Dear friends,
Those of you who know me well might have been disturbed by the glaring typo in my first sentence yesterday. I just want to reassure you that I am well, if a bit scattered. I was quite concerned about my mom, who depends on a pair of extraordinary home-care workers; there was over a foot of snow in the Boston area yesterday morning. As it turned out, the resourceful and indefatigable caregiver who was due to arrive made it there by the time I finished my morning call with my mom.
This brings me to today’s first action; we need to address the home-care crisis here in NY. According to the NY Caring Majority, the population of New Yorkers over 80 will grow by over 42% by 2040; some of you will be part of that Silver Tsunami, and most of us will need home care at some point. NYS cannot recruit enough workers to meet the growing demand for home health and personal care aides because caregivers are poorly paid and general receive few benefits. The pandemic has brought the crisis into sharp relief:
Over 39% of COVID-19 deaths in the US have been nursing home residents and staff, raising the stakes for in-home care.
Yesterday, a single upstate nursing home reported that over 200 of its residents and staff members have tested positive since November 22; the total number of staff and residents is around 420.
Please sign this petition to Governor Cuomo and our legislative leaders, calling on them to push for caregiver pay at 150% of minimum wage and to fund the Home Care Jobs Innovation Fund to improve job quality, recruitment, and retention of a qualified home care workforce.
Here’s a loving reminder to clean your coat closet and give any coats you don’t need to folks who are coming out of jail.
On Saturday, December 19, deliver coats and canned food to LAPC at 85 S. Oxford St in Brooklyn between 12 and 3 PM.
If you cleaned out your coat closet before I got to you, make a donation to help release a bail-eligible New Yorker from Rikers Island, which has the highest infection rate of any location in the city.
Help bail out those who cannot afford bail today.
We also have a duty to disrupt the carceral system. The DNA of thousands of New Yorkers has been added to the city’s database, despite those individuals not having committed crimes. Last year, the city promised to curb the practice of collecting DNA from innocent New Yorkers, including children. This insidious data collection is part of a pattern of racist policing:
“The continued increase in the size of the OCME DNA index shows that the NYPD is both slow-walking any removal of profiles while also rapidly ramping up collection," said Terri Rosenblatt, Supervising Attorney of the DNA Unit at the Legal Aid Society.
"At this rate, there will be no meaningful reduction in the size of the City’s index and, instead, it will continue to grow as an unregulated DNA index filled with the predominantly Black and brown victims of genetic stop-and-frisk who the NYPD have long targeted for racist over policing."
Contact your City Council member and ask them to support legislation to outlaw all surreptitious DNA collection and delete DNA profiles of children from the city’s index.
Have a good weekend!
with love,
L
Hope things are better today!