Members Of Mass. Congressional Delegation Request $100 Million For Community Projects
U.S. Representative Katherine Clark has asked Congress to earmark $4 million to connect commuter rail to subways and buses at the Wonderland station in Revere.
Flickr
The nine Democratic members of the U.S. House from Massachusetts have requested a total of nearly $100 million in federal funding for local projects, ranging from education and human services to drinking water and climate resilence.
During periods of Republican control over the last two decades, the House has banned earmarks for local projects, provisions often secretly slipped into the spending bills. The practice gained a bad reputation for funding wasteful, self-serving projects that were labelled pork, a name drawn from the barrel of meats that was passed around to slaves. Some campaign donors were suspected to have traded contributions for earmarks.
Buffy Lael-Wolf The Springfield Public Schools Board of Education will soon welcome two new
members who could shift the balance on decisions like the best way for students to return in the fall. Both are newcomers to public office and work in the medical field. Both were also endorsed by the Springfield Education Association, which represents teachers in District 186. Erica Austin, who won the Subdistrict 6 seat, is deputy director for the office of community care at SIU School of Medicine, where she s assisted COVID-19 testing and vaccine efforts. She s also pursuing a Ph.D. in higher education administration. Austin beat Tom Shafer, a retired firefighter and frequent candidate for local office, and Michael Washington, a former District 186 employee and volleyball coach.
by afampov · March 2, 2021
By Frederick A. Hurst
Jynai McDonald is running for Springfield’s Ward 4 City Council seat placing her in position to join several other local African American women elected officials who have been playing a significant, if not dominant, political leadership role for the benefit of the African American community and Springfield in general.
32-year-old Jynai is the daughter of Lester McDonald III and Victoria Lewis. Her paternal grandparents migrated to Springfield from Mississippi and North Carolina many years ago. Her maternal grandparents migrated to Springfield from Georgia and South Carolina. Along with the McDonald and Lewis families, she is also connected to the Washington, Redd and Wilkerson families just like so many of our Springfield African-American families are so interconnected. And, like so many of us, Jynai is a product of the distant generation of Southern migrants who escaped to the North for a better
Erica Austin is keeping the faith.
As 2020 comes to a close, she is determined to begin the new year with her family: Her Springfield family.
For the last seven years, Austin has organized the community Kwanzaa celebration that pays homage to African and African American culture beginning Dec. 26. This year, because of the pandemic, the gathering will take place virtually.
The children s dances and choir will still be a big part of the celebration, as they have been each year. However, this year, everything will be recorded in small groups at the Hoogland Center For The Arts on Sunday.
On Jan. 1 the final day of the weeklong celebration the video of the community’s annual gathering will be available on Facebook.