The Shoestring

It is hot in there. BLAIR GIMMA [Editor’s note: We are thrilled to announce that Blair Gimma will be reporting regularly on Northampton City Council meetings. This will be the first of many installments of a regular column that will push beyond the banality of journalistic convention; it will try out creative ways to hold […]

To make the ordinance less “inaccurate,” his bizarre revisions are contradictory. WILL MEYER On Monday, December 18th, Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz issued a letter to the City Council stating his reasons for vetoing the ordinance prohibiting downtown police surveillance cameras. Instead of objecting the ordinance outright, he instead used his letter to describe revisions that […]

Pleasing everyone and revealing nothing ROJAS OLIVA At Greenfield’s Baystate Franklin Medical Center (BFMC), nurses’ health care premiums had shot up 26 percent in the past year. Baystate nurses were working thousands of shifts longer than 12 hours, despite studies detailing how shifts this long makes them more prone to errors on the job. Furthermore, […]

Business owners and police want surveillance cameras to stop crime downtown. Their moral crusade against crime probably won’t stop wage theft. By Will Meyer Police Chief Jody Kasper hosted a community meeting in September to introduce what would become a controversial and polarizing proposal: to install police operated “surveillance cameras” in downtown Northampton. In her […]

Reflections on a 2nd Amendment Rally LES MACK Midday on June 17, 2017, I arrived at Swift River Sportsman’s Club for the 4th Annual Flag Day Second Amendment Rally and BBQ dinner in Belchertown. At the checkpoint I received an event program and a simple, terse welcome. Beyond, the dirt road ended in a parking […]