Resources We Love that May Be Your Perfect Match

Posted byRegina Fink 11 Comments on Resources We Love that May Be Your Perfect Match

In honor of Valentine’s Day, the district team (Annie and Regina) wants to share just a few resources in our communities we think you’ll love as much as we do. Collecting and sharing resources is one of our favorite things about the job.

This is far from an exhaustive list!  This represents a small heart-shaped box full of goodies – if we listed all of the amazing resources we love, you would be late for dinner. 

Feel free to share other resources you’d like to highlight in the comments below. Additionally, we are revising Senator Brownsberger’s Constituent Services Webpage featuring resources covering each part of the district – stay tuned for updates! 

For Immigrants

During this difficult time for immigrants, we wanted to highlight MIRA’s Immigration Helpline that provides information and resources. MIRA also won the coordinating role for the Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative (MACI) funded by the legislature’s budget that included funds for legal representation for immigrants facing detainment or deportation. 

State Level Resources

Eviction Sealing 

As a part of the Affordable Homes Act, a new law allows tenants in to seal their eviction record. Sealing an eviction record means that the eviction record will not be available to the public and means that tenants may answer “no record” if they have sealed all prior eviction records and are asked about evictions on a housing or credit application. Contact our office to learn more and connect with legal aid to seal your eviction record.  

Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) 

PFML is an opt-in program for employers that gives employees paid time off of work for family or medical reasons, including mental health issues. You may be eligible even if you aren’t eligible for unemployment. Learn more on the PFML website.  

Local Option Senior Tax Deferral 

This local option allows homeowners aged 65+ to defer all or part of their property taxes until the home is sold or transferred. You can contact our office or your municipality’s assessing office to learn more.

Resources Around the District  

  • Boston: Tax season is coming up! Check out the Boston Tax Help Coalition find free income tax preparation assistance for income eligible families and individuals.  
  • Allston-Brighton: Cleveland Circle’s Walking Talking Men group is a space where men of all ages can make friends and talk in a non-judgmental space. They are working to normalize every man having a community of local friendships in a society that often makes that difficult to find/maintain. 
  • Fenway: The Fenway Community Center is hosting CPR and Narcan training on February 26th in partnership with Harvard CEMS. The FCC has lots of great programming- check out their calendar!  
  • Cambridge: Cambridge-Somerville Black Business Network brings together Black entrepreneurs and identifies specific programs to foster resilient business strategies. We stopped by their pop-up market last week!
  • Belmont: Check out the fantastic programs for older adults at the Beech Street Senior Center.
  • Watertown: The Wayside Multi-Service Center provides prevention, outreach, and counseling services in Watertown and Belmont.  

Annie Mazzola (District Director) and Regina Fink (Constituent Services Director) comprise Senator Brownsberger’s district team. More about constituent assistance.

11 replies on “Resources We Love that May Be Your Perfect Match”

  1. What resource might be the perfect match for Massachusettsans looking for ultra granular data about communications related to the Commonwealth partnering with Sam Altman’s AI Assistant ChatGPT across the Executive Branch?

    Should we put our eggs in this basket? Reliance on AI will likely cause the Branch’s human capital to atrophy as state workers off-load mental processing to AI known to have data security vulnerabilities, hallucinations, and suggestive and coercive tendencies.

    Who’s baby is this baby?

    What process was involved in gaming out how it will affect the safety of state workers who choose to use the nascent technology, who choose not to use it, and gaming out how it may harm the citizens of the Commonwealth for routine matters, and how it may leave the Commonwealth vulnerable during disasters and unable to maintain continuity of services?

    For a state that makes such a to-do about caring for people the Commonwealth’s relationship with Massachusetts AI Coalition is rather queer. These companies represent private interests whose care for the people of the Commonwealth is limited to how much money they can extract to the point we have no pink left in us. I’m all for the free market, but Draft Kings? The State should not provide life-giving sunlight to tubercle, a cankerous, clear and present public health threat as Draft Kings and the like. “THERE IS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK.”

    I motion we put it to the vote to audit the Massachusetts Legislature.

    1. This scheme is not a just response to the winds of change. This has the same was the flavor as the argument for gaming in MA. So, what? We prostate ourselves to The Devil? To false prophets and false gods? Is this the equity you seek? To lop a nation off at the knees so nobody sees the game? Of course! The aim is to raise the outfield fence and pull out the gates to enjoy the warmth of collectivism.

      Like Mark said in the previous post this softening fire of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

      2. In addition to some of the perilous unknowns about how the Commonwealth’s dancing with Altman’s AI could possibly have negative repercussions for all state services, preparedness, response and continuity it also makes every state employee a guinea pig, subject to the suggestions of, and need to conform to, consciously, or unconsciously to the suggestions of a a large language library which may be inconsistent with Constitutional and Western values. In other words, IS BIG BROTHER WOKE?

        Whatever bit of truth there may be in the fig leaf of legitimacy of this dance with the devil, such as gaining “minutes” per day, or freeing up time for judgement, early-adopter (eye-roll) “benefits at” best the motive for this is this is just that, but at worst this could further waste, fraud, abuse and more, including crime and conspiracy, ESPECIALLY given conspicuous and obstinate the lack of transparency.

        With AI there’s no need for let’s say, a DTA worker to scrutinize too finely SNAP-EBT (food stamps) fraud, or even posses the tools to examine patterns of fraud.

        As it is, computer users know acknowledge their company’s IT privacy and use policy, in this case, the Commonwealth, but it is the expectation that, beyond routine monitoring, only for cause will there be any profiling, forensics and analysis of the computer use, but with AI every moment you are on the computer, phone, et cetera you are being analyzed. Your thought process is being collectivized.

        I thought Democrats were pro whistleblowers. This AI “Assistant” is not only going to hide that which needs whistleblowing, but identify which employees may have seen, thought about and warned their supervisors about the dirty laundry.

        Good luck with that.

  2. The ‘Walking Talking Men’ group is a dead link. It launches a blank tab.

    Some of the state level and district resources are absolutely fantastic.

    I was about to say “speaking of holidays” let’s give a shout out to our past Presidents on Presidents’Day on Monday, but neither Valentine’s Day, or Presidents’ Day are “holy-days,” like say Christmas, Easter, Passover, or Yom Kippur. The former may have in a sense been when it was Saint Patrick’s Day before it became a ritualized commercialized, obligatory blood-letting, and the latter is actually a federal day of observance of something real.

    1. Hi Matt- thank you for creating community and sharing the correct link! We were so excited to hear about this group.

  4. How about a group for single women who don’t have children? It’s a different ball game. I’m far outnumbered. Been told “…you don’t need…..” I need a support group for single women!

    1. I’d say start it up! If it is only single women I wouldn’t be included – but there’s definitely a need for spaces for women (especially childfree women) to connect. We know in MN many of the local organizers that were most effective against CPB were moms precisely because schools and PTA groups provided avenues for direct hyper-local community. The trick is getting the word out – Nextdoor maybe? Facebook? Signs? And I highly recommend checking out the local library and community spaces for meetup locations as well as places to hang flyers.

  5. Can you talk to your colleagues, Sens. Warren, Markey and Reps. that we (Warren was my last Democratic Congressional vote) voted for them to represent us and not be part of the Successionist Caucus and dodge the State of the Union Address.

    1. I stand corrected. It was great to see Sen. Warren at the State of the Union. It’s like on side of the aisle are Americans standing and chanting “USA! USA!” and the other side of the aisle are FX’s ‘The Americans.’

      How are Democrats going to escape their ideological capture by our enemies and adversaries?

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