March 3, 2022
work from home for justice
Hi friends,
I bet you weren’t expecting any good news on a Thursday, which makes it extra nice for me to be the bearer of some bits of good news, which I’m sure you could use.
Yesterday, representatives of 175 countries endorsed a resolution
to develop a legally binding pact to address a global plague of plastic pollution.
The world leaders signed the “End Plastic Pollution” resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) in Nairobi, where they pledged to address the full lifecycle of plastic — including its production, design and disposal — in an agreement by 2024.
The US Department of Justice is targeting Russian oligarchs — to seize and freeze assets — to undermine Putin’s support. Following the State of the Union, the administration announced that it is
“joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets.”
Conveniently enough, the college student who gained notoriety by tracking Elon Musk’s private jets on Twitter is now tracking the location of planes belonging to more than 20 Russian billionaires and tycoons. I hope this is helpful to DOJ.
There’s plenty of troubling news on many fronts: the week began with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describing the climate breakdown underway and the war in Ukraine brings harrowing reports of a million people fleeing the nation to escape advancing Russian forces.
President Biden said little about the climate in his State of the Union address, so I’m bringing back this action, in case you missed it. It’s a twofer, designed to promote sustainable development and reduce reliance on a rogue petrostate.
Contact the president and ask him to use the Defense Production Act to produce “Heat Pumps for Peace and Freedom.”
As regular readers know, I am a believer in the power of collective relentlessness. We need to follow up on two important issues at the intersection of climate justice, racial justice, and economic justice.
Climate Can’t Wait is meeting the climate emergency with a legislative package eleven important bills. Among them is the All Electric Building Act, legislation that would ban fossil fuels in construction of new buildings throughout NY State.
Sign up to phone bank with Food & Water Watch New York to pass the All Electric Building Act.
If you don’t phone bank, you can still pile on to address the climate emergency:
Make three calls to NYS leadership to get them to pass the full package of bills. Climate Can’t Wait provides the phone script and the phone numbers.
The Fair Pay for Home Care campaign has won some powerful allies and is calling on its many supporters for a final push this month, in the final run-up to creating the budget for FY 2023.
Sign on with NY Caring Majority to take an action a day to pass Fair Pay for Home Care.
S6929 would “require the New York City Department of Transportation to provide electronic and written notification to the community board and local elected officials when there will be a new bicycle lane or rack constructed or removed.”
The bill is unnecessary, as there is already city legislation requiring notification. It is also out-of-step with a city populace that broadly supports life-saving bike infrastructure. There was a move last year to repeal the city legislation calling for the notification of community boards, since there are major transportation projects undertaken with less notice.
“This Senate bill feels like an attempt to bigfoot the city exactly when the city is trying to streamline the process,” said one legislative source. “The whole thing is boneheaded.”
Contact your state senator and register your opposition to S6929. This action is ready-made.
Once again, there is a pile of very disturbing news out of Rikers. It has come to light that people detained at Rikers Island facilities have been subject to brutal beatings that were not recorded in incident reports and for which they did not receive proper medical attention.
Tarz Youngblood spoke to his wife from Rikers Island just six hours before his death on Sunday. Youngblood suffered from mental illness, according to friends and family members.
Youngblood’s close friend, Omowale Hewitt, received a call from Rikers just days before his friend’s death.
“The kid is trying to tell me ‘it’s not good for him in here,’” recalled Hewitt.
In the background, Hewitt said he could hear Youngblood’s voice calling out to him.
“He said, ‘Tell my kids I love you. They're not treating me right,’” Hewitt said, adding that it wasn’t clear why his friend couldn’t come directly to the phone.
Hewitt tried to contact people at Rikers to check on his friend and wants the city to investigate Youngblood’s death.
Call on the mayor to release the audio recording of the phone call to Hewitt and to investigate Youngblood’s death. This action is ready-made.
I am still working on the more action in response to this news along with the story of the failure to provide mental health care for people who are incarcerated.
It’s not too late to sign up for the town meeting with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg tonight. He promised to decrease the number of people behind bars.
with love,
L