Hi friends,
It’s the growing season, so we can see what the seeds are becoming.
Historically, integrating public schools has been a huge challenge, and New York City has been home to some of the nation’s most segregated schools. Here’s some good news from Brooklyn’s District 15, which scrapped selective middle school admissions five years ago to create a lottery system in an attempt to integrate schools.
Instead of using race, the district employed other categories to diversify student bodies and bring students with different life experiences and resources together. Specifically, schools prioritized students who are homeless, learning English or from low-income families — factors that are often correlated to race but that do not pose the same legal challenges.
The plan, which included school targets for admitting children from disadvantaged families, has not resulted in white flight, nor has it involved ugly social conflict.
Middle schools in a section of northwest Brooklyn that stretches from Sunset Park to Cobble Hill went from being the second most socioeconomically segregated to 19th out of the city’s 32 local districts. Teachers and students say friendships are emerging across income lines.
The initiative was spearheaded by parents. This is the same school district that was the subject of the podcast Nice White Parents, which examined the insidious role of White parents who sought better schools for their children without considering how best to provide a quality education for all children.
Five years ago, on the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I attended an amazing youth-led meeting calling on the city to “Retire Segregation.” I want those young people to know that their work is bearing fruit.
Although lawsuits are adversarial, the fight can be a means of winning something that benefits everyone.
Under what legal experts called a “historic” settlement, announced on Thursday, Hawaii officials will release a roadmap “to fully decarbonize the state’s transportation systems, taking all actions necessary to achieve zero emissions no later than 2045 for ground transportation, sea and inter-island air transportation”, Andrea Rodgers, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case.
Most of the plaintiffs in the suit are Indigenous people. One of them, 17-year-old Lucina, remarked on the settlement:
“A great thing to talk about is the kind of hope this brings to us. For many of us, it’s kind of been our whole life we’re seeing our beaches falling into the water, and our coral reefs disappearing.”
Denise Antolini, an emeritus professor at the University of Hawaii Law School, noted that the agreement reflects the cooperative spirit of island communities. The settlement provides that young people will serve in advisory roles to policy makers as they accelerate progress toward meeting the climate goals established by Hawaii’s legislature.
Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, was a willing party to the settlement and he commended the plaintiffs for exercising their “constitutional right to fight for life-sustaining climate policy” and mobilizing public support.
New Yorkers have a constitutional right to “clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
Tell Governor Hochul to take steps to protect our environmental rights! I made it easy.
Although Pride month is almost over, the work to secure more expansive rights for queer people around the world continues.
Thailand’s Senate passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage with overwhelming support. Once the king endorses the bill — a formality — Thailand will become first Southeast Asian nation to allow gay marriage.
The ruling states:
“We are of the firm view that the enforcement of private moral views of a section of a community (even if they form the majority of that community), which are based to a large extent on nothing more than prejudice, cannot qualify as such a legitimate purpose.”
Indeed, prejudice has no legitimate purpose.
The group, Urban Pathways, has found that
avoidable visits to hospital emergency rooms have fallen by half.
Housing experts say [their] investment in on-site health care is a novel approach they hope can become a model for other programs that provide housing and services to residents who often lack a primary care doctor.
The Retired Teachers Chapter of the UFT elected new leadership on the strength of grassroots demand for health care protections. As a result, the president of the union, Michael Mulgrew, has withdrawn his support for
Medicare Advantage for NYC retirees and is also withdrawing from the on-going healthcare negotiations for the city's in-service employees.
I hope this is an inspiration to all of the groups organizing opposition to the privatization of health benefits.
[The] ruling specifically pointed out that one of the main goals of congestion pricing was "to improve transit services for low-income residents, who overwhelmingly rely on public transportation."
And the judge, a Trump appointee to the district court, concurred with the argument that the "ongoing failures with New York City’s subway infra-structure continue to have a deleterious impact on the health, safety, and livelihood of commuters, tourists, resident New Yorkers, as well as ... the economy of the state of New York, such that a long-term and sustainable solution is necessary in order to ensure stable and reliable funding to repair and revitalize this significantly important mass transit asset.”
In chapter 2 of Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor’s book, Solidarity, I came across a reference to the political organizer, Saul Alinsky, who borrowed tactics from the labor movement. Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, in which he coined the maxim:
No permanent friends and no permanent enemies.
Instead, he urged people to pursue “permanent principles.” As a union member, I have found this very helpful. Unions generally — and the UFT in particular — have not always acted in a principled fashion.
When we do, we are each other’s business and we stand against bigotry and in favor of public goods that benefit all of us. That is to be celebrated.
Tell Mayor Adams and your city council rep to fund public goods. This quick action is from JFREJ and you can personalize it!
Garrett Bucks of The White Pages just published a piece I wrote as part of his Summer Movies Series. Garrett’s book, The Right Kind of White, a memoir about building connection and community, is in my library queue. Expect to hear about it!
Read What kind of man are you? — an essay about Twelve Angry Men.
We’ll end today with a poem about a great man, by the incomparable Gwendolyn Brooks.
Paul Robeson
That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.
with love,
L