Dear friends,
I think the world needs more superheroes right now. Here’s one of my young friends:
Photograph by Thai Sanders
Six weeks of targeted labor action against the auto industry has yielded a victory for the United Auto Workers (UAW). After years of stagnant wages, the new contract — which must be ratified — includes record pay increases. The UAW also secured the right to strike future plant closures.
The contract reverses years of efforts by GM to create lower-paid groups of UAW workers at units such as component plants, parts warehouses and electric vehicle battery operations. It puts workers at GM's battery joint-venture with South Korea's LG Energy under the national agreement.
This was the second really big labor win this month.
Following the largest documented strike of US health care workers, involving more than 75,000 workers, employees of Kaiser Permanente are voting on a new contract. The contract includes wage increases of 21 percent, increases for overnight shift work, and restrictions on the health care giant’s ability to outsource or subcontract union jobs.
At the beginning of the pandemic, folks loved to talk about the heroism of health care workers. It is great to see them receiving fair pay and better treatment.
Arizona’s Native Health, which provides primary medical, dental and behavioral health care to Indigenous people in Phoenix, living in urban settings, is now a voter registration agency, too. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes made the designation earlier this month to address some of the obstacles that Indigenous people face when trying to register.
New anti-Frankensteining regulations in NYS will affect about one million rent-regulated apartments in NYC. Frankensteining is the practice of knocking down walls between apartments to make one big apartment that is not subject to rent restrictions.
Now, the legal rent will be calculated based on the rent of the two prior apartments combined.
This should eliminate the incentive for landlords to warehouse empty apartments in order to await opportunities to create monster apartments for the rich.
The Champlain Valley School District in Vermont codified protections for transgender students, including:
A right to have their name and pronouns used by school staff without requiring a court order or legal name change.
A right for students input on parental notification and no mandatory outing of students to unaccepting parents.
A right to access the bathroom of their gender identity that goes above and beyond the state’s guidelines.
A right to participation in sports that allows students to compete in accordance with their gender identity.
The new policies passed unanimously and formalize existing practices that make school less scary for trans students.
The Biden Administration’s executive order on AI is a worthy step forward for transparency.
The White House’s executive order requires the Department of Commerce to develop guidance for labeling AI-generated content. AI companies will use this guidance to develop labeling and watermarking tools that the White House hopes federal agencies will adopt. “Federal agencies will use these tools to make it easy for Americans to know that the communications they receive from their government are authentic—and set an example for the private sector and governments around the world,” according to a fact sheet that the White House shared over the weekend.
The hope is that labeling the origins of text, audio, and visual content will make it easier for us to know what’s been created using AI online.
The internet has become a scarier place, and this is may afford some protection from deep fakes.
I’ll leave you with something I saw in my Instagram feed, just before I powered down to read my book last night.
On IG, I follow many artists, musicians, and poets, along with some comedians, librarians, farmers, and people who post charming videos of children. There’s a little politics in there. It is mostly a safe space for me.
I came cross this poem, Gate A-4, by Naomi Shihab Nye. This poem is the antidote to the last few weeks we’ve had.
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
Artists are another kind of superhero. If you find some at your door, give them cookies.
with love,
L