Dear friends,
Our Community Free Store was a success — lots of enthusiastic *shoppers* and beautiful clothing finding new bods to wear it! Folks got diapers, school supplies, and food from the KWT fridge, too. The lovely weather and friendly neighbors made it great. Thanks to everyone who came through!
And still it is a bit of a mad Monday. There is infuriating news out of Minnesota: the Indigenous Anishinaabe people have been trying to defend their treaty rights from Enbridge’s Line 3, but the damage to their wild rice lakes is threatening their staple crop. Wild rice is sacred; it is their
physical and spiritual sustenance, as well as a significant source of income.
Water Protectors have put their lives on the line to stop Line 3. The Ojibwe tribe is fighting in Federal Court for jurisdiction over a suit against Enbridge. The complaint is that the company took 5 million gallons of water to which it has no right. Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources gave a permit to Enbridge, and it had no authority to do so because of existing treaties.
The complaint is notable as it is the first enforcement action under a 2018 White Earth Band law establishing the inherent rights of wild rice, the tribe's main treaty food, which grows in water. Manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice, is lead plaintiff in the case.
The tribal court has set an evidentiary hearing [for today] on the White Earth Band's motion for an injunction, which seeks to nullify the DNR water permit.
Meanwhile, Congress is taking up legislation to “strengthen the ability of the state to have a reliable, secure, and resilient energy infrastructure.” This is an insidious bill that would criminalize the Indigenous Water Protectors by funding ‘protection’ of fossil fuel infrastructure.
Tell your Senators to vote NO on HR 1374 and support the Lakota Law Project.
Last week, I mentioned the House Oversight Committee’s formal request for
documents on the reported role of the fossil fuel industry in a long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.
Zealous Observer got excited and drafted testimony for the hearings, where they sincerely hope fossil fuel executives will be subpoenaed to testify. Here’s a sample of the unofficial, written-at-lunchtime, testimony:
Twenty-seven years ago, seven Big Tobacco executives stood up in front of Congress and lied under oath that nicotine is not addictive. Four years later, in a landmark decision called the Master Settlement Agreement, those corporations were forced to pay up for their abuses.
So today, I have hope. because today, the dominoes are all lined up. And you, the House Oversight Committee, have a powerful finger poised to knock over the first one.
This is more than just a birthday gift for my favorite person. Sign this petition to demand that fossil fuel executives testify before Congress.
My other favorite person used to work in the Mayor’s Office of Operations…quite a few mayors ago. Part of his job was to prepare the Mayor’s Management Report, detailing the performance of the city’s many agencies and providing quantitative evidence that “they are delivering services efficiently, effectively and expeditiously.”
City streets — the mayor’s No. 1 priority under his keystone initiative, “Vision Zero,” are less safe as 275 people – including 133 pedestrians – were killed in traffic [collisions], a 30-percent jump over the previous year and the most since 2014.
Meanwhile, the NYPD managed to arrest just 13 drivers for striking pedestrians with their cars, despite recording nearly 1,800 such collisions. And the number of speeding and failure-to-yield summonses issued by cops dropped by more than 27 percent and more than 63 percent, respectively.
If you live in the city, you cannot have failed to notice the lawlessness on the streets. We frequently arrive home with tales of terrifying near-misses. One might be inclined to just wait for the new mayor to take office, but there’s a very real danger of being hit by a car before that happens.
Call on Mayor De Blasio to take action to stop traffic violence!
Unfortunately, the Mayor’s failure to act “efficiently, effectively, and expeditiously” is not limited to street safety. His response to the crisis at Rikers continues to be marked by finger-pointing. Most recently, he has blamed the courts.
But Ms. Clark, the Bronx District Attorney, said the staffing crisis had also exacerbated the backlog of court cases. Without an adequate number of guards, she said, defendants who are being held in the jails are not arriving to court on time, or at all.
Governor Hochul signed the Less is More Act on Friday and announced the release of 191 people from Rikers who were detained for technical parole violations. The governor won praise from Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge of the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society, for taking action to address overpopulation at Rikers.
But Mx. Luongo also said Mr. de Blasio had not done nearly enough to sharply lower the number of detainees at the complex, and urged him to put those serving sentences for low-level crimes on supervised release rather than transferring them to state prison.
“I don’t see that level of crisis intervention leadership from the mayor. There are still things that must be done,” they added. “He has the opportunity to do it right now.”
Tell him again. Let the Mayor know that Rikers is his responsibility and there are lives at stake.
We begin week two of the 2021-22 school year with Manhattan’s PS 79 fully shut down. Both of my friends tested negative after being exposed to colleagues with COVID, but 16 members of PS 79’s staff tested positive.
The city’s vaccination policy for school staff will go to arbitration this week. I’m a little troubled that the UFT is fighting what seems to me a sound policy, especially now that a recent ruling requires the city to “offer non-classroom assignments to teachers who have valid medical or religious reasons to avoid the shots.”
More frequent COVID testing seems to be in order, especially in schools with under-12s and low rates of vaccination among students.
The current testing policy has attracted criticism for being less extensive than the protocol at the end of last school year, which required weekly testing of 20% of all students and staff.
Call on the mayor to restore weekly COVID testing of students and staff.
The NYC Department of Sanitation wrote to me to say that they noticed that I had not yet signed up for composting. At first, I thought they were mistaken. Then I realized that I had signed up to sign up and now I have to actually sign up. Did you sign up?
Please sign up for curbside composting!
I usually stop being angry once I take action. I hope that works for you, too. Have a good day!
with love,
L