Hi friends,
Tomorrow is the last chance to vote in this election season. I had the good fortune to run into Caroline Cohen at the green market at Grand Army Plaza on Sunday. Cohen is running for NYS Supreme Court Judge. Unlike her competitors, she is running only on the Democratic Party line; she has the endorsement of the Lambda Independent Democrats.
As I noted last week, you will see many judges on the ballot who are running simultaneously as Democrats, Republicans, and Conservatives. There is one candidate running as a Republican/Conservative.
Cohen was a civil rights attorney until she was elected to the Civil Court in 2019. As a family court judge, she handles cases that affect some of the most vulnerable people in our city. Her court has been both efficient and fair; none of her rulings have never been successfully appealed.
We can’t let Caroline Cohen be defeated by someone who does not hold progressive values.
Vote only for Caroline Cohen. Do not allow her to lose to a fake Democrat.
Your city council seat may or may not have a competitive race. Vote anyway. I urge you to vote on the Working Families Party line.
The last items on your ballot are two statewide proposals, both of which raise or eliminate debt limits for local governments in NYS to ensure that small school districts and necessary sewer infrastructure are funded adequately.
Vote YES on both proposals. For details, see this excellent article in City & State.
There are intimate connections between local, state, national, and international politics. Were it not for the independent journalists, this stuff would be impossible to track.
There’s a three-ring clusterf*** going on, which you can tell if you open any news source. You won’t, of course, read the same stories with the same emphasis, because algorithms are hard at work keeping us in our own bubbles. Oh wait, it’s not true; we keep ourselves in our own political echo chamber, according to a study in Nature.
Reporting from the bubble of my own making, here are some choice bits:
Considered illegal under international law and by nearly every country in the world apart from the US and Israel, settlements have continued to grow even as international opinion tilts strongly against them. An occupying military force like Israel transferring civilian populations into occupied territory such as the West Bank is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The authors of the article, Ken Klippenstein, Jason Paladino, note that in the past, US administrations have opposed construction for Israeli settlement in Palestine because it makes the hope of a “contiguous Palestinian state impossible.”
Tell the President that it’s not okay to support Israeli settlement in Palestine, indirectly or in any way. He must call for a ceasefire.
Governor Kathy Hochul traveled to Israel in October on the United Jewish Appeal’s dime. The UJA-Federation, a Jewish philanthropy that has a long history of anti-poverty work, is not, however, a benign organization.
Akela Lacy and Chris Gelardi, also of The Intercept, report that
federation chapters have also been accused of sending millions in tax-exempt dollars to organizations that support Israel’s illegal settlement program in the occupied West Bank. According to published reports and an Intercept review of recent tax filings, UJA itself has provided more than half a million dollars since 2018 to groups that support Israeli settlements.
Hochul has returned the funding and her office is now covering the cost of her trip.
Eric Adams returned from DC without making his pitch for additional funds to address the needs of the city’s ballooning population of migrants because he has a political crisis. The home of his chief fund-raiser was raided by the FBI.
Prior to the raid, the fund-raiser got a visit from the NYPD. When asked about it, the mayor said to talk to the NYPD. The NYPD claimed that the FBI asked them to do a wellness check prior to the raid and a journalist from The Messenger quickly blew up that nonsense.
Meanwhile, the mayor has dropped the ball on the problem he told us was destroying our city.
The former president is on the stand, testifying in the civil fraud case against him. The man is nothing if not a sideshow and the judge has threatened to throw him out of court.
If you are a New Yorker, and feeling despair, you need this very special pizza rat video to give you back a sense of pride in your city and a much-needed laugh. My partner has watched the video above multiple times, and it makes him laugh every time. You can watch the video from anywhere.
Hang in there, friends.
with love,
L