September 25th
Well, folks, Lena has set me up with a more professional look. I’m a little intimidated, but I’m hoping to grow into it. For those of you inclined to skim for actions, I’m switching to bold text to indicate what you can do.
Once again, it’s been a long, difficult week.
On the schools front, NYC teachers and school administrators are reporting crippling tech problems and slow responses from the DOE’s tech support. This is yet another long-standing problem that has been highlighted by the pandemic: few schools have in-house tech support staff. This is just one more thing teachers are expected to figure out. In the context of the pandemic, when public libraries are closed and students cannot simply stay late at school to use a computer, it is another justice issue, because it is lower-income families who rely on the DOE-issued hardware. I read today that Google is facing multiple anti-trust lawsuits that have ended the company’s ‘unexamined life’. If you are a Twitter user, please tweet @sundarpichai (CEO of Google) to ask him to offer free, fast tech support to NYC schools and families. Free tech support will not leave a lasting legacy on a par with Carnegie libraries, but if I were a robber baron, I would snap up this opportunity to polish my company’s image and to help New York’s children, our greatest asset. Google was not one of the companies that signed on to the recent letter to De Blasio to scold him about the state of the city; the company could set an example for other corporate leaders who want to “advise and support” a restoration of the city’s essential services.
The President has again said that we’ll have to wait and see if he will commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. Reassurances from the likes of Mitch McConnell are not reassuring. Electioneering at the entrances of polling places, by the devotees of the self-proclaimed ‘law and order’ candidate has already created an intimidating environment for early voters. The so-called Brooks Brothers riot in 2000, during which men dressed in suits violently disrupted vote recounts in Florida, now seems almost quaint; the preponderance of armed right-wing terrorists, in some cases working in concert with local police, is truly terrifying. Armed pro-Trump thugs plotted violence against activists at Portland BLM rallies; the evidence is in leaked logs from online GroupMe chats.
It is time to educate ourselves. The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection has prepared Fact Sheets on state laws concerning militias (I prefer the term terrorist groups) for all of the 50 states. Here is the Fact Sheet for NY. Each sheet includes detailed guidelines for what to do if you see armed groups near a polling place or voter registration drive. Access the fact sheet for any state here.
Your treat for this week is a recent program from Brooklyn Historical Society that you may have missed: Women + Power: Electoral Power, a conversation between voting rights activist Stacey Abrams and Raquel Willis, Communications Director of the Ms. Foundation. Watch it!
Stay focused and stay healthy.
with love,
L