Hi friends,
This week seems to be flying by. The good news out of California — the decisive defeat of the recall of Gavin Newsom — is most welcome. Newsom explained that the no vote was actually an affirmation of democratic values.
We said yes to people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental, constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body and her fate and future. We said yes to diversity. We said yes to inclusion. We said yes to pluralism. We said yes to all those things that we hold dear as Californians, and I would argue, as Americans: economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice.
The decision to cast the recall decision in starkly partisan terms was pretty smart, in my view. The sharp partisan divisions were also reflected in the Latino vote, which may have been the key to Newsom’s success.
Exit polling suggests that Latinos made up roughly 24 percent of all voters in the recall, and that about 60 percent of those Latino voters favored keeping the governor in office.
But early precinct analysis suggests the level of support for Mr. Newsom was likely much higher among Latinos.
One hopes that support will be reflected in attention to the political demands of Latinx communities. But one tries not to be naive.
We are back to the core democratic concerns of voting and meaningful representation. A team in the Senate, including Joe Manchin, Raphael Warnock, Amy Klobuchar, and Chuck Schumer, have crafted a new piece of voting rights legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act. (I recognize the irony of discussing the US Senate in a paragraph about democratic representation.)
The new bill is worthwhile, in spite of its smaller scope. First of all, it contains an explicit right to vote in federal elections. It places restrictions on partisan gerrymandering and relies on judicial review — in a single US District Court — to secure voting rights from regressive state legislation that makes voting more difficult.
McConnell has already rejected the bill, so the Senate may still have to make an exception to the filibuster to get the bill passed. I am way out of patience with the filibuster as an obstacle to securing voting rights. Don’t get me started on McConnell.
This might help you to channel your rage against McConnell (or to laugh).
Here in New York, it’s the season of contentious mapmaking. We lost a Congressional seat based on the 2020 Census figures and the bipartisan commission that was supposed to produce nonpartisan district maps instead of gerrymandered districts, has been unable to reach agreement. The result? Two sets of maps.
The New York maps will have national impact as Democrats scramble to hang onto their super-narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. As states with Republican legislatures around the country redraw maps to benefit their party, all eyes are turning to New York to see whether state Democrats will change the maps to work in their favor, despite sweeping reforms approved by voters in 2014 to prevent partisan gerrymandering.
This is one of those moments when it is difficult to be a person of principle. The Governor favors a realpolitik approach; she wants to secure the largest possible share of Democratic seats. There will be public hearings to discuss the draft maps. I’d love to know if you think we should take the high road or play partisan hardball. I’m not even clear how a federal law clears this up if our own bipartisan commission can’t function.
It’s time to revisit some issues that badly need our attention:
The crisis on Rikers Island has only grown worse. Staffing shortages continue to manifest extremely dangerous conditions for residents and Corrections staff. A group of public officials who visited the facilities this week witnessed an attempted suicide, and incidences of self-harm are increasing. Those who are incarcerated are unable to get medical care or even to make court appearances.
Call on Governor Hochul to sign the Less Is More Act to reduce incarceration because of technical parole violations.
“Carceral congregate settings are not a healthy place to be, period, much less in a time of a pandemic,” [Patsy Yang, Senior Vice President for Correctional Health Services] told the council members.
Correctional Health Services data shows that as of Monday medical authorities knew of at least 67 patients in the jails with active [COVID] infections.
At the city council hearing on Wednesday, elected officials pressed the de Blasio administration to grant work release en masse for detainees serving misdemeanor sentences.
About one-quarter of the jail population — almost 1500 people — are locked up for non-violent criminal charges and misdemeanors.
Call on Mayor De Blasio to grant immediate release to those in jail for non-violent criminal charges and misdemeanors. Here’s a ready-made message.
A recent survey of the deliveristas who 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.
My finger is seldom on the pulse of popular culture, but I did catch wind of the controversy over a new reality TV show called The Activist. A British activist, Gina Martin, captured my own thinking on this astonishingly dumb concept:
“1. Why the hell are they judging this 2. Why the hell is there a TV show that turns activism into a competition when the whole *essence* of activism is solidarity and community,” she added.
If you’d like gather with good people to get your hands dirty in the campaign for clean energy, join the No North Brooklyn Pipeline Coalition for an art build on Saturday in Bushwick.
Register to paint and design colorful banners and signs, and help spread the word that we won't pay to be poisoned!
No time to paint? Make sure you’ve voiced your support for the Climate and Community Investment Act.
Use this ready-made action to call on the governor to support climate action and to create good green jobs.
Finally, sometimes you know how good an idea is when you see who’s trying to shoot it down. I read this bizarre piece about how working class people don’t want the Child Tax Credit because
They want to feel that their benefits were earned.
This drivel comes from a guy who works at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, which “works closely with parents and other culture-makers to apply the truth in daily life.” That’s the Judeo-Christian truth.
The piece includes a quote from a woman who is upset that she earned too much for her child to qualify for Head Start. She concludes that
“it seems like the people who are not working seem like they’re better off, because they get all the assistance.”
Without getting into why it seems that way, let’s talk about the truth: endless means-testing breeds resentment and self-hatred. The best public programs are widely available, like Universal Pre-K, Social Security, Medicare, AND the Child Tax Credit. The temporarily increased child tax credit applies to families with as much as $150,000 annual income and the regular credit doesn’t begin to phase out until income exceeds $200,000 for a single parent or $400,000 for married couples filing jointly.
Need I point out that the people raising children are performing work for the whole society? Those children will be caring for us, if we’re lucky.
Let your Congressional delegation know that you support a permanent extension of the Child Tax Credit. This is a ready-made action!
Have a great day!
with love,
L
Absolutely, we need federal legislation to make election rules the same across all the states.
Democrats have crafted that legislation. They have litigated in favor of that legislation. Republican elected officials have refused to enact it, and Republican judges have struck it down. The rules of the game now permit partisan gerrymandering.
It is not unprincipled to play by the rules of the game.
Analogies are seldom truly on point, but I offer one anyway: I think resolving soccer matches with penalty kicks is stupid and favors teams with the best goalie, and if I were a stakeholder in a soccer league I would lobby strongly to change the rule to allow sudden death overtime until a match is resolved. But if I lost the argument, I would then try to find the best goalie I could, even if it meant having a weaker offensive line. Just because I disagreed with the rule and thought it unfair doesn't mean I wouldn't try to play by it.
Congress is a national body, and if the Republican party has decided it can maintain control of it by gerrymandering red states, blue states need to preserve the balance.
I would submit, as per your column today (9/16/21), that it is disingenuous to suddenly question the need for legislation/regulation outlawing gerrymandering in legislative district allocation just because it's quite possible that one's own party will be able to take good advantage of it in a state such as New York. And this is even with recognizing that gerrymandering is a far bigger problem in red/purple states than in most blue ones (with the possible exception of Maryland), and even with recognizing the folly of "unilateral disarmament".
The bigger issue, though, is still what leads to this in the first place--the capture of our election cycles, by way of Citizens United and other legal decisions, by the hyper-rich oligarchs, whatever political viewpoint they profess.
The reform that makes all others possible: full public funding of election campaigns, with no organizational contributions (be they corporate, labor, religious, or five-oh-whatever) allowed, and a low three-digit limit on individual contributions per contest. (And we need a lot stricter regulation of lobbyists as well.)
Because representatives need to represent more people than just electoral contributors.