Union representing Daily Hampshire Gazette workers brings labor fight to Northampton City Hall
Posted May 07, 9:00 AM
Union representing Daily Hampshire Gazette workers brings labor fight to Northampton City Hall
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More than two years after unionizing, the workers of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Amherst Bulletin and Valley Advocate still do not have a contract with the paper’s ownership.
The Pioneer Valley News Guild, the union representing those employees, aimed to draw attention to their labor fight Thursday evening. Union members and supporters rallied outside Northampton City Hall before speaking during the City Council meeting’s public comment section.
This article by Jennifer Walker-Journey was originally published on Psychedelic Spotlight, and appears here with permission.
The state of Massachusetts is inching its way toward decriminalizing psychedelics with a third city now making possession the lowest priority for law enforcement.
Thursday night, Northampton became the third city in the state to relax enforcement of laws against the possession, use and distribution of natural psychedelic plants, following a unanimous 8-0 vote by the City Council. Northampton follows Sommerville and Cambridge in decriminalizing the hallucinogens such as psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine, and peyote.
“Psychedelic plants save lives,” advocacy group Baystaters said in an Instagram post praising the City Council’s vote, “in the name of public health and criminal justice, creating momentum for state reform.
In three Massachusetts cities that ‘decriminalized’ psychedelics, police say public health was already prioritized over enforcement, and arrest volume was low
Updated 6:00 AM;
In Northampton, it should be the lowest priority of police to investigate, or arrest any person for planting, purchasing, possessing or in other ways interacting with entheogenic plants, the City Council declared two weeks ago.
In Cambridge, no city official should use public resources to enforce laws banning entheogens, or natural psychedelics, the City Council there said in early February, following a similar resolution in Somerville two weeks prior.
But interviews with police officials in Northampton and Cambridge indicate that, regardless of intent, the resolutions generally had no significant effect on law enforcement operations. In both cases, police said they already didn’t prioritize enforcing bans on hallucinogens by making arrests or investigating low-level drug possession. The Somerville P
Muncie man draws 10-year term for dealing heroin
MUNCIE, Ind. A Muncie man convicted of selling heroin was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison.
Issac Terrell O Neal, now 34, was arrested in March 2017 after he was accused of selling the drug, for $100, to an agent for the Muncie Police Department s narcotics unit.
When members of the MPD SWAT team arrived at O Neal s North Linda Layne home, they reported he broke out a rear window and tossed out a sock, later determined to contain both heroin and meth.
A stolen .40-caliber handgun was also recovered from the house.
When she sentenced O Neal last week, Delaware Circuit Court 1 Judge Marianne Vorhees gave him credit for 13 days already spent in the Delaware County jail.
Northampton City Council votes in support of decriminalizing psychedelic drugs
Updated Apr 01, 2021;
The Northampton City Council voted in support of decriminalizing entheogenic plants Thursday night, putting the city near the forefront of a budding national movement against enforcing bans on psychedelic substances.
The resolution stopped short of fully eliminating legal penalties for the use of entheogens, a category that includes psilocybin mushrooms. The power to decriminalize those substances is reserved for the state. But the measure made clear the city council’s position that no public employees, including police, should prioritize enforcement of criminal charges for possession of natural psychedelics.