Dear friends,
Bill McKibben wrote a lovely piece to celebrate the lives of Desmond Tutu and E.O. Wilson, who died on the same day. He noted that they were both “Great People” and lamented:
we are, I sometimes fear, not reproducing them as quickly as we are losing them.
I don’t share McKibben’s fear because people continue to astound me with their capacity for greatness.
Eleven-year-old Davyon Johnson saved two lives in one day, and couldn’t figure out why people were making a fuss over him for doing the right thing. First, he saved a schoolmate, on whom he successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver. Then he helped an old woman to escape a building on fire. The local police department and sheriff’s department made Davyon, who hopes to become an emergency medical worker, “an honorary member of their forces.”
When Cariol Horne intervened to save a man who was being choked in 2008, she lost her job. The man she saved was being restrained by a fellow police officer. Earlier this year, a court ruled that Horne be reinstated as an officer from 2008-2010 and granted back pay. Last week, Governor Hochul signed a law restoring Horne’s pension benefits.
I got a little bit curious about what Cariol Horne has been doing since losing her job. It turns out that she drafted a bill that became law in Buffalo; the law codifies a duty to intervene in police misconduct that jeopardizes someone’s safety. She has been advocating for similar legislation on the federal level.
The bill she drafted, which is not exactly the version that passed in Buffalo, also includes
accountability for officers neglecting to intervene; protection for officers who do intervene; accountability for falsifying reports, and restorative justice for retaliation of whistleblowers.
Cariol Horne, like young Davyon, did the right thing. And she keeps pushing forward, in the direction of greatness.
Call on your state legislators to support a statewide Cariol’s Law (A7283/S1619A). This is a ready-made action.
“My priority on Day One as DOT Commissioner will be to increase pedestrian and cyclist safety by increasing the number of protected bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, redesigning intersections, and increasing automated enforcement technology,” Rodriguez said in a statement on Saturday that reiterated an earlier promise to bolster 50 percent of the city’s unprotected “protected” bike lanes.
On Christmas Day, Rodriguez visited the crash site where two people, a pedestrian and a delivery worker, were killed by a truck on the Upper East Side.
The new law protecting Los Deliveristas goes into effect on Saturday, January 1. It provides some guarantees — access to bathrooms, control over delivery routes — to make a demanding and dangerous job more reasonable.
Los Deliveristas Unidos, the subset of the Worker’s Justice Project that organized delivery workers to demand better protections, will help the city mount an extensive outreach campaign to educate workers about the new policies.
The new law does not raise pay, but the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will consult with workers and other stakeholders to set a new rate.
Remember to tip los deliveristas generously! The median pay, including tips, is still just over $12/hour, including tips.
Last week, Mayor De Blasio signed into law a ban on fossil fuels in new buildings. De Blasio is chronically late to the gate, which has been a great frustration for New Yorkers. He waited until the last days of his tenure to sign
two executive orders — one aimed at converting the city’s fleet of vehicles to all electric models by 2035, and another mandating that the city employ a “chief decarbonization officer” who would oversee “compliance with decarbonization mandates for city government operations.”
Also in the better-late-than-never category, Taylor Energy has finally settled a lawsuit against them for an oil leak that began in 2004, when Hurricane Ivan damaged an oil pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico. The company will cover tens of millions in clean-up costs, penalties and damage, and put a $432 million clean-up fund in the hands of the federal Department of the Interior.
The Biden administration reversed the former president’s rollback of fuel efficiency standards. The new rule will reduce emissions by raising mileage standards,
reaching a projected industry-wide target of 40 miles per gallon by 2026. The new standard is 25% higher than a rule finalized by the Trump administration last year and 5% higher than a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency in August.
Dan Sherrell author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, recently noted that
“Hope is knowing that every increment we move the thermometer in one direction or the other saves or consigns millions of people to life or death. I can’t imagine higher stakes than that. And I can’t imagine anything that would invest a human life with more meaning than that struggle.”
Take a moment and call on your financial institution to stop funding fossil fuel projects.
Two bills passed in NYC to reduce light pollution by requiring buildings owned by the city to turn off non-essential outdoor lighting at night during peak bird migration. Based on the findings of New York City Audubon's Project Safe Flight collisions research program, the new legislation could prevent more than 100,000 birds from dying in collisions with windows each year.
You may have been longing for a time machine lately — to travel back to fight climate change sooner and harder, or forward, to the other side of this pandemic. The launch of a new telescope, the James Webb space telescope, may be the good news you’ve been waiting for.
Described as a “time machine” by scientists, the telescope will allow astronomers to study the beginning of the universe shortly after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago, and to hunt for signs of life-supporting planets in our own galaxy.
Or perhaps you just want to stop time, so you can catch your breath, catch up, or simply rest.
The president announced an extension to the pause on student loan payments, which was scheduled to expire at the end of January. The extension will continue until May first, and interest will not accrue during the pause.
Because the average monthly payment is about $400, even the vast majority of those who are employed cannot meet their student loan obligations. We can celebrate the extension of the pause without giving up on system change.
Support The Debt Collective, a debtors’ union fighting to “build a world where college is publicly funded, healthcare is universal, and housing is guaranteed for all.”
“This settlement agreement provides a crucial commitment from Amazon to millions of its workers across the United States that it will not interfere with their right to act collectively to improve their workplace by forming a union or taking other collective action,” Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s new general counsel said in a statement on Thursday.
We are most likely to realize our greatness collectively. Thank you for being part of this collective. If you have some good news that I missed, send it along!
with love,
L