Deep Dive

We in the Commonwealth may have better-than-average gun control laws than in the rest of the states, but advocates and legislators here are nonetheless concerned. A committee made up of three senators and three representatives will work to craft a new gun control bill they hope Gov. Maura Healey will sign into law before the end of this legislative session July 31. Here’s what we need to know.

I think my message on the winter solstice should be to find the light. At the end of 2023, this message feels like a cliché. Even so, our only ways forward are to identify ways to push back and to honor those who are doing the work.

Activist Laurie Veninger is worried. Along with others in the Commonwealth, she thinks there’s evidence that dangerous groups may be showing up to oppose progressive causes, including access to abortion.

Safe, medically accurate information about abortion and trans health care is under attack, even in a reliably “blue” state such as Massachusetts. NCJW activist Cathy Corman provides an update on what happened in Easthampton this summer.

There are about 30 so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” or CPCs, in the Commonwealth. They provide no medical treatment. They are unregulated. And there are twice as many of them as there are reproductive health clinics in the state of Massachusetts. Cathy Corman talks with organizers developing strategies to curb their deceptive and damaging tactics. *** Michael S. […]

Lara Crawford is NCJW MA’s State Policy Advocate, or SPA. Cathy Corman interviewed Lara to learn more about her role and how she came to get involved in the organization.

At seders around the Commonwealth next week, Jews will be considering oppression, exploitation, persecution, and captivity. We’ll also be thinking about liberty. In this week’s Deep Dive, NCJW member Cathy Corman learns about a local initiative with the potential to liberate people reentering communities after imprisonment.

NCJW takes special interest in immigrants and asylum seekers. In this month’s Deep Dive, Cathy Corman explores advocacy work in these areas with Rachie Lewis, Director of Synagogue Organizing for the Organizing for the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).

When activists talk about “white supremacist culture,” many of us aren’t sure what they mean. This month in Deep Dive, Cathy Corman explores the concept as it is used in Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book, published this past July. The book is the delightful and funny fruit of a collaboration between comedian and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell and queer feminist activist Kate Schatz.

If we want to convince others to keep abortion legal, we need to change the conversation.  Until we ground our talking points in our values, we won’t be able to gain ground with those whose minds aren’t yet made up.

Journalist and filmmaker Civia Tamarkin released her feature-length documentary, Birthright: A War Story, in 2017. A prescient account of the war on women’s health, the film lays out the decades-long campaign to criminalize abortion.

I spoke with Tamarkin by phone after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned rights to abortion guaranteed in the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. Tamarkin, 75, has long been an activist in the area of women’s rights. She shared insights and strategies she believes essential in the fight to legalize abortion.