State House hearing on Feeding Our Neighbors Legislation TOMORROW - Sept 12th !

Dear Feeding Our Neighbors and SNAP Coalition Members:

As many of you know, tomorrow, Tuesday, September 12th, the Joint Committee on Children and Families is holding a public hearing on roughly 35 bills, including S.76/H.135 An Act establishing basic needs assistance for Massachusetts immigrant residents. The hearing starts at 10 AM in Gardner Auditorium.  (The Lift Our Kids Coalition is also having a rally outside on the State House steps at 9:30 AM. We hope you can join them before heading to Gardner Auditorium). 

Submitting testimony on Feeding Our Neighbors and other bills. Yes, you can! 

• You can submit written testimony this week or anytime up until the date the Joint Committee holds an "Executive Session" on the bill (which could be a few weeks or more). For written testimony, send it to: House Chair Jay Livingstone and Senate Chair Robyn Kennedy, Joint Committee on Children and Families, State House, Boston MA 02133. Be sure to reference Bill Numbers: S.76 and H.135. The email for written testimony is: JointCommittee.Children&Families@malegislature.gov  
• You can also come to the State House on Tuesday, the 12th and provide oral testimony. Here's the Joint Committee's instructions on providing oral testimony on Tuesday: https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4674 (Even if you did not pre-register, you may still have a chance to testify in person during the hearing if there is time).

We encourage you to include in your testimony individual stories or case examples as those are the most powerful. Here's examples of individual stories we've posted, and research documenting the harm and our Bill Fact Sheet with core talking points. Please also send us a copy of your written testimony!  

If you need help with talking points, or how to submit testimony, please reach out: Pat Baker, MLRI pbaker@mlri.org and/or Hiba Senhaj, Field First, hiba@field-first.com  Want to know more about the MA Legislative process? Check out our MassLegalServices webpage and here's an excellent short fact sheet from the Mass Food Systems Collaborative with tips on advocating with state legislators. 

Three additional anti-poverty bills being heard on Tuesday:  Please also include in your written or oral testimony support of these important bills:

• The Lift Our Kids/Deep Poverty legislation, H.144/S.75  (Sen DiDomenico/Rep Decker leads)  This bill will set a floor for welfare (TAFDC and EAEDC benefits) at 50% of the federal poverty level. 
• The Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) legislation, S.85 / H.150  (Sen Gobi/Rep Domb leads). This bill will codify the HIP program into state law and create a trust fund that would be able to accept public and private funding. 
• The bill to protect access to local DTA offices ). S.117/H.187 (Sen Moore/Rep Keefe leads). This bill will set criteria for when DTA can close or move a local DTA office.