Dear friends,
Three years ago, when I started sending emails to a few dozen people about how we could be good allies in the ongoing struggle for Black civil rights, I was focused on fighting racism and ending over-policing and mass incarceration.
One of the first authors I cited in June of 2020 was Charles M. Blow, who asked
How will our white allies respond when this summer has passed? How will they respond when civil rights gets personal and it’s about them and not just punishing the white man who pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck? How will they respond when true equality threatens their privilege, when it actually starts to cost them something?
And we have seen how many people quickly moved on, unwilling to engage in uncomfortable work. I want to thank those of you who’ve stayed with it from the beginning and the folks who have joined along the way.
Lots of you are still doing mutual aid work, paying reparations, donating to groups that bail people out of jail, and using your voices to defend bail reform and investments in frontline communities.
The Tuesday tradition of good news developed pretty quickly, because work is work, even if you do it from home. We need encouragement and hope.
This story is one of the most hopeful things I’ve read in a while. If you’ve ever been at a street protest where someone chants Who keeps us safe? then you’ve heard the crowd roar back:
We keep us safe!
It’s the story of a community-based public safety effort that involves a local nonprofit, Brownsville In Violence Out. The experiment came about when a police officer who had grown up in the neighborhood asked residents, in June 2020, how the precinct could rebuild their relationship with the people.
The response was that neighbors with street credibility and natural authority could effectively intervene to squash a lot of violence; their work would eliminate the need for police intervention, which is so often violent.
Several times a year, workers from Brownsville In Violence Out stand sentry on two blocks for five days. The police channel all 911 calls from that area to the civilians. Unless there is a major incident or a victim demands an arrest, officers, always in plainclothes, shadow the workers.
The civilians have no arrest powers. But they have persuaded people to turn in illegal guns, prevented shoplifting, kept a man from robbing a bodega and stopped a pregnant woman from hitting a boyfriend who had not bought a car seat and a stroller as he had promised.
Similar “community responder” programs are being used in a number of other cities around the US and the Center for American Progress estimates that
almost 40 percent of calls to police could be handled by community responders.
The Brooklyn DA notes that crime in the 73rd precinct, where Brownsville’s experiment is underway, is down. In the first half of this year, homicides and shootings were down by 50 and 25 percent respectively, as were car thefts.
I’m sorry I missed this pop-up exhibition, “29 Million Dreams.” It asked the question:
if we weren’t spending it on policing. The costs of over-policing are not just what we spend to pay for policing. They include the costs of failing to invest in necessary services and the damage done by policing when there are better alternatives.
The new “neighborhood safety teams,” which are the reincarnation of the NYPD’s anti-crime units, are still stopping Black and Brown people disproportionately — 97 percent! A court-appointed monitor found that almost 1 in 4 stops were unconstitutional. According to his report, issued this week, only two of 230 vehicle stops turned up weapons.
Tell the mayor to fund community responders and stop spending $29 million a day on policing.
Yesterday, I wrote at some length about the current situation on Rikers Island and the pressing need for federal intervention to prevent more violence and chaos. If you haven’t yet taken this action, please do, even if you live outside New York state.
Email Judge Laura Swain and tell her that receivership is overdue.
Clean Slate legislation appears to be in the realm of the possible during this session. The idea of the NYS bill is to let formerly incarcerated people who have accepted responsibility for crimes they committed and served time to have an opportunity to move on. With a clean slate, they can find housing and employment.
Give legislators one more push using this easy tool from Clean Slate NY to call, email, or tweet at your legislators: Clean Slate can’t wait!
Voters in the Bronx and Queens will have progressive choices in the primaries for District Attorney. There are challengers to the current DAs, and if you are a Bronx or Queens voter, I urged you to learn more about Tess Cohen and Devian S. Daniels.
Start with The City’s guide to “Who is Running for District Attorney.”
Last week, I mentioned the important strategy of suing manufacturers of harmful products. This came out of the playbook against Big Tobacco, and is proving powerful against other industrial malefactors.
Los Angeles won a $5 million settlement from Polymer80, a Nevada-based company that manufactures ghost gun kits for people who want guns without serial numbers. In a three year period, LAPD recovered over 4,200 guns made from Polymer80 kits.
The company failed to conduct background checks required under California state law. Under the terms of the settlement, the company will not be able to market or sell their kits in California, nor provide customer service to people in the state.
Lawsuits against manufacturers that pollute are also yielding results.
Last week, chemical giants DuPont, Chemours and Corteva announced a tentative class settlement of almost $1.2 billion. Public water systems had sued them over contamination of drinking water by forever chemicals (PFAS). Some water systems may opt to go to court to extract greater damages.
A similar case — against manufacturing company 3M, set to go to trial next week —has been postponed until July as the parties try to settle. A city in Florida is seeking funds to cover the costs of cleaning up the PFAS contamination. I imagine that it’s very expensive to clean up forever.
I live with someone who is on a mission to end traffic violence. He is active with Transportation Alternatives and other street safety groups. In addition to serving on the Transportation Committee of the Community Board, he makes hundreds of 311 reports each year — mostly about vehicles that block bike lanes and crosswalks — to address conditions that endanger pedestrians and cyclists.
We can’t keep ourselves safe if drivers are speeding through the crowded streets. There is legislation pending in the Assembly to allow NYC to set speed limits in the city. This common-sense home-rule bill is known as Sammy’s Law, but the Speaker of the Assembly, Carl Heastie, is dragging his feet. The session ends on Thursday.
Call Carl Heastie at 518-455-3791 and tell him to bring Sammy’s Law to a vote. You can use the paragraph above to make your own script.
If you are tired of working for justice, remember that we don’t have to finish the job —we just have to do our part. As with any good work, we can take days off and come back fresh.
with love,
L