Massachusetts Pirate Party

Abolition and Alternatives Conference (AAC) 2025
2025-10-03 17:30 - 2025-10-05 15:30 (America/New_York) | The Black Response, 245 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142, United States
We are proud to sponsor The Abolition and Alternatives Conference (AAC) on October 3–5. The conference is organized and hosted by The Black Response at their offices at 245 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142. We encourage all Pirates to attend and support this conference, especially, but not exclusively, the ShotSpotter and Police Surveillance track. If you can not attend, or even if you can, please consider giving a donation to The Black Response or print out their poster and put it up in your neighborhood. See you in less than two weeks!

Details on the conference are reproduced below. Edits are only for clarity:

This free, in-person event will bring together community members, organizers, and advocates for a weekend of in-depth learning and discussion focused on alternative public safety and community care, housing justice, and the impacts of surveillance technologies like ShotSpotter. It will include keynote addresses from Fatema Ahmad (Muslim Justice League), Stephanie Guirand (The Black Response), and Spencer Piston (Boston University).

Food will be provided, childcare will be available, and we encourage attendees to share any additional access needs via the conference interest form. TBR will be reaching out to invite participation as speakers and facilitators. For questions, please contact Stephanie at general@theblackresponsecambridge.com.

Throughout the conference, participants will have the opportunity to choose from panels in four tracks:

Housing Justice

This track features panels led by the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition (CHJC). CHJC is a coalition of activist groups and concerned Cambridge residents who believe housing is a basic human right. The panels and workshops on this track will focus on housing justice and its intersections with the prison industrial complex.

ShotSpotter and Police Surveillance

This track will be led by the #StopShotSpotter Coalition Camberville. In this track, coalition members will provide an introduction to ShotSpotter, the audio-surveillance technology. We will examine its impact in Cambridge, the national landscape, and broader conversations about surveillance tech.

Alternatives and Community Care

This track will be led by members of the Massachusetts Community Care Network (MCCN). This track will include panels of responders, program directors, and organizers working to make alternatives to policing real. It includes a panel on the movement with Daanika Gordon, Spencer Piston, and Minali Aggarwal.

Community Concerns (Anti-Racism, Immigration Justice, Justice for Palestine, and Black Lives Matter)

This track will discuss concerns that come directly from the communities we serve and work with. These concerns also intersect with the movement for abolition and alternatives. They include Justice for Palestine, Immigration Justice, and Anti-Racism. In this tract we intend to learn from organizers leading these movements in Massachusetts.

09/28/2025 Member Meeting
2025-09-28 20:00 - 21:00
Our biweekly member meeting. Contact us if you want to add anything or bring it up at the meeting.

It will be a video meeting at our community bridge page. On the page, just enter your name, the access code listed in the text about the name field and click Join.

View this meeting’s agenda.

09/23/2025 Organizers Check-In
2025-09-23 19:00 - 20:00
We are getting ready for the 2026 elections. If you want to help organize your community, come to our Organizers Check-In! You can get connected with other organizers, ask for advice or share what you have learned.
It will be a video meeting at our community bridge page. On the page, just enter your name, the access code listed in the text about the name field and click Join. A draft meeting agenda is available.
Can’t make it? Check out our Organizing Guide and Materials.
Email us if you want to add anything or bring it up at the meeting.

Cantabridgians! Oppose ALPR surveillance cameras in your neighborhood!
2025-09-18 09:00 - 12:00 | Cambridge Pole & Conduit Commission
This Thursday, the Cambridge Pole & Conduit Commission will consider Flock’s requests to put up 15 to 20 surveillance cameras with Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technologies around Cambridge. The Cambridge City Council, in a 6-3 vote on Feb. 3rd, approved Cambridge PD’s request to install these cameras. It was supposed to roll out to Central Square only, but it looks like Cambridge PD and Flock have asked to put up a camera at the corner of Rindge and Alewife Brook Parkway facing eastward. That is pretty far from Central Square.

Anyone living within 150 feet of the camera location should have been mailed letters from Flock telling them that the can attend the Pole & Conduit Commission meeting this Thursday at 9am and comment on Flock’s request. The Pole & Conduit Commission hasn’t posted its agenda or the requests it will consider on Thursday. If you got a letter or found out that you are near where Flock wants to install one of these cameras, please attend the meeting to speak against it and notify your neighbors.

The Cambridge Day, who recently published a story on us, reports that City Councilors Patty Nolan, Sumbul Siddiqui and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler have called for reconsidering introducing more cameras to Cambridge. These cameras are paid for by the federal Urban Area Security Initiative grant program and the data they collect will be shared with the Boston Regional Information Center (BRIC) and from there to ICE, CBP and other agencies that are part of Trump’s new secret police already active in the Boston area.

We urge you to attend this meeting at 9am on Thursday and speak against the camera nearest you, if you received a letter or know that the camera will be within 150 feet of your residence. You can register in advance and the earlier you register, the earlier you will be able to speak. Issues you can bring up:

A Texas sheriff recently searched ALPR data to identify the location of a Texas woman who sought an out-of-state abortion. We will see more efforts like this as conservative state legislatures criminalize abortion and attempt to force their views on us;

The Cambridge Police Department has stated in a public hearing that they use license plate readers to monitor traffic in the vicinity of protests. People exercising their 1st Amendment right to peaceful protest should not fear that they will end up in a local, commonwealth or federal database because their car was near a protest;

Last year, Boston shared its ALPR data 37 times with federal agencies and state police in other states. The Flock ALPR database is available nationaly and Flock has a pilot contract with Customs and Border Patrol to send them ALPR data directly;

In the past, ALPR companies have not done a good job keeping their data secure. In Boston, there was a leak of ALPR data on 68,924 scans of 45,020 unique vehicles which caused the Boston Police Department to suspend ALPR data collection in 2013.

We urge affected Cambridge residents to speak at Thursday’s hearing at 9am. If you plan to attend or can put up flyers in your area about the cameras, please email us at info@masspirates.org.

09/14/2025 Member Meeting
2025-09-14 20:00 - 21:00

9/4/2025 Organizers Check-In
2025-09-04 19:00 - 20:00

08/31/2025 Member Meeting
2025-08-31 20:00 - 21:00

Oppose Police Social Media Surveillance
2025-08-19 16:00 - 18:00
Boston Police (BPD) continue their efforts rollout more surveillance tools. This time, on social media.
On August 19th, the Boston Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing on the Boston 2024 Surveillance Technology Report including police usage of three new tools to monitor social media posts. Any tool BPD uses will feed into the Boston Regional Information Center (BRIC) and Federal agencies such as ICE, CBP and the FBI.
If you want to tell the Boston Public Safety committee to oppose this expansion of surveillance, please show up on the 19th virtually. Details are posted, but to sign up to speak, email ccc.ps@boston.gov and they will send you a video conference link. We especially encourage Boston Pirates to attend and speak against this proposal. The Docket # is 1357.

08/12/2025 Organizers Check-In
2025-08-12 18:00 - 19:00

08/10/2025 Member Meeting
2025-08-10 20:00 - 21:00
Our biweekly member meeting. Contact us if you want to add anything or bring it up at the meeting.
It will be a video meeting at our community bridge page. On the page, just enter your name, the access code listed in the text about the name field and click Join.
View this meeting’s agenda.
If attendance is too low, we will record Pirate News instead.

08/03/2025 Member Meeting
2025-08-03 20:00 - 21:00
