Established as the newspaper of organized labor in New England in 1989, the New England Labor News and Commentary was the official newspaper of the Nashua, N.H. Labor Council.
The National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy supports people with psychiatric diagnoses to exercise their legal and human rights, with the goals of abolishing forced treatment and ensuring autonomy, dignity, and choice.
The NARPA collection contains audio tapes of conferences held between 1993 and 2002.
The first New Hampshire branch of the NAACP was formed in Portsmouth in 1958, meeting initially in the home of its first president, the local businessman Thomas Cobbs. Growing steadily during the 1960s, the Portsmouth membership were engaged in addressing local concerns over discrimination in housing and employment and were stalwart supporters of the national civil rights struggle.
This small collection of records from a local New England branch of the NAACP consists of minutes of meetings between 1963 and 1966 and a relatively miscellaneous assortment of fliers and other materials from the national organization. Although the collection is slight, it includes records NAACP actions in Portsmouth and, notably, the minutes were kept by Betty Hill and her husband Barney, who became well known for their claim to having an encounter with a UFO.
Founded by attorney Keith Stroup in 1970, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) is the nation’s oldest and most prominent organization advocating for an end to cannabis prohibition. A nonprofit public-interest advocacy group based in Washington, DC, NORML has lobbied at the state and federal levels for the elimination of penalties for the cultivation, possession, and responsible use of cannabis, and it has met with success in state-level efforts at decriminalization. Over the years, NORML has led a wide variety of educational initiatives and coordinated its activities with other organizations working for cannabis reform. More recently, NORML has become a significant voice in the struggle to legalize the therapeutic use of marijuana.
The records of NORML offer a perspective on more than forty years of grassroots advocacy in cause of drug policy legislation. Highly varied in nature, the records include organizational records, research files on marijuana and marijuana use, promotional materials prepared by NORML, and letters from persons incarcerated for possession. The collection is currently being received by SCUA with new additions expected in the near term.
The Maryland Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) was formed at the University of Maryland in Dec. 1976.
This small collection contains an assortment of NORML-related ephemera, including bumper stickers, pins, fliers, and brochures, along with some organizational notes, memberships rosters, and a copy of their newsletter.
A national non-partisan, not-for-profit organization based in Northampton, Mass., the National Priorities Project was founded in 1983 by Greg Speeter, Brenda Loew, Ricky Fogel, and Alwin Schmidt to conduct research into the depths of the federal budget. Their first effort was to analyze the dramatic reductions affecting many social programs, but the organization grew around the principle of making the complex federal budget transparent and more publicly accessible so that the public can better influence how their tax dollars are spent. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 in recognition of its pioneering work in tracking military spending, the NPP continues to work toward a federal budget that reflects Americans’ priorities, including funding for issues such as inequality, unemployment, education, healthcare, and the need to build a green economy.
The NPP collection documents over thirty years of a not-for-profit organization devoted to research-informed advocacy for a federal budget that reflects the priorities of most Americans. In addition to a run of NPP publications, the collection includes a series of topical files from Greg Speeter and his associates, selected correspondence, talks, and notes on their work.
George Naughton was born in 1951 into an academically inclined family. His father, Thomas, was a writer and magazine editor and his mother a music teacher; his grandfather Julius Seelye Bixler was a college professor and president of Colby College (1942-1960); and his great-great-grandfather Julius Seelye served as the fifth president of Amherst College (1876-1890). Naughton grew up in the 1960s in Old Saybrook, Conn. He graduated from Mount Hermon School in 1969 and from New College in Sarasota, Fla., with a BA in General Studies, in 1973. For the next few years, Naughton lived, worked, and meditated in Cambridge, Mass., and California, then in March of 1978 moved to Amherst and took a job at UMass. From 1978 until his retirement in 2011, he worked in University Information Systems in Whitmore Administration Building. Now president of the Amherst Historical Society, Naughton is also active in the Pelham Historical Society and lives in Pelham with his wife, Cindy.
Naughton’s lifelong interests have included mathematics, science fiction, cultural alternatives, and books, and he accumulated a wide collection of print material on a variety of topics. The Naughton Collection is a reflection of many of those interests and comprises underground comics as well as pamphlets, periodicals, and ephemera on spirituality, new age thinking, counterculture, politics, the environment and sustainability, and intentional communities.
An educator and scholar of educational assessment, Monty Neil is the Executive Director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest). For his doctorate at Harvard in the mid-1980s, Neill examined the impact of the 1974 desegregation order affecting Boston’s public schools and the ongoing search within the city’s African American community for quality and equity in education. He completed his dissertation, The Struggle of Boston’s Black Community for Quality and Equality in Education: 1960-1985, in 1987.
The 33 audiocassettes in this collection include interviews with 29 activists and educational and political leaders in Boston, predominantly from the city’s African American community, include in-depth discussions about the busing crisis in Boston during the late 1970s and early 1980s, its aftermath, and the ongoing search for educational equity and quality. The tapes were recorded between January and April 1986 as part of Neill’s dissertation research.
Includes eleven of the thirteen newsletters published by the Labor and Community Network, a group of academics and trade unionists interested in labor issues in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.
A leader in promoting energy sustainability, particularly in the building sector, the New England Sustainable Energy Association is a membership organization dedicated to advancing the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment by cultivating a community where practitioners share, collaborate, and learn. Founded as the New England Solar Energy Association in 1974, NESEA merged with likeminded organizations, changing name (but not acronym) to the Northeast Solar Energy Association in 1985 and then to the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association in 1989. NESEA is an associate member of the American Solar Energy Society.
The records of a grassroots organization devoted to energy sustainability, this collection documents the origins and growth of solar energy, the construction industry, and ideas about sustainable living in New England.
