Past Events

Public transportation needs to change to be clean, reliable and more attractive to riders. That requires money. Over the next five years Massachusetts will receive more than 9 billion dollars in new federal infrastructure funding. This is in addition to existing state and federal funding for transportation. What are our needs for investments and for operations? Is there enough funding to make our transit system modern, climate-friendly, reliable and safe? At a time when we need to slash carbon emissions and pollution from transportation, and encourage more people to take transit. What are the funding priorities? Join Josh Ostroff,of the Transportation for Massachusetts Coalition, Lizzi Weyant of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and Brian Kane, Executive Director of the MBTA Advisory Board for this informative discussion moderated by Bob Seay of GBH. ### Resources [MBTA 2023-2027 Capital Improvement Plan - Oversight Report](https://mbtaadvisoryboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AB_CIP_oversightFINAL4-29-22.pdf) [MBTA Proposed Fare Tariff Changes for FY 23 - Oversight Report](https://mbtaadvisoryboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/MBTAFareTariffOversightReport3-8-22.pdf) [FY2022 MBTA Operating Budget Oversight Report](http://mbtaadvisoryboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FY22MBTAOpsBud.pdf) [Born Broke How too much debt and a faltering financing source threaten the MBTA](https://mbtaadvisoryboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Born_Broke.pdf) [Article in the Commonwealth Magazine](https://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/let-the-mbta-plan-its-own-future/) [MAPC ARPA Investment priorities](https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/arpa-priorities/) [MAPC list of IIJA resources](https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/iija/) [MAPC transportation finance recommendations](https://www.mapc.org/planning101/mapc-releases-transportation-finance-recommendations/)

Catherine Filloux is an internationally recognized award-winning playwright who has been writing about human rights and social justice for over 25 years. Her new one-person play “Under the Skin” is about the internationally acclaimed visual artist and human rights activist Claudia Bernardi, who is part of a generation that grew up in Argentina under a military junta, Filloux and Bernardi show clips from the virtual workshop of the play and share how they embarked on this collaboration of trust, having first met in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They discuss aspects of the play including its historical perspectives, Bernardi’s participation with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, as well as the community art model Bernardi has shared with communities that suffered political violence in many parts of the world. The conversation is moderated by Toni Shapiro-Phim, PhD, a Brandeis University professor whose work focuses on efforts at the nexus of the arts, human rights, and social justice concerns, and who has worked with Filloux and Bernardi in theatrical, educational, and community endeavors. ### Resources The Disappeared Are Appearing: Murals that Recover Communal Memory International Journal of Transitional Justice Oxford University Press Published: 26 November 2019 Claudia Bernardi: Author [Abstract](https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article-abstract/14/1/193/5643962) [Article (free access)](https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article/14/1/193/5643962?guestAccessKey=3d64083b-09fe-45ed-81a4-9d64b29b6ae3) [Argentinian Artist Claudia Bernardi Visually Unearths Brutalities Of Past Present](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackieabramian/2021/01/07/argentinian-artist-claudia-bernardi-visually-unearths-brutalities-of-past-and-present/?sh=75f959b53a07) By Jackie Abramian FORBES Magazine [“La Bestia/ The Beast”](https://solispress.com/9781910146460.html) Claudia Bernardi: Author Voices On The Move: An Anthology About And By Refugees Edited by Domnica Radulescu and Roxana Cazan Solis Press/ England 2020 [Cartography](https://smoca.org/2020/06/17/museum-musings-claudia-bernardi/ ) Claudia Bernardi: Author Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [Second Chances](https://directory.weadartists.org/second-chances) Claudia Bernardi: Author WEAD, Women Eco Artists Dialog [“The Tenacity of Memory”](https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319749648) by Claudia Bernardi “Doubling the Voice, Expanding the Frame: Re-imagining Witnessing Against Torture” Bringing together the voices of torture survivors from TASSC International with non-survivor academics, clinicians, and advocates Edited by Elizabeth Swanson, Ph. D. and Alexandra Schultheis Moore [Horrors and Dreams](http://clas.berkeley.edu/research/art-horrors-and-dreams) Claudia Bernardi: Author Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Fall 2015. “Urdimbre de Historia” Claudia Bernardi: Author Aesthethika, Revista Internacional de Estudio e Investigación Interdisciplinaria sobre Subjetividad, Política y Arte International Journal for the Study and International Investigation of Subjectivity, Politics and Art. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Vol 8, No 1, Septiembre 2012 ISSN 1553-5053 [Version online](http://www.aesthethika.org/Urdimbre-de-historias) “An Angel Passes By: Silence and Memories at El Mozote” Claudia Bernardi: Author “Inhabiting Memory: Essays on Memory and Human Rights in the Americas” Edited by Marjorie Agosin Wing Press, San Antonio, Texas “The Moral Imagination Embodied/ Insights from Artists Navigating Hybrid Identities In Scholarship and Practice” by Kathryn M. Lance The International Journal of Conflict Engagement and Resolution 2016 (4) 1 55 doi: 10.5553/IJCER/221199652016004001004

At the start of the pandemic, federal subsidies helped to keep public transit running even though there were few passengers. There was less of a need to collect fares and in fact many Regional Transit Authorities did not. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu first promoted the idea of free bus service as a city councilor, the idea became reality when she took office. Using 8 million dollars in federal Covid relief money, Mayor Wu made 3 of the busiest routes in Boston free for the next 2 years. Other transit agencies like the Merrimack Valley and Worcester RTAs are also adopting fare free models. And the creation of a means-tested fare system to make transit more affordable for low income riders is under consideration by the MBTA with the encouragement of many transit advocacy groups. We will look at the pros and cons of making mass transit more affordable. How do we create free fares, or lower fares for low-income riders? What would affordable transportation look like? What is the effect on ridership? And what will happen to the current fare free pilots when the COVID-19 relief funds are depleted? ### Resources [UnFare Deal report: How Fare Policy at Baker’s MBTA Transfers Wealth from Riders to Corporations](https://publictransitpublicgood.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PTPG_Un-Fare-Deal-Report.pdf) [H. 4481 An Act Relative to Low Income Fares](https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/H4481) [Low-Income Fare savings white paper](https://publictransitpublicgood.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/PTPG_Low-Income-Fare-Savings-Report-1.pdf) [Polling from MassINC](https://www.massincpolling.com/the-topline/poll-massachusetts-voters-support-new-transportation-investment-taxing-million-dollar-earners) [Fair Share Amendment](https://www.raiseupma.org/fair-share-amendment-2022/) [A low-income fare at the MBTA would bolster struggling Massachusetts families with $500 annual savings per rider](https://publictransitpublicgood.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/PTPG_Low-Income-Fare-Savings-Report-1.pdf)

It feels like a new Cold War is upon us – Russia poses an alarming extrinsic threat to the American concept of freedom, and to Western ideas of democratic values. Russia’s terrible assault on Ukraine and the recent elections of pro-Putin regimes in Hungary and Serbia, coincide with a growing threat to American democracy from within its own borders. JOHN SHATTUCK, an international legal scholar and human rights leader, is currently Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at Tufts after a long and distinguished career in academia and government. In the early post-Cold War years, he was responsible for coordinating and implementing U.S. efforts to promote human rights, democracy and international labor rights. The first U.S. official to reach and interview survivors of the genocide at Srebrenica, he helped negotiate the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and was instrumental in the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He also served President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1998-2000. His new book ‘Holding Together: the hijacking of rights in America’ is co-authored with SUSHMA RAMAN, Executive Director and Mathias Risse, faculty director at the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Shattuck and Raman will join the Forum to discuss the current world crisis with regard to human rights, a fight which challenges Americans domestically, as well as internationally. Raman is the host of Justice Matters podcast and a contributor to Foreign Policy magazine; she brings two decades of experience in launching and leading social justice and human rights’ initiatives to her position as director at the Carr Center. Are you alarmed at the steady deterioration of common purpose among your fellow Americans or are you more concerned about the international disregard for human rights and democratic values, we have witnessed in Ukraine and beyond? Join this spirited discussion to investigate what can be done.

Life Is Good Co-Founder John Jacobs in conversation with Boston Public Library President David Leonard will instruct on the power of optimism, sharing how a Boston-based family business grew into a million-dollar lifestyle brand that changes lives through its charitable foundation and simple wisdom. An audience Q&A session will follow the discussion. When John and his brother Bert started the now $100 million company in 1994, they had $78 in their pockets, lived out of their van, and sold t-shirts on the streets of Boston. Was this their way of avoiding the “real world”? You betcha. Did it turn into something much bigger? Absolutely. It has been 25 years since they sold their first t-shirt, but John and Bert champion the same mission: to spread the power of optimism. On their journey, they’ve been inspired by a vibrant community of resilient optimists — people from all walks of life who identify deeply with the brand and who constantly demonstrate the depth and meaning behind the three simple words “Life is Good.”

The Amazon Rainforest is known as the "lungs of the earth" because it draws in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen. But it is also the biological heart of the planet's hydroclimate system, the planet's rain making machine. We have lost almost 20 % of the forest and are close to reaching a tipping point where it will turn to grassland. What will that mean for us, and how can we prevent the dieback? We can calm the weather and cool the planet within one generation by protecting and reforesting the rainforests of the planet and reshaping food production in those areas from open canopy monocultures to largely closed canopy forms of agroforestry/permaculture. This massive regeneration process restores the disrupted water cycle on a micro and macro level, restores degraded soils and dampens the destructive effects of extreme weather events. If the world embraces this regenerative work at the scale and speed of the challenge, we can avert a climate catastrophe and the collapse of biodiversity while massively improving food-security, substantially reducing poverty and meeting most of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Jon Schull, co-founder of the EcoRestoration Alliance will moderate a discussion with panelists Rob de Laet, co-founder of the World Climate School and Atossa Soltani, founder of Amazon Watch and director Global Strategy for Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. Our speakers will show us how massive regeneration can restore disrupted water cycles and degraded soils and moderate the destructive effects of extreme weather events. A full holistic way to support forest economies that don't rely on cutting down trees and paradoxically killing the forests is possible. This program is hosted by the GBH Forum Network and its partner organization, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate.

The world experienced remarkable demographic changes in the 20th century that continue today and have resulted in far-reaching social, economic, political, and environmental consequences all over the globe. These consequences are creating mounting challenges to development efforts, security, the environment, as well as the sustainability of human populations. How will changing demographics impact the future? Join us at the Boston Public Library for our first in-person Great Decisions program since 2020! This program will simultaneously be streamed to Zoom from 6:00 to 7:00 PM ET.

Migratory birds and other such creatures can navigate vast distances to annual retreats and nesting sites because they are endowed with magnetoreception. Dr. Walcott explains the biological adaptations that enable the connection to Earth’s magnetic field. He describes his pioneering work on the homing pigeon, one of the major sources of evidence for magnetoreception. Dr. Walcott also discusses some other interesting sensory mechanisms, such as spiders that “hear” with their legs. IMAGE CREDIT: BBC & treehugger.org

There is a widespread expectation that the Democrats will suffer losses in the 2022 midterms at all levels. This would not be unusual, since it is a regular pattern in which the party of the president in office loses ground in midterm elections. The political environment is challenging, with pain at the gas pump, inflation stretching pay checks, pandemic fatigue, disappointment with what Biden has not been able to deliver, the war in Ukraine, and bitter partisan divisions over hot button issues. Will Biden’s performance amidst all this bad news be rewarded or punished at the polls? The closing episode of this series will examine the state of the state —and the race— as we approach midterms. Experts in political economy, polling, campaigning, and presidential politics will unpack what’s important and pull out their crystal balls to look ahead to what will happen in November.

Research is providing us with more and more proof that having friends is beneficial, if not essential, to good health. Many people are aware of the detrimental effects that social isolation and loneliness can have on physical and mental wellbeing, but fewer appreciate the advantages of keeping our important relationships close and personal. University of Oxford data shows that best friends’ physiology comes into synchrony – the rhythm of their hearts, body temperatures and hormonal responses match. Human touch also slows the heartbeat, lowers blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol. So our interaction with good friends actually keeps us alive and helps us live longer!