Dear friends,
A very long time ago now, about last week, Janet Protasiewicz won election to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. The news cycle will swallow us whole, if we let it.
We need to pause to recognize the extraordinary energy of organizers on the ground, who worked for many months and years to realize this important victory.
Wisconsin voters turned out in droves on Tuesday to deliver an unmistakable blow to right-wing judges and politicians pushing forced-birth laws, hyper-gerrymandering, voter suppression and union-busting. Progressive Judge Janet Protasiewicz clobbered former right-wing state Supreme Court justice Dan Kelly by 11 points.
The Washington Post got the issues right, but rendered the work invisible. The phone banks and postcards and canvassing that go into turning out the vote in an off-year election are the stuff of grassroots democracy.
The youth vote in Chicago helped to catapult Brandon Johnson into the mayoralty. A progressive, pro-union candidate who was unafraid to acknowledge the false equivalence of public safety and more police helped to galvanize young voters.
[P]ublic safety remained a critical issue for many Chicago voters. But, Vallas’s recommendation of employing more police officers was not as popular as Johnson’s promise to invest in mental health resources into communities and increase economic development to address underlying causes of crime.
As I have noted on multiple occasions, young people have been leaders in the climate and anti-gun violence movements. Their efforts have provided the moral clarity that political struggles so often lack.
The huge demonstrations in Tennessee following the Nashville school shooting were not an isolated event.
The coverage of last Wednesday’s nationwide walk-out, in which many thousands of young people marched against gun violence has been underwhelming, but the action was not.
Advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which coordinated the walkouts through Students Demand Action, said there were more than 300 demonstrations across 41 states and Washington, D.C., to kick off a "week of action" by advocates and gun violence survivors.
Call on Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons. This quick action is from Moms Rising.
When Governor Hochul tried to sneak in a fossil-fueled methane accounting method that would gut New York State’s Climate Act during the final push of budget negotiations, New York’s climate and environmental justice movement responded swiftly and powerfully. NY Renews is proud to stand with a movement that stopped—for now—changes to New York’s progressive 20-year methane accounting method as written in law.
Environmental advocates and legislators sprang into action to defeat the Governor’s proposal to change the accounting of emissions because of cost concerns. Our state is alone in considering three factors when measuring emissions:
a 20-year metric, out-of-state upstream emissions from imported fuels, and “biogenic” emissions from burning fuels like wood and ethanol.
New York is the one of only two jurisdictions to use a 20-year time horizon to account for the damaging effects of planet-warming gasses instead of 100 years.
Elected officials should understand the impact of youth endorsements, like this list of Sunrise NYC’s champions.
One of my readers reminded me to mention the importance of supporting the independent media outlets that continue to break the stories we would not hear.
Support ProPublica, which broke the story about the extravagant gifts that Clarence Thomas failed to disclose.
An ethics law passed after the Watergate scandal requires justices and other federal officials to disclose most gifts to the public. That law, legal ethics experts told ProPublica, clearly mandates that gifts of transportation, including private jet flights, be reported.
Here’s a special action, especially for my friends who live in Republican House districts. I recommend that you call, but writing to your rep is also worthwhile. I hate the phone and I still had fun leaving a message for Jim Jordan.
Call on Republican members of the US House of Representatives and members of the Judiciary Committee to demand action in the face of corruption. I wrote you a script.
And, one more action for my Brooklyn neighbors, in defense of one of our most important institutions:
Please sign this letter in support of full funding of the Brooklyn Public Library.
with love,
L