May 3, 2022
work from home for justice
Dear friends,
I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t seen the bad news. Nonetheless, I am a student of the long view.
First, however, I will admit that I have not been sleeping well, which is unusual for me. It’s not surprising, since we are, quite literally, experiencing social unrest on multiple fronts. Luckily, I just learned about the Nap Ministry. This is a book scheduled for fall release and also a series of playlists devoted to the idea that Rest is Resistance.
[Author Tricia] Hersey said music has always been central to the Nap Ministry’s practice. The ministry’s signature events are nap sessions: community events where people can rest together. Participants lie on yoga mats as a facilitator reads meditations and poetry; dim lights and soft music, sometimes performed by live musicians, set the tone. This helps assuage what can be a strange and vulnerable experience — falling asleep with strangers. When it comes time to wake up, the music grows louder and changes to something upbeat and joyful: a tone-setter to carry the lessons learned into the day, according to Hersey.
Check out a Nap Ministry playlist on Spotify.
I’m not sure if Margaret Renkl wrote this piece before Politico dropped the draft of the decision likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. In any case, I recommend Renkl’s essay.
The leaked draft may change the midterm calculus. The vast majority of Americans favor protections of reproductive rights.
Governor Hochul said this:
"For anyone who needs access to care, our state will welcome you with open arms. New York will always be a place where abortion rights are protected and where abortion is safe and accessible.”
There are signs of important changes. Heather Cox Richardson dedicated a recent post to a musician who asked the historian if there was a precedent for the changes the musician saw as she traveled around the country.
Richardson wrote about the Farmers Alliances’ that became the social infrastructure of the nineteenth century Populist movement.
They offered a different vision of the country’s political economy, defending the idea that the government should treat everyone equally. Alliances declared that they shared the same interests as workers, and called for “the reform of unjust systems and the repeal of laws that bear unequally upon the people.”
They also redefined what it meant to be a success in America. Rather than the cutthroat individualism of those like Carnegie, they called for reviving an older tradition, one in which “manliness” meant honesty, generosity, community-mindedness, and dignity. Their emphasis on reason and honorable conduct meant that they rejected the era’s political fights for dominance, and so there was room in their political coalition for women and often, despite the era’s Jim Crow walls, for Black farmers.
Richardson describes the regional triumphs as well as the seeds that Populists planted that would bear fruit in later eras.
We know this story. I remember defending Occupy Wall Street against people who insisted it was of no consequence. Three words: Black Lives Matter.
At the correspondents’ dinner on Saturday, Trevor Noah celebrated the journalists who
that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn’t have one.
Noah made a point of celebrating the “intrepid journalists” who were not in the room, too. Yesterday, Hell Gate joined the scene.
Hell Gate is a website owned and run by journalists covering New York City. Our name comes from the city’s sturdiest (and handsomest) bridge over its most treacherous currents.
One of their first articles reported on the termination of a lawyer for the NYC Law Department last Friday. Dara Weiss was defending the NYPD in a series of lawsuits about racist policing during the civil rights protests of 2020. She was fired because she lied to a federal judge and created fake documents.
Weiss has spent much of her 18-year career at the Law Department steeped in police misconduct litigation, overseeing a team of eight attorneys in the Special Federal Litigation Division. She led the defense of the NYPD in more than 80 civil rights cases, taking a leading role in defending the NYPD in the numerous lawsuits arising from its violent suppression of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Weiss also wrote that she "work[ed] closely with NYPD leadership in both developing defense strategies and advising them on the Constitutionality of new and existing public safety policies and procedures."
Weiss's track record of sanctions for discovery obstruction isn’t limited to protest cases. She was also sanctioned and fined by a court for withholding documents in a lawsuit brought against the City by a man beaten while detained on Rikers Island.
It is good news that Weiss has been terminated. At the length truth will out.
In his May Day Every Day post, Michael Moore wrote about the burgeoning labor movement with millennials taking the lead.
In just the last six months there has been a whopping 57% increase in the number of workers and labor groups demanding to be recognized as a union, demanding better wages, benefits, time off and safety protections.
In recent weeks nearly 170 Starbucks locations have sought out the legal petitions to start the unionization process. Over 50 Amazon warehouses have found their employees doing the same.
Still, organizers suggested that not all hope was lost. Halfway through the vote count, as Amazon’s lead in the tally grew, organizers commented on Amazon’s well-funded resistance to organizing in its facilities, which has included “captive audience” meetings and anti-union propaganda. “The count has finished,” the union tweeted after the vote. “The organizing will continue at this facility and beyond. The fight has just begun.”
An eleven-year-old named Lillian Fortuna started a petition to the president to get him to use this moment as an opportunity to help Europe switch to cleaner electricity.
Sign Lillian’s petition to Biden, calling for Heat Pumps for Peace.
Last week, both houses of the NYS legislature passed environmental justice legislation that will require the State’s Environmental Quality Review process to consider the cumulative impacts on communities when polluting facilities seek permits. New Jersey is the only other state with similar legislation.
The language to explain the legislative intent is surprisingly moving:
The legislature finds and declares that each community in the state should equitably share the responsibilities, burdens, and benefits of managing and solving the state's environmental problems and the facilities necessary to accomplish such ends. The legislature further declares that there has been an inequitable pattern in the siting of environmental facilities in minority and economically distressed communities, which have borne a disproportionate and inequitable share of such facilities. Consistent with its commitment to providing equal justice for its citizens, the state has a responsibility to establish requirements for the consideration of such decisions by state and local governments in order to insure equality of treatment for all communities.
Contact Governor Hochul to ask her to sign the Cumulative Impacts Bill!
Our friends at NY Caring Majority have created a quick email tool for thanking the legislators who helped Fair Pay for Home Care get into the final stage of budget negotiations.
Urge your legislators to keep up the fight for Fair Pay for Home Care.
University of California will waive tuition and fees for many Native American students. I’m out of time for writing today, however I had to leave you with this piece of news. This is an act of reparations, and part of the long view that keeps us from despair.
Have a great day!
with love,
L