Dear friends,
Every year, as Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday arrives, I am struck by the breadth, depth, and clarity of the work he took on during his too-short life. When I am most exhausted by and frustrated with the world as it is, his words still provide guidance and vision.
Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method . . . is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem. —Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957
I hope that, at a minimum, today affords you a break from bitterness and chaos.
What would it look like if we were to create the beloved community that King envisioned? We would be united to solve problems of hunger, poverty, and homelessness, to end police violence and war, and to raise up care in all of its forms.
The Biden Administration launched a program to provide families with additional funds for purchasing groceries — $120 per eligible child — during the summer months when children may not have access to school meal programs. Incredibly, 15 states have refused the assistance, even though five of them had rates of food insecurity above the national average.
In addition to relieving hunger, SNAP benefits lead to improved health outcomes, reduced health care spending, and they boost local economies.
If you live in any of the 15 states — Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming — I urge you to contact your governor.
Send this message to your governor to urge them to accept Summer EBT funds. If you have ties to folks in these states, pass the message on!
Mapping Police Violence reports that last year set a record for police killings in the 11 years that it has been tracking homicides by police. At least 1,232 people were killed.
Elie Mistal, writing for The Nation, notes that
[T]he cops unleashed their most deadly year on us when the murder rate by people who are not protected by a badge went down. Society as a whole was less homicidal, but the cops were more violent. That’s on top of the cops asking for more money and more weapons to combat a “crime wave” that doesn’t actually exist.
He also points out the familiar fact that Black and brown people are more likely to be killed by police and the somewhat surprising fact that more of the killings happen in rural areas than urban areas.
Mistal concludes that this is the police force that white people want,
violent and unaccountable.
In New York City complaints of police misconduct have reached their highest level since 2012. In spite of the fact that the Civilian Complaint Review Board took action against officers in only 55% of these cases and still did not fire a single officer, the courts have found that some NYPD officers have significantly abused their power.
Akela Lacy of The Intercept reported at the end of November that NYC was on track to pay out $100 million in 2023 due to lawsuits that found misconduct by police. She notes that the $100 million figure does not include settlements paid by the city before cases came to trial. By the end of September, that number was $30 million.
I can’t find the stats for the number of people killed by the NYPD last year. In 2022, the number was 13. As Mistal pointed out, the stats for police killings do not
track the beatings or sexual assaults. It doesn’t track the racial harassment or false arrests. This report doesn’t account for the people who miraculously survived their encounter with predatory police and escaped with only broken limbs, perforated lungs, or lifetime psychological scars.
Mistal was referring to the national numbers, not to the NYPD, but his point is important. The payouts for police misconduct are significant because they indicate that there has been tremendous damage done by the police. They also raise some serious budgetary questions.
In recent days, Mayor Adams has reversed some of the deep budget cuts that he announced in November.
Both independent and city budget experts have attributed the city’s substantial deficits in the coming years to migrant spending, costly labor contracts and the end of federal pandemic aid. But some council members have called the sharp across-the-board cuts unnecessary and even accused the mayor of manufacturing a financial crisis.
Adams found $200 million last week to reverse some of the cuts he called for in November. The first cuts that Adams reversed were to the NYPD. Then came the FDNY, the Parks Department, and the Department of Sanitation. The latest reversal added back a chunk of education funding.
No mention has been made for restoring cuts to the Human Resources Administration, despite the fact that advocacy groups went to court last month for relief from the backlog of unmet needs for timely SNAP benefits.
So, this brings me back to the beloved community that we are trying to create. When the mayor determines that there is, in fact, money available to reduce the cuts in essential city services, the priorities should be to provide food assistance and shelter, and to support valued community resources like schools and libraries.
Migrant families have been forced to move because the Administration has imposed an arbitrary 60-day limit on shelter stays. Making people move every 60 days is just compounding the problems that migrant families face.
The New York Immigration Coalition says the city's short-term fix is failing, and it should instead prioritize permanent housing by expanding its voucher program for asylum seekers.
The mayor’s obsession with the police remains disturbing and it distorts a process that should take into account the most effective and least lethal government services.
Tell Mayor Adams about your budget priorities.
with love,
L