I Worried
Mary Oliver
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
From Joanna Macy
I consider myself fortunate to live in these times. To be alive in this wonderful self-organizing universe, involved in the dance of life with the senses to perceive, with lungs to breathe, with organs that can obtain their nourishment — this is a miracle for which there are no words.
Furthermore, it is an incredible privilege that we have been given human life with a self-reflective consciousness that makes us aware of our own actions and enables us to make decisions. Now is the time we human beings can decide to consciously and actively participate in this dance of life.
*****
Hi Folks
It’s difficult and painful to hold 2 points of view at the same time. But it’s necessary these days, in order both to NOT turn away from the suffering in our world BUT ALSO keep our heart and mind focused on the world we wish to inhabit, as if it were already here.
So, as we reflect on 2023 and the ongoing wars and totalitarian takeovers across the world, and all the suffering that engenders, let’s ALSO remember this:
According to Nicholas Kristof, respected New York Times columnist, whose career has focused on covering genocide, wars, and poverty…
[2023] WAS A TERRIBLE YEAR, AND ALSO MAYBE THE BEST ONE YET FOR HUMANITY
[Excerpts]
Of course, the tragic bad news predominates, breaks our hearts and must be grieved for: including civilians – many of them kids – dying at a staggering rate in Gaza; genocide in Darfur apparently starting up again; a man charged with 91 felonies is leading in the U.S. presidential polls; and our carbon emissions are off the charts, threatening all life…HOWEVER:
The U.N. Population Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached in global child mortality, just 3.6% of children dying before age 5. That a million fewer than died in 2022!
As for extreme poverty: that too reached a record low, just 8% of people worldwide. Approximately 100,000 people are emerging from extreme poverty every day! And along with that, gaining literacy!
Two horrifying diseases are close to eradication worldwide: polio and Guinea worm disease. [Kristof reminds us of the amazing work former U.S. President Jimmy Carter did to accomplishthat.]
The U.S. government recently approved the new CRISPR gene-editing techniques to treat sickle cell disease, which affects and cuts short the lives of so many black children
Trachoma, a disease which blinds but also causes excruciating pain in the eyes, has been eliminated in Mali and 16 other countries
As Kristof reminds us: “I highlight this backdrop of progress so that it may fortify us in 2024 to tackle all the suffering that persists.”
My Note: Of course, the tragic bad news predominates, breaks our hearts and must be grieved for: including civilians – many of them kids – dying at a staggering rate in Gaza; genocide in Darfur apparently starting up again; a man charged with 91 felonies is leading in the U.S. presidential polls; and our carbon emissions are off the charts, threatening all life…HOWEVER:
The U.N. Population Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached in global child mortality, just 3.6% of children dying before age 5. That a million fewer than died in 2022!
I’ve shown this in a few past newsletters; but I can’t get enough of it because it always makes me smile.
YOGA DOG
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1571435336397775
From THE SUN Magazine
January 2024 edition
Excerpted from an article in 2008 by David James Duncan, “Cherish This Ecstacy”
“The peregrine falcon was brought back from the brink of extinction by a ban on DDT, but also by a peregrine-falcon mating hat invented by an ornithologist at Cornell University…Female falcons had grown dangerously scarce. A few wistful males nevertheless maintained a sort of sexual loitering ground. The hat was imagined, constructed, then forthrightly worn by the ornithologist as he patrolled this loitering ground, singing, Chee-up! Chee-up! and bowing like an overpolite Japanese Buddhist trying to tell somebody goodbye. For reasons neither scientists nor fashion designers entirely understand, this inspired the occasional male falcon to dive onto the ornithologist’s head, fuck the hat, and fire endangered sperm into the hat’s hidden rubber receptacle. The last few females were then artificially inseminated so that their chicks could be raised in DDT-free captivity. The young produced in this way saved the peregrine from extinction — a success story from the annals of human meddling, one as rare as debacles like DDT are common.”
Finally! The US will require background checks for gun shows and online firearm sales
From The Hartmann Report
April 13, 2024
In the largest and most consequential step toward rational gun regulation in the United States since the passage of the Brady Bill 30 years ago, the Biden Justice Department finalized a new ATF rule to close the “gun show loophole” by requiring the 22,000+ sellers of guns at gun shows, online, and via private sales to get a license and perform background checks
New limits to drinking water contamination
from The Environmental Working Group [ewg.org]
April 10, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Biden has finalized unprecedented new limits to tackle drinking water contamination from six of the notorious “forever chemicals” known as PFAS – PFOA, PFOS, GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS.
The limits, known as maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) are the highest level of contaminant allowed in drinking water. The new MCL requires water treatment plants to lower the amount of these chemicals to much safer levels than currently exist in water systems.
These are just six of the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, a large family of toxic fluorinated chemicals that build up in the body and don’t break down in the environment. Even at lo
w levels, they have been linked to cancer, reproductive harm, immune system damage and other serious health problems.
Americans have been drinking contaminated water for decades, but this historic action will finally get these toxic chemicals out of our water.
From TED Talks Daily,
Aired Feb 8, 2024
An 8-minute talk describing which climate solutions are worth funding. From a “meta-analysis of all of the ones out there, showing which are 1) most effective, 2) most cost effective, and 3) most easily done.
TED Talks Daily: The climate solutions worth funding — now | Jonathan Foley on Apple Podcasts
Show TED Talks Daily, Ep The climate solutions worth funding — now | Jonathan Foley - Feb 8, 2024
This from Heather Cox Richardson’s Feb 26th newsletter:
Letters from An American
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is about to expand again. After 19 months of stalling, Hungary’s parliament voted today to approve Sweden as a new member, bringing the number of NATO countries to 32. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has good relations with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, has a history of using his country’s veto power over NATO to extract concessions; in exchange for Hungary’s approval, Sweden has agreed to provide it four fighter jets and for Saab to open an artificial intelligence research center in Hungary.
Sorry, I can’t find where I saw this…
On March 19 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it was banning asbestos, which is linked to more than 40,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and was already partly banned, but which is still used in a few products. More than 50 other countries already ban it.
Here's really good news for our health:
Getting microplastics out of tap water!
by Ben Turner, Live Science – [livescience.com]
Feb. 29,2024
In a new study, published Feb. 28 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, scientists looked into practical home methods to remove the tiny plastics from drinking water. One question they were particularly concerned with was whether boiling water could rid it of microplastic contamination.
"Drinking boiled water, an ancient tradition in some Asian countries, is supposedly beneficial for human health, as boiling can remove some chemicals and most biological substances," the researchers wrote in the new study. "However, it remains unclear whether boiling is effective in removing NMPs [nano/microplastics] in tap water."
So far, some plastics are thought to be harmless, whereas others, such as polystyrene, have been shown to kill human cells, cause bowel inflammation and reduce fertility in mice.
To investigate, the researchers created samples of tap water containing many of the commonly occurring minerals alongside three commonly occurring microplastic compounds: polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene. The researchers also varied the "hardness" of the water samples by adjusting the concentrations of calcium carbonate. (A vast majority of American homes use hard water, meaning the water has a high mineral content.)
THE RESULT: After boiling the samples for 5 minutes and leaving them to cool, the researchers noted a drastic decline in the amount of microplastics. In harder water, there was a nearly 90% reduction in microplastics, because the calcium carbonate in the water became solid at higher temperatures, trapping the plastic particles within.
The researchers say that using this method alongside a simple coffee filter to remove the solidified calcium could be an easy way to remove the potentially health-damaging particles.
Is there an alternative to plastic? Yes, as it turns out…for many uses
From Jim Hightower’s Hightower Lowdown
jimhightower@substack
Mr.5,2024
…But sometimes a product really needs no hype – like this new one I’ve learned about that’s damn-near magical! It’s a non-polluting, affordable, natural, job-creating, alternative to plastic stuff. No, seriously – come back here – this is real!
The only fib in my pitch is the word “new.” Actually, this product is ancient. It’s cork, used for thousands of years by Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, and others to make shoers, fishing gear, etc. But now, it’s a sustainable, regenerative material that all sorts of enterprising outfits are using for home construction, clothing, electric cars, spacecraft… and more.
Maybe like me, you’ve pulled many a wine cork without thinking where does this thing come fro
m? Trees! In particular, the bark of evergreen, Mediterranean cork tress that live for some 200 years. But how sad to cut them down for wine stoppers! No, no – the bark is carefully harvested by skilled workers… then it grows back over about nine years and can be harvested again… and again, creating steady income for small farms.
The cork tree is climate friendly, drought-tolerant, and fire resistant, and the cork itself is renewable, reusable, and biodegradable. Even cork dust is used to produce energy.
Before we let corporate profiteers turn Earth (and us) into a throwaway plastic dump, let’s recognize that nature is the greatest technologist ever. So maybe cooperating with her can be more beneficial than constantly trying to overpower and trash her.
This piece of good news hold promise for similar bans on killing of whales…
From New York Times Sunday March 31, 2024
by Remy Tumin
For many indigenous groups across Polynesia, whales had an ancient sacredness and spirit that connects all life…
Indigenous leaders of New Zealand, Tahiti and the Cook Islands signed an historic treaty that recognizes whales as legal personals in a move that conservationists believe will apply pressure to national governments everywhere to offer greater protections for whales.
*****
Doing our best to personally reduce plastic and waste…
I just got a new/refurbished iPhone 13 mini (replacing my iPhone7). I bought it from a company in Australia and also got a case from them. And it came in eco-friendly recycled packaging.
The case is made by INCIPIO and is called “Organicore”. It’s 100% compostable.
And has a lifetime warranty. Do consider this company when you need another cell phone case.
Creative solutions to the U.S. state bans on abortion…
From the NY Times Feb.5, 2024
“New Shield Laws Allowing Women Abortion Access”
Since last some, women in states prohibiting abortion are getting abortion pills prescribed by licensed providers in other states and mailed to them. It’s being legally permitted under laws enacted so far in half a dozen states – so far, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, NY and California.
The “telemedicine abortion shield laws” promise to protect doctors, nurse practitioners and midwive licensed in those states who prescribe and send the pills.
This, from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American
March 5, 2024
Possibly the biggest story today in terms of its impact on most Americans’ lives is that as part of its war on junk fees, the Biden administration announced an $8 cap on late fees charged by credit card issuers that have more than a million accounts. These companies hold more than 95% of outstanding credit card debt. Currently, fees average $32, and they fall on more than 45 million people. The White House estimates that late fees currently cost Americans about $25 billion a year. The rule change will save Americans about $10 billion a year.
The administration also announced a “strike force” to crack down on “unfair and illegal pricing.” Certain corporations raised prices as strained supply chains made it more expensive to make their products. But after supply chains were fixed and their costs dropped, corporations kept consumer prices high and passed on record profits to their shareholders. The strike force will encourage federal agencies to share information to enable them to identify businesses that are breaking the law.
As reported on NPR:
Last summer, in a narrow majority, Israel's Supreme Court struck down a law approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July that stripped the court of its power to overturn government appointments and decisions. The measure sparked months of protests in Israel at the time. Demonstrators accused the administration of weakening government checks and balances.
The court said the law would cause "severe and unprecedented harm" to Israel as a democratic country, NPR's Daniel Estrin reports on Up First. He adds that while Israel's government is dissatisfied with the ruling, officials suggest they won't do anything further to overhaul the country's judiciary while the country is at war with Hamas.
NOTE: Because Israel does not operate under a written Constitution, Israel’s Supreme Court is a critical check and balance to the government and must remain independent.
I’ve been recovering from a major surgery and also ill and found myself watching a long, thoughtful interview of Jay Shetty talking with Michelle Obama. It was so rich and meaningful that I stayed watching until the very end. I hope you’ll watch it.
There’s so much exciting science to inspire you. This, from the online news LIVESCIENCE, that publishes “amazing science every day”
Feb. 21, 2024
The James Webb telescope has found an ancient galaxy larger than our Milky Way.It dates to roughly 13 billion years ago, long before the first glazes formed around giant halos of dark matter. This finding is extraordinary.
This, reported in AARP’s Magazine
January 2024 edition
For more than 50 years “music therapy” has been used to treat diseases ranging from depression to chronic pain to movement disorders to autism to Alzheimer’s. But only recently have researchers been able to understand how something as ephemeral as air vibrations (music) can have such profound effect on damaged bodies and brains. Making music with instruments. has been part of human cultures since for tens of thousands of years, as attested to by the finding of a a 60,000-year-old flute made from a bone of a now extinct European bear.
fMRIs have shown how this occurs. Listening to music causes many brain centers to light up: the brain stem, motor centers, language centers, the auditory cortex, emotion centers, and visual centers. This is very important in work with people who have various kinds of dementia. One study found that, after just 4 week of listening to their favorite music daily, patients’ brains had a greater density of white matter, meaning more highways active between neurons. As that researcher said, “It’s a bit like city that gets bombed. Many houses are gone, but we can emphasize what is still standing…and rebuild to make that city support as much life as possible.” There is value for all of us in listening to or making music.
I almost never report on anything related to sports, since that’s just not my thing. However, the gains in women’s sports, in terms of news and televised coverage, and money awarded athletes, has been phenomenal. I went to high school in the late 1950s and there was NOTHING in terms of women’s sports.
I just opened the sports page of the Sunday December 31st issue of the New York Times and the entire front page was devoted to women’s sports’ gains and records and stating what still needs to be done to level that playing field with men.
The top half of the page was a photo taken from a distance showing more than 92,000 fans filling the auditorium of Nebraska’s biggest football stadium to watch women’s college volleyball! This was the largest attendance at any woman’s sporting event worldwide. That’s progress.
PEERS online News Service gathers and reports on news from all around the world.
from their INSPIRING NEWS section are 3 of the stories they reported
January 12, 2024
'He's my angel. He gave me life': the story of two enemy soldiers saving each other's lives
September 10, 2021, CBC (Canada's Public Broadcasting System)
The story of two enemies cuts through the darkness. It begins on a battlefield in the Iran-Iraq war, and ends 20 years later in a waiting room in Vancouver. The Iran-Iraq war began in 1980, and ended eight years later. It was the longest conventional war of the 20th century, claiming at least a million casualties. Najah Aboud was nearly one of them. Najah was severely wounded. He crawled off to a bunker, where he saw corpses from both sides and prepared himself to die. Zahed Haftlang ... was assigned as a medic.
After the Iranians recaptured Khorramshahr in May 1982, Zahed was ordered to go into the bunkers and treat wounded countrymen. It was then that he ... spotted Najah near the back. Both men were suspicious of each other. Zahed thought Najah's body might be booby-trapped. Najah thought Zahed might kill him. Then Zahed reached into Najah's breast pocket and pulled out a photograph. It showed Najah, with a beautiful woman, and infant son.
It was at that very moment that Zahed decided to save Najah's life, even though it meant risking his own. Najah was taken to a prisoner of war camp, where he'd remain in unspeakable conditions for the next 17 years.
While reading magazines in [a Vancouver] waiting room, Zahed noticed the door open as another man entered the room. The two men erupted into shouts, hugs, kisses and tears. Their spectacular reunion happened two decades years after the battle of Khorramshahr and on the other side of the world. "Najah is like my family … he really is my angel, because he gave me life. After he got a new chance at life, he gave me a new chance at life. He is the dearest and most precious thing in the entire world to me."
Iceland’s ‘bike whisperer’: the vigilante who finds stolen bicycles – and helps thieves change
The Guardian
December 25, 2023,
It all started in 2019, when Bjartmar Leósson started to see a rise in bike theft in Reykjavík. The bus driver and self-confessed “bike nerd” decided to start tracking them down and returning them to their rightful owners. Four years and, he estimates, hundreds of salvaged bikes later, the 44-year-old has developed a reputation in the Icelandic capital among cyclists and potential bike thieves.
Known as the Reykjavík “bike whisperer”, people across his home city turn to him for help to find their missing bicycles, tools and even cars.
Often, he says, bike thieves hand over bikes without being asked and some former bike thieves have started to help him.
Now when somebody loses their bike it can take as little as 48 hours to track it down on his Facebook page, Hjóladót ofl. tapað fundið eða stolið (Bicycle stuff etc lost, found or stolen), updated every few hours with missing and found items and which has more than 14,500 members. “It’s not only me,” he says. “Many times someone sees a bike hidden in a bush, takes a picture and then someone else comments ‘hey that’s my bike’. So everyone’s looking out.”
Now when people’s bikes get stolen, he says, the police direct them to his Facebook page. When there is a finder’s fee he gives it to people living in [a homeless] shelter. He he says he now sees the bike theft problem is often driven by addiction, aided by long rehab waiting lists and closures during the summer.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archivefocused on solutions and bridging divides.
Zimbabwe’s therapeutic ‘friendship benches’, coming to a city near you
July 26, 2023, Positive News
https://www.positive.news/lifestyle/zimbabwe-friendship-benches...
A legacy of poverty, genocide and dictatorship left Zimbabwe struggling with an epidemic of depression, colloquially known as kufungisisa, or ‘thinking too much’. Known as ‘gogos’ (elder women) or ‘ambuya utano’ (community grannies), these Zimbabwean community health workers (CHWs) have a record in treating mild to moderate anxiety and depression that beats many traditional talking therapies and pharmacological interventions.
Meet the Friendship Bench grandmothers of Zimbabwe. Founded in 2007, the Friendship Bench project has treated 280,000 people in its 16 years of existence, in 70 communities across Zimbabwe and at spin-off projects in Malawi, Kenya and most recently Zanzibar and Vietnam. In 2024 it will arrive in London, with a series of Friendship Benches set to be installed in the city’s most marginalised communities. “Whether it’s London, New York or Zimbabwe, everywhere the issues are similar,” Friendship Bench founder, Harare-based psychiatrist Dr Dixon Chibanda tells Positive News. “There are issues related to loneliness, access to care, and to just being able to know that what you’re experiencing – whether you call it stress or depression or anxiety – is treatable.” Most of the therapists are older women, who are traditionally turned to for counsel in Zimbabwean culture. The women are trained in the basics of cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] and allocated a park bench in their communities.
On a musical note, as Dan Rather referred to in his January 14, 2023 Substack column, here’s a beautiful compilation of dozens of musicians from around the world playing and singing a new rendition of John Mayer’s Waiting On The World to Change, from Playing For Change Foundation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTU2J2xnkbg
An amazing acrobatic dance routine, by a couple, from Cirque du Soleil
As reported in PEERS online news regular news stories…
Scientists Have Created Synthetic Sponges That Soak Up Microplastics
Smithsonian Magazine
October 5, 2023,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-have-created...
For millennia, humans have used dried natural sponges to clean up, to paint and as vessels to consume fluids like water or honey. Whether synthetic or natural, sponges are great at ensnaring tiny particles in their many pores. And, as scientists around the world are beginning to show, sponges’ cavity-filled forms mean they could provide a solution to one of our era’s biggest scourges: microplastic pollution. In August, researchers in China published describing their development of a synthetic sponge that makes short work of microscopic plastic debris.
In tests, the researchers show that when a specially prepared plastic-filled solution is pushed through one of their sponges, the sponge can remove both microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics from the liquid.
Optimal conditions allowed the researchers to remove as much as 90 percent of the microplastics. The plastic-gobbling sponges are made mostly from starch and gelatin. Looking a bit like large white marshmallows, the biodegradable sponges are so light that balancing one atop a flower leaves the plant’s petals upright and unyielding, which the researchers suggest ought to make them cheap and easy to transport.
The sponges, if ever produced at an industrial scale ... could be used in wastewater treatment plants to filter microplastics out of the water or in food production facilities to decontaminate water. It would also be possible to use microplastic-trapping sponges like this in washing machines.
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Again, from PEERS, these next 2 stories:
The EU Just Banned Microplastics. How Are Companies Replacing Them?
Reasons to be Cheerful
November 16, 2023
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/microplastics-europe-ban-natural...
Microplastics — solid plastic particles up to five millimeters in size that are not biodegradable — are pretty much everywhere. They have been detected in over 1,500 different marine animal species. They also find their way into our bodies via the water cycle and the food chain. In fact, the average person consumes up to five grams of microplastics per week. The European Union has now banned intentionally added microplastics. This applies to plastic glitter or polyethylene particles used as abrasives in scrubs, shower gel and toothpaste (these have been banned in the US since the 2015 Microbead-Free Waters Act) . Under the terms of the ban, some products, such as plastic glitter found in creams or eye shadow, have been granted a transitional period to give manufacturers a chance to develop new designs. LUSH and The Body Shop are among the companies that have long been offering natural alternatives, using ground nuts, bamboo, sea salt and sugar. Beiersdorf AG ... has not used microbeads for exfoliation purposes since 2015. Instead, it has used, for example, cellulose particles or shredded apricot kernels. Since the end of 2019, all Beiersdorf wash-off products have been free of microplastics. Before the EU ban, Germany stopped providing public funding for artificial turf pitches with granules containing a high proportion of microplastic. As a result, the country already has hundreds of pitches that are filled with cork and sand instead of microplastics.
Microplastic pollution: Plants could be the answer
August 16, 2023, University of British Columbia
https://news.ubc.ca/2023/08/16/microplastic-pollution-plants...
Could plants be the answer to the looming threat of microplastic pollution? Scientists at UBC’s BioProducts Institute found that if you add tannins—natural plant compounds that make your mouth pucker if you bite into an unripe fruit—to a layer of wood dust, you can create a filter that traps virtually all microplastic particles present in water. While the experiment remains a lab set-up at this stage, the team is convinced that the solution can be scaled up easily and inexpensively.
For their study the team analyzed microparticles released from popular tea bags made of polypropylene. They found that their method (they’re calling it “bioCap”) trapped from 95.2 per cent to as much as 99.9 per cent of plastic particles in a column of water, depending on plastic type. When tested in mouse models, the process was proved to prevent the accumulation of microplastics in the organs.
Dr. Rojas, a professor in the departments of wood science, chemical and biological engineering, and chemistry at UBC, adds that it’s difficult to capture all the different kinds of microplastics in a solution, as they come in different sizes, shapes and electrical charges. “There are microfibres from clothing, microbeads from cleansers and soaps, and foams and pellets from utensils, containers and packaging. By taking advantage of the different molecular interactions around tannic acids, our bioCap solution was able to remove virtually all of these different microplastic types.”
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I urge you to sit and watch this beautiful and important documentary of indigenous and traditional midwives around the world. Their knowledge is deep and their wisdom is dying, with modern wester interventive medicalized birth still not recognizing the value of what midwives have to teach us.
https://mailchi.mp/615ee35c7077/givelightonlinemay29-6689996?e=3ad36b12a0The filmmaker is a colleague and friend and she’s done a superb job, taking nearly a decade to complete this piece, funded by her own money, earned mostly from teaching yoga. She gotten an acceptance letter from PBS that they guarantee to air the film. NOW, however, Steph must raise enough money to
hire the right professional to “place’ the film, so that it gets aired close to prime time rather than in the middle of the night! It costs you a $15 donation to view it.I hope you’ll donate a lot more – as you are able – after you’ve viewed it.
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REGARDLESS OF WHO YOUR PREFERRED CANDIDATE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT IS, PLEASE look, and encourage your friends and colleagues and family to look, at the many accomplishments of this Biden administration, which are often ignored in mainstream media. I’m tired of hearing and reading that so many voters think Biden has done nothing substantial to improve the quality of life for Americans, and that there’s no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It’s simply not true.
Here’s a noteworthy example:
Wage increases coming on January 1st 2024 for many U.S. workers:
As reported in NPR’s Newsletter Dec 26th
Minimum-wage workers in 22 states are going to see more money in their paychecks in the new year.
Those increases will affect an estimated 9.9 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which estimates that those bumped wages will add up to an additional $6.95 billion in pay.
See the full list of increases.
In addition to those 22 states, 38 cities and counties will also increase their minimum wages above state minimums on Jan. 1.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 20 states will maintain the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
And according to EPI, of the 17.6 million workers earning less than $15 an hour, nearly half live in those 20 states that continue to stick to the federal minimum wage — which has not changed since 2009.
The cost of living, however, has skyrocketed.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, a dollar in 2023 can buy roughly 70% of what it could buy in 2009.
According to EPI data, nearly 58% of workers who will benefit from the coming wage increase are women. 9% are Black and nearly 38% are Hispanic.
Over 25% of those who will benefit from the pay increases are parents, which could make a significant difference in their standards of living, given that nearly 20% of the benefitting minimum wage workers currently have incomes below the poverty line.
Most recently, Senate Democrats introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2023 in July. If passed, it would gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2028.
Still, the buying power of our money in the U.S. is about what it was in the mid 1970s. That’s due to many factors, most noteworthy, that big businesses keep raising prices to extract more and more profit!
We consumers need to start boycotting products to get these companies to lower prices!
******
Finally, in remembrance of the gutsy pioneering Black U.S. Congresswoman, Shirley Chisolm
*from Biography the online newsletter
by Rachel Chang, published 2021
Shirley Chisolm was the 1st Back Woman to run for U.S. President through a major party…the 1972 Presidential Campaign
Robert Gottlieb was standing by the luggage carousel waiting for his baggage to arrive after he landed in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1972 when was met with shock. There was no doubt those were his boxes, but someone had written all over one of them, “Go home n*****.”
It was clear what was inside the boxes: brochures and bumper stickers for Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign, for which he had been hired as the student coordinator. “That’s how the campaign began,” Gottlieb told Smithsonian Magazine in 2016.
That anonymous sign of hatred, even degrees removed from Chisholm herself, is proof of the kinds of language and insults that were being hurled at the candidate — yet she let none of it shake her at all. As the first major-party Black American to run for president, she forged ahead fearlessly, running to represent all the people of the country equally, no matter how they viewed her, as she announced at Brooklyn’s Concord Baptist Church on January 25, 1972, when she decared her candidacy.
“I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud,” the daughter of West Indian immigrants said. “I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that… I am the candidate of the people of America. And my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.”
And that was exactly what her historical presidential run did. Chisholm had already made history as the first Black congresswoman in the U.S.
By the time Chisholm was putting her hat in the ring for the 1972 Democratic presidential bid along with white male candidates George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, Henry M. Jackson and George Wallace, she had already been a barrier breaker, most notably becoming the first Black congresswoman in 1968.
The Brooklyn-born politician was a former nursery school teacher turned New York City Division of Day Care consultant, who was elected as a New York State assemblywoman in 1964. But it was during her 1968 campaign for the New York 12th Congressional District’s House seat that she truly started to show that she had what it took to win a hard-wrought campaign.
Chisholm quickly branded herself with toughness, regularly starting off her speeches with “This is Fighting Shirley Chisholm.” She also highlighted diversity by using her Spanish language skills, which she picked up while working in education, to speak to her Spanish-speaking constituents. Her bold tactics worked. She defeated her worthy opponent, James Farmer, by more than a two-to-one margin.
As a newbie to the House of Representatives, Chisholm was assigned to a committee. The one chosen for her despite her history growing up in the concrete jungle of New York: House Agriculture Committee. “Apparently all they know here in Washington about Brooklyn is that a tree grew there,” she so famously said that President Barack Obama even quoted it when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2015.
Chisholm soon found her way, using her educational background to fight for the Head Start program, as well as school lunches. She also was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Women’s Caucus and also one of only 19 representatives who were willing to hold Vietnam War hearings.
Two Black men — Georgia’s Julian Bond and former Cleveland mayor and congressman Carl Stokes — considered runs and started strategizing. But Chisholm wasn’t about to sit around. “They were standing around, peeing on their shoes, so Shirley finally said the hell with it and got a campaign going,” a Chisholm aide told The New York Times. “If she hadn't, we'd still be without a black candidate.”
As the campaign was progressing, the Vietnam War was still being fought and the women’s movement was just starting to emerge.
“But these traits are not the stuff of which election victories are made,” The New York Times noted of the big hole in her campaign. “Victory requires money, well‐placed support and slick, professionally-led political organization.”
Indeed, Chisholm had only started her presidential run with about $40,000 — the Times said that was just a fraction of what other candidates spent on TV ads for just a primary election in one state. And on top of that, getting top tier support proved to be a challenge. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem, who seemed like a likely Chisholm support, sided with her opponent George McGovern, as did Jesse Jackson.
“Mrs. Chisholm encountered a Black leadership that was divided and occasionally hostile wherever she campaigned,” The New York Times said. “In North Carolina, Black leaders went so far as to proclaim publicly that ‘a vote for Shirley Chisholm is a vote for George Wallace.’”
As proof of just how untraditional Chisholm was, when Wallace became paralyzed after an assassination attempt, she went and visited him in the hospital.
In the end, the trailblazer only received 152 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention and McGovern went on to win the party’s nomination but lost the presidency to Nixon. But for Chisholm, that wasn’t necessarily defeat. After all, from the start, she had said, “Regardless of the outcome, they will have to remember that a little hundred‐pound woman, Shirley Chisholm, shook things up.”
And Chisolm kept on shaking things up, eventually serving seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, continuing to open up opportunities everywhere she went, with her famous attitude: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring your own folding chair.”
With Love, Suzanne Arms
Be a light in dark places,
when all other lights go out.
J. R. Tolkien