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🌤️Hot, with a 30% chance of afternoon showers and highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 8:10 p.m.
Let’s start this Wednesday with a bit of joy: meet Sanie Joseph, the valedictorian of New Mission High School in Hyde Park. She moved to Boston from Haiti at age 15, and is now headed to Dartmouth College, where she plans to pursue the pre-med track.
“I’m the type of person, really, anything brings me joy — the small things, the little things,” she told GBH’s All Things Considered. “So many other people, and especially people from my country — young people from my county who came around the same time as me as well — they are doing so much. They are accomplishing so much. And just seeing the amazing progress and so many people adapting to a new country in three, four years, it’s truly amazing. I think it really brings me a lot of joy.” You can hear more of her story here.
Four Things to Know
1. Rideshare drivers in Massachusetts are officially the first in the nation to form a union. The App Drivers Union represents about 70,000 drivers, most of whom work through Uber and Lyft. Voters gave drivers legal permission to form a union via a ballot measure a year and a half ago.
One of their first orders of business: bargaining for a higher share of the pie. Right now, drivers get about 20% to 30% of what riders pay, said Mike Vartabedian, a union officer — though a Massachusetts law mandates a base pay of at least $34 an hour while they’re working.
2. Short-term rentals on Cape Cod are seeing an uptick: bookings are up nearly 20% this spring. But there’s also some “economic stratification” within the Cape’s tourism industry, said Paul Niedzwiecki, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce: four- and five-star, higher-priced resorts are doing well. Travelers with less disposable income are more hesitant, he said.
“They’re watching prices, they’re booking a little bit later and stays seem to be shortening a little bit,” Niedzwiecki explained. “It’s not going to affect them coming to the Cape. It may affect what they do once they get here.”
3. An update on a story we brought you last week about a father and son detained by the Coast Guard while fishing and sent to ICE custody: the son, 15-year-old Nycolas de Al Varenga Lima, was released by order of a federal judge Friday. Court records show that the two were kept in a hotel room and that federal officials were considering sending them to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
In another emergency hearing on Monday, a separate federal judge ordered federal agents to release the father, Rogerio da Silva Lima, by noon today. The father and son are originally from Brazil, and federal officials said they had asked for asylum previously but were denied, and therefore have deportation orders.
4. The unofficial start of summer means you can once again take the bus to Blue Hills Reservation. Route 716 runs from Mattapan to Houghton’s Pond on weekends, and will get you there in about 20 minutes (without traffic). The special service runs Saturdays and Sundays through the second week of October.
Last year was the first time the MBTA started running buses to the park. “Even though the bus leaves from Mattapan, we encountered visitors from all over Greater Boston — which was great,” said Jen Klein, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Blue Hills. “We were surprised at how many people had never, never been here before.”
New program aims to help veteran defendants on the Cape and Islands
Veterans who get arrested or summoned to court on the Cape will now have a new option: a program from the local district attorney’s office designed to connect them with services. If they qualify and complete the program, prosecutors won’t charge them with a crime.
It’s a similar idea to Veterans Treatment Courts, which operate in Boston, Lawrence, Framingham, Dedham, Brockton, Holyoke and Gardner. That program is run by the trial courts, while this one is run by local prosecutors.
“It’s not like the district attorney gets to wave a wand saying, ‘I want a veterans trial court.’ It’s a function of the trial court,” District Attorney Robert Galibois told CAI. “We recognize that budgetary times are a little tight right now, and trying to expand this program down our way might meet those particular challenges within the budgets.”
Veterans, active-duty service members and people in the National Guard can ask about the program at their probation intake, or ask an attorney, someone from Veterans Affairs or the state’s SERVE program to refer them.
You can learn more about how this program works here.
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