Racial healing initiatives funded by the Kellogg Foundation and implemented through the DEI Office in Amherst bring together people whose histories are marked by profound trauma and displacement. Under DEI director Pamela’s leadership—shaped by a libertarian-inflected vision and informed by BLM-related initiatives like Bridges—these spaces reveal something deeper than policy debates. What we didn’t pass down wasn’t only tradition, but continuity.

There are three awards hovering over Amherst right now, like framed certificates on a wall that no one dusts any more polished, impressive, and oddly hollow. The first is global and absurd. In January 2026, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the actual recipient of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, handed her Nobel medal to Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

At UMass Amherst, the Sunrise Movement chapter revealing $2 million budget discrepancies in the Town of Amherst in 2024, now are holding up 40-foot banners over “pillars of profit,” challenginh the university on every front. Amherst’s Sunrise Club is proving that activism can be precise, loud, and unignorable.

Respect doesn’t mean agreement—and it doesn’t mean silence. Ask harder questions, stay for the uncomfortable parts, help carry veteran stories forward intact, before they’re simplified into slogans that teach us nothing.

A lesson in a classic low-baller intimidation tactic: prolonged engagement, faux expertise, repeated defect-listing, undermining your credibility, then anchoring with an insultingly low price.

The 2025 New Year’s Eve in Northampton celebration, a living, breathing symphony of community- where every note, every step, and every smile reminded everyone that in Northampton, everyone belongs.

2025 showed how intertwined private risk and public consequence have become. How fragile trust is in institutions, data, money itself. How economic power is increasingly used to enforce loyalty, not stability.

What 2025 Taught Us Amherst wants accountability and justice — but the road there is contested, slow, and full of process drama. Residents are more vocal than ever, committees are pushing back, and 2026 looks like it’ll be all about turning transparency talk into actual, visible change.

Top 2025 Digital Marketing Trends Small Businesses Can’t Ignore Digital marketing is evolving rapidly, and in 2025, small businesses need to adopt the latest strategies to attract, engage, and retain customers. Here’s what’s shaping the digital landscape—and how your business can benefit: 1. Short-Form Video Dominates Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts continue to capture attention. Short, creative videos showcasing products, tutorials, or behind-the-scenes content are highly shareable and drive engagement.

Trust fuels growth. For businesses, that trust comes from reviews and testimonials; for communities, it comes from unbiased data and independent expertise. When evidence is ignored, opportunity is lost.

Local Business Needs a Strong Digital Presence in 2026 By 2026, the role of digital visibility for local businesses isn’t just a marketing add-on but a core driver of discovery, sales, and long-term viability. A digital presence matters, especially for downtown economies like Amherst’s: 1. Most consumers start their buying journeys online Nearly half of all Google searches (≈46%) are local in intent…

Amherst property taxes continue to rise, with average residential bills projected to exceed $9,600 per year as home values climb — even as commercial parcels make up only about 6% of all properties. Amherst’s heavy reliance on residential tax revenue means long‑term homeowners and renters shoulder most of the burden, while tax‑exempt institutions like UMass and Amherst College contribute comparatively little through PILOT agreements despite heavy use of town services. Amherst Bulletin Amherst Indy

Amherst at a Crossroads: Housing, Public Services, and Smart Planning Amherst, a scenic college town, with tree-lined streets, charming neighborhoods, and miles of bike paths and the Norwottuck Rail Trail, but life for the people who keep the town running is far from idyllic. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, municipal workers, healthcare staff, landscapers, and other essential workers face an uphill battle just to find stable housing, while the town braces for decades-overdue upgrades to its fire station and Department of Public Works (DPW) facilities.

Do I Have a Story Worth Telling? Most people who ask this question aren’t doubting their lives but permission. We’ve been taught that stories need dramatic arcs, public recognition, or some kind of extraordinary survival to matter. That if you didn’t flee a country, publish a book, or reinvent yourself on Instagram, your life is just… background noise. But stories aren’t valuable because they’re extreme but because they’re…

The Power of Social Media: How Small Businesses Grow With Consistent Branding In a small town, everyone knows something—but no one knows everything. That’s always been true. What’s new is where that knowing lives. In places like Amherst and the surrounding hill towns, social media has quietly replaced the front porch conversation, the coffee shop bulletin board, the “my neighbor knows a guy” economy.

I can usually tell whether a local business is still alive before I ever step inside. Not by the lights in the window, but by whether Google thinks it exists. In 2025, we don’t wander in anymore. We check. We verify. We look for proof of life. That habit didn’t disappear when the pandemic “ended”—it calcified. We learned, collectively, that hours change without notice, doors lock early, and signs lie.

On November 24, 2025, Amherst Human Rights Commission volunteers walked into Town Hall ready to contribute, only to find procedural delays and repeated scrutiny from the Town Council. Despite thorough vetting by staff and KP Law, the bylaw discussion became a test of patience rather than progress, leaving unpaid volunteers to clarify questions that had already been answered. highlighting the tension between process and purpose in local governance.

Human Rights Day in Amherst this year did not feel ceremonial but inhabited.

So Amherst Was Broke… Until It Suddenly Wasn’t.

So, Amherst Town Council had its second-to-last hurrah, and honestly, it was a rollercoaster if you care about housing, zoning, and whether year-round residents still exist in this town. Here’s the tea: Councilor Pam Rooney tried to tweak the Housing Production Plan with tiny edits—removing some comment bubbles, adding a line about UMass, moving a brag paragraph to the front. She just wanted the plan to actually reflect what living here is like.

🚨 Amherst Drama Alert 🚨Hampshire College’s Atkins Corner plan just hit pause. 140 apartments, shops, and a café sounds dreamy but wetlands, neighborhood pushback, and “this might be too much” vibes shut it down. Developer withdrew, leaving the future of the land and Amherst housing up in the air. Mother Nature: 1, Big Plans: 0

Amherst restores your faith in community—just enough to make you forget the zoning fights, the parking wars, and that one guy who always complains about taxes. But we show up, freeze a little, and clap for lights on a tree, and for a moment the whole place feels stitched together. That’s the Merry Maple effect.

While sipping locally roasted coffee and sampling fresh juices lined up under a white canopy tent, I balanced a compostable plate of zucchini frittata at a neighborhood brunch in Amherst. The New England sky a moody and cloudy overcast with the sun slipping in and out, played hide and seek behind thick July humidity. Around us wet grass, peonies and wildflowers spilled over the edges of backyard gardens while on the side a secret garden full of coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, bee balm, and purple native beautiful flowers.

Dollar Throne Still breathing. Still encoding. Trust no one. Buy the Book — £14.00 Whispers Beneath Empire Dollar Throne is a poetic journey through post-9/11 surveillance states, fractured identities, and encoded resistance. Rizwana Khan weaves memory, data, and rebellion into verse — a transmission from the underground. “Truth is a currency. We’re just bankrupting the empire.” Purchase Options Digital Download…

Qandeel She lit up the screen—then became the warning. Buy the First Chapter of the Book — $5.00 When the Algorithm Turns on You Qandeel is a haunting literary thriller inspired by true events. When a bold, unapologetic social media icon in a conservative society begins to speak too loudly, too clearly, the state listens—and the trolls sharpen their teeth. …