Dear friends,
I’m posting on Monday night, since I have to get out early tomorrow and fear that I have forgotten how!
The MTA will resume 24-hour subway service on May 17, eleven days after the first anniversary of late-night closures. With the 7-day COVID positivity rate now under 3 percent, the city does indeed seem to be coming back. I am lifting my unenforceable travel ban to Staten Island.
(How did I get the authority to declare a travel ban? You can be assured that I have no authority. Also, lacking authority is Andrew Yang, who has suggested that the city should take over the MTA. The man is king of the half-baked idea. I will leave you to consider his undeveloped proposal if you have time for that.)
In my family, we can be very impatient. Someone will invariably substitute the exclamation Finally! when what they mean to say is thank you or congratulations! Almost always, this is in jest. This one is not: FINALLY! The last operating reactor at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant went offline on Friday night. For decades, the plant’s operation has raised safety concerns for the many millions of people who live within 50 miles of the plant. The end of this chapter represents a major achievement by activists. Renewable energy sources in the region are already in place to meet the demand previously served by Indian Point.
Rebecca Solnit writes that we have reasons for “climate optimism,” not only because the new administration is
reregulating what was deregulated, restarting support for research, and rejoining the Paris climate accords. The Biden administration is regularly doing things that would have been all but inconceivable in previous administrations, and while it deserves credit, more credit should go to the organizers who have redefined what is necessary, reasonable and possible.
The bold type is mine. Organizers and activists have changed the debate, and solutions are at hand. The key is to move quickly and boldly.
Sign up to participate in a lobby visit with your NYS legislator to lobby for the Climate and Community Investment Act.
Three pharmaceutical distribution companies — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health — are being sued by localities in West Virginia for their role in the opioid epidemic. The death toll due to opioid addiction rivals that of the coronavirus in the US. There is speculation that the corporations will seek to settle because the defense team fears that West VA’s former chief health officer, Dr Rahul Gupta, will testify about
whether the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell opioids led to overdose deaths, and whether addiction to prescription opioids drew people into using illegal narcotics such heroin and fentanyl which are not the main cause of overdoses.
The companies also do not want Gupta to speak about the epidemic’s impact on social issues such as the number of children taken into foster care.
Justice will require huge reparations to the communities harmed by the opioid epidemic.
There may be some movement on legislation to end the federal death penalty (finally!). Death Penalty Action is calling on us to write to our US representatives and senators to get this done.
Use this ready-made action to call on US legislators to pass HR 262/SB 582, to end the federal and military death penalty.
I’m going to visit some loved ones (finally! :))). I’ll be back on Friday.
Have a great week!
with love,
L