Rachel Armany

Sep 13, 2024 | wgbh.org | Rachel Armany

September 13, 2024 Hundreds of members of the local LGBTQ+ community lined up in Back Bay on Thursday night to celebrate the opening of Dani’s Queer Bar. It’s the city’s first venue in over a decade to cater specifically to women who are attracted to other women, along with trans and nonbinary people. Thursday’s opening had been a long time coming. A fundraiser for the effort launched in March 2022, and Dani’s was originally slated to open last year.

Jun 13, 2024 | wgbh.org | Rachel Armany

When Madison Eisen was growing up in Fall River in the 1990s, finding a local community as a young trans person was a challenge. “If I ever wanted to meet other people who are openly LGBTQ, I had to go into Providence or Boston,” Eisen said. It’s part of the reason why they opened Lavender Lit,a used bookstore and lending library in Attleboro that specializes in titles written by members of the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized groups.

Nov 17, 2023 | wgbh.org | Rachel Armany

As communities in Massachusetts grapple with an influx in migrant families coming into the state, aid workers in some overstretched cities and towns hope the state will hear them on providing more aid, or changing the way the state administers its programs. The Massachusetts House and Senate failed to reach a compromise on Wednesday on how to spend $250 million in funding for the state’s emergency shelter system.

Nov 13, 2023 | wgbh.org | Rachel Armany

State lawmakers heard emotional testimony in a hearing Monday over efforts to ban the use of electric shock devices on people with disabilities. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Danielle Gregoire of Marlborough, was filed to address controversial practices at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton — the only institution in the country to shock disabled residents as way to control behavior.

Nov 13, 2023 | wgbh.org | Rachel Armany

Whether you’ve heard someone credit their bad day to astrology — maybe during Mercury retrograde — or seen the emergence of WitchTok, a community of witches on TikTok, the intrigue has exploded, especially in the wake of the pandemic and seismic shifts in our nation’s culture. Interest in all things magical has grown radically over the last decade — the popularity of tarot, astrology and reading tea leaves has surged, especially among Gen Z.