October 6th
As difficult as it is to turn away from the national train wreck, we have some important work to do on the state and local level. NY Renews is organizing online lobby efforts and calls to NYS legislators to secure funding for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. You can sign up here to call your legislator; they provide the script.
I wrote a while back about the egregious neglect of detainees in Irwin County, GA. Please sign this petition to ICE and LaSalle Corrections, demanding basic supplies such as clean underwear and PPE.
You may already have seen Cuomo’s announcement that schools in the hot-zone areas identified by the Mayor will close today instead of tomorrow. The Governor expressed concern about inadequate testing (a concern that teachers have been expressing since the summer). Please contact the Mayor, the Governor, and Chancellor Carranza (212) 374-6000) to demand that Covid-testing be expanded to at least half the school population (students and school staff) every two weeks. It is probably too late to prevent the inevitable shut-down of the system as a whole, but it seems worthwhile to make demands for safety, since the schools will reopen eventually.
The NYPD continues to behave as a blunt instrument. Over the weekend, there was an outsize police response to interrupt a love song at an outdoor street concert in Park Slope. Helmeted officers arrived by car with sirens blaring, ordering residents to clear the street. The weekend before, hundreds of police in riot gear surrounded a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington Square Park. These incidents are increasingly the norm in the city. Last week, Human Rights Watch issued a report about the kettling of protesters in the Bronx in June; they concluded that the NYPD’s response to the protest in Mott Haven is part of “an abusive, unaccountable system.” On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio defended Commissioner Dermot Shea, in spite of the report’s finding that he “repeatedly misled the public about the department's unprovoked assault on peaceful protesters in the Bronx.” I am thinking about our next moves in response to this and welcome your input.
with love,
L