Hi friends,
We have achieved Friday. I refused to engage this week with the question of whether the Republicans were really going to burn it all down by refusing to fund the government. Luckily, I saved some energy for things that require my attention, and I hope you did, too.
Yesterday was the first day in well over a week that Covid deaths have fallen below 2000 in the United States. Mandates appear to be having the desired effect; workers are getting their shots, however belatedly and reluctantly. This is not tyranny; it is an urgent public health imperative.
At Genesis HealthCare, which operates long-term-care facilities in 23 states, Covid cases fell by nearly 50 percent after nearly all staff members had finished receiving shots this summer.
Still, there are problem areas. SUNY Downstate is seeing staffing shortages that existed before the mandate reach levels that necessitate the cancellation of surgeries and delays in other care.
So far, many New York hospitals say the fallout from the vaccine mandate has been manageable, with staff continuing to take advantage of the grace period afforded by their employers to get a shot and avoid losing their jobs.
In places where health care workers have been suspended, a significant number have then gotten their first shot in order to be reinstated. This is the proper use of government authority.
The abdication of authority that has led to the crisis at Rikers is squarely on the mayor’s shoulders. As you may recall, the mayor stated that the purpose of his recent visit was
focused on improving health care at Rikers Island and speeding up the intake process.
Nine hundred people in one of the two facilities the mayor visited are locked down because of exposure to COVID. Somehow, the mayor failed to share this information, even though the mandatory quarantine was in effect during his visit.
A spokesperson for Correctional Health Services explained that the staffing crisis that has slowed the intake process also undermined the COVID containment strategy and contributed to the first quarantine of an entire facility since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Multiple patients who tested positive at intake potentially infected many other patients who were waiting to be seen and/or housed.”
By mid-September, just 41.3 percent of people detained at Rikers had gotten one shot of the vaccine; vaccination rates for DOC staff were still under 50 percent last Friday, even counting those staffers who had received a single shot.
As of Wednesday, more than 20% of detainees in the 6,000-person jail complex were under quarantine for “likely exposure” to the virus.
It is past time for the mayor to use his authority to take action.
Tell the mayor that he has a duty to grant immediate release to everyone being held on bail who is not currently quarantined. The ready-made message reflects recent developments.
The governor’s order to allow more virtual hearings has failed to address the problem of getting folks to court, because the quarantine means they cannot even be transported to the rooms with video access.
Governor Hochul is resisting pressure from state legislators to do more, arguing that she has done her part by signing the Less is More Act and releasing 201 people who were eligible for immediate release. Legislators are calling for her to speed the timeline.
She said lawmakers would have to return to Albany to amend the timing of the law if they want to see immediate action.
I don’t think getting the leadership to call the legislature back into session is realistic right now, which is why we’re focusing on the mayor.
A data leak seems to link at least two active-duty NYPD officers to the Oath Keepers, the far-right extremist group linked to the January 6 insurrection. I wish I were shocked by this.
This week, in Long Beach, California, a school “safety” officer shot a young woman a block away from a high school. Everything is wrong with this story. Why was the officer armed? Why did he shoot at someone in a moving vehicle? Why is the young woman now on life support, with little chance of recovery?
The larger context of these stories is that police violence is egregious, racialized, and underreported.
Research at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that in the US between 1980 and 2018, more than 55% of deaths, over 17,000 in total, from police violence were either misclassified or went unreported.
The study also discovered that Black Americans are more likely than any other group to die from police violence and are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.
Commit these statistics to memory and share them whenever you encounter people who doubt the necessity of the Black Lives Matter movement and the call to defund police.
Support the Movement For Black Lives Fund.
While I have been trying to maintain a healthy detachment from the dysfunction in Congress, it is undeniable that we need them to act on our behalf. This is the bedrock principle of representative government. Jamelle Bouie gets the first and last word about the filibuster this morning.
The other related story that we ignore at our peril is the persistent threat to voting rights. A new report from Voting Rights Lab spells out what’s going on:
In this climate of distrust, a quiet but deeply disturbing legislative trend has emerged – one that threatens not just voter access but the most elemental foundations of our democracy: bills shifting the allocation of power in election administration to partisan actors, criminalizing non-partisan elections administrators and initiating sham election reviews to instill further doubt in elections.
My inbox has been filling with donation requests for candidates running against state legislators who must be punished at the ballot box for their role in undermining election integrity and voting rights. Last year, I was donating liberally to candidates. This year, I am primarily focused on supporting the groups on the ground that are doing the voter education and engagement work that will build democracy from the ground up.
Support Fair Fight Action.
It has taken a while for me to own the title of organizer. Luckily, someone who believes in me sent me the job listing for my new position:
The 92nd Street Y has hired me for a ‘residency’ to teach Civics and Grassroots Activism as a teaching artist in two NYC public middle schools (no, I don’t have to sleep under the desks). This is the planning phase and I start teaching on 10/13. I am excited to go back into classrooms to work with young people and can’t wait to tell you what I learn from them!
Today’s post will be my last Friday edition until December, owing to the new gig. Work from home for justice will still reach your inbox on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Thank you for supporting this work in the only the way that matters — action!
Have a great weekend!
with love,
L