Hi friends,
I had the pleasure of seeing windmills in rural Wisconsin last week, and marveling at their charm; they always look to me like friendly aliens, waving an enthusiastic hello.
More and more energy in the US is being provided by wind energy:
On Tuesday, March 29, wind turbines in the Lower 48 states produced 2,017 gigawatthours (GWh) of electricity, making wind the second-largest source of electric generation for the day, only behind natural gas. Daily wind-powered electricity had surpassed coal-fired and nuclear electricity generation separately on other days earlier this year but had not surpassed both sources on a single day.
Last week, the NYS Public Service Commission approved a transmission line that will bring hydroelectric, solar and wind power to Astoria, Queens from Delaware County, NY. Another transmission line,
the Champlain Hudson Power Express, [will] bring in electricity generated by dams in Canada, along a 339-mile route. This project, which has its state and federal permits, is slated to operate by 2025.
Together, the projects stand to cut the city’s dependence on fossil fuel generation by over 50% by 2030, which also paves for the state to achieve a zero-emissions grid by 2040, as mandated by the state’s sweeping Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
The horizon is dotted with signs of progress. I recommend Ankita Rao’s profile of Congressman Jamie Raskin. In it, Raskin talks about the inextricable links between democracy and climate action:
“I think for me the struggle to defend the truth is a precondition for defending our democracy, and the struggle to defend our democracy is a precondition for taking the effective action that needs to be taken in order to meet the climate crisis in a serious way and turn it around,” he said.
Yesterday, I attended a spirited event on the steps of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall — the kind of event that gives me hope for democracy and our capacity to solve our many problems. It was organized by Rep Your Block and was a call to the Brooklyn Democratic Party to drop the objections to signatures on petitions for candidates for county committee positions.
Antonio Reynoso (speaking above), Borough President of Brooklyn, told a great story to the folks assembled in front of him and behind him. He said that when he was 22, Barack Obama encouraged him to get involved in politics.
Reynoso gathered the 14 signatures required for the petition to be on Brooklyn’s county committee and got knocked out by a challenge to one of his signatures. The next time around, he got 34 signatures; again, he was ineligible due to a challenge. The third time, he made it. And thus began his political career.
Reynoso noted that the New Kings Democrats, a group he helped to form in a basement, is misunderstood by the current party leadership, which seems to be engaged in fraudulent efforts to stop ordinary folks from getting involved in representing their communities.
We’re not going after heads. We’re a bunch of nerds. We want more meetings, more committees.
Brad Lander, now NYC’s Comptroller, threatened to start a “More meetings! More Committees!” chant before pointing out that they only way to build a real democracy is by bringing more people into politics.
Monae Priolenau, of the Brooklyn Young Democrats, also spoke, highlighting the irony that the leadership of the Brooklyn Democrats has never been more organized than when they are trying to challenge grassroots organizers, even those seeking positions for which they are unopposed.
Most of us there were just regular folks, wanting to be sure that our government really hears our voices.
Today, the Biden administration announced that local communities will again have input before new highways, pipelines and other major projects can get the green light from federal agencies. By reviving provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act that were changed under the last administration, there is hope that “basic community safeguards” will be restored.
An Amazon employee who lost his job in April 2020 for protesting against unsafe working conditions will be reinstated and paid back wages. Gerald Bryson will return to work at the newly unionized JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island.
Young coders are fighting anti-unionization efforts by large corporations. Sean Wiggs, a largely self-taught coder, wrote the code that crashed the website created by Texas Right to Life, which was designed to collect reports on people seeking to get abortions.
Now, Wiggs and other young coders are targeting corporate efforts to
undermine workers’ efforts to unionize. Pro-union workers at Starbucks have alleged that they’ve been punished and even fired for trying to organize, and the National Labor Review Board issued a formal complaint against the company accusing it of retaliating against an Arizona college student and others working to unionize a Starbucks location.
Gen Z for Change floods the websites for job applications in order to make it more difficult for companies like Starbucks to replace unionizing workers. The ruling that gave Bryson back his job at Amazon is unlikely to change corporate behavior, so it’s hard not to root for the coders.
Last week, the Vice President held a press conference to announce the Administration’s efforts to address the problem of medical debt. Among them, are that the Department of Veteran Affairs will streamline the application process for eliminating veterans’ medical debt. In addition, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will investigate violations of patients’ and families’ rights by credit and debt collection agencies.
Use the CFPB website to understand your rights and to file complaints related to abuses by agencies collecting debt.
Because we’re scrounging for good news today, I will mention that the MTA has kept its mask mandate, even as madness has ensued on lots of other forms of transit.
I am recommending a diet of stories of hope and renewal. Read about the ecological recovery of the island of South Georgia, nearly a thousand miles off the tip of the Antarctic peninsula.
Some young folks in Spain are establishing new communities in the abandoned towns in the nation’s interior. The effort is not without challenges AND it is a hopeful endeavor involving collective vision and work.
Together, we can do what none of us can do alone. Come out tomorrow: 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 tomorrow, from noon - 2 PM to demand climate action.
The sky over Brooklyn today was full of dramatic clouds and beautiful sunny breaks. Keep your head up!
with love,
L