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July 2025 E-Bulletin
It was good to see so many familiar faces and new faces at our Annual Membership meeting. We started with a fun getting-to-know-you activity and ended with voting on our local programs and a new slate of Steering Committee members. Thank you to Jessica Ryan (Voter Service) and David Shanabrook (Treasurer) for serving the LWVA. We hope they don't have too much trouble finding things to do with their new free time.
June 2025 E-Bulletin
Dear Members and Friends,
It is time to step up and volunteer! Hope to see all of you at one or more of the upcoming events. The steering committee needs YOU to represent us. Please RSVP and feel free to contact the organizer for more information. We have dozens of new members and we are hoping to you will help us show up.
Members, I hope to see you at the Annual Meeting. We will be voting on our program, a few revisions to the bylaws, and our wonderful new Steering Committee slate, plus taking time to get to know each other and thinking together about the year to come.
Do you like to take minutes? The Steering Committee is looking for someone to volunteer to take the minutes of the June 10th Annual Meeting. Please contact me if you are willing and able. A template is provided.
2024/2025 Racial Justice Annual Report
The Amherst LWV, with its mission to promote policy positions and advocacy on significant local issues, established a Racial Justice Task Force in June 2020; it is now a permanent League Committee. The broad goals of the Racial Justice Committee (RJC) are to increase the League’s informed and active participation with Amherst Town government and the community at large, in order to advance racial justice, equity, and well-being, and to collaborate with individuals, groups, and organizations to achieve a just and equitable community.
June 2025 Racial Justice News
Visit to Ruggles Center, Florence
We have reserved Saturday morning, June 21st, for a special LWV visit to the Ruggles Center in Florence. We will learn about the utopian community, nascent silk industry, and anti-slavery history of Florence, followed by a walking tour for those interested.
David Ruggles (1810-1849) was an active Black abolitionist. He established the country's first Black-owned bookstore in NYC, and was a conductor on the Underground Railroad and a mentor to both Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.
2024/2025 Health Care Committee Report
The LWVA Health Care Committee continued its work to fulfill the LWVUS health care position, educating and advocating for a publicly financed health care system--to improve health outcomes, reduce costs, and re-introduce democratic governance in health care with coordinated resource allocation and public oversight.
However, as clarified in an impactful report from the research arm of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), "Our Payments, Their Profits," the corporate Fortune 500 medical industry is deeply entrenched, siphons off as much as a third of our health resources to investors, and effectively thwarts reform efforts. (See also, the Privatization of Everything by Cohen and Mikaelian.) The results of the 2024 November election dealt an even larger blow to the movement to de-privatize health care. The new administration lost no time adopting Heritage Foundation Project 2025 policies that prioritize handing our health care taxes over to investment firms (like United Health, Aetna, Cigna, etc.)
2024/2025 Connecticut River Report
From its beginning in 2022, the Connecticut River Committee has been focused on the relicensing of five hydroelectric facilities in the Connecticut River. Two of those facilities are in Massachusetts: the dam at Turners Falls and the Northfield Mountain pumped storage facility. In April 2024, LWVA submitted a statement to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a statement based on our existing regional League Connecticut River position, was adopted in 1965/1966 yet still amazingly relevant to many of today’s issues.
2024/2025 Voter Service Report
2024/25 was a big year for voters. We had many volunteers helping to get people registered and ready to vote. We participated in an accessibility survey of voting locations for the Disability Law Center, and we tabled at Collective Power for Reproduction at Hampshire College, the Gender Resource Fair at Amherst College, the Democracy Fair in Northampton, the Jones Library Naturalization Ceremony, the Democracy event at UMass, the Amherst block party, and many more. We had a panel on the League and voting at Amherst College where we mailed out hundreds of postcards to voters. We were invited to speak on a WMUA radio talk show. We even sent volunteers down to the West Springfield Mosque to educate and inform voters! As we headed into 2025, with democracy down but not out, we rose to the challenge and chartered a bus, taking nearly 60 people to Boston for the Hands Off rally.
June 2025 Connecticut River Update
The Amherst League’s update/restudy of our existing sixty-year-old position on the Connecticut River was instigated by Elizabeth Davis in conjunction with the relicensing of five hydroelectric facilities on the Connecticut River. Our League’s involvement began about four years ago and culminated with the submission of our position statement to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in April 2024; and our statement to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in February 2025.
May 2025 - Conversation on the ARPS School Budget
On Sunday, April 13th, the League and Support Our Schools (SOS) Amherst held a Community Conversation on School Funding at Crocker Farm Elementary School. This event brought together approximately fifty community members to discuss the challenges with funding in the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools
June 2025 Healthcare update
This month, the Health Care Committee continued to pursue our project to learn about students' knowledge and attitudes about health care alternatives in the U.S.
We did some informal "tabling" at the Blue Wall food court in the UMass Campus Center. That is, instead of us being installed at a table, we visited tables with groups of students and asked if we could speak with them about health care. After a brief description of Massachusetts' and other states' initiatives to establish single-payer plans within a few individual states before doing it at the national level, we emphasized the importance of understanding younger voters' concerns and needs and asked them if they would agree to sign up with us to participate in a focus group on the topic. (We gave out LWV Healthy People/Healthy Democracy bookmarks and also offered pizza.)
May 2025 Healthcare Update
Last month we mentioned that we are working on "opening up" college students as an advocacy group for single payer healthcare. We are moving forward on that and will have more to report next month.
We are excited that the Single Payer/Medicare for All national bill will be introduced Tuesday, April 29th. The 11:00 AM launch should be live-streamed on the YouTube channel of main sponsor Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA), and then available here.
May 2025 Racial Justice Update
Distribution of 1500 “Know your rights” red cards
Visit to the Ruggles Center in Florence
Judy Brooks Conversation: A better chance
September Opening Meeting
May 2025 E-Bulletin
I want to get a special shout out to our Budget Committee - Kathy Campbell, Alisa Brewer, and Katie Naughton with David Shanabrook and myself from the Steering Committee - for going through next year's budget, line by line, in preparation for the Annual Meeting. And also congratulations and many thanks to the Nominating Committee - Kathy Woods Masalski, Trish Farrington, Ann Kieser, and myself - for finding a strong slate for this coming year. Both the budget and the slate will be sent to membership in a few weeks via email.
Be sure to read about the Book Sale volunteer opportunities. The sale raises the funds we use for the year, and then some. It is an excellent way to get to know other League members.