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 ...

 [long read] "Mom, Dad, the doctor said I should call you. This is her phone. I'm in a hospital in Guatemala." Four hours later a phone was pressed into my hand. "Chris, oh good, hold on." It was my mother's voice. "Your father is boarding a flight. I just told him we reached you." Twenty years ago I participated in a delegation to El Salvador. In many ways that's where lessons I had started to get exposure caught up with me in full force. A few years before, the global campaigns for justice  first pierced my bubble in Seattle during the successful shut-down, sit-in to stop the World Trade Organization. Only two months before the twin towers created a national mnemonic for my generation, I was trying out broken Spanish and freshman microeconomic theory in a meeting with the Mayor of Nueva Trinidad. The community had formed in Honduran-based refugee encampments during the 1980s and maintained its identity, then ten years since the conflict had b...

 The map of Iraq filled the television screen, while audio played from Baghdad. My sister turned four March 4, the day an official cease fire was signed, but children at the Ameriyah shelter in Baghdad were not so fortunate.   Kathy Kelly writes: "There, on February 13, 1991, two 2,000 lb. U.S. laser guided missiles killed 400 civilians, mostly women and children. Another 200 were severely wounded. I wish President Joe Biden could meet the Pope there and ask him to hear his confession." Promoting dialogue as he did in his 2019 visit to the Arab Emirates, the upcoming apostolic journey, March 5-8, Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad, and the next day go to Najaf in central Iraq to meet Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Al-Husayni al-Sistani, the 90-year-old spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslims. An interreligious meeting will follow at the Plain of Ur, the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham. On Sunday, March 7, in the Kurdistan region the Pope arrives in the north...