Dear friends,
Last week, we bought the really expensive organic strawberries. It was a difficult week, and eating sunshine to revive our spirits often seems like the best way to treat ourselves.
In the 1980s, I spent a year working at a locked juvenile detention facility, which gave me ample time to consider all of the reasons why I would not thrive behind bars. Food was high on the list.
Some folks inside rely on loved ones to send them fruits and vegetables to meet their needs for dietary restrictions and chronic health diagnoses.
Directive 4911A requires that all packages sent to incarcerated folks in NYS prisons be purchased from approved vendors only. This policy is predatory because friends, family, and other support networks must pay inflated prices, while selected vendors turn a profit.
Call Governor Hochul to direct DOCCS to change Directive 4911A so that people who are incarcerated can receive fresh food from CSAs!
Diaper need has serious implications for children and families. Children do not sleep as well, which invariably means that parents don’t sleep as well. In addition,
people who reported diaper need were also more likely to report symptoms of depression or living in a home where someone had a chronic illness.
The non-profit organization Help a Mother Out spells out the other impacts on families:
A supply of clean diapers is required to attend most childcare programs. So without diapers, toddlers don’t get a fair start in their education.
When toddlers can’t go to childcare programs, adults remain under-employed. Something so basic as a diaper can actually have a big impact on a family’s ability to become financially self-sufficient.
Generally speaking, public assistance programs don’t cover diapers.
Help a Mother Out by donating to address diaper need!
My background as a student and teacher of history inclines me to look at the arc of social change, not the daily ups-and-downs. This is also good advice for attending to the stock market, which I have had to do as the trustee for the funds to care for my aging mother.
Jessica Grose, a fellow student of the long view, wrote an excellent essay called “What It Takes to Get America’s Moms What We Need.” She provides a helpful recent history of policies affecting parents and families.
After years of working women blaming themselves when they have been unable to find quality childcare,
the pandemic “accelerated years of work of conceptualizing child care as the backbone of the economy,” [said Melissa Boteach, the vice president for income security and child care at the National Women’s Law Center.]
Grose’s history of gender-based credit and employment discrimination is a powerful reminder of the larger arc against which current events are playing out.
Join a virtual event today, A Day Without Childcare: A National Day of Action to fight for equitable access to affordable child care and better pay and working conditions for providers. This is from Moms Rising.
Moms Rising is also collecting childcare stories. Storytelling is a powerful tool for framing an issue and building momentum for policy change.
Tell your childcare story. It will feel like venting AND it sheds light!
Last Tuesday, I went to a rally and press conference in downtown Brooklyn, in the hour before a hearing on the state’s draft pathway to achieve its goals under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
We’ve been sending in comments to the Climate Action Council about this draft for months now.
There were dueling rallies, it seemed, as Sunrise, NY Renews, the Sierra Club, and NY Communities for Change gathered on one sidewalk wearing ‘Get off gas’ buttons and union members gathered around the corner to protest the ‘gas ban’ in the All Electric Buildings Act.
Council member Sandy Nurse, who has serious chops as a climate and racial justice organizer (and composter!), spoke powerfully for a just transition to a fossil-free future:
What’s so important is that these pieces of paper that we pass called bills and laws have to mean something. And they only mean something when we put the money behind them, when we put the staff in the agencies behind them, when we put the resources behind them.
They’re trying to make us lay down our tools and bring in electricity for all our energy needs, which is ridiculous.
Who’s being ridiculous? Zanfardino has been installing gas pipes in houses for forty years. We will need his tools and his expertise for a just transition.
No city has yet announced a plan to remove gas infrastructure that already exists. The focus has been firstly on new construction—which has to stop, ASAP—but all the current gas lines and gas appliances will eventually need to go, too. We’ll need a robust gas workforce for years to come to ensure that work happens safely.
Call on our city council to be the first to write legislation to transition workers to the task of safely removing gas infrastructure from buildings. This action is ready-made!
Life would feel very hard if we could not visualize a better future and look at the sky.
Have a great day!
with love,
L