Dear friends,
Today is the first day of school for students in New York City public schools. I don’t expect that it will ever stop feeling like a special day to me. It is a day full of expectations, excitement, jangled nerves, new haircuts, friendly faces, and possibilities.
It’s been a rough couple of years to be a child. One of the good things that came out of year two of the pandemic was a dramatic increase in the Child Tax Credit, which helped to relieve food insecurity and reduce financial instability. There’s a move in Congress to extend the expanded Child Tax Credit for at least four years, which would dramatically reduce child poverty.
Let your Congressional delegation know that you support a permanent extension of the Child Tax Credit. This is a ready-made action!
Members of Congress are also back at their desks. They did not finish their summer homework. As they cram to draft the monster reconciliation bill, they will need some whimsy. Draft a child (or anyone who likes to color) into this fun action to call attention to the need for big investments in child care:
Print and color this page to call on Congress to invest in childcare infrastructure. There are instructions about where to mail, email, and/or tweet your finished page.
Okay, no more time for whimsy. Today, there’s a 5 PM deadline for public comments on the Astoria Power Plant. After today, it won’t matter what we think about the construction of a new fracked-gas plant because decision-makers at the state level are going to decide, one way or the other.
Use the ready-made comments and links to weigh in to stop the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. If you’ve made all four comments, make one more brief comment, from the heart.
A second urgent matter is that Dr. Ruth Etzel’s hearing before the US Merit Systems Protection Board begins today. Dr. Etzel, a global expert on children’s health, is one of five EPA scientists who have alleged that because the agency is corrupted by corporate influence, it has failed to protect the public.
At the EPA, Etzel helped launch an initiative to accelerate the reduction of childhood exposure to lead from sources in air, water, soil, paint and food. The federal lead strategy stalled, Etzel alleges, after the 2016 election of Donald Trump when the EPA came under the direction of administrator Andrew Wheeler.
In short, Dr. Etzel is a whistleblower who claims that “irreparable harm” is being done to children because of the agency’s dysfunction. According to her lawyer,
the EPA still has not taken action to implement the lead protection strategy, and has acknowledged the “libelous claims” against Etzel were not substantiated.
Call on the president to reinstate Etzel to her position and take immediate steps to enact her lead protection strategy and address the corruption of the EPA by corporate influence.
Whenever I feel overwhelmed (which is more often than I care to admit), I look out at the horizon. It worked when I got nauseated in the backseat as a kid and it still helps. For those of you who need a longer view, it’s a good time to work on gubernatorial elections.
Trump and his followers are already anticipating defeat in their effort to unseat Gavin Newsom in California and calling it a stolen election. There are statewide elections in Virginia and New Jersey, too, and the strategy is to keep Democratic voters attending to Trump because the coup is ongoing. (Sorry, that last bit is not going to help with the nausea.)
Sign on with Vote Forward to write letters to Virginia voters.
Remember, it’s the first day of school and full of possibilities. We could stop construction of the Astoria Power Plant and protect children from lead poisoning! Sharpen your pencils and get Congress to invest in child care.
Have a good day!
with love,
L