As you probably have read, the Massachusetts Senate passed drastically anti-immigrant language during the consideration of the budget  (a 20 minute debate), that is likely to deny many immigrants and their children access to health care, education opportunities, and housing.  It promotes a watchdog culture encouraging citizens to call in to an anonymous hot-line to report on potentially undocumented workers.

This legislation is misguided and inhumane.  Current laws already limit services to undocumented persons.  These provisions will likely increase the number of people who are not able to get services.  They are likely to increase public health risks by decreasing our ability to contain the spread of illnesses.  These provisions also promote racial profiling.

As you might know these provisions were eventually eliminated from the final budget. Thank You to all who let your legislator know of your concern.

From Sheila Decter – May 25

It is crunch time at the State House.  Committees are obligated to release bills with their recommendations, although we understand that there are over 800 bills that have “extensions” and are still in committee.

We need to expand continued energy to get those bills we care about passed.  So, please understand if you get several messages over the next few weeks.

For more information go to  JALSA Pages:   Crunch Time Details

Call House on Paid Sick Leave

Call Senate on discriminatory provision on Savings Bank Life Insurance

CORI reform vote —Passed House by 138 to 17 vote> next step is merging House and Senate Bills.

Restore Dental funding

Full-funding for METCO

Support Shaw’s Fired Workers   Let Shaw’s Markets know you won’t shop until they return to the Bargaining  Table

National Popular Vote for President (Agreement by state governments that would allow the national popular vote to elect the President) – Passed House – next step is Senate.

Encourage a vote on Transgender Protection.

Embrace Transparency in Budget Considerations

Thank Governor Patrick for the newly required Civil Rights Impact Assessment

Important weeks in the legislative session.  Committees were to release bills.  State House News tells us that 900 bills were given “extensions” which means the committees have not been willing to support, reject, or send them to “study” (effectively killing them for the year).

Paid Sick Leave is in the House Ways and Means Committee. Contact all members of that committee and the House Leadership, Speaker Robert DeLeo  ( 617-722-2500) and House Ways and Means Chairman, Charles Murphy of Burlington of Winthrop (617-722-2990);  Barbara L’Italian of Andover of Boston – Vice Chair (617-722-2380);  Stephen Kulik of Worthington of Franklin – Assistant Vice-Chair   (617-722-2380).

Urge 15 of your friends to call, as well.   Telephone numbers for all on State House Website

Scaccia of Boston            Fox of Boston                 Koczera of New Bedford
Canavan of Brockton    Fagan of Taunton          Quinn of Dartmouth
Garry of Dracut              Creedon of Brockton    Rodrigues of Westport
Balser of Newton           Timilty of Milton            Kane of Holyoke

Donelan of Orange        Rush of Boston       Driscoll of Braintree  

Guyer of Dalton             Sciortino of Medford     Sannicandro of Ashland

Welch of West Springfield     Speranzo of Pittsfield   Rice of Gardner

Conroy of Wayland       deMacedo of Plymouth   Hargraves of Groton

Perry of Sandwich         Polito of Shrewsbury         Smola of Palmer

Webster of Pembroke

For a script for telephone calls, see our Paid Sick Leave page.

Savings Bank Life Insurance

For 20 years, the SBLI company has sold insurance in the Commonwealth with a provision in the statutes prohibiting discriminatory provisions in rate setting by gender.  Now, the company wants to be able to establish different rates for men and women.  Please contact your senator.  The company has been profitable for many years without discriminating.  Whatever small savings women might achieve by discriminatory rate setting, they will lose more in the long run in the insurance field.  Just last year, Massachusetts was finally able to end discrimination in annuities.  Now SBLI wants to turn the clock back.

Contact your senator immediately.  Urge they not take this discriminatory action.

Transgender Civil Rights Bill 1728

Once again the Massachusetts legislature is dragging its heels on civil rights legislation.   A bill to add transgender identity to the state’s civil rights statutes is still pending, notwithstanding that a majority of the legislators have indicated their support.

Write the leadership.  Urge that this bill be released from the Judiciary Committee for floor debate and a vote.

JALSA  congratulates the members of the Boston City Council, who have unanimously expressed their outrage at the un-American actions of the State of Arizona.  In a triumph of ignorance and bigotry, that state’s legislature and governor have created a discriminatory system of interrogation and arrest for the offense of not having your passport or your birth certificate with you while looking like a foreigner.  We are all immigrants, some recent, some generations or millennia in the past, but all with the potential to look strange to somebody.  Encouraging local law enforcement to demand “papers” from suspicious-looking strangers comes right out of the totalitarian play book– a scene from Casablanca.   The City Council gets it, and has spoken up for all of us.  Perhaps if enough voices like theirs are raised, the misguided folks in Arizona will get it too.

– Also See Jewish Community Condemns Arizona Law signed by JALSA

To the Editors:

Joe Lieberman and our new Massachusetts US Senator, Scott Brown, have introduced in the Senate a bill that would strip the citizenship from anyone “accused” of aiding terrorism, of joining a terrorist organization or of being a terrorist.  The defects in this brainstorm are readily apparent: it reverses the presumption of innocence and is otherwise unconstitutional on a number of grounds.  It panders to unreasoned panic, and demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of its sponsors.  It will have no deterrent effect on terrorism but raises the specter of widespread injustice.  Sadly, our history is peppered with this sort of over-reaction, from the Alien & Sedition Acts to the Palmer Raids to the internment of the Japanese to the blacklist; sooner or later we wake up with a national hangover.

But this particular assault should have a special resonance for the Jewish community.  In the 1930’s and 40’s, the Stern Gang, the Irgun, and even more moderate Zionist organizations were widely perceived as terrorists, certainly by the British who ruled Palestine.  Let us recall that Menachim Begin surmounted his part in the destruction of the King David Hotel to become prime minister of Israel.  If the proposed law, and the State Department’s list of suspected terrorist organizations, had been around when World War II began, how many native-born Jewish-Americans could have been denaturalized and deported for joining or donating to a Jewish charity with murky connections?  If great uncle Max were careless in his Zionist activities, he could have wound up back in Mielec, Poland just in time to be gassed.  And it wouldn’t matter that he was born in New Jersey.

Joel Eigerman, Chairman

Committee on Law and Social Action, JALSA