November 8, 2016 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS This is not a dream. For your whole life, you’ve seen images on screens showing brutal political struggles in faraway places like Ukraine and Yemen. And in the rare moments you’ve paid attention to the suffering you’ve seen, you’ve asked yourself, “How could things get so bad that […]
UMASS CAMBRIDGE: MAKING HARVARD UNIVERSITY PUBLIC WILL SOLVE ITS WORKERS’ PROBLEMS—AND THE COMMONWEALTH’S HIGHER ED CRISIS
October 24, 2016 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Three weeks into their strike, Harvard University dining hall workers are in a difficult position. Their union’s demands for better wages, benefits, and working conditions are falling on deaf ears in the Harvard administration. They cannot continue picketing indefinitely on $200 weekly strike pay—which itself won’t last for […]
THE THIRSTY GAMES CONTINUE
After failed attempt by Boston to gain control over licenses, liquor laws still stuck in last century Earlier this year, DigBoston and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism published a two–part feature, The Thirsty Games, investigating the Hub’s antiquated liquor license quota, and the confusion and disparity the limited number of licenses has caused. The series laid out the sordid history […]
KILL SHOT 2: MASS PUBLIC HIGHER ED STILL ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK
UMass President’s Office at One Beacon Street in Boston Overlooking the Massachusetts State House July 12, 2016 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Will campus advocates spark a rebellion for proper funding or cling to failed politics as usual? Hot on the heels of the UMass Boston administration issuing pink slips to 400 Boston non-tenure track faculty […]
HOW MASS BECAME GROUND-ZERO FOR CORPORATE ED REFORM
With a statewide referendum looming in November, Massachusetts voters will have to decide just how much school privatization they’re willing to bear. What happens when charter schools begin to proliferate in traditional public school districts? In Massachusetts, where K-12 alternatives have had more than two decades to metastasize, it means millions less in annual funding […]