A reportback--  I am here in Chelmsford, MA to attend a bail hearing for a man detained by ICE 82 days ago--a week since the co-owner of small business filed my letter of support along with Senator Pat Jehlen's letter. Please donate www.ElectSpicer.com  I raised funds for signage and doorknockers $1800 from 15 donors last Friday. According to Senator Pat Jehlen, new law allows me to put your campaign support to pay for childcare so I can campaign. Thank you in advance! At Finance Committee of the Whole, I spoke up regarding the Mayor’s proposed budget that would cut the Racial and Social Justice Department funds by $200,000 and increase the Police Budget an additional $5-9 million. The Cambridge-Somerville 350.org node organized me, and I spoke to the need to provide environmental justice protections from pollution to impacted neighbors--crediting the pilot project of Ward 1 City Councilor Matt McLaughlin--which would bring air filtration units to homes already most likely to ...

  Finally a date with my wife! But just to make it happen, both she and I wrestled with our demons and angels. In my case, Yesterday Thursday 7pm, mourning Somervillians for Palestine (S4P) were in my heart. Mourning--The immolation of Matt Nelson at the Israeli consulate in Boston. Mourning-- The shooting of Caleb Gannon, a pro-Palestinian Jewish lifelong Newton resident--allegedly by a man who had repeatedly harrassed S4P--including the daughter of a colleague of the Human Rights Commission on her way into Somerville High School. Mourning the failure of our Mayor to address the need of a plan for protest protection. All this heaviness as we proceeded to our date. We read James this coming Sunday at Mass--easily distorted into an abstraction on wisdom that begins and ends with purity. But today, our spaces map across and through global mess, and we are called into conversions of hope, daily persistant practices of love, solidarity, shouldering the reality of the oppressed. In her ...

Author with State Senator Pat Jehlen and husband Alain Jehlen in Davis Square. Published 20 March 2024   Somerville Times here Another Jew for Ceasefire C.R. Spicer March 8 Yellow tulips for International Women’s Day were distributed to participants after thirty-five had gathered in Somerville at Davis Square to mourn the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. Alain Jehlen, attending the protest on Friday said “Ceasefire is the only way to be human.” “Already 1 percent of the population is dead,” Sen. Pat Jehlen said. “That’s thirty million Americans. 700 in Somerville.” “I’m so appalled,” said Nancy Murray, Cambridge resident who worked for the ACLU, She has visited all the refugee camps including Jabalia recalling the 2,000 lb. bomb Israel dropped there. As more than 9,000 women have been killed in Gaza, the death toll was dramatized by a reading of names and ages of Palestinian victims. “The names we just read included several families,” remarked Amina, a student wearing a Kafiya ...