Dear friends,
A panel of three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of Education’s vaccine mandate can be enforced, effective immediately. While it remains unclear whether this will result in staffing issues, the ruling is an encouraging and important development.
The New York state’s vaccine mandate went into effect and led thousands of health care workers in hospitals and nursing homes to get their first shots ahead of last night’s deadline. Both hospitals and nursing homes reported that 92 percent of their workers had at least one shot.
It is possible to have mandates as well as compassion for those who are frightened of vaccines, however frustrating and mystifying we may find their fears. Still, we need the mandates to move people to action.
Mayor De Blasio finally visited Rikers island yesterday, for the first time since 2017. This is good news because the pressure is increasing on the mayor to address the crisis at Rikers. We know what it takes to set him in motion.
The mayor also received a letter from Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, on behalf of the House Oversight Committee. The are demanding a report on conditions by Monday, October 4 from the Department of Corrections commissioner, Vincent Schiraldi.
The letter also called on the mayor to release low-level offenders into supervised programs in order to address overcrowding at the jail complex, which is under the control of New York City officials and where about 5,000 people were being held as of [yesterday].
Keep the pressure on. Tell the mayor that people eligible for bail should be released. The ready-made message is updated each day!
At the beginning of the pandemic, prosecutors in NYC looked for ways to send fewer people to jails. Even then, they knew that congregate settings are the most dangerous place to be during a pandemic.
They requested bail less often and supported early releases, contributing to a 30% drop in the jail population.
“We did it, in large numbers,” City Council candidate and former Queens District Attorney candidate and public defender Tiffany Caban told New York Focus. “In 21 days, they managed to release over 1,200 folks.”
But in the season of Delta, prosecutors request bail and judges set bail at astonishingly high rates. In mid-September, DOC Commissioner Schiraldi
pleaded with the city’s DAs to use supervised release for individuals awaiting trial rather than increasing the population of pretrial detainees at Rikers Island.
“Sending any person, any friend, neighbor, father, mother, son, brother, to jail right now is a potential death sentence, and we demand that it stop,” said Amanda Jack, a public defender and activist with the Five Borough Defenders coalition, which helped lead a protest outside of the Manhattan criminal court.
Advocates and activists used new analysis that identified the ten criminal court judges who remand folks to jail and set bail at the highest rates. I’m keeping that list handy for upcoming elections.
There are people who belong in prison, however. R Kelly was convicted on racketeering and eight sex trafficking charges after years of sadistic and controlling behavior that enabled him to torment and abuse multiple people.
The shocking testimony in the trial — even after much of Kelly’s egregious behavior was common knowledge in the music world — confirmed the portrait painted in the 2019 documentary Surviving R Kelly. Kelly will be sentenced in May. He is facing additional charges in two states.
Last week, I mentioned the free store that we set up on E. 2nd Street for a day. All the things we collected that no one took went to the Gowanus Free Store, which is an on-going operation. In a country where so much goes to waste even as some folks struggle to meet basic needs, the free store is an idea whose time has come.
This week, I read about a free store that was set up by an Atlanta rapper, known as Gunna, in the middle school that he attended. Celebrity culture can be frustrating, when it eclipses regular people doing great things, or worse, when it means that awful behavior gets a pass (see R Kelly, for the last 25 years).
But when the son of a school cafeteria worker gets a Grammy and makes some money and decides to create a free store for his home community, it’s pretty hard not to be moved. Gunna, born Sergio Kitchens, cut the ribbon on the free store, which is stocked with food and clothing, two weeks ago.
minimum pay, protections for workers’ tips, the right to use restaurant bathrooms, and more.
These protections are now in place in the city, but not throughout the state.
The New York City Council’s work on advancing protections for gig workers now stands in stark contrast to the state Legislature’s stalled action. “Let’s take this to Albany next,” state Sen. Jessica Ramos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Labor, tweeted in reference to the Council’s package of bills.
State legislation failed because workers and their advocates were left out of the process. We have no action at this time on state legislation, but we will soon.
As we impatiently await federal infrastructure investments, we have some good news on the public transit front. The environmental review is complete and the MTA is preparing to build four new stations in the Bronx to create direct Metro-North service to Penn Station from the Bronx, Westchester, and Connecticut.
Acting MTA chair and CEO, Janno Lieber, said it was an important milestone for [the Metro-North Penn Station Access] project and will give people in several, transit-deprived areas of the East Bronx access to jobs, education, health care and everything New York and Connecticut have to offer.
I hope today’s collection of good news gets you off to a good start. On a personal note, today is my official start date for a new job, which I will tell you more about next week.
Have a beautiful day!
with love,
L