Dear friends,
In San Francisco, the locals like to joke that if you don’t like the weather, you should walk a few blocks, because there’s always another microclimate. This week, it occurred to me that in the 21st century, if you don’t like the news, you can wait a few minutes. The news may get better or worse, but you can rest assured that it will be different.
Our theme today, friends, is that change is gonna come. It is the only certainty. We will keep working to steer in the direction of justice.
Some good news from Tuesday afternoon: Michelle Wu was sworn in as mayor of Boston, and used an extended metaphor about accessibility in City Hall to illustrate her larger point:
"Boston was founded on a revolutionary promise: that things don't have to be as they always were."
Later in the day, Justin Brannan, who seemed poised to lose his NYC council seat representing Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, pulled ahead with the counting of absentee ballots and won. Another Democrat, Ari Kagan, defeated a QAnon supporter who rallied in DC on January 6 to win the council seat in District 47, a southern Brooklyn area that skews Republican but has been represented by term-limited Democrat Mark Treyger.
When it seems that change will never come or that it will come too late, we need to maintain perspective. This is true even when we talk about the climate.
COP26 and its 25 predecessors cannot be the lone metric for progress on climate. A quarter century of polluter-powered pavilions are not the whole story — the climate justice movement has grown bigger and bolder than ever before.
Nathalie Rengifo Alvarez, climate policy leader at Corporate Accountability, explains the ‘long game’ strategy for those of us who count ourselves as climate activists:
We know who’s responsible, but who will make them pay? Corporations and polluting governments got us into this crisis, but they won’t get us out. Only the people will save us. Polluters should be afraid — the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change may have failed us, but we still have the courts and the streets, and we are millions.
We’re not defeated unless we quit fighting.
And this is no time to quit fighting. President Biden promised in Glasgow to “lead by example,” but yesterday began an auction of leases for fossil fuel extraction in the Gulf of Mexico,
a record sell-off that will lock in years, and potentially decades, of planet-heating emissions.
The enormous size of the lease sale – covering an area that is twice as large as Florida – is a blunt repudiation of Biden’s previous promise to shut down new drilling on public lands and waters. It has stunned environmentalists.
Contact the President to let him know that this auction must be cancelled. A sample message is provided.
New York State’s Climate and Community Investment Act will require corporations to pay $55 per ton of greenhouse gas emissions. We are taking aim at the oil and gas industry.
Call on Governor Hochul to include the Climate and Community Investment Act in the budget! There is a call script and this only takes a minute.
The real climate criminals have to pay for what they’ve done, and the front line activists who are facing prosecution need us to come to their defense. The struggle against Line 3 continues.
trumped-up charges, police violence, excessively high bail and intensive aerial surveillance.
Tell Attorney General Ellison & Gov. Walz: Drop the Charges against Indigenous Water Protectors!
Support the Lakota People’s Law Project.
We have not forgotten about conditions in the city’s jails. Federal monitors issued a new report on conditions at Rikers Island yesterday, indicating that some progress has been made:
“The risk of harm to both incarcerated persons and staff in the daily operations of the jails remains high. The Department [of Corrections] has taken some positive actions to address the mass absenteeism of staff and the issues related to intake, but significant work remains to address the entrenched and troubling security practices, decades of mismanagement, and lack of accountability for staff misconduct.”
Among the important steps that the DOC has taken are the suspension of more than one hundred staff members who have been absent without leave (AWOL). This is a fresh effort to enforce old rules. The DOC has transferred 91 officers to Rikers from assignments in courthouses; the courts are being staffed by the NYPD.
In addition to the new class in the DOC’s training academy and more than 1,600 people who recently passed the officers’ exam, the department is contacting officers who left jobs “in good standing.”
Meanwhile, nearly half of the uniformed employees of the Department of Corrections have still not been vaccinated, in spite of the impending deadline. There’s little to suggest that any legal strategy will ‘protect’ corrections officers from the mandate; yesterday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker fired state prison guards who missed their vaccination deadline by more than 30-days after suspensions failed to move them to comply.
Hysterical responses to vaccine mandates were a key part of the failed campaign to unseat Justin Brannan. Mandates work, and with virus cases up, we need to keep our heads.
Some good news: NYS legislators have passed an important bill known as the MTA Bike Access Bill (S4943B/A6235), which
requires the metropolitan transportation authority to develop a strategic action plan to improve bicycle and pedestrian access at its bridges and passenger stations.
Call 518-474-8390 to tell Governor Kathy Hochul why she should sign it today!
I hired a fourth caregiver for my mom this week, and was reminded of my good fortune: to be connected to a cooperative network of extraordinary, dedicated caregivers, to have the resources to employ them when there is high demand and an acute labor shortage of care workers, and to know that my mother is in good hands.
Perhaps you employ a babysitter, nanny, or a caregiver for someone you love. If so, you know what good caregivers do for you and for them.
Sign the Employer Pledge and commit to paying the domestic worker you employ during the coronavirus crisis.
Contribute to Hand in Hand and become a member of this vibrant national network of employers of domestic workers and allies, who believe that dignified and respectful working conditions benefit worker and employer alike.
Finally, some urgent action: there’s a voting rights rally at City Hall today at noon and we should all be there. Heather Cox Richardson’s post last night provides a detailed and frightening account of the impact of partisan gerrymandering and the necessity of passing federal voting rights legislation.
RSVP for TODAY’s Before It's Too Late Rally to pass the Freedom to Vote Act.
We end this week with wise words from the mystic poet Hafiz:
Fear is the cheapest room in the house
I would like to see you living
In better conditions,
for your mother and my mother
Were friends.
I know the Innkeeper
In this part of the universe.
We are the innkeepers.
with love,
L