Just got this astonishing email from Progressive Massachusetts, which has been doing a great job trying to move this state forward:
You are making a Real Difference!
Calls to key Senators have been continuing all week and progressives are working together to pass a better revenue bill. We aren’t there yet but there is movement. And we are being noticed!
Activists are touting our first-ever live tweet of the roll call last Monday night. Donors gave to our endorsed legislative candidates – Linda Dorcena-Forry and Jay Livingstone. Canvassers are regularly using our Markey-Lynch comparison sheet to great effect.
But you REALLY know you are having an impact when a senior legislator BANS you – your staff, your Board – from their taxpayer funded office – because they don’t like what you said about their role in Monday night’s progressive loss in the House.
“The organization [Progressive Massachusetts], its employees and board members are banned from this office. Future correspondence will be ignored.”
Can you really ban someone for exercising free speech?
We Continue, Undeterred
Fortunately many legislators are still listening, engaging in conversation, and willing to stand up for our progressive values – and we thank those legislators for continuing the dialogue and the fight. It’s your activism and support that are making that happen, so please keep it up!
Donate now to support our work. Every contribution goes directly to our organizing work.
Did you see what I saw?
“The organization [Progressive Massachusetts], its employees and board members are banned from this office. Future correspondence will be ignored.”
W-T-F ?!?!? Even its correspondence?
As you can see, this edict comes from an (unnamed) “senior legislator.” This in an 80% Democratic legislative body? Sorry, all bets are off.
It’s time to name names.
The email doesn’t say.
First thought was DeLeo. Could be any of them, though. I just read about Therese Murray being mighty peeved at Deval for saying mean things about the legislatures [offensive words redacted here] transportation bill. Mighty touchy. As if they’d vote for bad policy just because someone didn’t talk nice about them.
Come on, Ben. Name some names. We deserve to know.
And what is the basis for their ban?
some sort of butt-hurt about public criticism on Monday.
You promote this junk that doesn’t give a name. What the hell?
Why so quiet on my Boston Globe Milton Valencia posts? The e-mail from Valencia is outrageous!
Do you guys know Valencia? His bosses? I know you don’t like Joan Vennochi, but I really feel like I’m missing something here.
David, you are a former United States Supreme Court Law Clerk. For those that don’t know that means in the law world you were a first round NFL draft choice. You went in the top ten.
Unfortunately I’ve had a tough time engaging you on some of the travesties that affect much more than bulger or connolly.
So here I am crashing this party, in front of all these people, just to talk to you.
A legislator kicks someone out of his office and says “Don’t come back”.
You question the legality of that?
David, please, you need an intervention. Re-training perhaps
The place you’re looking for is over here. Just keep going until you come to the run-on post title.
When you starve a fading star of the attention they’ve been craving
I’ve never seen David promote anything to the front page that didn’t have a name attached, so we could know where it came from.
How’s the car business doing these days?
When I worked at the State House, I also asked an advocate to leave my office and not come back.
The advocate was from the “Family Protection Council” or whatever group they called themselves, she came in for a drop in meeting with a gentleman to discuss the issue of Gay Mariage. She sat in my office and proceeded to tell me that her group had cured “Frank” (the gentleman who accompnanied her) of his “sickness”. I asked what illness the poor man had, amd she whispered that he was “A Gay, but not anymore” that he is cured and we “fixed” him. She then proceeded to tell me how my boss did not know the harm his policies would cause and that he is not fit for the position and that he should follow the example of then Governor Romney and stand with families and “normal folk.”
I then asked that she and the oaf that was with her to leave my office and do not come back.
false equivalency.
Because you agree with one advocacy group, but not the other?
that the positions in the comment are far outside the mainstream of opinion in Massachusetts, at odds with all scientific understanding, and personally offensive to the gay community.
Criticizing a legislator for blocking progressive legislation does not rise to that level by a long shot. People can disagree with the positions taken by Progressive Mass., but they are not personally offensive. They are positions supported by most of the activists within the party that holds super-majorities in both houses of the legislature, all statewide constitutional offices, and every single seat in an eleven-member Congressional delegation.
So it is because you agree with one advocacy group and not the other?
A lot depends on how the group approaches the legislator. I have seen many groups with whom I fundamentally agree approach legislators in completely inappropriate ways. Some of the more zealous advocacy groups will threaten to withdraw support or support a primary opponent.
Also, I disagree with the notion that whether a viewpoint is in the mainstream of MA politics should be the litmus test for whether it is OK or not to throw an advocate out of an office.
Personally, I think this “senior legislator” went too far in “banning” PM. But I also think that ward3dem’s post can’t be dismissed as a false equivalency.
I don’t agree with the Mass. Taypayers’ Foundation most of the time. Nor the Beacon Hill Institute, nor Massachusetts Citizens for Life. But I would not support a blanket ban on their presence in any legislator’s office, nor a directive that their correspondence should be ignored.
The situation described by ward3dem is the early twenty-first century equivalent of people who would have said, a few decades earlier, that we shouldn’t try to give “the Negros” equal rights because “science proves their brains are less developed.” It’s outside the bounds of civilized political discourse.
By the way, if you think “threatening to withdraw support or support a primary opponent” is “completely inappropriate,” I don’t agree. Of course you should look at the totality of the legislator’s record rather than overreacting to one vote. But if the record is consistent, I have no problem whatsoever with a primary challenge. People are not due the party’s nomination for life without having to vote for the party’s goals.
It is reasonable to schedule appointments to keep things organized, but only security threats should be banned.
the order to toss the correspondence from them directly into the trash barrel.
Unacceptable.
quit fussing about this. Ben’s right, this is a tribute to your power. Get to work lobbying the Senate on expanding the transportation funding and start lobbying your reps about the serious cuts that have been made in the House Ways and Means Budget. … Jeez.
how would you feel if an important legislator banned you, your staff, and your organization from their office, and made clear that any communication from you to them would go immediately into the circular file? Wouldn’t that be worth “fussing” about?
As a certain former Speaker was fond of saying ” Tell Judy F—-g Meredith to go away. And he’s the one who did.
does not narrow it down, unfortunately 😉
all we have to do is keep working together and wait a little bit.
to God’s ears. (Or eyes.)
Hold the ones who are here now accountable now! Bans or not.
a “certain former Speaker” tossing out the occasional off-color remark is hardly the equivalent of a formal ban that includes not only the organization and its staff but also its board (which, in this case, includes people who work for other organizations). Did anyone ever put out a formal directive that you were not to be allowed into an office? If so, we’d love to hear about it!
never in writing, although the same former speaker got real mad at a homeless advocate who planted a bucket of manure on his desk, and harassed his daughters at their summer home. Homeless advocates never got a meeting with him afterwards. .
I can’t. He just did a real nice thing by posting about Milton Valencia.
That sucks I know, I really want to attack attack attack regarding an elected officials right to talk to whoever he wants.
But I can’t. Right now love the mug.
you know how i’m a stickler for proper grammar.
elected officials have to schedule me in as oppose to me being an individual?
Does this include the Lttle League? The Sons of Italy? The Knitting Club?
I still don’t get why these people deserve more than everyone else.
Seeing some issue oriented group wishing to echo what others are saying way down the list of priorities. Seeing constituents is something different. They get seen
But this sense of priority or superiority based on the issue one is lobbying for or against is anti-intellectual and somewhat selfish.
Actually telling a group that they are banned and not scheduling a meeting at any given time are obviously two totally different things.
Progressive Mass. is not “fussing” about this. They sent it in an email exhorting people to stay engaged, and to donate. It may well be in there to get people pumped up.
I, someone not employed by or on the board of, Progressive Mass. have brought it to the attention of the rest of BMG because I think it’s outrageous. And it really tells me a lot about where the sympathies of our legislative “leaders” lie.
Without the name of the legislator. Why so coy?
why they didn’t name the legislator. I imagine their chance of fixing the relationship goes down if they do so. If you look higher up in the comments, though, you’ll see that I asked them to reveal that information.
I am not affiliated with the organization except for being on their email list and supporting their goals. We have had much discussion, particularly in recent weeks, about the legislature and its leaders’ positions on revenue and other issues. I therefore thought this germane to the discussion. People are free to disagree with that assessment. But, as I noted in a comment below, I don’t find it plausible that Progressive Mass. just made this up.
all Fenway and Progressive Mass. have is an unsupported accusation, unnamed “villain”, and they want to use that to raise money.
Tawdry.
an organization with plans to work with 200 legislators on a regular basis would put those relationships at risk by making this kind of thing up out of thin air in their first few months before the public, all to raise an extra few hundred bucks. Not finding that plausible.
Maybe it is completely fabricated to get attention. Maybe it is true as written. The key point is that if it is important the legislator should be named so that they can respond and justify their behavior if they choose to do so, or be brought to justice if their conduct really is illegal. If it is not worth naming the legislator, is evidently is not actually a very important issue to Progressive Mass.
It is, as of now, an unnamed legislator, not an unnamed “source.” I find wholly unconvincing and, frankly, insulting the suggestion that they “completely fabricated” it. I cannot imagine that they fabricated not only the event, but also a fake document from which to quote.
That is not the kind of “attention” a new policy group would want to get, and they are getting plenty of (good) attention as it is. The risk-reward calculus makes no sense at all; what organization hoping to be taken seriously and influence policy would risk their credibility in that way? Nonetheless, I added a question mark to the title pending further confirmation or more information.
I also have no idea what steps they are or are not taking with respect to this. I’m not ready to conclude that it’s “not…a very important issue” to them just because they haven’t run over here to name names. Of course, with no names having been named, no person’s reputation has been affected.
If you think the post is worthless, click on to the next, but I find it curious that you’d use such strong language on this after promoting dozens of EB3’s gossip columns to the front page.
This is Deborah Shah. I am Executive Director of Progressive Mass – and I wanted to identify by name because I made the decision, with the help of my Board, to refrain from naming the legislator in question and I didn’t want to hide behind the ProgressiveMass post name.
For me it really isn’t about this person or that person. It’s about how people, even our friends react to accountability or criticism. All we really want is dozens of fabulous legislators voting on progressive policy. If people are voting the other way, we ought to know that they are (hence our support for roll calls) and why they’re doing it. Sometimes we’re going to annoy each other – even get prickly – but we all want the same thing – and we have to live to fight another day.
Today we had a real tough day as progressives. Actually, we had a really tough couple of weeks. I think many of us thought the stars were aligned for substantial new, progressively raised revenue. We thought all those delegation visits, all those calls and emails would make it happen.
We were angered by the pre-conference maneuver of leadership to put a regressive, paltry $500 million dollar transportation package on the table.
We were frustrated by the failure of the progressive caucus in the house to hang together.
The Senate progressives – six of them – held together – and got more – certainly showing that the sense in the House – at least last Monday – that it was $500 million or nothing – wasn’t quite true.
But tonight we lost in the Senate. We got a better bill but not the one this Commonwealth needs.
I know we are having an impact – just not enough, not yet. That’s what the email we sent out to our supporters was about. We recognized that some would be excited and motivated by a positive account of our work – like donations to endorsed candidates – and some might be more motivated by anger – at a legislator who is being petty. But that’s all it is.
You may disagree with my (our) decision but I hope that those of you who know me know that I’m no Drudge and, by the way, you can’t make this stuff up.
I’m going to have a scotch. I hope wherever he is now, Ben Wright – who spent 10 hours at the State House tweet-reporting on events – is enjoying himself!!
for putting you in the position of dealing with this on a Saturday night. I thought people on BMG should know we have at least one legislator who responds this way to progressive pressure.
Agree that the Senate bill – though better than the House bill by a lot – is not really sufficient. David S. Bernstein, on Tuesday, predicted a bill of about $800 million. His previous take was this:
I think it looks a little better than that, but only a little better.
Good job Progressive Mass.