Dear friends,
It’s time for a self-congratulatory look-back on some of the issues we’ve been working on. I’m not going to address the whole of the year. . . just the week’s haul.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act made it through the congressional cram session! This shouldn’t be surprising, because it had passed the House and had bipartisan support in the Senate. Still, it’s undeniably good news, as it
requires companies to provide pregnant workers with reasonable accommodations such as limits on heavy lifting and more frequent breaks. Currently, federal law only requires those accommodations if employers also give them to workers with injuries or medical conditions.
The hope is that employers will comply with the law, sharply limiting discriminatory behavior. By expressly mandating accommodations for all pregnant workers, the new law makes it much easier for those who do face pregnancy discrimination to prove liability.
The cram session also yielded an excellent law to end one of the myriad ways that the prison-industrial system preys on people who are poor. The law, years in the works, gives the Federal Communications Commission
the power “to ensure just and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention facilities.”
The law is named for Martha Wright-Reed, a grandmother who organized to end the profiteering that made it so costly for families to stay in touch with folks who are locked up.
People who are incarcerated and their family members speak often of the importance of maintaining these connections. Family contact is not only beneficial to their mental health—these relationships also play an important role in helping incarcerated people succeed while in prison and when they return home.
Decades of research support this, including a study of parolees from 1972 that found reduced recidivism among folks who had visitors. There are more recent studies that correlate calls, mail, and visits during periods of incarceration with success after prison.
We didn’t work on this, but the issue is adjacent to so many we are working on. I’m glad I know Martha Wright-Reed’s name.
Urge the president to sign the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act AND to take bold action to grant clemency to federal prisoners. I made it easy!
Congress finally passed a reform to the 1887 Electoral Count Act, nearly two years after the January 6 insurrection. We called for this repeatedly.
By the way, no one grabbed on to the name ‘political grace period’ for the poorly-named legislative period following November elections. Even I didn’t like the sound of it as much as the idea.
But I sort of love congressional cram session, with its internal and external alliterations, guttural Rs, and accurate imagery. Have you heard this anywhere else? I really hope I made it up!
One of my favorite January 6 Committee members, Jamie Raskin, celebrated Christmas by talking up the idea of ditching the Electoral College. This sounds pie-in-the-sky until we make it happen. This is on my to-do list.
Last week, I wondered if the biodiversity agreement in Montreal was fatally flawed because of the way in which it was passed. This is an interesting account of how negotiators from the ‘rainforest big three’ — Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — achieved a diplomatic triumph to unsully the agreement.
In another triumph for biodiversity, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s wall will be removed.
Earlier this month, a bunch of us signed a petition to end the trade in shark fins. Sometimes it seems fruitless to sign such a petition. And yet. Congress approved the shark fin trade ban as part of the annual military defense bill.
A friend, reader, and data-meister inspired me to look at the back-end (rude, right?!) of Substack, to better understand how much action I’m getting. I already knew that most days, more than 6 in 10 readers open my posts.
Here’s what I learned: 1 in 10 readers have clicked on at least 100 links since subscribing; about 1 in 6 readers have clicked on at least 65 links; 1 in 3 have clicked on 25 links; 3 in 5 readers seldom take action.
I often remind friends that reading my posts is not a condition of friendship. That said, when you do read, consider taking a little more action.
I’m a fan of incremental, manageable change as opposed to grandiose resolutions. A year ago, I cut my avocado consumption in half because of cartel violence linked to the avocado market. I stopped using almond milk (too water-intensive) a few years ago, but I am going to make this tart.
If you seldom take action, aim to take an action each week. You can grab the low-hanging fruit: one-click actions and petitions. If you send email but never call, try to work in the occasional call to a legislator. You get the idea.
Make your own action plan. I’ll let you know how we’re doing next month.
The most gratifying thing I learned is that almost everyone has shared a post. My mission is educational, and it took me years to fully appreciate the quiet students who were listening in class and maybe even repeating some of what they learned outside of class.
All readers are welcome and appreciated.
This is an interesting essay about meat consumption and biodiversity. The author notes that getting people to give up meat is a hard sell. And I lack sales experience and credibility, as I stopped eating meat more than 45 years ago and have never missed it.
Michael Grunwald, the climate writer who wrote the essay above, points out that
if current eating and farming trends continue, the world will clear land equal to at least one and a quarter Indias by 2050. That would be a disaster for the climate and wildlife, dooming carbon-rich and biodiverse ecosystems like the Amazon and Congo rainforests.
We should not give up things we love. But there are incremental steps. I’m a vegan for one or two meals a day, but I will not give up eggs (see tart recipe above), ever.
Consider making a modest dietary change part of your action plan.
with love,
L