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☔Rainy morning, cloudy day, with highs in the 60s. Sunset is at 4:14 p.m.
Just how expensive is living in Massachusetts these days? A new report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation argues that high housing, health care, and energy prices are costing the state its competitive edge: more working-age people are leaving the state than moving to it. The state ranks last in the country in job growth for private companies and 48th for the cost for employers to provide health care to their workers.
“The goal of this index is not to say, ‘Oh, gosh. Massachusetts is no longer competitive.’ It’s to say, ‘Hey, what are the areas that we think we need to focus on to make sure that people can live here, invest here and create jobs here?’” Doug Howgate, the foundation’s president, told GBH’s Arun Rath. You can find the full report here and listen to Howgate and Rath break it all down here.
Programming note: we will be off for the next two days and back in your inboxes on Monday.
Four Things to Know
1. A Massachusetts nursing union is warning that changes to the amount of money nursing students can borrow from the federal government will make it harder and more expensive for them to pay for their education, and keep some people out of the profession entirely. Under the Trump administration’s plan, people pursuing degrees in areas like medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, law, and theology would be able to borrow $50,000 a year and up to $200,000 total from the federal government.
But students studying nursing — as well as physical therapy, dental hygiene, social work, architecture, education and accounting — can only borrow $20,500 a year and up to $100,000 in total. Mary Havlicek Cornacchia, a nurse at Tufts Medical Center and Massachusetts Nurses Association board member, said that “clearly the decision is being made by people that have no idea what we do.”
2. Retired GBH senior investigative reporter Phillip Martin spoke to GBH about a recent incident in which a worker at Caffè Nero in Cambridge refused service to him, mistaking him for a different Black man who had recently been banned from the location.
“Eyewitness misidentification and racial bias significantly contribute to the misidentifications of Black men within the U.S. criminal justice system,” Martin said. “And it starts with something that’s innocent, as a misidentification at a counter in a restaurant or a cafe or a store. Once the police are involved, misidentification becomes a major, major issue. If anyone who dares to assume this is not problematic, they don’t understand how racial bias plays into these decisions in the United States.”
3. The state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, the first such body in the U.S. created by law, is suggesting the state adopt more education about Jewish identity and the Holocaust, better protocols for reporting and tracking antisemitic incidents, and fully staffing the state’s Hate Crimes Awareness and Response Team.
Commissioner Peggy Shukur told GBH’s Adam Reilly that commission members heard from local Jewish residents who said they hid or obscured their identity because they thought it would help them avoid antisemitism. “When people start hiding and not feeling comfortable expressing who they are and their identity, you know, that doesn’t come up in a statistic,” Shukur said. “But we’ve heard many stories of that in the workplace, on campus, in the classroom.”
4. Amid a social media harassment campaign targeting her for her gender identity, Giselle Byrd of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women said she’s leaning on loved ones and mentors for support. Byrd is the first Black trans woman to serve on the commission and the second trans woman — former Gov. Charlie Baker appointed the first, Sarah Schnorr, in 2016.
“I was raised by strong Black women, women who had survived the Jim Crow South, who had survived segregation in schools and overcome so much,” Byrd said. “And to me, joining this commission, being appointed by Governor Healey, was an opportunity to not only carry their legacy, but also to advance their rights and protections.”
Thanksgiving potluck celebrates bond between immigrant workers and people with disabilities
Every year around Thanksgiving, people with intellectual and development disabilities who live in the Guild for Human Services’ group homes gather with 70 or so of the staff members who care for them.
“I call it our little village, a small family,” Mustapha Abdulai, the associate director of the guild’s residential services, told GBH’s Meghan Smith. “You’re looking at food from East Africa, you’re looking at food from West Africa, food from South America. … We have staff from about 45 countries, so that’s how much diversity that gets celebrated.”
Abdulai is originally from Ghana. About 26% of direct care workers in Massachusetts, who look after people with disabilities and help them with everyday tasks, are immigrants, according to the Arc of Massachusetts.
And right now, a lot of them are feeling scared about what the future will bring. Some health care and home health workers across the state have already lost their immigration status and their jobs.
“The uncertainties around what the scope of what administration [is doing], how they’re handling all of these things … it’s become more difficult,” Abdulai said.
Still, at the annual Thanksgiving potluck earlier this month, workers and residents were dining on turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet plantains and jollof rice and chapati bread and puff puff, a snack of sweet deep-fried balls of dough. There was a dance floor and karaoke.
Ryan, a 32-year-old resident, said he appreciates the gathering — and the work caregivers do year-round.
“The staff here at the guild are very very honest and they’re very very very compassionate to what they do,” he said.
Read Meghan Smith’s full story about the annual dinner here.
Dig deeper:
-Reframing The Story Of The First Encounter Between Native Americans And The Pilgrims
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