Hi friends,
First, a piece of good news, before I hit you with the hard stuff. The New York Nurses Association fought and won for all of us:
“Through our unity and by putting it all on the line, we won enforceable safe staffing ratios at both Montefiore and Mount Sinai where nurses went on strike for patient care,” the nurses union said in a statement. “Today, we can return to work with our heads held high, knowing that our victory means safer care for our patients and more sustainable jobs for our profession.”
The climate news remains dire. I checked on some friends in California and was relieved to hear that it was a mess AND they are okay.
Don’t try to pin this on Mother Nature. The evidence is in.
Researchers examined climate projections produced between 1977 and 2003 by Exxon, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies. They found the company’s science was not only good enough to predict long term temperature rise, but also accurately predicted when human-caused climate change would become discernible, according to the report published Thursday in the journal Science.
Exxon knew in the 1970s that their products were causing climate change, and researchers have the documents to prove it.
With the House in Republican hands, we must act at the state level.
Luckily, in New York, there is a package of legislation teed up to make good on the promises of the 2019 Climate Protection Act (CLCPA). Part of the package is to make polluters pay. You don’t have to be a New Yorker to take action.
Tell NYS legislators to fully fund the CLCPA by passing the Climate, Jobs, and Justice package! This one-click action is from NY Renews.
Here are four actions from Earth Justice that I posted earlier in the week, in case you missed them:
Tell the Biden Administration to protect biodiversity with new rules and judicious use of Inflation Reduction Act funds to protect habitats.
Petition the Secretaries of Commerce and the Interior to take steps to protect Gulf of Mexico whales.
The communities on the Gulf Coast, who get the brunt of big storms and fossil fuel pollution, need federal action to protect them from offshore oil terminals.
Call on the Secretaries of Transportation and Environmental Protection to protect vulnerable communities from new fossil fuel infrastructure.
This fall, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged that lead emissions from small planes are a danger to public health. Millions of Americans live in communities adjacent to airstrips, unaware of the dangerous levels of lead pollution.
Tell the EPA to ban leaded airplane fuel.
When I say that we are headed to hell in a handbasket, it’s not just the climate. I’m harking back to the original animating purpose of this publication: fighting racism and specifically police violence against Black people.
Patrice Cullors, one of the three people who founded Black Lives Matter in 2013, lost a family member to police violence in LA last week. I did not get through this news story dry-eyed. Keenan Anderson was a 31-year-old DC father and school teacher, on vacation.
A co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA commented:
“Keenan’s murder is absolutely horrific. LAPD is not calling it a ‘killing’, but calling it an ‘in-custody death’. But Keenan was Tased to death. We know LAPD caused Keenan’s death. We know that a minor traffic accident shouldn’t result in the death of anyone, let alone the death of this Black man, who was clearly unarmed and wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
2022 [was] the deadliest year on record for police violence since experts first started tracking the killings. Nearly 100 of the killings involved traffic violations.
In short, racial violence, including by so-called law enforcement, is getting worse.
The [NYPD’s] Strategic Response Group, better known to the public as the “goon squad,” is supposedly 700 strong, but NYPD profile data only list around 460 as currently deployed. Still, those 460 cost the city $10.2 million in overtime last year — not far off from their record $15 million in 2020. In June 2020, the last month of the fiscal year, the group was deployed nightly to brutally [sic] police protesters.
Sign up to attend a NYC Council Hearing on Monday 01/23 about the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group.
Lest we forget the origins of policing in the notorious slave patrols of the antebellum era, look no further than Florida, where heavily armed police officers descended on the homes of two unarmed men in their underwear. The men were handcuffed and arrested for illegally voting.
“This isn’t bringing a gun to a knife fight, it’s bringing a gun to a voter registration card fight. It’s an unbelievably grotesque abuse of power,” said Daniel Tilley, the legal director of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s designed not just to stop those who might be ineligible, but not know it. But it’s also designed to intimidate voters who may be eligible to vote.”
I don’t have an action response to this, but I’m thinking about it.
Brazil’s January 8 riots are behind them, although the government is bracing for further disruptions. One question is whether the high level officials will be held accountable. The head of the military police in the capital has been arrested and there is a warrant out for Anderson Torres, the former head of Brasília’s police force.
A close ally of the former leader, Torres was Bolsonaro's justice minister before being appointed to lead the police. Torres wasn't in Brazil on Sunday — but vacationing in Florida. Torres allegedly sabotaged Brasília's police force by gutting its leadership before leaving the country.
Bolsonaro is also in Florida.
Tell President Biden that Bolsonaro and his lieutenants should not find cover in the US to escape responsibility for their part in the fomenting the riots. This action is adapted from Chop Wood, Carry Water.
And because criminals holding government power is a danger to us all, I must return to George Santos. People are already eyeing Santos’s Congressional seat. Santos is now also facing a House ethics complaint, which may bypass the Office of Congressional Ethics and go directly to the bipartisan committee.
And yes, there’s more. Apparently one of the campaign staffers who worked for Santos impersonated Kevin McCarthy’s own chief of staff while contacting wealthy donors to raise campaign funds.
There’s a new piece about about Santos and the irregularities of his campaign finances in today’s Times. It’s going to keep on coming.
The other day I spoke to Gabrielle in Santos’s DC office. They are only taking constituent calls at this time. If you live in NY-3, please call.
Call George Santos and tell him to resign. The script is updated.
Anyone can also sign Adam Schiff’s petition to tell Santos to go!
This post is so late that I’m not sure if I’ll post tomorrow. Please take some action!
with love,
L