Dear friends,
A loyal Tuesday reader, who is very committed to the good news theme, sent me this great article about two California art teachers who created PepToc, a hotline and poster project to get us through the hard times.
Their grade school students contributed sound and silly advice, recorded laughter, and all manner of encouragement, in answer to the question:
imagine someone needing a little bit of joy: “What would you say that you think would help someone else?”
A poster that says
You are NOT the only one who wants to sigh loudly
has tear-offs at the bottom that say “it’s okay to feel sad” and “remember that there are people that love you.”
It’s true that there has been troubling learning loss during the pandemic AND it’s also the case that the children who participated in this project learned something powerful about their capacity to make positive change. The hotline gets thousands of calls each hour.
Dial 707-873-7862 to reach PepTok.
In addition, the bill renews the Violence Against Women Act and provides additional money for processing the backlog of rape kits.
It seems that the war in Ukraine is functioning as a unifying force in American politics.
Many political commentators have wondered whether former President Trump’s evident sympathy for Vladimir Putin fundamentally altered the views of the Republican Party about Russia.
I’m for functional government, but always concerned about the capacity for war-making when government is ‘working’. Still, the funding bill kicks the threat of a shutdown ahead until the fall, and I wonder if Congress might accomplish something in the meanwhile.
Let’s experiment! As states threaten reproductive freedom, perhaps we can shame the Republicans into supporting postpartum health care, including mental health care, for people who give birth.
Urge Congress to pass a permanent option for states to extend the postpartum coverage period for Medicaid to a full year following pregnancy. This ready-made action is from Moms Rising.
Here’s another issue we can get behind: the ban on members of Congress and their families trading stock. Jon Ossoff and Mark Kelly’s Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act is the better of two similar bills in the Senate. The other bill comes from Josh Hawley.
Ossoff's legislation would fine the lawmakers from their salaries if they broke the law, while Hawley's would require lawmakers in the wrong to return their profits to the American people through the Treasury Department.
Clearly, we don’t need a ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ bill. We need to deter criminality among the ruling class.
There is another bill that was recently reintroduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Katie Porter that would extend the ban to the president and vice president, Supreme Court justices, top officials of Federal Reserve, in addition to members of Congress.
The Ossoff-Kelly bill and the Gillibrand-Porter bills prevent members’ families from trading individual stocks, but not from investing in funds in which they have no role in choosing stocks.
There is an argument to be made for starting with Congress.
A Times editorial, citing the tremendous popularity of these efforts, concluded:
The push for a trading ban is about more than imposing rules to keep lawmakers on the straight and narrow. It is about changing the widespread perception of public service as a playground for corruption and self-dealing. It is about restoring Americans’ faith in their government. For Congress, there may be no worthier cause.
Sign the petition to ban Congress members from owning or trading individual stocks. This ready-made action comes from Daily Kos.
According to the CDC, there are adequate testing and ventilation to prevent the spread of COVID among the unaccompanied minor population of detainees.
Unfortunately, no such provisions are in place for adults and families.
Selective applications of asylum policy are not limited to Title 42. Happily, the US has, in record time, granted Temporary Protected Status to Ukrainians in the US, to shield them from deportation, but this is not the case for people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, El Salvador, or Nicaragua.
We have discussed why the conflicts and refugee crises from non-European nations have not gotten the same coverage or attention in the US. Now it is time to act.
Call on the Biden Administration to protect the lives of US residents threatened with deportation to areas with violent conflict and instability and to stop all deportations under Title 42. This is ready-made!
“Attorney General Letitia James joined 29 national, state and local advocacy groups in asking the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a federal investigation into Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s recent directive to treat care for transgender children as child abuse.” I can’t talk about Abbott’s perverse notion of abuse without getting really worked up, so I will just report the good news that his bullshit is being challenged.
This is as close as we’re going to get to reparations for folks with marijuana convictions:
To be one of [NY] state’s first licensed retailers, you or a member of your family must have been convicted of a marijuana-related offense.
There’s some exciting progress in the NYS budget negotiations. I know that budget negotiations are not necessarily exciting, however, the move by legislators to guarantee a living wage to home care workers is a BIG deal.
There will be three people in a room, negotiating our state budget, and two of them already support Fair Pay for Home Care! We need to work on the governor so that she gets to yes.
Yesterday, I sent you a bum link. Please try again!
Sign the petition to Governor Hochul in support of Fair Pay for Home Care! This one-click action is ready-made by NY Caring Majority.
Home care workers are not the only fighting for a living wage. There’s a whole lot of labor organizing going on in NYC elsewhere: REI, Starbucks, Amazon.
“It's too early to tell yet whether this is a blip or the beginning of a new phase,” said Joshua Freeman, a history professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. “There've been other periods too when time seems to speed up. Instead of one little thing after another, suddenly — these huge bursts of organizing.”
We shall see!
Is it still Tuesday? I could really use that hour back!
with love,
L