Developing a Moral Budget for Massachusetts

Friday, September 27, 2019 - 2:00pm

Click here for an archived video of this program.

Congress is currently debating a discretionary budget which spends more than 50% of our income tax dollars on endless wars, nuclear weapons upgrades, foreign military bases, and other military accounts. Financing this requires cutting major programs funding human and environmental needs nationally, and therefore also in Massachusetts. The  alternatives are the People’s Budget generated by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and just recently, the Moral Budget released by the  Poor People’s Campaign.

More than 30% of the Massachusetts state budget is actually derived from federal funds returned to the state. Unfortunately this information is not made clear by any agency of the State, or of the Federal Government, so that the relationship between the federal appropriations and state budgets is often opaque.  

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PROGRAM

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2: 05 pm: Welcome: Patricia-Maria Weinmann, Assistant Coordinator, MIT Radius

2:10 pm: The Poor People's Campaign : Moral Agenda for the Nation

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharris (PPC) 

2:20pm: Panel 1: Developing a Moral Budget for Massachusetts

            Chair: Savina Martin, Mass Poor Peoples Campaign

Discussion:

3:00 pm: Panel 2: Housing, Transit, Infrastructure and Energy

            Chair: Caesar McDowell, MIT Urban Studies and Planning

Discussion

3:45 pm Coffee Break

4:00 pm: Panel 3: Education and Health

            Chair: Ruth Rodriguez Fay, Save Our Schools, Worcester

Discussion

4:45 pm Panel 4: Cutting the Pentagon Budget 

            Chair: Cole Harrison, Mass Peace Action

Discussion

5:30: Next steps:

5:45: Closing Keynote: A State Budget Responding to Our Needs – State Representative Nika Elugardo, Boston

6:00: BenedictionRev. Leslie Sterling, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church     

  • (All panels – 8 minute talks, then general discussion) 
  • Program committee: Jonathan King, Savina Martin, Jelena Mitic Elliott, Patricia-Maria Weinmann.
  • Co-Sponsors: Mass Poor Peoples Campaign; MIT Radius; Institute for People’s Engagement; Mass Peace Action.
  • Additional support from the Amy S. Rugel Foundation.

Co-Sponsored with Massachusetts Peace Action, the Poor People's Campaign and Radius.

 

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