Letter: Project 2025 Is an Urgent Threat to Democracy

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."

Sally Filkins
Pittsfield, Mass.

Colombian Artist Celebrates Immigrant Stories in New Pittsfield Mural

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
06:49AM / Saturday, October 24, 2026

Artist Laura Barrios explains the  inspiration of the mural, of immigrants building new lives in the Berkshires.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The walls along the Intermodal Center's train platform are a little more colorful following the unveiling of Let It Shine's third mural at that location, transforming a space once surrounded by bare concrete into a vibrant display of public art.

 

The unveiling on Thursday, marks the close of Let It Shine's 2026 outdoor public art season and the third year of its emerging artist program, said Mill Town Foundation Program Director Andy Wrba. 

 

Let It Shine's Emerging Artists Mentorship program was established in 2024 to support aspiring artists in the community by providing guidance, hands-on experiences, and opportunities to create large-scale public art.

 

"This mural, along with all the murals, as part of this emerging artist program, and even more broadly, all the murals that you see downtown throughout Pittsfield shows that we care about the cultural scene and we care about the creative people that live and work in our city," Wrba said.

 

The new mural, painted by Colombian artist Laura Barrios, celebrates immigrants who have built lives and found a sense of home in Berkshire County.

 

Barrios has been working on the piece for the last two months alongside mentor artist, Jesse Tobin McCauley. 

 

"It's a homage to the immigrants who work and make a home in the Berkshires … this is a very personal experience too because I am an immigrant," Barrios said in her speech.