the fifth installment in the Unnatural Causes film and discussion series.
Labels: Community , Education , Events , Health and Wellness

Saturday: join the Boston Interpreters Collective this Saturday in the rallies in Boston area. Arizona is the wake-up call. Got yourself out in the streets this Saturday. We probably could live without universal health care, but not with racial profiling. Help us to make this May 1st bigger than 2006.

Two options for you:

- Boston has a rally in the Commons from 12 to 2pm. Check www.bostonmayday.org.

- BIC folks will be going to East Boston. The contigent will be meeting at Everett City Hall at 12pm, Chelsea City Hall 1pm or for the final rally at Lopresti Park in East Boston at 2pm. Link on BIC's calendar: http://www.interpreterscollective.org/calendar/event/165
Labels: Events , Immigration , May Day

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Massachusetts Jobs for Justice wanted us to let you know about these jobs available to teens and young adults.

The union is on strike on most of the Shaw's Supermarkets because the company has taken action to cut the benefits and wages of the 300 workers who work at Shaw's Warehouse and Distribution Center.

The job involves standing outside of a Shaw's Supermarket near the entrance to the parking lot with a sign asking people not to shop there during this strike. Also, asking people walking up to the store to consider not shopping there because of these issue.

 It pays $10.00 an hour and can be done during the day and/or evening at various Shaw's locations.

If you know of anyone interested contact Megan Pierce at United Food and Commercial Workrs at her cell phone at (202) 531-4823 or Russ Davis at Jobs with Justice (617) 524-9778
Labels: Job Opportunities

WASHINGTON --Dorothy Height, the leading female voice of the 1960s civil rights movement and a participant in historic marches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, died Tuesday. She was 98.

Height, whose activism on behalf of women and minorities dated to the New Deal, led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. She continued actively speaking out into her 90s, often getting rousing ovations at events around Washington, where she was immediately recognized by the bright, colorful hats she almost always wore.

She died at Howard University Hospital, where she had been in serious condition for weeks.

In a statement, President Barack Obama called her "the godmother of the civil rights movement" and a hero to Americans.

"Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality ... and served as the only woman at the highest level of the Civil Rights Movement -- witnessing every march and milestone along the way," Obama said.

It was the second death of a major civil rights figure in less than a week. Benjamin L. Hooks, the former longtime head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, died Thursday in Memphis at 85.

As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, "Stop the lynching." In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading the movement not to underestimate their women counterparts.

One of Height's sayings was, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said that the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

"He spoke longer than he was supposed to speak," Height recalled in a 1997 Associated Press interview. But after he was done, it was clear King's speech would echo for generations, she said, "because it gripped everybody."

She lamented that the feeling of unity created by the 1963 march had faded, and that the civil rights movement of the 1990s was on the defensive and many black families were still not economically secure.

"We have come a long way, but too many people are not better off," she said. "This is my life's work. It is NOT a job."

When Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, Height told Washington TV station WTTG that she was overwhelmed with emotion.

"People ask me, did I ever dream it would happen, and I said, `If you didn't have the dream, you couldn't have worked on it," she said.

Height became president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957 and held the post until 1997, when she was 85. She remained chairman of the group.

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 from President Bill Clinton.

To celebrate Height's 90th birthday in March 2002, friends and supporters raised $5 million to enable her organization to pay off the mortgage on its Washington headquarters. The donors included Oprah Winfrey and Don King.

Height was born in Richmond, Va., and the family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was four. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University and did postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work. (She had been turned away by Barnard College because it already had its quota of two black women.)

In 1937, while she was working at the Harlem YWCA, Height met famed educator Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had come to speak at a meeting of Bethune's organization. Height eventually rose to leadership roles in both the council and the YWCA.

The late activist C. DeLores Tucker once called Height an icon to all African-American women.

"I call Rosa Parks the mother of the civil rights movement," Tucker said in 1997. "Dorothy Height is the queen."


By Ben Evans, Associated Press Writer  |  April 20, 2010
Labels: Black History , Civil Rights Movement

FREE TAREK! BENEFIT SHOW: Join us for food, raffle & live music to celebrate the release of the Free Tarek! Compilation CD, an educational fundraising project to help free our brother Tarek and all political prisoners!

SATURDAY, APRIL 24th, 2010
6:00pm @ Spontaneous Celebrations
45 Danforth Street, Jamaica Plain, MA (Stoneybrook T-stop on the Orange Line)
**GET THERE EARLY. SHOW WILL SELL OUT!**

$10 - 30 sliding scale suggested donation.
Any donation over $15 gets you a FREE CD with entrance!
There will be food, raffle, etc for sale.
All Ages! Wheelchair Accessible. No alcohol, please.

Featuring a combination of hip hop, soul and r&b performances in support of Tarek by 8 artists featured on the CD!

NATURAL BLISS (http://www.myspace.com/naturalbliss)
BROADCAST LIVE (http://www.myspace.com/broadcastlive)
SPIRITCHILD (http://www.myspace.com/spiritchildmentalnotes)
SISTAH MIA (http://www.myspace.com/sistahmia)
L.O.S.T. (http://www.myspace.com/lastofsoldierstaken)
STEPHANIE ROOKER (http://www.myspace.com/srooker)
MAJESTY (www.myspace.com/majesty360)
ABU NURAH (http://www.myspace.com/abunurah)

For more information about Tarek's Case and what you can do to help: www.freetarek.com
Labels: Events , Hip-Hop / Poetry