On July 30, the workers at the food co-ops in Northampton and the neighboring town of Easthampton announced they had a victory when they signed a new union contract with management. A total of about 240 people work at the two co-ops. “Every worker has received a $2 per hour pay bump, raising the starting wage from $18 an hour to $20 an hour,” a spokesperson for the workers said. There are other victories in the contract. Photos of picket lines that helped win the contract are at:

https://imgur.com/a/river-valley-co-op-informational-pickets-J4iqoOj

The workers have a web site at www.ufcw1459.com.

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In Brattleboro, on August 1 at 6 p.m. people will intermittently bang pots for an end to the genocide in Gaza. The protest will be in Harmony Lot.

According to a history of pot banging protests on the web site of the American Musicological Society, “On November 21, 2019, more than 200,000 Colombians attended non-violent marches in Bogotá, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Cartagena Manizales, Medellín, Cali, Popayán, Pasto, and elsewhere. However, after 5:00 PM the protests went awry when the Colombian National Police clashed with protesters. At 7:00 PM, local authorities enacted curfews in several cities. At 8:00 PM, people responded to the curfews by banging pans from their homes, standing on their balconies and doors so that the sound would be heard. As reported on the news soon thereafter, thousands of Colombian citizens had sounded their rage and frustration through the first national cacerolazo. Noise intruded into public spaces, shattering the institutional fantasies of social control embodied by the emptied and silenced streets.”

The full article is at:

https://musicologynow.org/the-eloquence-of-noise

A group that's promoting the Brattleboro protest has a web page at:

https://grassrootsfund.org/groups/upper-valley-action-affinity-group

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In Springfield, Massachusetts on August 7 there will be a march to protest a proposed fossil fuel pipeline. The pipeline would go from Springfield to Longmeadow, Massachusetts. “We will gather at 5:15 p.m. sharp in Stearns Square for a street theater performance and call to action, followed by a mini-march to the Eversource Open House at Tower Square,” the organizers said in an email. The organizers have a web site at https://ClimateActionNowMA.org.