We can be very proud of our collective efforts in fighting for economic and social justice over the past year.  We faced up to several daunting challenges, made great strides in building our peoples' movement, and won some tremendous victories.  At the same time, we have not been strong enough to win some of our most important battles, and we experienced some disappointing defeats.  This points to the need to further strengthen our grassroots movement.  Our recent accomplishments include:

• Passing a progressive tax package to stop the cuts, including closing the capital gains tax loophole.  In 2002, we played a critical role in reducing the impact of statewide budget cuts, by passing one of the largest progressive tax increases anywhere in the country since World War II.  Our statewide coalition persuaded the legislature to pass a major tax package, making possible the  funding of $1.1  billion in programs that would otherwise have been cut.  40% of the tax increase will be paid by the wealthiest 1%. No political expert thought this was possible.  CSJ co-founded the statewide Stop the Cuts campaign and organized a powerful grass-roots push at the local level in Brockton, Fall River and New Bedford.  Our ability to turn people out and to organize testimony from large numbers of people at the Legislature's March, 2002 Public Hearing in Fall River was arguably the decisive moment in winning top-level legislative support for our tax proposals.
   
• Building the 2003 Stop the Cuts Campaign.  In 2003, we have again played a critical role in the statewide campaign to Stop the Cuts.  This campaign is focused on winning veto-proof legislative support for a large progressive tax package to stop statewide budget cuts, including closing corporate tax loopholes and restoring the income tax rate to 5.95%.  We have organized meetings with 19 different legislators, involving groups of constituents advocating for our agenda.  We have organized hundreds of people to call or write their legislators to advocate for a progressive tax package to provide the funding needed to stop statewide budget cutbacks.  We have organized thousands to send individualized postcards to our legislators.  We have held large public Stop the Cuts events, including organizing 140 people and 40 testifiers to participate in a Stop the Cuts Speak-Out in Brockton, earning front-page coverage in the Brockton Enterprise.  In Fall River, we organized 375 people to attend our Annual Banquet, with Speakers focusing on the fight to stop the cuts.  Now, we are establishing in-district campaigns inside dozens of legislative districts to build the groundswell of popular support needed to persuade a critical mass of legislators to support passing a large tax package to stop the cuts. 
      
• We fought a determined battle to defeat plans to demolish public housing in Fall River, the culmination of a 3-year-long struggle.  In 2002, we built broad support within Fall River and statewide to prevent demolition of the Watuppa Heights housing development.  At first, it appeared demolition was a done deal.  But we and our supporters systematically met with legislators to provide the other side of the story.  We succeeded in forcing the advocates of demolition to back down from their initial legislation; then we persuaded the Housing and Urban Development Committee to vote 15-0 against the new legislation.   Ultimately, we lost by only one vote, and only because powerful supporters of demolition twisted arms to get their way.  In the process, we built a statewide movement that will now work to stop future demolition efforts in other communities. 
     
• Our grassroots election efforts were critical in re-electing State Representative David Sullivan.  He won despite determined efforts by the political establishment in Fall River to drive him out of office as a result of his courageous stand opposing demolition of Watuppa Heights.  Instead of the close race that was predicted by the political experts, Sullivan won an overwhelming victory.  Coalition for Social Justice made 6000 phone calls, knocked on 500 doors, identified 3600 supporters, and made sure his supporters got out to vote.  Not only did we re-elect Sullivan, we showed that politicians could stand up to the powers-that-be in Fall River and survive politically.
   
• We played a leading role in the campaign in Southeastern Massachusetts to defeat Mitt Romney.   We understood that with Romney in office, we could count on an automatic veto of our progressive tax initiatives and an active campaign to win public support for severe budget cuts in the name of "cleaning up the mess on Beacon Hill.".  We went all out, contacting 11,360 voters and identifying 4,615 O'Brien supporters who we turned out on election day.  It’s not a coincidence that  New Bedford – where we were able to contact 5500 voters - also came through with the highest vote for Shannon O'Brien (70%) of any urban center in Massachusetts, and that Brockton, where we contacted 2200 voters, supported a Democratic candidate for Governor for the first time since 1988.
   
• Establishing a new branch of CSJ  in Brockton.  In the last year, we have made major strides toward establishing the Coalition for Social Justice as a vibrant grassroots organization in Brockton.  We organized large numbers of Brockton residents to sign postcards, make phone calls and turn out to our Stop the Cuts Speak-Out in spring, 2002.  In the 2002 election, we tripled voter turn-out in 2 of Brockton's public housing developments, as a result of intensive door-to-door outreach, in addition to making our 2200 calls. Since the election, we have once again been building a powerful campaign to Stop the Cuts in Brockton.  Most recently we organized 140 people to attend a Speak-Out to Stop the Cuts in Brockton,  attended by all of our area state legislators.  We have involved many dedicated and passionate volunteers in Brockton and are now proud to announce the opening of our Brockton office, located at the Universalist-Unitarian Church, 325 W. Elm St., Brockton. 
   
• Campaign for quality education in New Bedford.  For nearly a year, we have been working on a campaign to make the New Bedford School Committee more accountable through a change from the current at-large system to one based primarily on district representation.  We joined with education activists throughout New Bedford to develop a new organization (PASS - People for Accountable and Successful Schools) to wage this campaign.  The campaign arose in response to the School Committee's refusal to accept the recommendation of a Search Committee for a new superintendent, because the search failed to ratify the political machine's candidate.  The resulting outrage has opened up new opportunities.  The campaign is focusing on putting a binding referendum question on the ballot, which is the first step to getting home rule legislation passed at the state level to amend the City Charter.  Our campaign has won broad public and media support. 
   
• Building the anti-war movement in Southeastern Massachusetts.  Although historically, CSJ has not gotten involved in international issues, the threat of war on Iraq was too compelling to ignore.  Based on popular demand from our volunteers, we took the initiative to help form a new organization, Southeastern Massachusetts Committee for Peace, and played key roles in holding local anti-war rallies in New Bedford (275 people), Fall River (325 people), and Brockton (110 people).  We also organized hundreds of people to sign large anti-war ads that appeared in the New Bedford, Fall River and Brockton newspapers, organized 190 people to attend the historic half-million person rally against the war in New York City on February 15^th, and organized educational peace conferences at Bridgewater State College on April 19^th and in New Bedford on June 14^th.