Dear friends,
There is some lingering naivete that made the Republicans’ move to block a Senate vote on the Freedom to Vote Act feel like a fresh slap in the face. The reasoning part of me fully expected this move; the Republicans know that if voting rights are secured against suppression and partisan interference, they will not be able to win elections. Clearly, the filibuster has to go.
Make the calls. Let your senators know that voting rights are not negotiable. Pass this action on to friends in other states.
The move in the Senate followed the approval of Texas’s redistricting maps on Monday night, which are already the subject of a lawsuit that
alleges that Republican mapmakers diluted the political strength of minority voters by not drawing any new districts where Latino residents hold a majority, despite Latinos making up half of Texas’ 4 million new residents over the last decade.
Texas has been routinely dragged into court for decades over voting maps, and in 2017, a federal court found that a Republican-drawn map was drawn to intentionally discriminate against minority voters. But two years later, that same court said there was insufficient reason to take the extraordinary step of putting Texas back under federal supervision before changing voting laws or maps.
The urgency of passing the Freedom to Vote Act is palpable, as lines are being redrawn in every state. A while back, I asked you how you felt about Governor Hochul’s realpolitik approach; she wants to secure the largest possible share of Democratic seats in NY, even if it means ignoring our commitment to reject partisan gerrymandering.
My question was, should we take the high road or play partisan hardball? The two thoughtful responses I got took opposing positions. It’s pretty clear, however, that if everyone plays hardball, voters get hurt. We need to stop the madness that has resulted in so little representation of so many people.
Make sure you know what’s in the Freedom to Vote Act. We are likely to have to go into the streets in large numbers to get this bill passed.
As a reminder of what’s at stake, Republicans continue to deny the legitimacy of the current president. Steve Bannon has refused to comply with a Congressional subpoena to testify to the January 6th committee. The House is voting this afternoon on whether to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress.
Call on your representative to vote to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress.
A man who was held on the communicable disease ward at Rikers Island while he had COVID brought a suit against the Department of Corrections, alleging that he was sexually assaulted by a corrections officer. As you may recall, another man died last week of COVID that he contracted while at Rikers.
Although the mayor announced a vaccine mandate for all city employees yesterday, there is an exception being made for the Department of Corrections because of the current staffing crisis. Uniformed officers will have until December 1 to receive their first shot.
Amid surging coronavirus cases within the city's main jail complex on Rikers Island, only half of those working in the city's Department of Correction (DOC) have been immunized—the poorest vaccination rate of any city agency. Civilian DOC employees and its uniformed members working in healthcare settings must also immediately comply with the mandate.
DOC officers should be held to the same November 1 deadline. These are unionized public employees, refusing to protect themselves and their charges — and in some cases, abusing their unlimited sick time and failing to even call in sick. These abuses are making the dire situation on the island even more dangerous, and this requires a reckoning sooner rather than later.
It is unlikely that suspending non-compliant workers without pay for failing to get a vaccination will have a significant effect on attendance. The mayor needs to stop kicking the can down the road.
The city task force on transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary and intersex individuals wants to put a stop to the initiative. They say the decision to move the inmates to upstate correctional facilities puts their safety at risk.
The alternative proposed by the task force is to release “vulnerable populations.” It would seem that any woman, whether or not she is trans, who has not been convicted of a crime, would be part of a vulnerable population in a prison.
Tell the mayor and the governor (again!) to take immediate action to release people from Rikers. The messages have been updated (again!) to reflect new developments.
Earlier this week, I mentioned the tens of thousands of workers on strike around the country. As Robert Reich and Paul Krugman have noted, there is a different feeling among workers these days.
Reich has noted that millions of workers have been quitting their jobs each month, and that this has been going on for months. Krugman has called it the “Great Resignation”:
What seems to be happening is that the pandemic led many U.S. workers to rethink their lives and ask whether it was worth staying in the lousy jobs too many of them had.
Both economists have dismissed the idea that the labor shortages are due to excessive unemployment benefits, as the right would have us believe. They note that employers are offering better pay, which is as it should be. Reich has considered that we may be looking at
an unofficial general strike.
Worker exploitation is a regular feature of capitalism. Young workers are often the most vulnerable, and the problem may begin before workers even collect their first paycheck.
Sign this petition to colleges and universities demanding an end to double-charging students for credits accrued through internships.
Correction: On Tuesday I wrote that the former president had planned to appoint his daughter, Ivanka as the head of the World Bank. Then, I misidentified the actual head of the World Bank. He is David Malpass, not Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell is the chair of the Federal Reserve.
Elizabeth Warren wants Biden to replace Powell as Fed chair; last month she called him “a dangerous man.” Powell has weakened the rules against speculation, permitted the creation and growth of big banking institutions, and allowed the restraints that protect banks in times of crisis to be loosened. I don’t understand banking well, but Warren does, and I trust her.
Call on Biden to replace Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve.
Below is some unfinished business. That’s my personal theme today, as my to-do list is overflowing with things I should already have done. And here I am, posting mid-morning. Yup, I’m already hours behind. Ah, well. I did all six actions above and I am now gently prodding you into action.
Call on your senators to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity. Here’s a ready-made message. Pass this on to friends in every state!
Another front in the battle against fossil fuel projects is to stop the folks who fund them. I was not the only one who forgot to call Citibank’s CEO last week.
Call Citibank’s CEO and tell her to Defund Climate Chaos. There’s a script!
Use tomorrow to catch up on anything you don’t get to today. Then, enjoy the weekend!
with love,
L