Dear friends,
The legislative session in Albany is wrapping up, and our civics lesson from the last year is that a tremendous amount of important legislation is made at the state level. NY Renews, the coalition that is lobbying hard to pass the Climate and Community Investment Act, has an ingenious call relay system to keep attention on our legislative goal all day long. There’s a sheet where you sign up for a time to make two calls today. The person before you texts you when they get off the phone and then you make your call; there’s a script with phone numbers. You don’t really even have to text the next person; people generally call at their scheduled time. The idea is to make sure that the leaders get one call after another urging them to support the CCIA.
Please join the call relay. Make polluters pay to fund a just transition!
I tend to think of climate activism as something I owe my own springling and all of the other young people who are inheriting an overheated world. This is not merely a sense of obligation. I don’t want to live in a world without young people.
We need to remake a world in which young people can see a reasonable future.
“We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I’m raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant,” she added. “I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.”
She was speaking, of course, about the new Texas abortion ban that includes no exception for rape or incest. How frustrating it is that the people with power are unwilling or unable to recognize reality.
Because nuance is my middle name — all of the letters are silent — I see no contradiction in wanting people to have bodily autonomy AND hoping they will eventually reproduce. Otherwise, we’re all going to live in a giant NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community).
Contribute to Planned Parenthood Action to protect reproductive rights!
Here’s a piece of happy news from my sister’s home state: Melanie Stansbury, a progressive Democrat, won an overwhelming victory to fill the vacancy in New Mexico’s Congressional delegation that resulted from Deb Haaland’s elevation to the cabinet.
Good news seems to be in short supply today. Send some my way if you have some!
with love,
L