Dear friends,
All this talk about bodily autonomy has me thinking. People riddled with gunshots don’t have bodily autonomy, nor do those who are incarcerated.
Today would have been Yuri Kochiyama’s 101st birthday. She lived a very fruitful life for 93 years, so we can celebrate a shining force for justice, who devoted herself to supporting struggles for human rights and peace.
Watch this tribute video and learn about Yuri Kochiyama, a great American.
I recently learned that Yuri, who was known as Mary when she was a growing up in California, was elected to her high school’s student council.
This fun fact got me thinking, as I often do, about how people get engaged in justice work and public service. It so happens that I am working with students who serve on their middle school student council. Perhaps some of you got your start the same way.
Another person has died in custody at Rikers Island this week.
Sharon White-Harrigan, the executive director of the Women’s Community Justice Association, called her death “infuriating and heartbreaking.”
“No one belongs at Rikers, especially women and gender-expansive individuals when there is a clear and viable alternative that would end the decades of torture and suffering.”
White-Harrigan has called for the creation of a trauma and healing justice center in an unused correctional site in the city.
Call on Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams to remove vulnerable populations from Rikers to a setting where they can receive care.
This powerful essay about breastfeeding by Elizabeth Spiers also got me thinking. She notes that the current baby formula shortage has once again put the pressure on mothers:
Voices from across the ideological spectrum suggested that women should simply breastfeed their babies. As I watched the discussion unfold around this distressing situation — caused in large part by an oligopolistic system and government failures — I had the uneasy feeling that the demands that breastfeeding makes of women were precisely the point.
I breastfed the springling until they one day announced that they were getting too old for it. Really. We made a plan to phase out nursing in time for their half birthday, between two and three, and with characteristic self-possession, they stuck to the plan.
Because it was a happy chapter of our lives which came to a celebratory end, I made the mistake, as so many people do, of generalizing from my own experience.
Spiers tells her own story in the larger context, which is that the public discussion of the merits of breastfeeding seldom includes a discussion of the costs — including, but not limited to considerable frustration and pain for many, and loss of rest, wellbeing, and time:
The reality is I tried very hard to make it work. But after four months of the baby not latching on, frantic pumping at home, going back to work and having nowhere to pump, and more than one overnight hospital stay for postpartum complications (including the brain aneurysm scare), I stopped.
When I mentioned switching to formula to medical professionals, I always encountered a volley of questions about why, usually followed by a question or two about whether I had tried various methods to extend breastfeeding. Not a single person who asked me these questions seemed convinced that I was doing what was best for my family and child, not to mention myself.
Spiers’s story is a reminder that families that rely on formula deserve our sympathy and support, not our sanctimonious comments about their lives and bodies and choices.
Moms Rising is collecting stories about the effects of the formula shortage. Be a supportive listener and help an overwhelmed parent tell their story.
Congress is looking at both long-term and short-term measures to address the problem. Congress is not where we go for quick action.
Late yesterday, the president took action, authorizing
the defense department to use commercial aircraft to fly formula supplies that meet federal standards from overseas to the US.
In addition, the FDA has begun to rework its review its process in order to allow more foreign-made formula into the US. (Note: I wrote to the president yesterday to suggest that.)
Last Thursday’s post encountered some mysterious difficulties on the way to your inboxes, so I am repeating some important updates and actions.
With a million people uninsured in our state, this law, which would cover the costs of hospice care as well as in-home and institutional care, is long overdue. Obviously, reproductive health care is also part of the package.
Contact your state legislators to let them know you support the NY Health Act! This is ready-made!
I went to a book event for Elise Engler’s Diary of the Plague Year: An Illustrated Chronicle of 2020. A number of years ago, Elise nearly lost her arm as a result of a traffic crash, and the thread of traffic violence runs through her diary, as the temporary quieting of the streets gave way to egregious lawlessness.
Elise’s extraordinary chronicle — of the pandemic, the uprisings that followed George Floyd’s death, and the shootings and traffic violence that came to dominate that awful year — highlights all the ways that our bodies are on the line.
The City analyzed 1.8 million NYPD records and determined that crashes are less likely when speed cameras are on and more likely when they are off.
[T]he number of crashes is beginning to rise — and all of the growth is happening during the hours the cameras are turned off. The number of crashes during the on-camera hours was down slightly this year over last.
The cameras are already there. This should be simple to fix and we have the data to make the case.
Contact your state legislators to support a bill to make speed cameras to be operational 24/7. This action has been updated.
NYS’s legislative session is coming to an end soon. Until we win Fair Pay for Home Care, people who need care will be managing without care — sleeping in their wheelchairs, unable to bathe, etc. — or forced into congregate care settings they would not otherwise require.
The Home Care Transparency Act is a bill designed to collect the data and to provide a paint-by-numbers picture of the scale of the care crisis.
Make some calls to NYS legislative leaders to get the data on our state’s home care crisis. There’s a script and this is urgent.
I was pretty disturbed by this story of a young woman who has undergone multiple rounds of egg donation in order to pay off the student loans she took out to get a degree in public health.
Selling her eggs did not feel like a choice, so much as a necessity, which is also how she feels about the ‘decision’ to take out the loans she is trying to pay off.
“The biggest misconception about debt is that we made this decision, and so we should somehow live with it, but what choices were we really offered to secure our futures?” she said.
Tell the president to cancel all student debt now. This is a 30-second action!
And finally, because work from home for justice was always a contradictory name — my second post exhorted you to fill the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd — I’m reminding you that showing up is how we put our bodies on the line for justice.
Head to the streets to protect bodily autonomy. See the plan of action.
with love,
L
Found wallet in Brooklyn for Lynn Yellen - bam13@nyu.edu. Email me.