Dear friends,
I hope you had a restful weekend.
The first full week of the new year was a tough one. By many accounts, it was harder than folks expected. Teachers were struggling to do their jobs. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Families with young children were running out of options. I don’t know that this week will be better.
In the words of one school administration, which thanked their exhausted but ‘gung-ho’ staff with hot cocoa on Friday, it “shoulda been a snow day.” Attendance was abysmal throughout the school system. Students in an ESL class made this friendly character from window ledge snow.
MORE Caucus is rallying today at 52 Broadway for remote schooling until January 18.
Adolescents over 12 are now eligible to receive booster shots.
I went to Teens Take Charge to find out what young New Yorkers were saying about schooling. What I found was their statement about why they have gone quiet:
Community building means starting at the roots and making sure that the interpersonal relationships are nourished enough to grow, blossoming into a close-knit group that will create change and tackle the systems in place that have wounded and hurt Black and Brown students.
We’ll be back advocating for the youth of NYC once we have taken care of ourselves.
Chicago schools are closed again today; Reverend Jesse Jackson has stepped forward to mediate between the mayor and the Chicago Teachers Union.
What is the impact on young people of the situation in schools right now? Catlyn Savado, a Chicago student, was so stressed about the lack of information and the way that young people have been excluded from decision-making, that they used their Google classroom to inform other students when schools were shuttered.
Savado hopes education experts and leaders look beyond two polarizing options: schools staying open versus fully virtual classes.
“I don’t feel safe in school, but I like being in school. We need to explore other options on the spectrum with childcare and support for Black and brown parents,” they said. “Students need to be kept safe, they need to be loved. I just wish that adults would realize that everything is not binary and isn't just this or that. These options stem from infrastructure issues. If we're not going to acknowledge these issues with infrastructure, we're going to keep repeating these issues over and over.
Some of us rallied on Saturday outside Chuck Schumer’s home to demand the passage of voting rights legislation and Build Back Better. We need to both secure voting rights and convince voters that the party in power is taking their economic concerns to heart.
Photograph by John Trotter
Phonebank with Common Cause to get West Virginia and Arizona voters on the phone with their senators to pass the Freedom to Vote Act.
Write your senators to demand that they pass the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2747) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (S. 4263). This ready-made action is from the NEA.
Michelle Obama’s organization, When We All Vote, is organizing Americans to contact their senators to pass voting rights legislation. In addition, the group has launched a campaign to register one million new voters ahead of the 2022 elections.
Join When We All Vote’s social media squad.
Conditions at Rikers are the subject of a federal monitor’s report, issued late last month. Less than 40 percent of the population at Rikers is fully vaccinated, the Covid positivity rate is alarming, and staffing shortages continue. There is pervasive violence, chaos, and a lack of medical and psychiatric care. The monitors have been engaged to address the unnecessary and excessive use of force against detainees, but the problems have only grown worse.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent a memo to prosecutors last week directing them
to avoid seeking jail or prison time for all but the most serious crimes, and to cease charging a number of lower-level crimes.
The memo was consistent with Bragg’s campaign promise to reshape the legal system and to reduce incarceration for first-time offenders or those whose behavior results from a systemic lack of access to mental health care, housing, and other essential resources.
Bragg’s memo drew a hostile response from Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who warned police officers that Bragg’s policies would have implications for their safety as well as that of the public.
Mayor Adams has not criticized Bragg’s memo, nor has he commented publicly on Sewell’s response. Adams has staked his reputation on creating a safer city. Rikers, as it is, cannot be part of that vision.
Call on the mayor to release bail-eligible people from Rikers. This ready-made message has been updated.
In addition to the broader crisis at Rikers, Cabán drew attention to solitary confinement, euphemistically known as punitive segregation. Supposedly, it is punishment for those who behave violently.
Cabán said on Friday that she spoke with someone in punitive segregation during their visit who had been given 30 days “in the box,” and when she asked why he was there, he said that he had thrown water at a correction officer.
The mayor has insisted that punitive segregation is necessary. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has criticized the current use of solitary
as “inhumane,” saying it has led to a “string of tragedies for New Yorkers who often aren’t convicted of a crime.”
Before the new year, 29 council members wrote to Eric Adams to criticize his support for solitary confinement; the practice contributes to more violence and is widely understood to be a form of torture.
Contact your city council representative to ask them to reintroduce the bill to ban solitary confinement in city jails.
Have a good day!
with love,
L