Grassroots movement takes on Eversource

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On a Wednesday morning in August, a group of people were causing a commotion in the Fairhaven Staples. An employee came over and asked them to leave — they were loud and excited, with documents spread across the workspace. There was no way they were leaving. 

Elijah DeSousa and several volunteers from his group, Citizens Against Eversource, had gathered for a cause they care about. He and his volunteers had seen their utilities bills increase sharply in recent years, and they’d had enough.

The night before they met at Staples, DeSousa finished writing six petitions for ballot initiatives with the help of a pro bono lawyer. The initiatives would attempt to change the way utilities companies charge their customers, and they needed to be submitted to the state’s Attorney General in just a few hours. 

The petitions required 10 signatures from verified registered voters, and the documents had to be pristine. DeSousa and his team started an assembly line, printing three of each copy, and signing them all carefully. They were shooting for 20 signatures. 

“It was organized chaos,” DeSousa said. “It was a little stressful in that moment, but nothing was gonna stop us from being able to print those and be able to get those signatures in.”

DeSousa, a New Bedford construction-sales estimator, started the Facebook group Citizens Against Eversource in February. Today it has almost 40,000 members.

Tammy Foisy was in Staples that day, eager to be one of the petitions’ initial signatories. She said her electric and gas bills tripled in the 4½ years since she bought her home in New Bedford.

After 2½ hours in Staples, DeSousa and volunteer Kimberly Brie headed to Tobey Hospital in Wareham, where more volunteers — the Plymouth and Wareham contingents — were waiting in the parking lot to sign the petitions. 

From there, DeSousa and Brie met another few volunteers at the Taunton Starbucks. At every stop were groups of “working class people, doing the best that they can to make this work,” DeSousa said. 

Signatures in hand, DeSousa drove to Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s Boston office. There, he met Christopher Thrasher, the lawyer who helped him with the ballot initiatives, and more volunteers. 

They submitted their petitions at 4:56 on Aug. 6. The deadline was 5 p.m.

The ballot initiatives target fees for the MassSave energy-efficiency program, the fact that utilities’ profits are separated from energy usage, and fees around new meter technology. 

The Attorney General certified all six petitions, three of which were backups.

A few weeks later, DeSousa and his volunteers began collecting more signatures on their main three initiatives, this time from registered voters outside grocery stores and in parking lots. They need 74,574 and the deadline is Nov. 19. 

The petitions

On Oct. 28, DeSousa campaigned for his initiatives at a Ward 1 meeting at the Pulaski School in New Bedford. Leo Choquette, Ward 1’s city councilor, introduced DeSousa to a crowd of around 20 people. 

Attendees remarked that this modest meeting was a far cry from the one six months earlier, when an auditorium of over 100 angry Eversource customers left with unanswered questions, and a green DeSousa gave the first of many passionate public speeches, announcing his group’s intention to write ballot initiatives.

At the October meeting, Choquette towered above DeSousa, who spoke for almost an hour before answering questions, waving an Eversource electric bill as a prop as he explained the three ballot initiatives. 

One initiative (Petition No. 25-43) would ban revenue decoupling, which separates a utility’s profits from energy usage, guaranteeing a profit margin. If the ballot initiative passes, utility rates would have to reflect actual delivery costs and usage, rather than allowing revenue decoupling to stabilize or inflate utility revenues. 

Another initiative (Petition No. 25-42) would require utilities to make it optional for customers to pay for initiatives like MassSave, which offers services to improve a home’s energy efficiency, sometimes at no cost. MassSave fees are currently included in delivery charges in customers’ bills. Delivery charges, which also include charges for the Gas System Enhancement Program and other costs of bringing electricity to homes, are often higher than the cost of energy usage itself. 

In September, a state audit found MassSave placed a disproportionate financial burden on gateway cities and environmental justice communities like New Bedford. DeSousa also worries that working-class people cannot afford to pay upfront to weatherize their homes and wait for a rebate from the state. 

According to Kate Peters, director of energy efficiency at Eversource, some incentives for low and moderate income customers don’t require an initial buy-in; instead, Eversource pays contractors for 100% of the work, so there’s no charge for homeowners. 

A third initiative (Petition No. 25-44) would allow utilities customers to opt out of smart meters, which transmit usage data to Eversource, without paying a fee. Eversource is in the process of exchanging all electric meters for smart meters. Customers who opt out of receiving a smart meter are charged a $34 monthly fee, on top of an initial $42 charge.

According to William Hinkle, external communications director at Eversource, these meters would give customers more information about their usage and significantly reduce Eversource’s operational costs, since Eversource will no longer have to collect data from meters. 

However, Hinkle said this does not necessarily mean people will see their bills go down. As it stands, anyone who does not want a smart meter in their home will have to pay the fee to cover what Eversource will have to pay employees to go out and read meters. 

DeSousa objects to this, arguing that Eversource is already paying their employees to read meters, so there should be no increase in costs if someone doesn’t want a smart meter in their home. 

Getting the questions on the ballot

For the last few months, DeSousa and his volunteers have been campaigning on these issues, travelling around the state, learning on the fly. To get its questions on the 2026 Massachusetts ballot, Citizens Against Eversource needs to collect 74,574 signatures by Nov. 19, so that towns and cities have time to certify them before they must go to the state on Dec. 3.

South Coast voters can sign the petitions on weekdays between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the DeMello International Center at 128 Union St. in downtown New Bedford.

Citizens Against Eversource also plans to circulate petitions around the state until the Nov. 19 deadline. Petitioning locations, dates and times are listed under the events tab on the Citizens Against Eversource Facebook page.

DeSousa and his grassroots coalition are trying to collect 100,000 signatures, since towns verify all signatures and could throw some out. It hasn’t been easy.

On a Sunday in October, Brie spent nine hours collecting signatures outside Stop & Shop in Somerset, even though she swore she’d stop working such long hours. 

But Brie will do what she has to for this movement. She’ll drive anywhere, and has committed her retirement to training volunteers and collecting signatures. She says someone has to do it, and while she has no experience with this type of work, she’s doing her best — and people are grateful. 

“No matter where on the spectrum you’re living, people are feeling it,” Brie said. For some people, she said, all it takes is the word Eversource for them to ask, “Where do I sign?”

DeSousa has no idea how many signatures they have so far. He and Brie began training people on how to properly collect signatures after a professional signature gatherer — hired for another ballot initiative — taught them, and now DeSousa said he has people he’s never met collecting signatures. 

Brie and Foisy said the work has been tough, with just a handful of volunteers putting in the nights and weekends needed. DeSousa said the system is designed to make grassroots movements like his fail. 

Many ballot question campaigns get funding from interest groups. The “yes” campaign behind eliminating the MCAS requirement on the 2024 ballot received $3.5 million in contributions from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, according to reporting from WBUR. 

The only advantage to doing this grassroots, DeSousa said, is the people. 

“You build connections that end up becoming like a family,” DeSousa said.

Building a movement

The Citizens Against Eversource movement is adamant that it is nonpartisan.

“This is not political,” Brie tells people. “This is your wallet. It’s green — it’s not red or blue, it’s green.”

At the October meeting, DeSousa decried imbalance in the legislature, urging people to think of voting not as blue or red, but as for or against the Democratic supermajority. 

He also advocated for gas pipelines and criticized MassSave. This message isn’t universal. 

At the Oct. 28 meeting, DeSousa pointed to the blocking of these pipelines as a reason for high electric bills.

Wendy Morrill, a co-founder and organizer for South Coast Neighbors United, challenged DeSousa’s focus on clean energy initiatives. Morrill’s group, which recently organized against a proposed waste transfer station in New Bedford’s North End, was founded in 2015 to oppose a natural-gas project in Acushnet.

Morrill said she joined the Citizens Against Eversource Facebook group as “a single parent, with a one income household with soaring electric rates,” and as a community organizer. But she was disappointed to see rhetoric in the Facebook group about “‘those idiots that struck the pipeline,’ and ‘we need more gas,’” she said. At the meeting, Morrill accused DeSousa of not including different environmental viewpoints, particularly in his Facebook group. 

“I’m not going to sit here and argue with people left and right,” DeSousa responded, as the meeting became more heated. “If you’re not on board, you’re an anchor — get out. I’m building a movement of people that agree with my philosophical beliefs, and if people don’t agree, there’s the door.”

When DeSousa began moderating the group, he said he tried to keep every post strictly about utilities. At one point, he said he was banning 200 people a day. 

But he saw engagement dip quickly when everyone in the group agreed, so he expanded discussions a bit. 

“I will remove cancers at the drop of a dime,” DeSousa said. “I don’t have time to deal with people who are gonna sit there and try to put stones into the movement.”

Morrill doesn’t think that’s the right way to build a movement. 

But DeSousa, Brie and Foisy are in it for the long haul. 

So what’s next? 

DeSousa is a sales estimator for a local construction company. He stands at almost 5 feet and 7 inches tall — and he doesn’t like to tell anyone his age beyond that he’s “over 30” (he said he’ll always be mentally young, so never wants to “affirm getting old”). He described himself as a constitutionalist who cares about transparency, and he’s adamant he’s not doing any of this for his own political gain. 

DeSousa, who describes himself as a “working-class guy,” said jumping into politics would mean taking a pay cut and giving up his privacy, neither of which he’s interested in. But he has been approached, he said, about a “myriad of seats anywhere from the city level all the way up to the state level,” and he’s willing to consider running.

“For myself, I wouldn’t do it,” DeSousa said. “But for the people? I would sacrifice my life for the people.”

DeSousa imagines he’d have to run a grassroots campaign, and that it might be tricky to win an election without support from the political establishment.

“I will leave it up to the people,” DeSousa said. “I would do it only because they do not have a voice and they deserve to, and nobody else is doing it.”

In the meantime, what’s next for DeSousa and for Citizens Against Eversource depends on whether they’ll see their questions on the 2026 ballot.

Brie doesn’t want to consider another possibility. 

“At least we’re opening the eyes for the public to see what is going on and how unfair it is for the consumers,” she said. “I don’t want to say, ‘if it doesn’t go through,’ but you know what? We’ll come back stronger and harder next time.”

Abigail Pritchard, a graduate student in the Boston University journalism program, is a frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light. She can be reached at apritchard@newbedfordlight.org.

Editor’s note: This story was modified on Nov. 13, 2025, to correct the contribution made by the Massachusetts Teachers Association to the “yes” campaign behind eliminating the MCAS requirement on the 2024 ballot.