BOSTON/Boston Common - Over 125 students, faculty, staff and alumni from several Massachusetts public colleges rallied Monday on Boston Common to pressure the state legislature to increase funding for public higher education. The event was oraganized by the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts.

Chelsea, Mass. - Community members and activists gathered in Bellingham Square on Saturday to rally Chelsea residents around Criminal Offender Record Information reform. About 25 participants held signs and distributed fliers (D-Chelsea) calling on Chelsea residents to call Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty to support An Act to Reform CORI (H. 3523) in the Mass. House of Representatives.

BOSTON - Over the weekend, members of the City Life Vida Urbana organization and its affiliated Boston Tenants Association held raucous pickets in front of a hotel and two restaurants owned by developer and restaurateur Paul Roiff.

Activists with the Jamaica Plain based housing justice group were protesting the possible eviction of several families from a residential building owned by Roiff in East Boston.

Protest organizers said they hoped vigils outside Roiff's businesses would pressure him to cancel eviction notices against the residents of 22 Princeton Street.

BOSTON/Downtown Crossing - As a response to the recent electon of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and a continuation of the push to pass a national health care reform bill, the Service Employees International Union Local 615 hosted a rally and march from their headquarters at 26 West Street, on Saturday. Other sponsors included MoveOn Boston, Northeast Action, Jobs with Justice, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1445 and the Alliance to Develop Power. Gillian Mason, council coordinator for MoveOn Boston, led the rally, which also included speeches by SEIU president Rocío Sáenz, SEIU executive board member Hector Conde, International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America Local 201 vice president Alex Brown and Norris Kamo, regional director for the Massachusetts chapter of Doctors for America.

BOSTON/Back Bay - Twilight was bittersweet on Friday in front of Boston's Arlington Street Church as Renewal House, a Roxbury based shelter for victims of domestic abuse, held their Valentine's Day Vigil to raise awareness about domestic violence.

BOSTON/State House - Declaring Monday, February 8th the day "we start to take control of our commonwealth, our common health, and our common future," Green-Rainbow Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein announced she would run for Governor of Massachusetts this year at a rally on the State House steps.

Surrounded by supporters holding signs, Stein named some of the pressing issues on which she would focus during the campaign. "Crumbling schools, unjust and racially biased CORI and drug laws, regressive taxes, crushing costs of war, climate threats to our economy, and the list goes on."

BOSTON/State House - In the face of continued conservative resistance to immigration reform proposals nationwide, over 100 undocumented immigrant students and allies attended the Wednesday January 27th hearing of the Mass. legislature's Joint Committee on Higher Education in State House Hearing Room B-2 in support of "An Act Relative to Equal Access to Higher Education and Generating Revenue for the Commonwealth" (S. 603/H. 1175). The bill would allow undocumented immigrant students who attended at least 3 years of high school in the Commonwealth to pay for tuition and fees at public colleges at the in-state rate. Currently, undocumented students are allowed to attend Mass. public colleges, but are required to pay the much-higher out-of-state tuition and fee rate - which advocates say effectively bars most of the students from attending college at all, given that most of them are from poor families.

BOSTON/State House - After successfully pushing a reform bill through the Mass. Senate last year, over 125 advocates of changes to the state Criminal Offender Record Information system held a rally in State House Hearing Room B-2 Wednesday before lobbying key legislators that can help move the House version of the bill towards passage this year. The event was organized by the Commonwealth CORI Coalition - which represents over 90 organizations in support of CORI reform.

BOSTON/Back Bay – Following on the heels of the “First Night Against the Wars – Let Gaza Live!” New Year’s Eve Copley Square rally in support of the Gaza Freedom March, local members of CODEPINK: Women For Peace – one of the official March sponsors – were joined by the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights and other groups in a lunchtime demonstration on Wednesday outside the Israeli Consulate at 20 Park Plaza.

BOSTON – Since the creation of the Transportation Security Administration – following the attacks of September 11, 2001 – unionists have been trying to organize TSA workers; something the Bush administration and their Republican allies in Congress vigorously opposed.