Dear friends,
Happy Tax Day! Garrett Bucks wrote a wonderful, must-read piece on why today should be celebratory. I write without a trace of sarcasm.
One of Bucks’s central points is that none of us have the know-how and capacity to do all that needs doing, and that governments can pool our money to employ people to do the essential work that all of us need done. And this is a good thing. . . for all of us.
Bucks made me laugh, asked some great questions, and offered persuasive evidence that our taxes yield a lot of good.
We get to send our children to schools where another human being literally teaches them algebra, and then, when our day is done, we get to head out to a public park with a freshly mowed lawn and play softball with our neighbors. And that’s in the United States! A country that has actively tried to do as little as possible for the common good!
He has a few choice words for the folks who make preparing our taxes expensive, baffling, and adversarial. Still he concludes where I would have, if I’d had the wherewithal to write a good essay on why we should pay taxes:
Together, we’re chipping in to build a collective miracle. A small percentage of that miracle already exists, but it pales in comparison to the humanity-loving network of care that we can build together.
We should have stickers like the I VOTED stickers, because paying taxes and sharing in the common good should be a source of pride.
I wish I could assign Bucks’s post to hundreds of students. Instead, I am assigning it to you. Bear in mind that — like the federal courts — I lack enforcement capabilities.
If you have a class, assign them to read “Taxes Rule!” And remember, dear public servants, a lot of us really appreciate you.
Bucks’s vision of a “humanity-loving network of care” is one I share. My friend Bobbie Sackman, a talented campaign Leader with the NY Caring Majority and JFREJ, co-wrote an op-ed with Council member Crystal Hudson that was also published today.
Read “Our Communities Need Fair Pay for Home Care Work.” Then, leave another phone message for Governor Hochul or email the ready-made message.
Today, President Biden signed an executive order that directs most federal agencies to take action to expand access to long-term care and child care. Expanded access, according to the order, could come “through federal child care centers, child care subsidies, or contracted care for providers.” A stated goal of the initiative is to improve working conditions for caregivers.
Care remains in the crossfire of our national conflict between the majority of Americans and the powerful fascists and theocrats who are restricting health care on ideological grounds. Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, has publicly stated that she thinks the FDA should refuse to enforce ignore the court ruling suspending the approval of Mifepristone.
Mace has also told fellow Republicans that being pro-life — as she identifies — means that they must take action to prevent mass shootings. It’s possible that she can embolden some other Republicans — those who do not privately agree with the direction their party is taking — to speak up.
There’s some potentially game-changing news in the struggle to meet the demand for abortion care. The MYA Network, co-founded by Dr. Joan Fleischman, is soon to unveil an online curriculum along with in-person trainings to teach medical providers to use manual uterine aspiration to remove pregnancy tissue.
Fewer than 1 in 10 primary care doctors provide abortion services, even though almost 3 in 4 believe it to be within their scope of practice. Manual uterine aspiration involves a small, mechanical device, and is
gentle enough that the tissue often comes out almost completely intact. It is a quick and discreet procedure where a patient might be in and out of the door in less than an hour.
In Bangladesh, following systematic rape of many thousands of Hindu and Bihari Muslim women during the 1971 civil war, suicide, maternal mortality, and death resulting from backroom and self-administered abortions added to the devastation of war.
But “menstrual regulation” — the euphemism for abortion care using the manual aspiration technique — came into practice and occupied a legal gray area. The practice became legal in Bangladesh in 1974, and five years later was part of the nation’s family planning program.
Learn more about the MYA network and support their work.
Listen to the voices of people trying to build the “humanity-loving network of care” that we need.
This April marks the 125th birthday of Paul Robeson. So, here is Gwendolyn Brooks’s beautiful poem about the “major voice.”
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