Policy/Advocacy

The Boston Tree Party is a collaborative campaign to plant 100 pairs of heirloom apple trees in publicly used spaces across Greater Boston. The tree plantings will take place in partnership with a diverse range of institutions, organizations, businesses, and communities. As an urban agriculture project, the campaign will create vital gathering places, build community connections, and improve community health. As a conceptual art project, the Boston Tree Party engages with metaphor and symbolism, and playfully reimagines patriotic and political language, imagery, and forms of association. Like the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Tree Party is a symbolic political act. The project takes a stand for universal access to fresh, healthy food; for greening our cities; cleaning our air and waterways; reducing our city’s carbon footprint; creating habitat for urban wildlife; and for protecting the biodiversity and heritage of our food. Collectively, the 200 apple trees will become a decentralized public urban orchard that crosses social, economic, political, and geographic boundaries.

Thrive in 5 works with all the people who support young children - their families, early care and education providers, health and human service providers, and their city - to ensure that every child in Boston has the nurturing early care and experiences that provide a solid foundation for success in school and in life. The Field’s Corner Children Thrive overall goals are to:

• Empower and support parents and caregivers with new knowledge and skills to nurture children’s healthy development through reading, talking and playing.
• Ensure collaboration among service providers, developing programs that prepare children to learn and meet parents and caregivers where they are and without prejudice.
• Involve the entire Fields Corner community in creating, identifying, mapping and connecting resources that are accessible to all.

Thrive in 5 is active in five neighborhoods of Boston: for information about the overall program, please view the guide entry here or website here.

GBIO was founded by a group of 45 clergy and community leaders who began meeting in January of 1996. What motivated this founding group to begin building GBIO was a common desire to transcend the historic divisions in Boston that existed between neighborhoods, particularly around race and class issues. These founders were motivated to build a new organization which could help build relationships across these divides and provide a new vehicle for different constituencies to act together on common interests in ways which would be powerful and effective. This founding group raised seed money from ten different religious denominations and the first staff organizer was hired in August 1997. In November of 1998, GBIO held its founding assembly attended by some 4000 people from across Greater Boston. This watershed event in Boston's recent history was the largest and most diverse mass meeting held in Boston during the past 25 years.

Anti-Usury Campaign

It is time to re-instate usury laws by capping interest rates at 10%. Why 10%? Because 10% is enough.

Ten percent is enough to allow credit to flow to all worthy borrowers. It is enough to allow bankers their fair share of profit. It is enough to protect families from permanent indebtedness. And it is enough to divert our economy away from the speculative gambling that has caused our present economic crisis, and back towards productive wealth creation in the industries of the future: green manufacturing, sustainable energy, and others that the American entrepreneurial spirit has yet to imagine.

Health Care

The fight for quality, affordable health care for all continues.

In 2005, over a half a million people were uninsured in the state of Massachusetts, many of whom were members of GBIO institutions. Through listening to these members, their stories became our stories and motivated us to become active in the fight for affordable health care for all. The passage of Massachusetts 2006 Health Reform Law was a landmark victory for GBIO and the residents of the Commonwealth of MA. More than 430,000 residents have acquired health insurance as a result of the passage of this reform, and Massachusetts rate of uninsured has dropped from seven percent to three percent, the lowest in the nation!

School Organizing Campaign

DotOUT is a grassroots, member driven organization committed to the ideals of acceptance, inclusion, fairness, and equality. We believe in the strength of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (“GLBT”) community in Dorchester and recognize that together through our activism and neighborliness we can positively influence local opinion on issues that are relevant to us and our community. We recognize that Dorchester's GLBT residents have a long history of contributing to the very essence of our neighborhood. It is upon this foundation that we unite as a community to working with our neighbors and friends in an ongoing effort to improve the quality of life in Dorchester by continuing to build bridges to Dorchester's many communities. In so doing, we will advance the ideals of fairness and equality for all the residents of Dorchester.