Letter: Project 2025 Is an Urgent Threat to Democracy

Letter to the Editor02:30PM / Thursday, September 19, 2024Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

I have watched the recent resurgence of the Democratic Party with growing optimism for America's future. Kamala Harris offers America a sane, intelligent candidate who clearly understands the critical importance of American democracy, domestically, and for world stability.

Harris' pro democracy stance contrasts dramatically with Project 2025, the de facto policy platform of Donald Trump and his Republican Party. An urgent threat to American democracy, Project 2025 creates a step-by-step playbook for a second Trump administration, blatantly laying out an authoritarian master plan for the replacement of American Democracy with autocracy.

Project 2025 abolishes constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms for all Americans. The plan's anti-American highlights include a nationwide ban on abortion, imposition of Christian Nationalism on America's public institutions, elimination of the Department of Education, criminalization of LGBTQ-plus individuals, rejection of the scientific reality of climate change, censorship banning teaching about slavery and black history, and the forced roundup and imprisonment of millions of immigrants in internment "camps."

Project 2025 abolishes American constitutional democracy by eliminating the Department of Justice. Stating "the rule of law must be consistent with the President's agenda," 2025 replaces the rule of law with the rule of the President.

Although Donald Trump has recently attempted to downplay his support, Project 2025 was written at his behest, largely by former Trump administration staffers.

Project 2025 constitutes an authoritarian assault on our democracy, a written promise to all Americans that, should Trump be reelected, our 250-year-old experiment in democracy will abruptly end.

Sally Filkins
Pittsfield, Mass.

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2026 Point in Time Count on Jan. 25

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
01:52PM / Tuesday, January 13, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Point in Time count, which measures people experiencing homelessness, will occur on Sunday, Jan. 25, and the Three County Continuum of Care stresses that every survey matters.

Earlier this month, the CoC's data and evaluations manager Michele LaFleur and compliance manager Natalie Burtzos reviewed past data with the Homelessness Advisory Committee and discussed planning for this year's count.

LaFleur described the PIT count as "our attempt to try and determine how many people are experiencing homelessness on a single night." Each year, it has to be conducted within the last 10 days of January.

In January 2025, there were 215 Pittsfield people in shelter, and 12 people unsheltered. In July, 107 city people reported being in shelter, and 27 people reported being unsheltered.

Of the unhoused individuals in the winter of 2025, 113 were people in families with children under 18. The PIT count for 2024 reported more than 200 people experiencing homelessness on that day.

Pittsfield's shelter data consists of ServiceNet's individual and family shelters, Soldier On's shelter and transitional housing, and Elizabeth Freeman sheltering areas. The winter count has increased significantly since 2021, and the CoC conducted a summer count on July 20 that showed fewer people in shelters and more unsheltered.

It was noted that the count misses people who are couch surfing or paying to live in a motel, as the reporting is on the burden of service agencies or community members who work with those experiencing housing instability.

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