Dear friends,
My most recent post was last Tuesday, which was a surreal day.
Contribute to South Brooklyn Mutual Aid’s community fundraiser for the survivors of last week’s mass shooting.
A local council member, Shahana Hanif, wrote in her recent newsletter:
We have never had more cops, more technology, and more funding for the NYPD, yet crime continues to rise. We already have surveillance technology in nearly every station and a record 3,500 cops patrolling the subways, yet they failed to prevent this tragedy or catch the person responsible.
It was every day New Yorkers, from transit workers to the people who rushed others off the trains, to our new hero Zack Tahhan who helped catch the gunman, who stood up and helped each other. Tuesday exemplified the abolitionist saying, “we keep us safe,” and we must remember this as the calls for more police intensify.
Hanif included a link in her newsletter to the same article I planned to recommend:
Read Julie Ae Kim’s article about community safety in the face of anti-Asian violence.
As the violence was unfolding at a Brooklyn train station last week, Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin was arraigned on federal charges of bribery, fraud, conspiracy and falsification of records. By the end of the day, he had resigned.
This reinforces my resolve to get Ana María Archila elected as our next Lieutenant Governor. Archila, who has worked at the Center for Popular Democracy for years, rose to national prominence when she held an elevator door open to challenge Senator Jeff Flake’s support for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Learn more about Ana María Archila and support her campaign.
Here’s a complicated little tale of corruption centered in NYC: the Brooklyn Democratic Party seems to be engaged in some illegal and truly rotten shenanigans to keep opposition to entrenched party leadership off the ballot. Rep Your Block, a grassroots organization that is trying to build progressive power,
lodged a complaint with the board [of Elections], citing sworn affidavits from two registered Democrats in Brownsville and East New York who said the signatures on ballot challenges to candidates filed in their names weren’t theirs.
There are multiple challenges targeting almost 200 of the new candidates seeking a spot on the ballot, and many are linked to the Brooklyn Democratic Party, which is led by party chair and state assembly rep Rodneyse Bichotte.
Join the Rally for the Ballot at Brooklyn Borough Hall, tonight at 6 PM.
There are consequential events — and failures of action — that are less dramatic than hate crimes and mass shootings, but with far-reaching consequences for large numbers of people.
NYC has 14 wastewater treatment plants, the largest of which is at Newtown Creek. Those gorgeous silver eggs are digesting sludge from the wastewater treatment process and producing methane.
As early as 2009, National Grid floated a plan to convert the methane that is produced by the digester eggs into fuel to heat peoples’ homes. National Grid agreed to partner with the city to purify the biogas; the waste-to-energy project was to have been completed in 2016. But the methane is still being burned off.
In 2013, City Hall heralded it as an innovation that would improve local air quality, reduce organic material sent to landfills and provide clean energy to gas customers, thereby reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
“It’s supposed to be a step in the right direction in terms of getting off fracked gas and other hazardous fuel sources and creating a local fuel supply and helping with climate change overall, but in fact it’s just been contributing to carbon emissions,” said Willis Elkins, executive director of Newtown Creek Alliance.
Call on city officials to get National Grid to keep their “clean energy promise.” This action is ready-made.
This Earth Week/Month/Year/Decade, we need to hit the streets to demand climate action. Specifically, we will demand that the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation deny the permits for National Grid's new liquified natural gas vaporizers and that the legislature pass the Build Public Renewables & All-Electric Building Acts.
RSVP to turn out at Union Square this Wednesday, from noon - 2 PM to demand climate action.
Have a great day!
with love,
L