Dear friends,
Some of today’s good news is in the coulda-been-even-worse category. Somehow, the $14.5 billion of levees and pumps built to protect Louisiana withstood the onslaught of Hurricane Ida. Of course, the power outages, flooding, and destruction must be reckoned with.
Mercy Chefs, a Virginia-based nonprofit group, was founded in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the hometown of its founder, Gary LeBlanc. The organization has served more than 15 million meals to people affected by natural disasters or who have other needs. The group has deployed two mobile kitchens to serve hot meals in Ida’s wake.
Donate to Mercy Chefs.
The US finally ended its occupation of Afghanistan with the last troops airlifted out yesterday.
World Central Kitchen is welcoming Afghans to Washington, DC and to Madrid with halal meals.
Donate to World Central Kitchen.
In spite of everything, Gen Z is optimistic. A poll of 1,349 14-18-year-olds revealed that even though they have every reason to despair, young people are aware of the problems we face as a nation and still feel hopeful about the future.
They are most concerned about the political divisions that are fracturing American society, perhaps because they have an insidious way of interfering with scientific and historical facts and they lead to heated conflicts without shedding much light.
A federal judge tossed out the Trump administration’s rule change to an Obama-era protection for waterways. She noted that the rule violated the 1972 Clean Water Act and could lead to “serious environmental harm.”
In her order, Judge Márquez wrote that the Trump water rule, which was jointly written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, appeared to disregard the E.P.A.’s own scientific findings that indicate allowing pollution in small bodies of water could significantly harm the health of larger bodies of water and their ecosystems.
The EPA must now reassess how the 1986 regulation — the last rule standing, as it were — qualifies bodies of water federal protection. Unsurprisingly, there are plans to write a new rule.
Last week, the New York State’s Board of Regents has again called for classroom discussion of the role of racism in American life and history. In addition the Regents encourage efforts to hire more diverse staff.
The state’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework was released three years ago, but is not mandated for school districts. It asserts that people do not simply succeed because of their own efforts and that structural inequities disadvantage certain groups.
It’s hard to believe that there is debate about this, but of course, school board meetings tell the story. In Smithtown, Long Island, they routinely take 10 minute breaks at meetings to cool down overheated tempers. At a school board meeting last month, one Smithtown parent commented:
"I am against DEI, CRT and any agenda that pushes multiculturalism, global warming and any distortion of American history," he said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as critical race theory.
Good grief!
A 16-year old student at Valor Christian High School in Colorado led a walkout by dozens of students last week to protest the dismissal of an athletic coach because he is gay. Among the students’ demands are a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ students, and protections for the staff, regardless of their sexual orientation. A second coach came forward to tell the story of her decision two years ago to leave the school because of a toxic environment.
If Gen Z is turning out all right, in spite of the alarming state of the world, at least some of the credit goes to moms. I have noticed a proliferation of mom activist groups. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) were the moms of Gen X and Y kids, so we should probably regard them as the forebears — mama bears? — of the current crop of mom groups.
I have sung the praises and shared links to Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of climate scientists and mothers who are dedicated to climate education and informed advocacy, and Moms Rising, a group that educates the public and mobilizes massive grassroots actions to address the concerns of women and our families.
Most recently, I came across a report about Vaccine Talk, “an evidence based discussion forum” established as a private Facebook group by Kate Bilowitz, who found herself briefly involved in an anti-vaxx group when she was researching vaccines as a new mom.
Having spent a lot of my career as a teacher promoting text-based discussion and understanding rather than debate, I appreciate the efforts of the Vaccine Talk folks to cultivate a place where people converse with rather than insult each other. The group has 70,000 members, who commit to a code of conduct.
One of the rules, which warms my researcher’s heart, is that members must
provide citations within 24 hours for any claim [they] make. Twenty-five moderators and administrators in six countries monitor the posts, and those who flout the rules are kicked out.
Bilowitz notes, however, that Facebook’s algorithm and heavy-handed enforcement is often a problem:
“Facebook is attempting to shut down misinformation by shutting down all conversation entirely,” she said. “I strongly believe that civil, evidence-based discussion works, and Facebook’s policies make it extremely difficult for that to happen.”
Still, the good news is that researchers who studied social media and misinformation in 2020 have found that when people online present factual information to rebut misleading claims, they influence the thinking of other group members even if they fail to change the minds of the people they were responding to.
Now we just need a group of moms to discuss the evidence related to ivermectin and COVID.
I came across this Spanish proverb recently, which seems apt: An ounce of mother is worth a pound of priests.
You may have heard that the new head chaplain at Harvard, Greg Epstein, is a non-believer. I liked his explanation of humanism:
[It’s] the positive philosophy of life, positive life stance that I subscribe to, that - it's a way of defining myself by what I am, not just what I'm not. Yeah, I'm an atheist. I believe that the concept of a supernatural God is something that human beings created, not vice versa. But for me and I think for many, many non-religious people — probably millions or even hundreds of millions — it's more important to us that we're trying to live lives of meaning and purpose. We're trying to be good people and build a better world. We're trying to fight for justice. A word for that is humanism. It's good without God.
So, that explains what I’m doing here.
Epstein notes that atheist humanists are natural allies for “progressive and moderate religious people”:
You know, people who consider themselves deeply religious but want to work to advance science, want to work for public health in an evidence-based manner, want to work for democracy and representation for all in equity and equality - those are my friends and allies.
Here we go, fighting for justice:
Julius Jones was convicted of a capital murder in Oklahoma, but he has maintained his innocence since the 1999 killing and there is evidence that one of the perpetrators framed him and that he has a legitimate alibi. There is also evidence of racial bias among the police handling the case and in the jury selection process.
You might be wondering how I could frame this as good news. Here’s the surprise: Julius has a commutation hearing set for Sept 13th to try to prove his innocence.
Sign the petition to the Oklahoma Attorney General, Governor Kevin Stitt, and the Pardon and Parole Board to release the state's case-file to Julius Jones' defense team and rescind the request for an execution date.
It’s very likely that either Governor Hochul or the Senate Majority Leader and Assembly Speaker will call the NYS legislature back into session this week. The legislative agenda will depend on who makes the call. Either way, the priority is likely to be finding a way to extend the statewide eviction moratorium, which expires today. And the challenge is to do it so that it can’t be tossed out by the courts.
Tell them again: contact your assembly rep and state senator to urge them to protect New Yorkers from eviction.
Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking that the legislative session should be longer:
“We should just have a fall session as a matter of course,” Assembly Member Robert Carroll of Brooklyn said in a text Monday morning.
This has been a brutal month. The good news? It’s finally over.
with love,
L