BOSTON/State House - Physician and environmental activist Jill Stein of Lexington announced her candidacy for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket at a press conference outside the State House on Monday. Best known as the 2002 Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party gubernatorial candidate, Stein hopes to win her national party's nomination and be a progressive voice for working families in the 2012 election.

BOSTON/State House - Dozens of labor and community activists showed up in support of a green jobs bill at a hearing of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Energy and Natural Resources at the Massachusetts State House on Thursday. The bill, H. 1774, An Act Regarding Community Access to Energy Efficiency Programs and Green Jobs would require that all utility companies operating in the Commonwealth provide data showing what populations their energy efficiency programs are reaching, and expand access to energy efficiency services by establishing new weatherization goals.

BOSTON/State House - Supporters and opponents of a bill that would change the way temporary agencies do business in Massachusetts squared off in front of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on Thursday in Gardiner Auditorium at the State House. Advocates for the Act Updating and Streamlining the Employment Agency Law (House Bill 1393) - which they dub the “Reform Employment Agency Law” or the “REAL bill" - made the case that bottom feeders in the temp industry are operating outside existing labor law and exploiting workers due to a lack of regulation. Spearheaded by the Massachusetts Coalition on Safety and Health, MassCOSH, a group of labor and community organizations calling themselves the REAL Coalition is working to change a situation that they say has led to multiple wage, health, safety and unemployment crises for low-wage temp workers and denied the Commonwealth of significant amounts of workers’ compensation and other state employment taxes.

BOSTON/State House - Over 200 union members, allies, and family members representing the 47 Massachusetts workers who died on the job over the last year gathered in front of the Mass. State House yesterday to commemorate Workers' Memorial Day. Many attendees carried placards that read “Mourn for the Dead, Fight for the Living” - paraphrasing the early 20th century labor leader Mother Jones.

Sal Salvati, whose father, Gerardo Salvati, died on the job last June, said, “My dad died in a preventable senseless workplace accident. He worked in a building that was dangerous but the owners didn't care. He took tremendous pride in waking up each and every day going to work, dreaming that someday he and my mom would enjoy some of the fruits of his labor in his retirement years. Unfortunately, that day never came.”

BOSTON/State House - Over 1,000 teenagers and youth advocates from across Massachusetts marched from Copley Square to the State House on Thursday to lobby for more funding for youth jobs in the Fiscal Year 2012 Mass. state budget. Gov. Deval Patrick, several legislators and business leaders addressed the marchers at a rally in Gardiner Auditorium. Patrick called both for more funding for youth jobs in the upcoming budget and for the private sector to do its part to hire more young people - especially in the summer time when young people are out of school.

BOSTON/State House - Advocates for immigrant rights and many other social justice causes gathered in the cold in front of the Massachusetts State House yesterday to speak out against what they called "racism" and "racial profiling" in the Secure Communities Program.

BOSTON/State House - Over 100 immigrant and civil liberties advocates held a protest in front of the State House today in opposition to a recent announcement by the Executive Office of Public Safety that Massachusetts will participate in the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Communities program. The controversial program would screen everyone arrested by local and state police to determine their immigration status. Any arrestee found to be in the United States without proper documents would be reported to US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and face detainment and deportation.

BOSTON/State House - Over 100 immigrant students and allies held a rally at the State House on Monday to push Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to back Sen. Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) recent inclusion of the DREAM Act into the National Defense Authorization Act as an amendment, and vote in favor of the NDAA with the DREAM Act language intact.

BOSTON/State House - Over 50 members of the local clergy, religious educators and supporters held a press conference at the Mary Dyer statue in front of the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday "in response to the recent controversy regarding the proposed mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Manhattan and elsewhere." The organizers - representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish and Muslim communities - released an Interfaith Pledge entitled "To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance" that had already been signed by close to 1,000 people at the time of the event.

BOSTON/State House - A jubilant group of over 50 activists from the Student Immigrant Movement and allied organizations held a press conference on Friday to announce a victory in their campaign to get the Mass. legislature to overturn several provisions of an amendment to the Senate budget proposal for FY 2011 that they believe was an assault on immigrant rights.

The event was called on short notice after the Conference Committee - made up on an equal number of state representatives and senators - released its budget proposal on Thursday. Immigrant advocates quickly discovered that some of the contested provisions of Senate budget amendment 172.1 - including the proposed language that would have made it illegal for the children of undocumented immigrants that had grown up in the Commonwealth to ever qualify to attend Mass. public colleges at the in-state resident tuition rate - had been removed from the Conference Committee budget proposal.