Dear friends,
First things first, or I should say, first peoples first: the first ever Indigenous cabinet member, Deb Haaland, was confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of the Interior.
She will lead about 70,000 staff who oversee one-fifth of all the land in the US and 1.7bn acres of coastlines, as well as managing national parks, wildlife refuges and natural resources such as gas, oil and water.
Haaland will also be responsible for upholding the government’s legally binding obligations to the tribes – treaty obligations which have been systematically violated with devastating consequences for life expectancy, exposure to environmental hazards, political participation and economic opportunities in Indian Country.
Rebecca Solnit, again:
To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.
So, this is really significant. The other good news of the day is still good, if not as big.
Last year at this time, progressives were trying to figure out how Joe Biden ended up as the leading Democratic candidate and how we were going to pursue an agenda that includes economic justice. When the new administration did not tap Elizabeth Warren — with her plans for everything— for the job of Treasury Secretary, the bankers and traders may have been relieved. It appears, however, that Liz’s protégés are well-placed in the Biden Administration to cause Wall Street some grief and to afford the rest of us some expectation of sound, progressive policymaking.
The Warren alumni at senior levels of the executive branch include banking and economic policy staffers who spent years leading her office's oversight of Wall Street. Bharat Ramamurti is now deputy director of the White House National Economic Council and Julie Siegel is Treasury deputy chief of staff.
Other former Warren aides in the administration include Julie Morgan, a senior adviser at the Education Department; Anne Reid, deputy chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services; and Sasha Baker, senior director of strategic planning at the National Security Council.
Many people stand to benefit from Warren’s “personnel is policy” strategy. Warren’s people have displaced the “Citigroup Clique.” Liz and my ‘cousin’ Janet have been talking regularly. This gives me some hope (think of Rebecca Solnit’s axe-you-break-down-doors-with imagery) that student loan debt, child care, climate, and tax policies will reflect the concerns that we have been pursuing in the name of justice.
If personnel is policy, then it’s past time to get rid of unpaid internships, which are a barrier to opportunity for young people who must earn money. The disparate impact of unpaid internships on BIPOC students is so dramatic that it’s impossible to regard it as an unintended consequence. Last week, Senators Corey Booker and Tim Scott introduced legislation that would guarantee that all interns in the US State Department would be paid the federal minimum wage or that of the jurisdiction where the intern will be employed, whichever is higher. For interns in DC, that will be $15/hour, which is a lot more than the NOTHING that interns in the State Department have been making. Note: The bill includes provisions for housing and travel assistance, but the pay is still probably too low.
Support Pay Our Interns, a non-profit organization “fighting to ensure all students — especially Black, Latinx, and Native American students — have equitable access to professional career paths.”
The budget process is underway and NYS legislators have announced their “top-line recommendations” for the coming year. New York Caring Majority’s campaign for #FairPay4HomeCare was one of those top recommendations by the State Senate! This is an important step to achieving meaningful changes that care workers, older and disabled people, family caregivers, and care advocates have been calling for.
Join an organizing call tomorrow evening to push for the long-term systemic changes for the caring economy we all need in order to thrive and live with dignity.
A bit of education news: Yesterday, the NYS Board of Regents voted unanimously to cancel all Regents exams this year except for the tests that are federally-mandated: the ELA, Algebra I, Earth Science and Living Environment exams. Students scheduled to graduate in June will not be prevented from graduating because of missing Regents exams if they have passing grades in the related coursework.
New York State has filed a request for a federal waiver, but has not yet received a response. Families can still file to opt-out of testing for younger students.
Download and print a refusal letter if you wish to opt out of testing for your child (grades 3-8).
Call Nancy Pelosi’s office (202) 225-4965 to ask her to use her influence to persuade the Administration to grant waivers for all annual testing.
Here’s another little bit of good news: last Sunday (3/07), a group of us planted this little pantry on E. 4th Street, just south of Fort Hamilton Parkway, Lenape land. The second picture wouldn’t load, but it showed the cardboard box full of overflow offerings and the concrete-filled bucket that’s holding this beauty in place. In the time it took me to cross Fort Ham and look in on the free fridge that’s in its third week of service, a neighbor snapped up the can of tuna that had been in the front of the pantry.
with love,
L