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A Cycle Considered
I grew up in a conservative household. I enrolled as a Republican as soon as I turned 18, and voted for George W. Bush that year. Then 9/11 happened, and the way our country’s leadership responded set off red flags in my mind. I had long been slow to trust authority figures, and I found myself drifting further and further apart ideologically from my family, church, and party. I watched as the GOP sold itself out, eagerly, to a rightward drift; a movement adding more and more authoritarianism, I would dare even say fascism, into the party. It took until I had some distance, when I was out of the party and looking over it with a wider lens, to learn that the process I’d seen happening up close had begun years before I had my voter registration, maybe even before I was born.
Same S***, Different Day
Unless you live under a rock, you have probably heard about the outbreak of cyclosporiasis currently running rampant through the U.S., causing a spate of gastrointestinal illness across the nation. The FDA thought they had found the source after Taylor Farms lettuce tested positive for the parasite. Unfortunately for wastewater management employees everywhere, they were sadly mistaken.
Good Trouble in 2026
Over the weekend of July 17-19, Mass 50501 participated in Good Trouble’s national weekend of action honoring the late congressman John Lewis. Throughout his life, Lewis worked tirelessly for civil rights and particularly for equal access to voting rights. Our country’s history of voting rights is messy, complex, at times painful, and—importantly—still being written.
Our Declaration
250 years ago, our predecessors submitted a list of grievances towards a tyrannical ruler, and declared their independence. What would our declaration look like today?
Get to Know Your Candidates: The Race for the Senate
To help voters decide who to support in the upcoming election for Massachusetts’s second U.S. Senate seat, we reached out to all seven of the candidates who are running. The questions we asked them and the answers we received are below.
Have You No Decency?
Decency requires you to put aside your selfish desires and submit yourself to some standard of propriety. Fundamentally, it requires subscribing to a higher code; By contrast, Trump's indecent use of language acts as a confession that he does not value anyone but himself. While this indecency harms many, it also provides us an opportunity…
25 Reasons to Oppose Age-Based Social Media Bans
The Massachusetts House of Representatives recently passed Amendment H.5366, adding age-based restrictions on social media access to a Senate bill to ban cellphone use by students in public schools. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea. If teens are struggling with mental health and spending a lot of time on social media, the idea that we can legislate them off of social media and solve their mental health struggles is deeply appealing. Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple.
How to speak out against Mass’s new privacy-killing social media ban
This bill, similar (though more wide-casting) to a lot of other restrictive and reactive bills we’re seeing to limit speech online, would require social media companies (defined very broadly) to verify the age of their users, and restrict younger teens from accessing their sites. This is problematic for many reasons: our right to privacy and freedom from undue searches, the security of our data, freedom of speech, safety of at-risk teens—pick your issue of interest!
Mayday, America
To participate in May Day Strong is simple: No School. No Work. No Shopping. This is a required step in our development as a movement. It will demonstrate to those still on the sidelines that we have staying power and the capacity to escalate. It will show to our political adversaries that we have the ability to apply pressure on a national scale at a specific time in a coordinated way to effect. It is a warning to capitulators that we have leverage in the consumerist system that they have built and that we are smart enough to exploit that vulnerability.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.” Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
Introducing What the Flock?!
Our first installation of What the Flock?! features a wider timeline of Flock news, including reports of Flock’s many problems, opposition efforts, resources to take action, and contract cancellations, including in our very own Attleboro, MA!
A Case for Zeal
The United States, without the remit or even notice to Congress and the American People, has unilaterally, and at the whim of a single man and a small cabal of conspirators, sunk the fleet of a sovereign nation, assassinated its leader, and devastated the Iranian command structure. Thousands are dead in the attack including hundreds at a girls’ school, hit with a Tomahawk missile in Tehran. This attack has no more the legality, morality, or strategy of a mob boss ordering a hit on a rival.
Science is Not Perfect. Fight for It Anyway.
If there’s one thing almost anyone can agree on, it’s that science is not perfect. Even so, I am here to invite you to Stand Up for Science tomorrow, March 7th, to make a case for science with all its imperfections.
Big Brother Won’t Save Your Lost Dog
Politics in the US are more divisive than ever, but there are still a few topics on which most Americans can agree: apple pie is delicious, football is the most popular sport, and dogs are adorable. A penchant for protecting our four-legged friends is normally a positive, but on Super Bowl Sunday, Americans’ love for our canine companions was weaponized against us by Amazon’s Ring cameras, their partnership with Flock, and Flock’s dealings with ICE.
MA-06 Candidates Answer our ALPR Questions
We asked the Democratic primary candidates for Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District seat their thoughts on AI-powered Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology in our communities. Here’s what they had to say.
Flock Safety and the Dangers of AI-powered License Plate Readers
Long gone are the days of “innocent until proven guilty” and personal privacy. There are fewer and fewer places that are free from our overlords’ constant gaze. Ugly black poles went up all over town. One lonely conspiracy theorist camped out by a pole closest to the center of town shortly after their appearance. They signal aliens! They’re watching us!, he declared.
ICE is a Rogue Agency. It’s time to shut it down.
The last several months have shown that ICE is an irredeemable blight upon our nation. There are measures that we can take right now that will cut off ICE’s access to the funding and information that enable its reign of terror.
Enough Is Enough
The best time to begin impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump was months ago, but the next-best time is right now. Since his reelection, Trump has repeatedly and egregiously ignored our laws and the Constitution, and his lawlessness continues outside of our borders. Trump’s flouting of U.S. and international law reached a new level this month when the military invaded Venezuela and kidnapped their president.
Did Misogyny Ruin the New York Times?
The short version? Yes. Yes, it did. On November 5th, the New York Times published an opinion piece entitled, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” To publish such an article right now, while women’s rights are under attack, is appalling. That it came from so highly-regarded a source is alarming. And that this piece masquerades as a championing of women’s rights? Unforgivable. Let’s discuss the term “conservative feminism,” what real feminism looks like, and why intersectional feminism is so important.
The Right to Read
Book bans are a rampant problem in the U.S. According to PEN America, there were 6,870 book bans in the 2024–2025 school year. The American Library Association recorded challenges to almost 2,500 unique titles in the 2024 calendar year. These numbers show an alarming increase—more than eight times over—when compared with the prior two decades. Almost 23,000 books have been banned nationwide since 2021, and these bans disproportionately attack books with LGBTQ+ and BIPOC characters. The good news is, there are many ways that we can fight back!