Dear friends,
It’s time to follow up on a few issues. The first is the mayor’s promise to end solitary confinement. On July 4th, I celebrated prematurely:
The recent protests and activism have wrought some real changes: NYC has finally ended the practice of solitary confinement; it is too late to save Kalief Browder or Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, but it is an overdue step in the right direction.
But the promise has not been fulfilled. Last week, there were more than 90 people in ‘punitive segregation’ in city jails.
“The City of New York and the Board of Correction, after hearing from persons with lived experience, understand that it is time to end solitary confinement in the New York City jail system,” Board Chair Jennifer Jones Austin said.
Meanwhile, the City Council could pass its own bill to end the practice of punishing people in jails for rule-breaking by imposing isolation for most of the day and night.
Council member Danny Dromm, who noted that many people now “understand that solitary is torture,” is introducing the bill tomorrow.
Please contact your Council member ahead of Saturday’s council hearing on solitary confinement to voice your support for the bill to end the practice of ‘punitive segregation’.
Kalief Browder, who took his own life after serving three years at Rikers — two of them in solitary confinement — was never convicted of a crime. Last Friday, another Black man, a little older, was pursued by police and killed at the door of his own home, in front of his little brother and his grandmother. Casey Christian Goodson, Jr. was 23 years old. This has to stop, but it does not stop.
Please sign this petition to US Attorney David DeVillers to demand that the sheriff’s deputy who killed Casey Goodson be tried for murder.
The schools have reopened for elementary school students, but there is still no date for reopening middle and high schools. Coronavirus positivity rates have soared to 9-10% in parts of the city, and the mayor is tuning his approach to school closures. I’m curious to know how you’re feeling about the situation.
Last March, the U.S. Department of Education offered states an exemption from standardized testing; within two weeks, every state accepted the exemption. There is widespread support among parents — across income level, race and ethnicity, and even political affiliation — for waiving testing requirements during this academic year.
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that fiscal, equity and access gaps have been exacerbated by the pandemic; you don’t need more tests to tell you that hard truth. DeVos is so obsessed with mandating tests that she has lost sight of what she’s testing. Any resulting scores or metrics will be useless for educators and school leaders who are trying to make critical instructional and curricular decisions now. Her mandated tests would waste federal funding and precious time for student learning, both in scarce supply.
Please sign this petition, initiated by FairTest: the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, to call on the incoming Education Secretary to waive federal requirements that require states to administer standardized exams to students in the 2020-2021 academic year.
It’s not too late to tell NYS’s Department of Environmental Conservation to put a stop to National Grid’s plan to expand the liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility connected to the North Brooklyn Pipeline. The expansion ignores widespread community protest, threatens serious environmental harm, and would violate two pieces of state legislation: the NYS State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).
Please call on the DEC to deny National Grid’s Application to expand liquefied and compressed fracked gas expansion in Brooklyn.
And, if you didn’t already do so, let the governor know that you expect him to protect our communities.
Contact Governor Cuomo and call on him to stand with the people of New York and reject National Grid’s rate hike and the expansion of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) depot on Newtown Creek in Greenpoint.
That’s enough for today. There’s always more to do tomorrow.
with love,
L