Dear friends,
Yesterday, the city announced that our public schools will not offer a remote option in the fall. The challenges of remote and hybrid instruction have been considerable, and I choose to see this as good news for everyone planning their way back to normal. Because so many families continued to opt out of in-person instruction this spring, the system must confront school hesitancy and provide support to students who may be unready to return to school.
The People’s Plan NYC has done some homework for you. The Education Scorecard ranks the mayoral candidates based on the alignment of their education policy statements with the progressive goals articulated in the People’s Plan. The big idea is that we want “schools that our children love and that love our children back.” I worked on the research for this scorecard.
Review the Education Scorecard and find out which candidates have plans to desegregate the schools, end the school-to-prison pipeline, and make schools inclusive and culturally responsive.
I was in Greenpoint yesterday, for a visit to the new Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center, a gorgeous new branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
In addition to the joys of visiting the library, Zealous Observer, my companion for the field trip reminded me of something important:
The new branch was financed, in part, by a $5 million grant from the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund (GCEF), which NYS created with the settlement from ExxonMobil.
If you are unfamiliar with the Greenpoint oil spill, it is a fascinating story. An explosion in October 1950 that blew out windows and manhole covers was the first indication of the problem — to the public. It didn’t become clear that oil companies had been spilling tens of millions of gallons of oil for many decades until the Coast Guard tracked a plume of oil in Newtown Creek in 1978. As a result, most of Greenpoint was a toxic disaster area in grave danger of becoming an urban holocaust.
Making the fossil fuel industry pay to clean up their messes is a very important part of the movement to save the planet. This is what the CCIA — you remember…the Climate and Community Investment Act — is all about. Until we stop using fossil fuels, corporations will have to foot the bill for costs to all of us of greenhouse gas emissions.
Join today’s call relay to put pressure on the two most powerful members of the state legislature so that we can pass the CCIA!
Greenpoint Nature Walk might sound like an oxymoron, but the artist George Trakas has created something extraordinary. I remember walking the early stretch of the project shortly after it opened almost ten years ago. Trakas had reintroduced native plants and designed a stone staircase to the edge of Newtown Creek.
The second section features a series of three boat-shaped vessels traveling above Whale Creek, inscribed with words that explore the evolution of the cosmos, science and human civilization. In its third section, visitors can walk on 400-million-year-old brachiopod fossils, sit on 385-million-year-old fossilized tree stumps from one of the Earth’s oldest known forests and drink water from a fountain carved out of a 3.5 billion-year-old rock. A dozen glass-topped cylinders are scattered among the new wetlands planted here, etched with the names of navigational stars.
Foolishly, I forgot that I wanted to take this walk when I was in Greenpoint yesterday. Let me know if you want to meet me for my next field trip to North Brooklyn.
Today is the anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Last week, the Times published a guest essay by William Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, in which they discuss the impact of Floyd’s death:
If George Floyd forced America to face the question of whether an officer who abuses power can be held accountable, Andrew Brown Jr.’s blood cries out from the ground of eastern North Carolina for deeper change. Justice demands systemic and enduring transformation — something that younger generations will see and trust as authentic.
Yesterday, the New Yorker published a piece about the NYC Law Department’s aggressive defense of officers who abuse their power. The strategy has failed to protect the city from massive pay-outs to those victimized by the NYPD, and has sought to conceal the systemic problems that are the basis of these lawsuits.
Join a rally or vigil today in remembrance of Floyd and in affirmation of the work ahead.
with love,
L