Dear friends,
When I was a young parent, I remember walking down the street holding a little hand in mine and hearing,
Mommy! Did you see that?
It made me laugh because we were in downtown Brooklyn, and there was so much to see, and we were almost never looking at the same things. It was always cool to hear what my small companion was attending to; it was usually something closer to the ground than what I was looking at.
It’s time to redirect our attention away from the obsessive discussion of Iowa, a place where 110,000 caucus participants, half of whom describe themselves as very conservative, came out in the freezing cold.
The whole country was watching, and under 15 percent of registered Republicans turned out.
So, here are some more interesting things to look at:
Newark teens won the right to vote in local school board elections.
In the largest and most vibrant multi-ethnic city in New Jersey, a paltry 3.1 percent of the city’s 195,000 registered voters participated in the 2022 school board elections. Newark is ripe for a change that will
reinvigorate civics education, encourage greater participation in the democratic process and boost lagging voter turnout.
Governor Phil Murphy urged state legislators to lower the voting age for school board elections throughout New Jersey.
Campbell said she is eager to have a say on curriculum, while Esubonteng named school violence as a top issue. [Mayor] Baraka said this means candidates will need to truly engage with student voters to get elected to the school board.
The mayor was not exaggerating: more than 7,000 young people will be able to vote in April school board elections, more than the total number of participants in the last such election.
Newark is not the first city to make this change; several cities in Maryland and California have also opened voting to younger teens in school board elections.
On the heels of the victory for teens in Newark, the Town Council of Cheverly, Maryland voted to form a Youth Council to advise it on issues relevant to young people and amended their charter to allow 16-year-olds to vote in town elections.
“Our youth are the future leaders, innovators, and change-makers of Cheverly,” [Mayor] Munyeneh said. “This dual action, both the charter amendment and the formation of the Youth Council, underscores our commitment to actively listen to their voices. We believe in their potential to contribute meaningfully to the growth and development of our community.”
As someone who talks to young people about voting and civic participation every chance I get, this rings true. I spent last Wednesday afternoon with a dynamic group of teens who are part of 92NY’s Teen Producers initiative.
In addition to getting them pre-registered to vote, there was time to discuss the issues that matter to them. See what’s on their minds:
As we grapple with the many challenges we face, it is instructive to watch how people in other parts of the world are staying with the struggle for justice.
In Buenos Aires, rebels performed an intricate group dance while tethered together by threads, mirroring the mycorrhizal networks that bind fungus to plants and nourish entire ecosystems.
The actions were a response to Mileia’s far-reaching decree, which would weaken or repeal hundreds of laws that protect the rights of workers, collective rights, universal health care, and ensure environmental protections. There are calls for a general strike on January 24.
Activists in Italy used a harmless green dye to turn rivers green in six Italian cities in December. It was a protest against inaction at COP28. There were four days of traffic disruptions in Melbourne, Australia to protest the fossil fuel industry’s seismic blast surveys that threaten ocean wildlife.
While it may seem to some people that such dramatic protests are a pointless inconvenience, the reality is quite different. Panamanian activists occupied a Canadian-owned copper mine and Panama’s supreme court ruled that the government’s contract with the mining corporation was illegal.
Here in the US, protests against the war in Gaza and the US strikes on Yemen continue.
All this action gives me hope. There are regular folks around the nation and the world working peacefully to align their governments with their values.
We’ll end with a story about a new elected official, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato in Pennsylvania. Innamorato raised the minimum wage for all county employees on her first day in office and initiated a pilot program last week to subsidize child care.
Innamorato now also holds a seat on the county’s Board of Elections. At her January 2 inauguration, Innamorato said:
"Protecting our democracy is one of our most sacred commitments. I look forward to sharing some good news with you about keeping our elections protected while expanding accessibility to voters.”
Special thanks to the readers who shared good news with me this week!
with love,
L