Green Justice community meetings held across Mass; State House hearing packed!
Leading up to a key hearing at the Massachusetts State House, community, labor and environmental groups from all over the state collaborated to bring the Green Justice message to community members, and hear back about their home energy efficiency needs and goals. Through June and July, meetings took place in the Springfield area, the North Shore, the Boston area and Southeast Mass, and were attended by scores of people concerned about high utility bills and problems with the state’s energy efficiency programs.
Then on July 14, these community meetings provided a way to coordinate a statewide mobilization, as over 100 people from all corners of Mass converged on the State House in Boston to attend the GJC energy efficiency bill hearing and tell their legislators about their support. The GJC is supporting legislation called H 1774 which aims to improve the current energy efficiency program with some simple but crucial fixes.
The first community meeting took place June 8 at Project HipHop in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, and was hosted by Boston-area members of the Green Justice Coalition. During the program, participants were updated about various aspects of the GJC energy efficiency campaign, including victories like inclusion of labor standards in the state’s weatherization program, and a ‘charrette’ meeting between GJC groups and all the state’s utility companies. There was also room for people to express their thoughts on how to make the planned hearing and lobby day on the GJC legislation as fun and effective as possible. Some suggested coordinating a clothing color scheme and one person proposed a “flash mob’ inside the State House, which quickly sparked others’ imaginative ideas about what could be done.
The second meeting took place June 23 at Nuestras Raices (Our Roots) in Holyoke, hosted by Alliance to Develop Power and Neighbor to Neighbor. Jeremy Shenk of Community Labor United also came out from Boston to help update participants on campaign developments. The next meeting, hosted by Coalition Against Poverty and Coalition for Social Justice, took place June 27 in Fall River at Bristol Community College, where community members from Fall River, New Bedford and neighboring towns turned out strong and were treated to a skit describing the GJC’s ‘charrette’ with the utilities. The last meeting happened July 6 in Lynn, and was hosted by Clean Water Action, Neighbor to Neighbor and the North Shore Labor Council. Participants, one of whom helped translate for non-English speakers, had a lot of questions about Lynn’s home weatherization pilot program, and benefits of the GJC legislation.
Legislators at the bill hearing July 14 no doubt noticed the sea of GJC t-shirts, and yellow Support H 1774 signs waving every time a panelist testified about the need for the bill. Leaders of community, labor and environmental organizations joined municipal and state officials to describe the carefully crafted bill, designed to provide a basic level of transparency in how the money collected under the program by utilities is spent, mandate that all households have access to weatherization services and set a floor for labor standards in the industry. This day was also the occasion for Community Labor United's Soledad Boyd to launch a comic to get across the need for the solutions being sought by the campaign.
Final decisions on the bill are not likely to be made before the Fall or even later, but there’s no denying that GJC’s impact was a strong and united one. All in all, this was a clear example of the influence that regular folks can exert on the levers of power if we think strategically and stand united.
