Members of the Ways and Means House Committee were met with dozens of advocates during a session on Friday, March 16, at the Massachusetts State House who were in favor of lifting the welfare cap on kids conceived after families start to receive benefits. Current law denies assistance of up to $100 a month per…
Mass. Advocates for Children: Fighting for the Rights of Young Students
Readers, imagine yourself waiting for the most opulent being in your life: your child. As the yellow bus approaches, you feel calm, ready to hear your child’s stories of the day. The bus stops, you see your child. As your little one runs to your arms, you ask the same question you have asked a…
Home and Healthy for Good Wins Hearst Health Award
The Massachusetts Housing & Shelter Alliance (MHSA) has received the Hearst Health Prize for Excellence in Population Health. The prize recognizes MHSA’s Home & Healthy for Good (HHG) program, which was founded in 2006. The win was announced on Tuesday, March 20 at the 18th annual Population Health Colloquium in Philadelphia. “All of us at…
Housing Justice Activists Rally to Support Jim Brooks Act and Keep Tenants From Eviction
Over 150 people took to the streets of Roxbury on Saturday, March 17 to stand in solidarity with tenants facing eviction in the area, and to urge a state house vote on the Jim Brooks Act which would potentially curb housing displacement in Boston. Despite the rally’s large attendance and political support, the Massachusetts General…
As ICE deports higher numbers of Asian immigrants, a Dorchester family is left without a mother
Robert Sparks with his and Nhan’s three children. Photo: Anna Bloxham Robert Sparks and his wife Nhan, a green card holder and native of Vietnam, left their Dorchester home to attend a meeting with ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – at an office in Burlington, Massachusetts on October 2. This was one of several…
Boston Takes to the Streets to Show Solidarity With Student Led ‘March For Our Lives’
On March 24, thousands marched from Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury to Boston Common for March for Our Lives, a rally held worldwide to protest gun violence following the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. Leonor Muñoz, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student, stood alongside her sister,…
Treat Homelessness Like the Health Issue It Is
Last spring a group of students, led by their Professor Dr. Debra Harkins, came up with Bill H.3933, which is based on an idea out of Hawaii that says homelessness should be treated as a medical condition; this could allow doctors to write prescriptions for housing. I know, it sounds far fetched, but when you…
BAKER’S MASS MEDICAID PURGE
The envelope arrived in my mailbox a couple of weeks before Christmas. It had a green stripe at the top and in big bold letters alerted me that I needed to open it immediately. Inside the envelope, I found a letter letting me know that my health insurance under MassHealth—which is the Massachusetts Medicaid program—would…
Free From Heroin: A Daily Fight
I have been drug and alcohol free now for almost 15 years. Does the heroin still call to me? To be honest, at times it does. As a matter of fact, after almost four years clean, I relapsed and used heroin for another year and two months. An eternity in hell. How did that happen?…
Boston Teens Gather to Talk Arts, Activism, and Social Change
“‘Woke’ means to have a moral center. It’s the idea that you care about others. It’s to be selfless, and to think about people other than yourself,” said Alexis Maxwell, a junior at Boston Arts Academy, at a weekly Teen Council meeting hosted by the Boch Center. The Boch Center, a non-profit organization focused on…