Dear friends,
I couldn’t get my good news post out yesterday and when the day was over, I was reminded of how hard it can be to be a person. You probably know, too.
Things have been a bit out of balance for me and my family, and I have been thinking a lot about sustainability, in all of its meanings.
Today, I aimed to start the day on a better foot. I sent birthday greetings to a beautiful friend, who is a gardener, a chef, a compost aficionado, and a teacher. And then I got to thinking about this person whom I hold dear and all of the things he holds dear.
Mark is a person who cultivates the good things in the soil and in his community, cooks for hungry people at CHiPS, engages everyone he can to build sustainable systems, and teaches what he knows to others. And he does all of these things in a menschy way.
People who experience food insecurity still have likes and dislikes, and they should be able to choose foods that appeal to them.
Tomorrow, the USDA will post its final rule for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). The changes were shaped by public comments and will provide program participants with a wider variety of foods, not only to meet higher nutritional standards, but to accommodate “special dietary needs and personal and cultural food preferences.”
The new plan is aimed at those who
owe more than they originally borrowed, including many who have made years of payments, due to the interest rates on Federal student loans.
If the initiative survives court challenges, it will cancel up to $20,000 of the increase in a borrower’s balance that results from unpaid interest since they began repaying loans. The plan aims to wipe out the total debt for low- and middle-income borrowers.
from the archives: a student in a voter readiness workshop, October 2022
Last month, the AFT negotiated raises of 17 and 22 percent for teachers in St. Louis, Missouri’s public schools. The raises will be phased in over three years to address problems of recruitment and retention, especially for special education positions. There was a double-digit vacancy rate at the start of the school year in St. Louis public schools, so this is good news for children and teachers.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library will be distributing free books to children under 5 throughout the state of Virginia. Children will receive a new book each month.
Parton’s childhood favorite, The Little Engine That Could, is the first book that will go out when the program launches in July. As a child, I used to walk up the steep hill to my house chanting, I think I can. I think I can.
You may be wondering how whales and dolphins can have legal personhood. First of all, it makes far more intuitive sense than recognizing the personhood of corporations or clumps of fetal cells [more on this below].
The principle is called the Rights of Nature, which recognizes that
ecosystems and species have legal rights to exist, thrive and regenerate.
Successful river conservation and restoration efforts in the UK have brought back Atlantic salmon.
A conservation group called the Wild Trout Trust got involved to remove a concrete weir that interfered with spawning. As a result, the salmon have recolonized the headwaters.
More than 30 years ago, the California Condor became extinct in the wild.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, there are now approximately 275 free-flying condors in California, Utah, Arizona, and Baja California.
I want to end today with good news for the personhood of actual people. The rights of pregnant people are threatened daily by dangerous abortion restrictions. A recent post by Jessica Valenti contains important updates on the way that restrictions are galvanizing reproductive rights voters.
I also want to highlight an interesting court decision from Indiana that points to an effective legal framework for challenging abortion restrictions on religious grounds. You read that correctly.
Although the legal arguments here might seem novel, they actually have a long history. For decades prior to Roe v. Wade, liberal and progressive religious leaders had argued on theological grounds for rights to contraception and abortion. What’s changed in the past few years is not religious convictions supporting reproductive rights. What’s new is how courts, often led by conservative judges, understand and create legal doctrines governing religious liberty.
The panel of three judges enjoined the state’s near-total abortion ban because they accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that it violates Jewish law, which recognizes personhood at birth, not in utero, and prioritizes the life and health of a pregnant person.
I’ll be out of town at the end of this week. Back on Monday!
with love,
L