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By BILL NEWMAN

Censorship functions as a deadly weapon in the arsenal of authoritarian regimes. Consider this.

By BILL NEWMAN

By BILL NEWMAN

Words matter. Some I wish I didn’t need to know.

By BILL NEWMAN

First, they came for people they called “illegals.” There was initial resistance, but many people who were not at risk did not speak out because they felt exhausted and distraught, could barely watch or read the news and believed nothing they said or...

By BILL NEWMAN

On the daily WHMP radio show that I co-host, the first part of the show on the first Thursday of the month is reserved for our congressman, Jim McGovern. I’d been happily anticipating this week’s scheduled post-Election Day conversation with him.For...

By BILL NEWMAN

Many of Donald Trump’s most adamant supporters acknowledge that he is a disgusting racist and misogynist, an inveterate liar, a grifter, and a fraud. But many don’t care or worse, venerate him for exactly these, what shall we call them —...

By BILL NEWMAN

Last week 14-year-old Colt Gray shot and killed two classmates and two teachers at his Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Colt has been charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult.His father, Colin Gray, has been...

By BILL NEWMAN

Let me confess. Until a week ago, I knew nothing about the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. And until Kamala Harris picked him as her veep, I had no idea how to pronounce his name. You, too?Political pundits disagree about the importance of a...

By BILL NEWMAN

From my Gazette column of August 1996 I miss the fireflies of July. A secret galaxy born from the still, overflowed waters of the Connecticut, they dance up the hillsides that surround the Meadows of Northampton into the night sky. For years we have...

By BILL NEWMAN

UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes’ decision in early May to call in the cops, resulted in the arrest of 130 protesters, including 85 UMass students, six faculty and other members of the five-college community. That decision was wrong — morally, ethically...

By BILL NEWMAN

This column is about my daughter Jo, her daughters Kobin and Ramona, a horse named Lady and the U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. And it also isn’t.Kobin is five, almost six. Ramona is three, close to four. Jo, the girls and their dad, Jo’s husband Dean,...

By BILL NEWMAN

Warning: The case from the Supreme Court of Alabama, discussed here, may cause severe nausea. Proceed with caution. The Supreme Court of Alabama recently decided a case about frozen embryos created, kept, and later accidentally destroyed at a...

By BILL NEWMAN

Are you on the outside looking in? Or the inside looking out?This question, important in many spheres of life, took center stage in federal court this past week in Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield v. City of Northampton. Let’s back up for a...

By BILL NEWMAN

This past week Alabama continued our country’s experiment with different ways to kill people. It executed Kenneth Smith.A brief history. In the American colonies, death sentences, imported from Great Britain, were by hanging. Hanging could be...

By BILL NEWMAN

This is scary. The number of books being banned in school libraries is spiraling upward. Nationwide, for the 2022-2023 school year, PEN America substantiated 3,362 school book bans that targeted 1,557 unique titles. That’s a 33% increase from the...

By BILL NEWMAN

This is a story of sadness and punishment compounding tragedy and pain.On Oct. 4, 2013, Eric Sinacori, a 20-year-old kinesiology major at the University of Massachusetts, was found dead in his apartment at Puffton Village in Amherst. He died from a...

By BILL NEWMAN

People with pre-existing conditions fear that they “are going to die because of a vote we might be taking.”Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Florida) said that earlier this week. He added, “(A) lot of people … call my office … daily who are extremely angry … because...

By BILL NEWMAN

The Preamble begins, “We the People.” The evening of March 26, a large group gathered at the Haymarket Café in Northampton to read the United States Constitution and its amendments. The thought was, we talk about the Constitution a lot but we actually...

By BILL NEWMAN

A year ago I could not have imagined asking or being asked the question, is fascism at America’s door? Now I find it critical to contemplate the answer.The question takes me back to my senior year at Antioch College in 1972 when I was taking a course...