Dear Reader

Dear Reader:

This week we published our 7000th Amherst Indy article since we began publication on March 26, 2019. That article is Valley Light Opera Celebrates 50 Years  by Michael Greenebaum, a nice coincidence as Michael has been with us since the beginning. Our growing community of writers continues to reflect our progress as a community journalism project aimed at promoting greater civic participation and greater civic literacy. Those 7000 articles were authored by 456 unique contributors.  While some of those writers have submitted only a single letter to the paper, others have appeared frequently in our pages. 

Another indication of growing participation in our mission is that this week we had 13 unique contributors producing this week’s 24 articles – and a few of weeks ago we also had 13 for 24. We invite our readers to join us in this project (revisit the Indy’s mission statement here and learn something about our most frequent contributors here).  Drop us a note at amherstindy@gmail.com and we’ll help you get started.

Is There a Better Way to Run A College Town?
It’s been a slow news week, so we lead this week with Darcy DuMont’s reflection and analysis of how things might be different in our small college town under Democratic Socialist leadership. This foray into thinking about better/different ways of doing things is timely. We have a local election around the corner and Darcy’s vision of a Democratic Socialist Amherst can perhaps move us to thinking about what is currently working well in our town and what is not, and how we might change things for the better. 

And with cruelty on the rise under the Trump autocracy and with more folks struggling to survive our rapidly deteriorating economy, why not consider what the world might look like when we eventually extract ourselves from our current autocratic nightmare, i.e. the possibility of a government that is democratic (adj. by the people) and socialist (adj. for the people).

Banned Books Week (Source: American Library Association)
October 11-15 is Banned Books Week, and this year’s theme is  “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights” – all too appropriate with Trump’s aggressive efforts to censor anything fitting his expansive definition of woke. The Banned Books Week 2025 theme reminds us that the right to read belongs to all of us, that censorship has no place in contemporary society, and that we must defend our rights.

The majority of book censorship attempts that ALA tracked in 2024 come from organized movements. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members, and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries. The 120 titles most frequently targeted for censorship during 2024 are all identified on partisan book rating sites, which provide tools for activists to demand the censorship of library books.  

Additionally, PEN America recorded the highest instances of book censorship in schools and the highest number of unique titles banned during the 2023-2024 school year – more than 4,000 unique titles were removed in over 10,000 instances of book bans. PEN America also tracked the influence of pressure groups, finding that they have undertaken efforts to remove materials in nearly every state.  Read More here and here.  See the list of most banned books in 2025 here. 

Trump Declares War on the American People
I note in this week’s Western Mass Resistance Calendar that Trump’s recent Executive Order effectively makes any opposition to his regime a crime and Trump has called for deploying the military to combat domestic enemies. Trump also announced on Thursday that the nation is now at war with drug cartels and with their affiliated domestic elements that are destroying our cities, setting the stage for him to claim (illegally) broad war powers and to further violate civil rights. He has said that the new mission of the armed forces is to take out domestic enemies. He says he will next send troops to Memphis, New Orleans, and Portland (OR).

There were many stories last week about ICE actions in the nation’s cities becoming more expansive (notably with the arrest and detention of journalists, protestors, children, and increasing number of us citizens including folks carrying proof of citizenship), and increasingly violent while conducting sweeps in places like hospitals and schools (see e.g. here).  Much of this violence has been documented with videos on social media. Writer Charlie Warzel, posting on Blue Sky Social, notes: “all of these videos are horrifying. What feels so singularly striking and scary to me in all of them is the individual seething contempt and rage of these agents.” He includes a chilling video of the ICE arrest of Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes.

As the well-quoted Niemöller poem (First They Came For)  warns us, under fascism, they will eventually be coming for all of us. Resistance is not futile and is in fact everywhere. Check out the Western Mass Resistance Calendar for ideas on how to start. 

Thanks for reading the Indy,

Art

Art Keene
Managing Editor