Local Campaign Info and Meeting Times
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Here are a few of our accomplishments from this last year.
New Voters Project: Here in Massachusetts and nationwide, we helped register and turn out young voters. Here at Worcester State we helped register over 400 students to vote and made hundreds of reminders to students during the days leading up to Election Day through emails, calls, canvassing, tabling, and text messages.
There were 3.4 million more young voters in 2008 compared to 2004. The youth share of the electorate also surpassed that of people over 65 - an impressive feat.
Hunger and Homelessness: We are facing one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. Unemployment rates keep going higher and more people are forced into poverty every day. This spring we raised nearly $1000 as part of the national Hunger Cleanup, a day of service and fundraising to serve our local community and raise money for local, national, and international agencies addressing poverty.
Making Higher Education Affordable: In January, we helped convince Congress to include several key measures in the economic stimulus package, including a $17 billion increase in Pell grant funding, more work-study aid, and bigger tax credits for low-income students and their families.
And, at the end of February, President Obama proposed a budget for 2010-2011 which significantly reinvests in the Pell grant and makes sure it increases each year according to inflation. The proposal pays for itself by cutting excessive subsidies to banks and lenders in the student loan program. Now we're working to make sure Congress stands up for students, not banks, by keeping these provisions in the budget.
Global Warming: In January we worked to make sure that the economic stimulus package included critical funding for programs that will create jobs and protect the environment, including $16 billion for public transit and $78 billion for clean energy and green infrastructure.
We were also able to recruit and fundraise to send 3 WSC students down to Washington, D.C. for Power Shift. Power Shift 2009 was a conference which brought together over 12,000 high school and college students to demand bold global warming and clean energy solutions from our elected officials. We took advantage of the opportunity to attend amazing trainings to learn new skills, listen and get inspired by influential thinkers - Al Gore, Van Jones, Vandana Shiva, Majora Carter - and connect with other students from our region.
At Power Shift and back in Worcester we were able to meet with Congressman Jim McGovern and his staff. This gave us a great opportunity thank him for his work on climate change issues as well as help him make sure strong energy legislation gets passed in the future.
Protecting Students from Bad Credit Card Practices: Our report, "The Campus Credit Card Trap," received national attention for exposing the bad practices of credit card companies on campus and has been quoted in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times. We used this attention to educate Congress and help pass the national Credit Card Holder Bill of Rights to stop some of the worst credit terms and conditions that can plunge students - and all consumers - into debt.
Affordable Textbooks: Open textbooks (free, online textbooks) are really catching on, thanks in part to our campaign to shine the spotlight on these great alternatives. Over 2,000 faculty members have signed our statement of support for open textbooks and a new publisher just released 10 new open textbooks. Also, a new bill was introduced in Congress that would fund the creation of more open textbooks.