Representing the Massachusetts Democratic Party in Sudbury
Early voting is now open. Election Day is Tuesday, November 8, 2022. Make sure you fill in BOTH SIDES of your ballot: Not only are there candidate elections on the front side, but also four Questions (Fair Share tax, dental insurance, liquor licenses, driver safety with undocumented people) on the reverse side. Check out our page on How To Vote.
We are marching in the Sudbury Fourth of July parade. Join us! We assemble at noon in Division 4 in Chiswick Park. Set your sat nav to 490 Boston Post Road and enter the parking lot . Here is the Map. We set off at 1pm and will march to the town center whose tri-centennial is this year.
More info:
Township “Parking is available at the entrance to Chiswick Park (GPS Address 490 Boston post Rd) and/or at the Noyes School Bus lot at Town Center” Enter the Noyes school bus lot from Concord Rd by the Town Pound. (See map linked above.)
“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming
Jan 6th hearings. Roe overturned. The mid terms are on November 8th and the choice is clear (a) democracy or (b) tyranny like that of “The Handmaiden’s Tale.” Join us in supporting (a). Force Multiplier has created two convenient donation pages for the critical House and Senate races:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/forcemultiplier2022houseslate
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/forcemultiplier2021senateslate
SDTC voted to support relief of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Please donate to one or both of the following vetted and worthy causes.
UKRAINE FORWARD
https://www.ukraineforward.org/
On February 24th at 5am, Russia launched an unprovoked military attack on Ukraine. People all around the country woke up to air raid sirens and bomb explosions. Their lives changed forever. In the following days, Russia deliberately bombed hospitals, kindergartens, densely populated residential areas. Russian troops are ruining the civilian infrastructure, and people are cut off from sources of food and water. Many people are left homeless and forced to flee the country. In this difficult time, we launched Ukraine Forward to supply life-saving resources to people in Ukraine.
Ukraine Forward is an initiative of the Ukrainian American Education Center, a registered 501c(3) nonprofit. The Tax ID number is 80-0311003.
CENTER MAKOR
Jewish Educational and Cultural Center
https://www.centermakor.org/help-ukraine/
We will send all donations and will pay bank fees for electronic transfers if needed.
https://www.centermakor.org/medical-supplies/ LINK INCLUDES LIST OF NEEDED MEDICAL SUPPLIES
The township Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commission has launched a project called:
The idea of racism, prejudice, and identity bias is sometimes abstract and fuzzy. This project brings it into focus with powerful stories from your neighbors. Here is the idea:
“Storytelling for change. We believe that for Sudbury to be a place of belonging, it must be a place of equity. Lived Experiences collects local stories to document identity-based experiences, including racism and prejudice, IN SUDBURY—from people who live, study, visit, or work in Sudbury. Our survey is anonymous and—if you want it to be—confidential so that you can tell your story without fear. Our goal is to make Sudbury a better place to live, work, learn—or just be. By understanding the experiences of individuals in our community, we can raise community awareness and collaborate with local advocacy groups and our Select Board to effect change.”
Do you have a story to share?
Update 2:
We did it! It passed! Congrats to Sustainable Sudbury and everyone else who made it happen!
Update:
Update: We only got through the first 18 articles last night (May 2). At this rate we’ll need all three continuation dates (tonight (3rd), tomorrow (4th), and the 9th). Let’s hope we can keep a quorum going until Article 58!
“Except for the election of Town Officers, no meeting shall be legal unless a quorum is present, and a quorum shall consist of one hundred registered voters; once a quorum has been assembled, the continued existence of a quorum shall be presumed until a count of the voters present, which shall be taken upon the call of seven or more registered voters, establishes that a quorum is not present.“
The Committee considers town politics non-partisan and rarely gets involved (although of course individual members get involved as it suits them). However, at our April 13th meeting we voted to endorse a citizen-led motion, Article 58, for action on the climate crisis at a town level. Hiring a Sustainability Director costs money, but it pays off: Natick hired one and ended up saving a lot more than the project cost. And it helps to save the planet. Here is more information from the petitioner, Alex Vei:
“Dear Friends and Neighbors,
We are very grateful to the Sudbury Democratic Town Committee for their recent endorsement of the Climate Emergency Declaration (Article 58) on the warrant for Sudbury’s 2022 Annual Town Meeting. As many of you know, Town Meeting starts tomorrow evening Monday May 2nd 7:30 PM at the L-S Regional High School.
I invite you (and any voters you can bring) to attend and vote YES on 58, the Climate Emergency Declaration. With your help, we can win this vote and help Sudbury take important actions to urgently respond to the risks posed by climate change.
Not only would Article 58 publicly acknowledge that Climate Action Now must be a priority for our town, it would take steps towards a comprehensive plan and enhanced staffing for sustainability and climate in Sudbury. For more information about Article 58 and the reasons for supporting it, please see: https://www.sustainablesudbury.org/climate-emergency/
As for logistics…I understand not everyone has the time or ability to attend the entire Town Meeting. Notably, Article 58 will be the final article and it may not come up during the first night. Currently planned continuation dates include Tuesday 5/3 and Wednesday 5/4.
To help, we are planning to use e-mail periodically during the Town Meeting to keep people informed of progress through the agenda and be present at the right times. If you’d like to get these e-mail updates, you are most welcome to sign up using: https://tinyurl.com/SudburyCELetter.
Thank you for your consideration of supporting Climate Action Now in Sudbury by voting YES on 58!
Best Wishes,
Alex Vai
On Behalf of the Sudbury Climate Emergency Working Group
The town hall is lit with the colors of the Ukraine flag.
The annual town elections are on Monday March 28, 2002. There are several changes compared to last year. The covid-era no-excuse mail-in ballot option was not renewed, so the two main choices are in-person and (if you qualify) absentee mail-in. There is a third “emergency” option: if you have been exposed to covid or are sick, you should NOT go to the polling station. Instead call the township on 978-639-3351 for voting options from home.
In addition, to these voting changes, the precincts have also changed.
Full details are here.
The Sudbury Democratic Town Committee regards town elections as non-partisan and does not endorse any particular candidate, so Google around, do your own research, and vote your conscience!
As a starting point, here are links to the 2022 League of Women Voters Sudbury Candidates’ Forums:
Access the programs from the www.sudburytv.org or lwvsudbury.org home pages or from the links below. There are five forums: Select Board, L-S, Goodnow Library, Board of Health, and Uncontested Races. Each program is fully indexed. Click on a question or respondent in the indexing to navigate to that part of the program.
Select Board
Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School
Goodnow Library
Board of Health
Uncontested Races (note: there are some signs for write-in candidates around the town, so “uncontested” might refer to “on the ballot”. For example Richard Williamson, incumbent Sudbury Parks & Recreation Commission member, was omitted from the ballot due some kind of snafu. If you want to vote for him write in his name and his address, 22 Farmstead Lane.)
LWV Sudbury
www.twitter.com/lwvsudbury
www.instagram.com/lwvsudbury
Added after the event:
The protest was featured on in the MetroWest Daily news !
Here is a PDF about what you can do to help.
Here is Tania’s speech:
“Thank you all for coming out today! My name is Tania Vitvitsky, one of the organizers of Sudbury Stands for Democracy, formerly known as the Sudbury Protest Group. For over two- and one-half years, we stood on this same spot protesting the actions and policies of the Trump Regime.
You are here because you have watched and read the news, seen photos and videos of the shocking unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic Ukraine by Russia — with troops and missiles from the north, the south and the east. This is David versus Goliath and so far, with the help of democratic friends and allies, David is holding his own. But this is also much more than a war between two countries. Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the right of sovereign states to choose democracy over autocracy.
Putin wants to drag his country and neighboring countries back to a 19th century style imperialism and colonialism. But Ukrainians want neither a Russian Tsar nor to live in a Russian colony. The people of Ukraine simply want to live their lives in their own country and chart their own future. Unlike their warmongering neighbor to the north and the east, Ukrainians enjoy actual not sham elections, a free press and a vibrant civil society.
Now you may ask, why am I holding a strange-looking stringed instrument — this is a bandura, the national instrument of Ukraine and I would like to tell you a story about the men who played this instrument.
The tragedy of the Ukrainian kobzars was described in “Testimony,” Dmitri Shostakovich’s memoirs “as related to and edited by” Solomon Volkov, a Russian musical journalist, published in London in 1979.
“Since time immemorial, folk singers have wandered along the roads of Ukraine.” Volkov quotes Shostakovich. “They were almost always blind men … but no one ever touched or hurt them… And then in the mid-thirties the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Lirnyks and Bandurists was announced, and all the folk singers had to gather and discuss what to do in the future. ‘Life is better, life is merrier,’ Stalin had said. The blind men believed it. They came to the congress from all over Ukraine, from tiny forgotten villages. There were several hundred of them at the congress, they say. It was a living museum, the country’s living history. All its songs, all its music and poetry, And they were almost all shot, almost all those pathetic blind men killed… In his book the “Harvest of Sorrow” the late scholar Robert Conquest also mentions this assault on Ukraine’s “national heritage.”
“The popular and patriotic culture of Ukraine had long been sustained in the countryside by the blind bards — the Kobzars, celebrated by Taras Shevchenko— who wandered from village to village, earning their keep by singing the old national songs and reciting the national ballads. Thus, the peasantry were constantly reminded of their free and heroic past.”
So, I say, when your neighbor kills your culture, steals your history, and denigrates your language, the logical next step is to kill the people. And that, tragically, is what is happening now.
What can you all do!
• As constituents — contact senate and house — keep the pressure on with sanctions and in particular, continuing to freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves
the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions that would immobilize any assets of the Russian central bank in the United States or held by Americans. The Biden administration estimated that the move could impact “hundreds of billions of dollars” of Russian funding.
Biden administration officials said Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, European Union and others have joined the U.S. in targeting the Russian central bank. EVEN THE SWISS!
• As donors — the needs are enormous and growing and I keep getting requests for suggestions — working on a list
• As consumers – Russia uses fossil fuels as blackmail. YOU can ask liquor stores to dump Russian Vodka — there are plenty of other vodkas
And finally, to finish the story of the bandura, you will hear a plea to the Almighty to protect Ukraine, by the Ukrainian National Bandurist Chorus.
Thank you. Now, I will ask State Representative Carmine Gentile to say a few words.”
February 28, 2022
Original post:
Our friends over at Sudbury Stands for Democracy (formerly the Sudbury Protest Group) are holding a stand out in support of the people of Ukraine. It will take place on the commons in front of the Sudbury Town Hall (322 Concord Rd, Sudbury MA 01776), on Monday, Feb. 28, from 4 – 5 PM.
It isn’t necessary but if you have them, bring signs or Ukrainian flags or even yellow sunflowers tied with blue ribbons. You can make your own sign by printing this file on nine sheets of regular 8.5 by 11 inch printer paper. Then use scissors and tape and a big piece of cardboard (approx 32 inch by 27 inch) to mount the sheets in a three row by three column pattern.
But don’t hesitate, just come! There will probably be some spares or you can just wave at the passing cars.
CAUCUS WILL BE HELD ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12 at 10:00 AM (ON ZOOM)
This year’s Convention will be held on Friday, June 3rd and Saturday, June 4th. It will take place at the DCU Center in Worcester, and also virtually, to endorse candidates for statewide office and to unite to elect Democrats down the ballot on November 8th, 2022.
The caucus is open to all Sudbury registered and pre-registered Democrats. Pre-registered Democrats who will be sixteen by February 4th, 2022, will be allowed to participate and run as Delegates or Alternates. Sudbury can elect 12 Delegates and four Alternates to the Convention.
Those interested in getting involved with the SDTC should contact Tania Vitvitsky at info@sudburydemocrats.org.