Dear friends,
I think I missed you more than you missed me! I couldn’t bear to face Tuesday without a little good news round-up, but since I was on a red-eye last night, I will be brief and will aim for coherence.
Nikole Hannah-Jones landed on her feet at Howard University after the ridiculous tenure battle at UNC Chapel Hill. There, she and her friend Ta-Nehisi Coates will set up a new Center for Journalism and Democracy. Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur recipient, was never going to have any difficulty finding work, but she and other prominent scholars rightly pointed out that highly qualified Black women are routinely denied advancement.
Hannah-Jones is best known for creating the 1619 Project, a massive and ongoing reexamination of how we tell our national story. This has placed her in the cross-hairs of the right-wing ideologues who are confused about who built this nation.
The authors of the 1619 Project essays and curricula lay a firm foundation for reparations, by highlighting the sweat equity of enslaved people and their Black descendants as well as the systemic racism that continues to shape the American system.
Schools chancellor Meisha Ross-Porter announced a $500 million investment to bring Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Curriculum to NYC’s students, throughout the public school system. This is the culmination of a sustained campaign by students, progressive teachers, and parents, under the leadership of the New York Coalition for Educational Justice. It is exciting to see this finally come to fruition.
Telling the truth about what is happening and how we got here is important, and it has never been more so than during this year of pandemic, civil rights struggle, electoral drama, and climate catastrophe.
The dire need to significantly decrease fossil fuel use, however, has still not sunk into the minds of the world’s biggest polluters. Take the United States. The Biden administration has taken some meaningful steps toward reducing carbon pollution, including suspending oil and gas leasing on federal land, cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, and reinstating several EPA climate regulations. But his Justice Department is also currently defending at least three massive new fossil fuel projects: the Willow drilling project in Alaska, the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota, and millions of acres of oil and gas leasing in Wyoming.
We have participated in the campaign to shut down Line 3, as well as some other local pipelines and gas facilities. Atkin reminds us that one of the most insidious lies promoted by the industries that profit from fossil fuel extraction is that there’s nothing we can do to address the crisis and save the planet.
Read Atkin’s “‘What can I do?’ Anything.”
I saw a great t-shirt recently. It said Earth is a Coop. This planet is ours. We share it with every living thing, and we have to work in shifts to keep it going. You don’t have to do everything, but doing nothing is self-destructive.
Join one of tonight’s prep sessions for tomorrow’s public meeting with National Grid. We need to show up tomorrow and call out their out climate denial and their profiteering. Here are talking points and the link for the meeting on Wednesday.
Have a great evening. Back on Thursday, as usual.
with love,
L