Dear friends,
It’s a big day. Fossil fuel execs are going to Congress, most likely to lie about what they knew about the damage they’ve been doing to the climate, the earth, and every living thing. If they tell the truth, they’re liable for damages, and if they lie, they will have other legal problems. In any case, this is a good thing. A reckoning is coming.
Read this Op-Ed about the ‘Slippery Six’ fossil fuel corporations, authored by a team that includes my own springling!
Guess what?! We stopped the Astoria power plant!
This decision comes after a three-months-long public process; in July the Department of Environmental Conservation asked New Yorkers to weigh in on NRG's plan in a series of public hearings and written letters, which elicited an onslaught of mostly negative comments.
Join the Bronx Peace Poets in song to celebrate.
Thank the governor for standing on the right side of history and with front line communities by refusing permits to the Astoria power plant.
Celebrate with a little bit more climate 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!
Stop the folks who fund fossil fuel projects. I finally made the call to Citibank’s CEO and was really happy to leave my message.
Call Citibank’s CEO and tell her to Defund Climate Chaos. There’s a script!
There is ongoing debate about the big reconciliation bill, which was on my mind as I spent some quality time this week with my mom and one of the extraordinary women who cares for her in her home.
My obsession with the issue of accessible home care for older people and those with disabilities is personal. Were it not for the women who care for my mother and the resources to pay them a fair wage in a competitive labor market, my life would be completely upended.
This is the reality for millions of Americans; people — usually women — must leave the work they do in the field of their choice to provide care for family members. We need a system, including paid family leave for emergencies.
Contact your congressional delegation about the importance of the care agenda.
This week, Rashad Robinson, leader of Color of Change, and Nick Turner, director of the Vera Institute of Justice called on the city’s DAs to do what the mayor has refused to do: release people who are jailed if they are charged with non-violent crimes.
Just last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, the city’s five district attorneys — in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island — consented to the release of 1,500 people from Rikers to stem the spread of COVID-19. This measure was consistent with not only public health but also public safety.
The district attorneys have the power to do this again right now. Today, we are calling on the five DAs to use their power to act now and safely decarcerate Rikers Island by adopting three commonsense measures:
Release everyone in jail facing low-level and nonviolent charges. Rely on the city’s extensive network of community-based service providers and alternatives to incarceration to individually review and consider release for everyone else. And stop requesting bail amounts beyond what most New Yorkers can afford.
Write to the city’s DAs and ask them to take immediate action to call for the release people from Rikers and reduce bail. A sample message is included.
Women who work at Rikers have come forward to speak about sexual assaults they have suffered at the hands of those who are incarcerated. This is plainly unacceptable.
On Monday, City Councilwoman Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) will join union leaders at a press conference to call for stepped-up penalties to deter the attacks on COs, 48 percent of whom are women.
I’m not optimistic that greater penalties will deter this behavior in the larger context of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions. I am not recommending action at this time.
Meanwhile…my anxiety over the failure to pass the Freedom to Vote Act is escalating.
Make the calls (again!). Let your senators know that voting rights are not negotiable. Pass this action on to friends in other states.
Voting rights are on the ballot this week in NYS. There are five ballot measures in total, and my quick advice is to
Vote YES on all five NYS ballot measures.
If you’d like more discussion, keep reading!
The first ballot question is about redistricting and is the most controversial.
There are more than a dozen individual changes to the constitution wrapped up in Proposal 1, but voters must vote yes or no on them all together. Here are the top changes, according to experts:
Cap the total number of state senators at 63
Require that incarcerated people be counted at the address where they lived before going to jail or prison for the purposes of redistricting — not where they are being detained
Move up the timeline by two weeks for when redistricting plans must be submitted to the legislature
Change the vote total needed to adopt redistricting plans when one political party controls both legislative houses
I strongly favor the second and third points above; incarcerated people should still be regarded as members of their own community AND the timeline for submitting redistricting plans is a practical administrative matter.
The state senator cap prevents the creation of new districts; it isn’t clear to me why this is necessary, but supposedly it prevents the creation of districts for partisan purposes. It makes even less sense to me when I consider the final bullet point.
Changing the vote total for redistricting is a bit problematic because it would eliminate the requirement that two-thirds of each house approve redistricting maps when both houses are controlled by one party, as they are now. Partisan gerrymandering is an objectively bad thing; though Democrats have supermajorities in both the Assembly and the Senate, this bothers me on principle.
New York Common Cause and New York Public Interest Research Group called it an imperfect but necessary change. The League of Women Voters of New York State wants voters to reject the proposal [because it] “would weaken the role of the minority party.”
And there you have the exhausting question 1. I’m going with YES unless one of you persuades me to do otherwise.
Ballot measures 3 and 4 are related to voting. In short, they remove the law preventing voter registration in the ten days prior to an election and allow for no-excuse absentee voting. These are good things.
Ballot measure 2 is my favorite: it would alter the state constitution to include this:
“Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
Maybe we won’t have to whack every mole (fight every polluting project to its death).
The final measure would allow New York City’s Civil Court to hear cases for claims up to $50,000, twice the current limit. This will relieve pressure on the State Supreme Court.
To find your early voting location, check here. Here is the League of Women Voters election guide.
Do you feel like a winner? You should, because we whacked that mole in Astoria.
And finally, here’s a nice weekend event about the urban environment: Stanley Greenberg will talk about his newest book with Eric Sanderson at Rizzoli Bookstore tomorrow at 6 PM.
with love,
L