 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Hello and welcome to the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media. I'm Claire Healy and these are the biggest stories out of Amherst, Massachusetts from this past week. A new 28 apartment affordable housing complex on Northampton Road was approved on November 12th with a unanimous vote from the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. The current single-family house will be torn down to make way for the two-and-a-half story building designed by Valley Community Development, a non-profit organization based in Northampton that works in affordable housing for low-income families. The Board asked that 70% of the units be set aside for local residents to purchase and there are a number of conditions and need-based criteria set for people to live there. Of the 28 units, 10 units will be made available for rent at or below 30% of the area median income with preference for currently houseless individuals. Two units will be available for rent at or under 30% of the area median income under the Facilities Consolidation Fund, 8 at or below 50% of the area median income and another 8 units for rent at or below 80% of the area median income. The 20-day appeal process has started in which the public or board can appeal the decision. The town council unanimously approved the selection of six residents to serve on the Community Safety Working Group. This group will ultimately consist of nine members and examine how public safety functions in Amherst and focus on ensuring racial justice is prioritized in policing. The initial proposal for the group states that at least six of the nine voting members will represent black, indigenous people of color or other historically marginalized communities. A written proposal on public safety changes will be submitted to Amherst Town Manager Paul Backelman by January 15th and further recommendations on policy reforms for the police department will be submitted by June 30th. We were able to speak with half of the newly appointed members about their goals for the working group and what they hope it achieves. Pat Anonabaku has been an Amherst resident for over 35 years, has five children that went through the Amherst school system and runs the Baku Care Adult Day Health Center in Hadley, working with adults and elderly with disabilities. She was a founding member of Race and Discipline Action Rights, or radar, a group looking to end racial disparity in school discipline and served from 2004 to 2008 on the racial profiling committee created by the town. Amherst have resources and I will hope that Amherst will think about getting a space for youth, for after-school programming, mentorship program and employment skills for our youth of color. One of the things I hope our proposal is to find a way to recognize police officers who are not targeting people of color, especially black men. And also I think that reforming police in Amherst is overdue and some resources should be allocated to housing. We have some homeless population and sometimes the cost to police is something could be resolved through social services. Mental health costs I think we could have like social workers and skilled mental health professionals who can assist the police in providing authentic services including domestic violence too. Tashina Bowman is a mom of seven boys and a student midwife and doula. She is an Amherst resident and says she is deeply invested in this group and its work. My family has had one experience specifically with the Amherst police and then that was this mistaken identity. It was basically they detained my son when he was walking on New Year's Eve to go see his girlfriend who was sick at home. And that really got me in a place where I was like Amherst really needs to be held accountable because we're a small town and our public service people really need to know their community. And I really want to work on finding a way to make them more involved. We've had officers in particular in the past that kind of everybody knew showed up to sporting events, so on and so forth. And I just feel like if our officers have more information about our community but also had more responsibility for being part of actually part of our community and not just policing our community then we can forge a better relationship. I also feel like there's a huge level of education that doesn't happen with town governments that really needs to be addressed history of why the police were originally invented and having an understanding that there's a really detrimental unspoken history that goes along with policing and what that meant to be a police to be policing and how in other countries it's very different and in this country it's based on a very racist history. I just want to be part of that voice I want to be part of that change because it can really change the tone of what's happening in our community if people are being held accountable but I really think accountability is not just about discipline again it's about learning, it's about growing, it's about making a stronger community and so that's why I think it's really important for me to be involved. I want to see when the generations coming up feel that they are safe and feel that they are respected in their community. Paul Wiley is an Amherst resident and formerly served for 18 years as principal of the Crocker Farm Elementary School. He recently served as interim head of school for the Common School. We have a very big charge in front of us to really get a grasp on what the needs of this community are with respect to safety and well-being of all the individuals that live in this community especially around the whole notion of policing and how that works or should work for us so my reason for joining the committee is that I feel after being here for so many years I've been invested in this community and wanted to contribute in a different way at this point and be a part of a group that's looking deeper into what the needs of the community are with respect to safety. It's my personal goal certainly to bring as much expertise and experience and energy to the work as I possibly can and the global work for our community is to build better relationships across this community in ways that contribute to the safety and well-being of everyone in our community and I think this is the group that may actually promote all the kinds of things that we need to do to make this a safer place on a number of different levels for everyone. We will certainly be reaching out to the community certainly to let them know and they'll be able to access information through the town government certainly but as we start moving forward with our work agenda we hope to be very public very engaged with the community and we're looking forward to get a lot done in probably a short amount of time but we're going to get it done so like I said we're just starting so that's the goal. Every year Monte Belamonte leads his annual Montes March 43 miles from Greenfield to Springfield in order to raise funds to combat hunger in the region and awareness of the extent of food insecurity. This year is no exception and a masked march will take place November 23rd and 24th with all proceeds going to the Massachusetts food bank. Congressman Jim McGovern and Food Bank Executive Director Andrew Morehouse will join supporters in the march which aims to raise $365,000 which would provide 4,000 meals a day for a year. We spoke with Congressman McGovern about the fundraiser and his goals following his reelection. I'm honored to represent the people of the second congressional district and I'm humbled by this report and I'm looking forward to the next session of Congress with a new president and we need to help our restaurants get through this difficult time. We need to help small businesses. We need to help individuals who are struggling. We need to address issues like hunger and that is we ought to boost up SNAP benefits for people during this difficult time. We need to support our first responders. We need to support our doctors and our nurses. We need to make sure we have enough PPE so that people can deal with this surge. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to get a plan in place not only for testing and tracing but to provide people with a vaccine as soon as it is available. Look, this week Joe Biden and Kamala Harris created a national testing plan that they wanted to unveil to tell the American people how they will go about this. But what I'm hopeful about the new incoming administration is they understand that we need to do something. Trump has walked away and as we are talking right now, the number of deaths in our country is over 250,000 people. That is criminal and millions and millions of people have been impacted by the virus who luckily have survived. But 250,000 of our fellow citizens have died as a result of this terrible thing. Congress needs to provide the resources and we need to provide a plan that can be implemented in all 50 states as quickly as possible. SNAP is a premier anti-hunger program in this country but it's inadequate. The average SNAP benefit is about $1.40 per person per meal. You can't even buy a Dunkin' Donuts coffee for that. So we need to do better on the federal level and expand the benefit. We also need to reverse some of the Trump rules which have thrown needy people off of the benefit including a lot of veterans. And one of the things that I'm going to call on President Biden to do is to have a White House conference on food, nutrition and hunger. We can bring everybody who has any role together to actually figure out how we can solve the problem of hunger. Monday's march is taking place the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I've been doing it for many many years now. When I began representing this district, I joined in the march. When I first started, the march was 17 miles long. Now it's 43 miles long. But we do this walk over two days. We raise awareness about hunger in our community because hunger exists in every single city and town in Massachusetts and all across the country. And we raise money for the food maker west of Massachusetts. Look, while we're fighting to get the federal government to do more to combat hunger, while we're fighting for better wages for people so they don't have to worry about nutritious food for their families. We need to support the food bank which does an incredible job of making sure people, especially those in rural areas, have access to good nutrition. Look, this is about supporting our neighbors in our community. People have been hit hard by this pandemic. I mean, hunger is a problem before the pandemic. It is much, much worse as a result of this pandemic. People are struggling and until we can get a stimulus package passed, until we can get a working government in place that will put people first, we need to support our local organizations like the food bank of western Massachusetts. So I would urge everybody to follow us online, to donate to the food bank, to help really show what a generous and decent and honorable community we really are. I hope you'll drive by and give us a wave or a beep and some moral support. But we'll follow the march. Please donate. Be generous because it's about helping our neighbors. The Corona Center for Peace Building is hosting a lecture, workshop, and dialogue series called Erasure and Restoration, an understanding of past and present in the Connecticut Q Valley's Indigenous communities. Events are facilitated by Indigenous people and non-Indigenous allies exploring history, culture, and lived experiences according to Corona's website. In addition to this speaker series, the Corona Center is establishing working groups where participants act in allyship to support Native-led initiatives for restoring justice and repairing harms. We spoke with Christina Downing, program associated with the Corona Center about these working groups and what they're meant to accomplish. It came about when we were really organizing the series. We had hosted a series last year that was about reparations and memorialization for slavery and in that series it came out that there was a huge gap in understanding about the history of Native people in this area and also just a gap in the conversation around reparations, memorialization, or any kind of justice really towards Native people. So the idea for the series came out of that. And then as we started conceptualizing the series and thinking about who was going to speak and what kind of things we wanted to learn more about, we realized that we also really wanted to kind of have some kind of engine for taking some of these things that we've learned and putting them into action. So being a support to the Native community. The working groups and we have some ideas for initiatives that we would really like the working groups to focus on. And we hope that some of those ideas are made apparent through the series. So for example we have some workshops coming up around land justice and we're working with local land trusts and conservation groups to think about how to move from just land conservation to actual land justice. So we have some ideas around that. We also have some ideas around decolonizing curriculums and education and we've got workshops coming up around that. But at the same time, we're really trying and hoping to follow the lead of Native organizations and Native people who are already working on these initiatives. And we are kind of entering into these working groups with an open mind. So we're hoping that the groups that we actually can mean that they'll really look towards Native leadership in our community to determine what the action steps are that are best to take. And while we have some ideas for that, we also, we want people to do what feels interesting to them in order to really kind of facilitate more engagement and more excitement about this opportunity. We also spoke with Ron Wellburn, Project Scholar for the series, and a member of the advisory committee. I am not of this area but I have what I could call, let's say, distant cousins while I have pretty much identified as Cherokee much of my life. My Cherokee ancestors have they migrated during the 1820s over to the Virginia Eastern shore, which is about as, you know, you can't go any further than you're into the Atlantic Ocean. And intermarried with an Algonquin group known as the Acomacs living on the Gingaskan reservation in Northampton County of Virginia. And I happen to have been born in Brynmore College Hospital and raised in Burwin and in Philadelphia. So what I'm going to be talking, that's kind of my background as far as cultural is concerned. I've been teaching. I'm now retired from UMass Amherst. I was in the English department. I retired from there after 27 years. I helped start the Native American Studies Certificate Program at UMass which is actually in the anthropology department. And I served as its director for nine years. So in terms of the scholarship and, you know, the scholarly role that I have, it's a matter of making sure that, well, accuracy for one thing. Accuracy as much as possible. I know a lot of people in terms of when you start, when you begin talking about history, you know, you say that, well what is history? How can you avoid, let's say, circumstantial evidence shadow of a doubt or kinds of instances. And when you're talking about Native life and so forth, it's not that easy to nail things down. You know, there are people who have come through oral traditions, oral traditions that are handed down. But a lot of it, you know, even though those accounts have been written down, you have to scrutinize them very carefully to find out exactly what's going on. And, you know, I grew up trying to learn as much as I could when I was a small kid about my, not just my own Native heritage, but the peoples, especially those who were living in the eastern half of the country. And I was quite surprised when I started joining the Buchachs on the, oh, golly, 40 years ago and more on the Powwow circuit. And we were selling books and all of a whole lot of stuff just sort of wow. I mean, I just, what I had retained was just remarkable. So, you know, it hasn't been easy for us, but I'm not going to make a big deal out of that kind of, let's say, hardship because we're here to carry on. And I feel that we owe our responsibilities to our peoples and to the Earth itself, to Mother Earth itself. There's so much filled with Mother Earth is crying. And I think that she wants her stories and our stories that we have about her and with her and because of her, I brought forth at this particular time. As for what he hopes comes of the series, he said he wants people to understand more about the histories and the people who were here before the Europeans arrived and what happened as a result of the colonization and genocide against indigenous people. And I would like to see more in the way of these kinds of teaching initiatives that would go on in the junior high schools, middle schools especially certainly in the lower grades too, but certainly in high school. Taking more of what we could call an indigenous approach to the backgrounds of a particular area. It's good that people want to learn from Native people and I hope that that kind of expands as well as the fact that I wouldn't want to see it just learn it for Native American History Month or Native American Month. I mean we shut the door and go into Santa Claus and go into something else. You know, we have survived and we've managed and I don't think that many of us are going to be forgetting, especially with these kinds of programs. These are memory programs also. It's very important to keep the memories going. And sometimes to stoke the fires of memory, those little embers because that's where the knowledge is, that's where everything starts to become crystallized in the minds and in hearts. And that's where we have to, that's where the work is. So, and it's beautiful. People interested in getting involved in the series can learn more on the Kruna Center's website. Following a large scale outbreak at the MCI Norfolk Facility in which over 50 prisoners tested positive or about 1 in 10 inmates according to reporting by WBUR, the issue of COVID-19 in prisons has gained renewed interest, all well case numbers have risen across the state. Executive Director of the Prisons Legal Services of Massachusetts or PLSMA, Elizabeth Matos has been working to ensure that the rights and safety of incarcerated individuals have been and continue to be maintained the pandemic. Matos explains that while prisons and jails are secure facilities, they act as an incubator for the virus due to confined close quarters. She said that a lack of proper mask usage and sanitary conditions only amplifies the risk to not only prisoners, but correctional officers and staff as well as the larger community. But it is true that it didn't hit every facility the same. This is, it's very different if you think of prisons and jails as being just by nature or by definition, they're highly secure settings, right? And controlled settings. So theoretically, if you're being very precautious and taking all measures possible then it's possible to not have an outbreak in a prison or a jail. We already know that social distancing is a must for keeping the virus at bay once people are infected. And so that's why we're getting these new executive orders from the governor limiting social gatherings and all kinds of things to really enhance the social distancing piece, not just the mandatory mask mandate. So it's not just about mask wearing and hand sanitizers, also about social distancing. And if you get social distance in a prison or a jail, which is pretty antithetical to prisons and jails, then once it gets in, then you really have a problem. The PLSMA has been working with the governor's office, legislatures, and the Department of Correction, among others, to file lawsuits and promote systematic advocacy for prisoners so that they now get access to masks and hand sanitizer. However, Matos noted this has not been an easy task. So it's been very difficult to have standards applied to the human beings that live in our prisons and jails that are on par with the standards that are being applied elsewhere in the state, including nursing homes and colleges and universities and things like that. If we really care about keeping people safe, then we should care about keeping all people safe and make sure that those things are adhered to. So a lot of our work has been around just elevating the humanity of this population. It's unfortunately much easier said than done. Still many challenges remain, particularly concerning elderly prisoners with underlying conditions. Earlier this year, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, before the unexpected passing of the late Chief Justice Ralph D. Gantz, wrote in a concurring opinion, according to Matos, quote, the DOC and the Pearl Board really had to do all in its power to start releasing people and take precautions to minimize the population and minimize the impact of the virus if there were to be a second wave. Matos explains that since then, quote, none of that has been done, including releasing individuals within the last five months of their sentence, or using home confinement as a mechanism, whereas other states, such as New Jersey, have already begun to significantly reduce the size of their prison populations. State Representative Lindsay Sabadosa, for the first Hampshire District, which encompasses Northampton, filed a bill in March to specifically address these issues between the coronavirus and DOC facilities called decarceration in COVID-19. Sabadosa said her inspiration to write the legislation, which is currently still pending on Beacon Hill, came from seeing what other countries had done to depopulate the size of their prisons and jails, in addition to a memo issued by the district attorneys for the State of New York concerning COVID in state correctional facilities. Sabadosa's bill goes further than the SJC ruling, which largely pertains to those being held on pretrial, in that it specifically addresses vulnerable and nonviolent individuals who have already been sentenced or who are awaiting parole. I was speaking to someone the other day who's been awaiting parole for five months now. He is currently COVID positive. He is at Norfolk Prison. He's serving a very lengthy sentence because he was sentenced on a three strikes ruling. So basically, if he had not had prior, they were both drug-related convictions. It suffers from addiction. If he had not had those two prior convictions very early in life, this third charge later in life would have only been two years. He's now served 13 years. So he's definitely someone that should qualify for parole, has not yet had a decision and now is unfortunately sick. The representative added, even if her legislation is not passed, action must be taken and she pointed to a lack of action from the executive branch. Sabadosa explained Governor Charlie Baker could unilaterally institute decarceration policies that would expedite this process of releasing prisoners through parole and home confinement, which Sabadosa says the state is supposed to have guidelines for. I think that politically there's often a lot of fear when it comes to doing anything around criminal justice reform. Historically, Massachusetts has become more and more conservative over the years in the way we treat people who are incarcerated. I think that the governor, while he has done a good amount of work and is supportive of programs around reentry, has not always made the connection that successful reentry also depends upon a successful period of incarceration. You need to treat people as if they're human, if you want them to then leave prison and be able to reintegrate into society, find a job, reconnect with their families. And our prison system currently puts up a lot of barriers to that. It's hard for, I think, politicians to say, yep, there should be home confinement because there's always the question of, well, what if something goes wrong? The flip side of that is we're not looking at, well, something is going wrong in our prisons, and we're not doing anything about that out of fear of potentially something bad happening if someone is released. Sabadosa stressed that, quote, the statistics speak for themselves. In terms of individuals who have either punished their prison sentences or who are paroled, not re-offending upon return to normal life in their communities, and that the success stories outweigh those who do re-offend. The legislation also calls for an individualized case-by-case review, particularly concerning sentenced individuals already eligible for parole, who qualify for medical parole, for example, those 50-plus with underlying conditions, and those nearing the end of their sentences. I know that there are people who say we should simply open the doors and burn down prisons and not have anything like that, and I can understand with the frustrations we have with the criminal justice system why you would take that view, but the legislation is not that bold, quite honestly. The legislation asks for a review, it asks for the Department of Corrections to weigh dangerousness versus risk to public safety and health, because if you have a prison in a community where there is a spiking number of cases, as I sort of insinuated before, the only people who are moving in and out of those prisons are the people who work there. That means they're bringing illness into the prison, but they're also bringing illness back to their families, into the towns, into the schools, into the hospitals. It creates hotspots, and we don't need that or want that in the state, and so if you can go through depopulate, keep people socially distanced, keep people in clean masks, have enough resources to do all of those things, it doesn't just benefit the people who are incarcerated, it benefits all of us. If someone has six months left in their sentence, then it feels like well it's no brainer, you know that there are cases in prisons and people are getting sick, why don't we just release the people that we're going to release in a few months anyway, and yet there's a very strong pushback to know people must finish every last minute of their sentences, and it I think speaks to a really sad situation where we are only viewing incarceration as punitive, we don't view it as rehabilitative at all, and that it doesn't lead to successful re-entry quite frankly. As the situation currently stands in western Massachusetts, Sabados explained there are no current positive cases as of earlier this week at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Corrections. However, one person who was hospitalized became COVID positive and several staff who were exposed are now quarantining. In nearby Hamden County, several COVID cases remain active in DOC facilities according to Sabadosa, but she noted there have been data discrepancies between the DOC's website versus data required to be reported by the SJC. Sabadosa added, quote, the court did very little early on in the past year. Incarcerating people during a pandemic without taking the necessary precautions can rise to a human rights violation. The representative stressed seeing the humanity in the state's prison populations, particularly during the pandemic, when these groups remain at risk. I think that we a lot of times like to pretend we don't know people who are incarcerated. It's not us, it's them. We create that divide. It's just not true. And so when you break that down we're talking about our sisters and our brothers and our parents and our children and grandparents and uncles and aunts. We all know somebody who has been incarcerated because we live in a country where we incarcerate a lot of people. When you think of it that way, when you think of this as members of your community then it's a lot harder to say it doesn't affect me. As students at UMass living in the Amherst area and their fall semester, they are being encouraged to get testing for COVID-19 within 72 hours of their planned departure so as not to potentially spread the virus to their families this holiday season. The reminder comes in an email to all students from Jeffrey Hescock the UMass Executive Director of Environmental Health and Safety and Ann Becker, the UMass Public Health Director. This advice lines up with updated health guidance from Governor Charlie Baker to colleges and universities concerning students' travel plans. UMass will continue to test students, faculty, staff and these individuals' spouses and dependents over the course of the winter break with modified hours. The new hours for asymptomatic testing begin Monday, November 23rd at the Mullen Center and will occur on a regular basis Monday through Thursday from 9am to 4.30pm with some exceptions. Testing will not occur on November 25th and 26th which coincide with the Thanksgiving holiday. In addition to December 23rd and 24th in the lead up to Christmas Day as well as December 30th and 31st for Christmas for New Year's Eve. Testing is free for all those who qualify and results are delivered within 24 to 36 hours. Currently the modified testing schedule runs until January 7th 2021 but UMass noted as the spring of the year. With Thanksgiving just around the corner we sent AWR correspondent Melissa Nieves-Torres out to talk with folks about what they're thankful for this holiday season. Thanks Claire. I'm here in downtown Amherst today talking to local residents about what they're especially grateful for as we head into the Thanksgiving season. Although dining room tables across the United States might look a bit different today and some annual holiday festivities might be canceled, Amherst residents have found ways to still remain grateful and thankful for everything this year. I'm just so grateful for my friends really and people who I can, even if I can't spend time with them in person right now that I can just call. Yeah. I'm thankful for my health and I'm grateful to be alive. And I'm just grateful for every day that I'm alive. I'm extremely thankful for the fact that I still have the opportunity to access online learning in this crazy time because I know it's been a real struggle for a lot of students and I'm just thankful to be healthy and able to pursue what I want this semester and stay active and be around my loved ones and overall just help for sure. For today I'm thankful for beautiful sunny day. I'm thankful for being able to continue to serve the community and be able to keep working through the pandemic and that and no one in my family has been directly affected by the pandemic. I'm just thankful to be able to travel to see my family. It's been almost a year since we've been here so it's nice to be able to come back and see my sister and my parents around here somewhere. I agree with that and we're taking a lot more time off this year than we would have normally so we're spending a good three weeks almost a month back on the east coast to see family so it's a nice opportunity to be able to do that. We wouldn't have otherwise so yep. I'm thankful for I guess my overall health and supportive family and friends and being able to enjoy their company is really what it comes down to. Although Thanksgiving is a little different this year it's important to remain thankful and grateful for what you have. As you can see Amherst residents have found ways to find the silver linings and what could be a quite bleak situation. For the Amherst Weekly Report I'm Melissa Torres. This Thanksgiving local food banks and centers in the area are giving back to the community and helping provide meals and services for residents. For on or off campus students at UMass Amherst the Amherst Survival Center distributes fresh and nutritious food for students in the area. Places like POGH or Pentecostals of Greater Hartford have a Thanksgiving food drive through Sunday November 22nd. Non-perishable items such as canned foods potatoes, rice, kidney beans, gravy packets and stuffing will be collected through Saturday November 14th. Whole chicken and turkeys will be collected from 12pm to 12pm on Sunday November 22nd. The Thanksgiving food giveaway will be from 2.30pm to 4.30pm on Sunday November 22nd. They will have family dinner kits available. Margaret's Pantry, Not Bread Alone Soup Kitchen and the Food Bank of Western Mass are some of many places in our area providing warm meals and non-perishable goods for local residents. If you aren't able to donate or participate in local food drives, you can always volunteer and donate your time to provide for people and families in need during this time. Although Black Friday isn't until the 27th of November there are many sales and deals happening right now. Some of the biggest items this year are the iPhone 12, Nintendo Switch and the Apple Watch Series 6. With COVID-19 still very active across the state this year your shopping experience might look different so online shopping is the best way to stay safe and socially distant from the comfort of your home. Many stores like Target, Walmart and Best Buy are having Black Friday deals now until Cyber Monday so be sure to get ahead and do some early Christmas shopping for your loved ones. Be sure to also check out your local shops and boutiques to support local businesses. Bring a mask or two and practice social distancing to ensure a safe shopping experience for you and the essential workers at these stores. That's all for this week. You've been watching the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media. We will not have an Amherst Weekly Report next Friday so we will see you again after Thanksgiving on Friday, December 4th.