Dear friends,
You likely did not miss the news of the former president’s dinner guests. I trust that you dined in better company this weekend.
Maybe you heard a land acknowledgment before a holiday meal, to remember that we are on stolen land. If you live in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or Connecticut, you may be on Lenape land, or Lenapehoking.
The Lenape Center uses the term “living land acknowledgment” to refer to acknowledgments that begin with action. Here is a recent example.
Tamanend was a Lenape leader of the Turtle Clan in the 17th century. A peacemaker, Tamanend welcomed William Penn and the settlers who colonized what they called Pennsylvania.
Tamanend was once revered as the ‘patron saint of America’. Settlers Anglicized Tamanend’s name as Tammany, which became associated with New York’s notorious political organization, Tammany Hall, in the mid-19th century.
Hadrien Coumans of the Lenape Center reflected on the process:
Tammany Hall is an example of how an architectural firm has, from the beginning, done everything in the best way to bring out a sense of recognition and place of honoring the original people. We’re very happy with the glass turtle dome roof, and it’s rare to have an example in the city of thorough consultation that resulted in something that is really a new landmark.
Tammany Hall, as a political organization, did not care for the well-being of the Lenape, and was using a romanticized notion of a chief. It’s exciting to have an architectural firm realize the misappropriation of this name historically, but also see that there is an opportunity to bring in authentic, legitimate voice and representation into the story. That’s more exciting than a monument — that’s actually creating change.
The same architectural firm, BKSK, has developed a plan for a physical home for the Lenape Center in Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan.
Support the efforts to build a physical home for the Lenape Center and to bring Lenape people home to NYC.
Colgate University is finally complying with the the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act by returning items once buried with ancestral remains including pendants, pots, bells and turtle shell rattles. Some of the 1,500 items are 400 years old and their return is one of the largest single repatriations in New York.
These moves are important. We are all responsible for deepening our understanding of what it means to belong to a place and to acknowledge — with respectful action — the people who were here before we were.
Caring for places — and the people who belong to them — takes many forms. The first principle is to protect the most vulnerable, something the US has repeatedly failed to do.
In 2021, nearly 43,000 people died on American roads, the government estimates. And the recent rise in fatalities has been particularly pronounced among those the government classifies as most vulnerable — cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians.
We have prioritized speed over safety. The rest of the world started to factor pedestrian and cyclist safety into both vehicle design and street design a generation ago.
In 2011, New York State developed a Complete Streets policy to incorporate
roadway design features includ[ing] sidewalks, lane striping, bicycle lanes, paved shoulders suitable for use by bicyclists, signage, crosswalks, pedestrian control signals, bus pull-outs, curb cuts, raised crosswalks, ramps and traffic calming measures.
Unfortunately, the original legislation used an ‘and’ where it should have used an ‘or’. The complete streets principles were only mandated for transportation projects receiving both federal and state funding.
The new law would correct this language to apply to projects receiving funding from either the federal or state government.
Let Governor Hochul know that we’re waiting for her signature on legislation that will fund urban ‘complete streets.’ This quick action is from Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets.
Transportation planning must include safety considerations for everyone, especially those who live near highways and those most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change.
Tell President Biden and Secretary Pete that it’s time to implement the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rule. This action is from the National Campaign for Justice.
Moms Rising is a group that takes on critical issues facing families by educating the public and mobilizing massive grassroots actions. I appreciate their sense of urgency about the legislative opportunities we have between now and January 1.
At the top of their list is restoring the expanded Child Tax Credit. During the pandemic, the Biden Administration seized the opportunity to increase the amount of the benefit and ensure that lower-income families would receive the full amount even if their parents weren’t employed.
The one-year expansion of the credit, which cost about $100 billion, cut child poverty by 36 percent, according to census data. The overall decline in child poverty reached 46 percent, a one-year drop without precedent.
Food insecurity among households with children also reached a record low, the Agriculture Department reported. Surveys have consistently found that the children’s payments reduced food hardship, variously defined, in some cases by 25 percent or more.
Sign the To-Do list for Congress and fight for the expanded Child Tax Credit. This is a quick action from Moms Rising.
with love,
L