Dear friends,
School started yesterday! Attendance was 82.4 percent; if my math is right, that means there were more than twice as many children at school in NYC yesterday than any day last year. There were hugs, fist bumps, first day nerves and COVID anxiety. This reopening is a massive achievement, which is not to say it was perfect.
Check out Chalkbeat’s coverage for details on classroom closings, the city’s health portal, and other challenges.
I collected some reports from the field, including some breathless-but-exuberant updates from two freshly-minted public school teachers from NYU’s program. Two close friends of mine who work in different schools had to get COVID tests after learning that colleagues (one vaccinated, one not) had tested positive over the weekend.
Two young friends rode the subway to school for the first time since March 2020. They made it!
Things were chaotic. Alex, grade 4, reported “Nobody knows what they’re doing.” Another friend forwarded an apology text from her kid’s high school, which noted that
Student schedules were in too many cases incomplete and inaccurate.
As a veteran of the system, I can say that first days can be like this. We’re back, baby!
The program has not been perfect, but the state has been working with advocates like Make the Road NY to smooth out the problems some applicants have experienced. We campaigned for the creation of this $2.1 billion fund and it’s good to know that the funds are getting to people who need them.
A recent survey of the deliveristas who risk life and limb to bring food to people’s doors shows that worker protections for this all-immigrant workforce are much needed. Excluded workers are often excluded from things we take for granted, like access to bathrooms.
Contact your council member to support legislation to protect basic rights of workers. Here’s a ready-made message.
First the waste is sorted to remove rubble and metal. Then the plastic is baked. Then the boiling mixture is molded into building blocks. She can now churn out as many as 2,000 a day.
[H]er bricks are 35% cheaper than standard bricks, and they’re up to seven-times stronger. So far, Nzambi’s bricks are only being used for pathways in small households. But her plan is to target big construction companies.
I’m not expecting technological fixes for all of the complex problems wrought by the fossil fuel industry. Still, it’s exciting to know that Iceland has built a giant facility designed to capture carbon.
Human-sized fans are built into a series of boxes that are the size of standard 40-foot shipping containers. They sip carbon dioxide out of the air, catching it in spongelike filters. The filters are blasted with heat, about the same temperature needed to boil water, freeing the gas. Then it is mixed with water and pumped deep into underground basalt caverns, where over time it cools down and turns into dark-gray stone.
The process is pricey and the capacity is relatively small, compared to the problem, but there’s reason to hope it could be part of the solution to an overheated planet.
Perhaps more hopeful is that Indigenous people are now getting a meaningful voice in the international conversation about how to save the planet.
Indigenous groups won backing for a motion to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025.
In the Marseille manifesto, the summit’s main outcome document, IUCN members recognised and supported indigenous peoples’ rights and roles “as leaders and custodians of biodiversity.”
There’s been a lot of pro-choice action in the wake of the passage of the restrictive Texas law. Governor Hochul and Senator Gillibrand announced a new initiative in NYS to
to affirm abortion rights and cement New York's status as a place to welcome women seeking abortion care.
Maybe that’s what’s behind the uptick in NYC tourism reported in Crain’s. But I can’t say for sure, since it’s behind a paywall.
Sarah Palin mocked AOC on Twitter for referring to menstruating people and called her a “fake feminist.” With her customary flair, AOC clapped back.
Ocasio-Cortez responded to Palin with a video sarcastically advising the former Alaska governor to call the hotline "1-800-CRY-NOW." The congresswoman later announced she set up a website of the same name that acts as a donation page to abortion providers.
Donations came into the site from 4,000 people (unclear if they were menstruating at the time), bringing AOC’s total fundraising since September 1 to around $300,000. The funds are going to a variety of groups working on abortion access, including Texas Equal Access Fund and Whole Woman's Health Alliance.
A group called WeTestify is collecting abortion stories,
to change the conversation about who has abortions and why, and to address abortion stigma in our communities.
Join WeTestify to call on the president and his spokespeople to use the word abortion. If you’re not sure why this is important, click on the link!
Images and words have power. Virginia removed the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from its state capital last week. Check out AOC’s dress for Met Gala.
Have a great day!
with love,
L