Opinion: NYC Must Commit To Zero Waste. Universal Composting is How We Get There - City Limits

“By refusing to send our trash to the communities adjacent to waste transfer stations, landfills, and incinerators—predominantly low-income communities of color—our city will be taking concrete steps to stand in solidarity with the struggles of environmental justice communities fighting to protect their land, air, and health.”

Adi Talwar

Composting at a community garden located in the East Village section of Manhattan.

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In 2015, New York City set a bold goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2030. That means we have just eight years to transform the largest municipal waste operation in the country and dramatically reduce our city’s carbon footprint. We’ve made progress, but one area we’re desperately behind in is composting.

Organic waste currently makes up a third of what our City sends to landfills, resulting in  hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year. Food waste and organic matter releases methane as it decomposes—a greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more destructive to our environment than carbon dioxide.

While cities with comparable populations, like Seoul, are leading the effort on composting by recycling 95 percent of their food waste, it’s estimated that less than 10 percent of New York City homes that are offered residential composting take part. Beyond expanding this program to meet the needs of all five boroughs, we need a serious investment in educating our city about how important composting is to reduce our carbon footprint. That’s why we’re proud to introduce legislation to bring universal and mandatory residential composting to New York City.

Zero waste policies like universal composting will create hundreds of good green union jobs. To meet the increased demand, New York City will need hundreds of workers to collect and process the millions of tons of organic waste now being put to better use. On the other end, we will generate millions of pounds of compost from food scraps to enrich our city soils, support urban agriculture, enhance our urban forest, absorb stormwater, and increase resilience to flooding.

Zero waste and universal composting will bring down the $450 million price tag to ship our waste to distant communities for landfills and incineration. Achieving zero waste and universal composting in New York City will not only improve the lives of New Yorkers but will send a message that we are serious about tackling the climate crisis, building sustainable waste systems, and enhancing our urban ecology.

By refusing to send our trash to the communities adjacent to waste transfer stations, landfills, and incinerators—predominantly low-income communities of color—our city will be taking concrete steps to stand in solidarity with the struggles of environmental justice communities fighting to protect their land, air, and health.

What’s even more inspiring is that we are not alone on this issue. Dozens of other councilmembers and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers across every neighborhood are joining us. Working-class communities in the outer boroughs have been waiting for New York City to stop enacting environmental policies that exclude people of color and finally give them access to curbside organics collections and composting. Additionally, without universal composting, our city will continue the environmentally racist practice of sending millions of pounds of trash to decompose near communities of color hundreds of miles away. We refuse to allow this unjust cycle to continue any longer.

As feminists and environmental justice activists, and two new councilmembers who have a deep love for New York City, we ran for office because we refuse to lose our city to the climate crisis. We reject complacency and inaction and are working towards a resilient, flourishing, green city. We imagine a city where zero waste systems are integrated into every aspect of our lives—where it becomes second nature to us all. We see a city where every household, every commercial street, and every community has access to composting.

The time to pass universal composting is now. We have the most progressive City Council that New York City has ever seen. Let’s commit ourselves to the livable future we all deserve.

Shahana Hanif is a member of the New York City Council representing the 39th district in Brooklyn. Sandy Nurse is a councilmember representing Brooklyn’s 37th district and chair of the Council’s sanitation committee.

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Opinion: OK, no indoctrination in public schools … wait, unless it's pro-Christian? - Des Moines Register

Who will be next? | Opinion - NJ.com

By Melissa Alexander

“Enough is enough, when is it going to stop.” This is the cry of minorities when one of us is shot and gunned down in an under-served community in America. The truth is that the victims are far too many to count. State resolutions on guns and other weapons are not effective and, obviously, not the answer.

There seems to be no way out for Black and Brown people in most of the underfunded communities, especially because the community is up against community barriers. It’s like being on a deserted island and waiting for someone to come for us to be rescued.

But no one is coming.

Moreover, there are not many or very few programs that are geared toward reaching out to individuals like us, who feel that this world has no hope and empathy.

I still remember that in 2011, my nephew was gunned down on the block where I lived. He was shot in the head during a drive-by. His story was featured on the news, but to date, there are still over 25 Black males, particularly young Black men, gunned down on the same city streets. Sadly, the authorities are not presenting any resolution, which is very disappointing. It really shows the disparities in the social system of races and classes. What’s funny is that police are placed on different corners of the street, especially in the toughest neighborhoods, where the gun violence is high but gunshots still ring out even in their presence. So you can put 100 police on the street, that will not reduce the violence in the county.

Police are only there to react. Money has to be put in prevention. If you want to talk about violence, you have to talk about economics. The police themselves cannot deter gun violence.

Other than gun violence, we’ve seen the unequal and negative treatment of Black and Brown Americans in society. For example, in 2021, 18-year old Kyle Rittenhouse, a white male, murdered two people and was acquitted and viewed as a hero. While in 2016 Philando Castile, a legally armed Black male, was pulled over for a routine traffic stop, complied with the procedure, but was murdered by a police officer, and his death was viewed as justified. There is really a disparity in every aspect when it involves people of color.

The call of action is always the same. Someone will pass a bill regarding tougher gun laws, but these laws are only a Band-aid solution to the issues. I do not have the power to stop the actual violence but I know what needs to be done. I suggest the legislative branch of the government must address and end the social and economic inequalities that are the primary root causes of gun violence that impacted communities of people of color. Opportunities and hope must be given to them, with these steps the communities will become more progressive. Otherwise you will continue generation after generation filled with hopelessness, nothing out here to live for. On this very day of April 13, 2022, on Forest Street and Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City, yet another young man was shot multiple times and for what, I ask.

This is also the reason why I founded the John Randy Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides supportive services to the homeless, at-risk youth, and those in need in under-served communities. Together with our supportive partners, we will never stop helping these groups. Our community deserves better and working together we can do it.

Melissa Alexander of Bayonne is the founder of the John Randy Foundation of Jersey City. For information, go to johnrandy.com.

Send letters to the editor and guest columns for The Jersey Journal to jjletters@jjournal.com.

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Discourse of Justice: Part I - Inkstick - Inkstick

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This analysis was featured in Critical State, a weekly newsletter from Inkstick Media and The

The durable end of an armed conflict comes first through the negotiation of a ceasefire, and second, through the ways in which the government in power handles that peace. Civil war is violence, experienced, and the former fighters in a conflict may be willing to pick up arms again if they see the worst of their enemies walking free afterward. Transitional justice can address this, by allowing post-war regimes to reconcile the harms of the past, but it can fail if the victorious side after war instead reneges on its promises.

When that happens, aggrieved parties can take action in the name of human rights, changing the politics of the country and demanding more durable change. Human rights discourse is politics by other means.

In Colombia, human rights discourse is contesting the political space by demanding a multiethnic polity under the protection of the law.

Such is one conclusion from “The Popular Appeal of Human Rights Activism: Reimagining Transitional Justice as a Political Struggle,” an upcoming paper by Frank Richard Georgi. Georgi looks to human rights discourse as a way for marginalized groups to do politics, and bend a bad status quo toward a more workable future.

Georgi contents that “human rights defenders imagine transitional justice in terms of a larger political struggle that exceeds justice for past atrocities,” and that this struggle can be seen in three tropes: “truth as the frontier of political confrontation with right-wing elites, the ‘rights-defending victim’ as a form of popular subjectivity and political underdog, and liberal overhaul of corrupted democratic institutions.”

This makes human rights discourse a complicating factor in conversations around populism, as the universal language of human rights is used to call for and contest rights on a popular basis. It is also an argument against populism as solely a term to describe movements among the political right, which claim popular appeal to attack elites and also narrow the scope of who gets counted and benefits from being a citizen. If marginalized people adopt universal language of inclusion to assert their right in a political space, that is not an elite-driven phenomena but rather a genuine and inclusive understanding of populism.

Georgi’s study is focused on Latin America broadly and Colombia narrowly, where resistance to governments of the right have been a staple of multi-ethnic coalitions for years. While right-populism focuses on the obligation of the state to a select portion of the population, with boundaries tightly policed, Georgi sees human rights discourse as contesting the space by demanding a multiethnic polity under the protection of law.

“[T]he political struggle of Human Rights Discourses] does not defy pluralism and liberal institutions — as postulated in prevalent populism research — but, quite the contrary, defines legality and basic rights as the horizon of their struggle against unbounded, authoritarian rule,” Georgi writes.

The idea is explained even more concisely by Martin, a lifelong activist, who answers Georgi’s question about the goal of transitional justice as ““¡Democracia!” Or, as Georgi puts it, marginalized groups using the language of human rights to demand change are calling for a “‘different democracy,’ where people can disagree without being stigmatized or killed, where the rights of indigenous people and afro-descendent communities are as respected as the land claims of small peasants and workers’ rights.”

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President Barron shares message on importance of informed, respectful discourse - Pennsylvania State University

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In a message to the University community, Penn State President Eric J. Barron underscored the importance of informed discourse and mutual respect following a series of demonstrations and distribution of a concerning petition. 

“We simply must agree that even if a member of our community chooses to advance their own perspective about an issue in a provocative and offensive way, there can be no place in response for threats to their safety,” Barron wrote. “It is my wish that all members of our community exercise their expressive rights thoughtfully and in an informed manner. But even when the intent is to offend, there is no room for rhetoric and tactics in response that intentionally threaten the welfare of any member of our community. We can all better ourselves and our University by rejecting intimidation and incivility, and instead doing all we can to cultivate a community of respect.” 

To read the full post, visit this link.

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Opinion | Macron may have won comfortably. But this is no time to let down our guard. - The Washington Post

In the end, it was not even that close.

French President Emmanuel Macron defeated right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen with about 59 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 41 percent. He outpaced polls, moving steadily into a commanding lead after the first round of voting. While Le Pen improved on her showing in the 2017 election by seven points, Macron’s victory remains impressive.

The Post reports:

“The result is very disappointing for [Le Pen],” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice. “She ended up very far from power.”

Especially while a war rages in Ukraine that has united European leaders to an unusual degree, a Le Pen win would have sent a shock wave through NATO and imperiled the flow of French weaponry that has quietly flowed to Kyiv. . . .

On the streets of Paris, many on Sunday night appeared relieved that a far-right victory had been averted.

Macron was able to consolidate voters who picked other candidates in the first round of voting, demonstrating that a center-left to center-right coalition can be more than enough to halt a far-right candidate whose appeal is limited to more rural and religious voters (in particular those who responded to Le Pen’s anti-Muslim rhetoric).

It is easy for skeptics to proclaim Le Pen “won” simply by increasing her share of the vote. Certainly, they might also point out that a deeply discontented faction of the country is apparently not all that distressed by Le Pen’s past affection for Russian dictator and war criminal Vladimir Putin. But that fails to appreciate the challenge all Western democratic leaders — including Macron — must overcome to govern.

A center-left leader can be a champion of tolerance, a force to fight climate change and an advocate for an agenda that a majority of voters favor. But they must do so while facing deep divisions between urban and rural populations, between religious and secular voters and between the well-educated and less-educated. That makes it virtually impossible for competent, well-intentioned leaders to fend off constant criticism from a 24/7 media or to withstand fierce opposing factions and cynical voters.

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Rokhaya Diallo

---

counterpointMarine Le Pen is now part of France’s mainstream. That should scare us all.

An American president who won with 59 percent of the vote, which few think is possible given our own toxic politics, would be a political colossus. That result in France contains several lessons for U.S. media and politicians.

First, a politician who considers it their job to solve problems, as opposed to channeling anger and fanning cultural resentment, will rarely receive credit for achieving half or even three-quarters of a loaf. No matter how well the president helps the country recover from the recession, how many jobs are created on their watch or how effective an international leader they become, anything less than perfect will be met with unforgiving criticism. The temptation to paint a president as a loser is overwhelming for allies who are disappointed with the results. This is made worse in a media environment that thrives on conflict and a political environment in which the opposition party is unwilling to give credit for any achievement. Therefore, one can expect few, if any constructive problem-solvers on the center left enjoying high approval ratings.

Nevertheless, center-left leaders can still be successful. A politician who polls in the low 40s, as Macron and President Biden do, might pull together a commanding victory if the alternative is a right-wing, unhinged, grievance-mongering opponent. The French are not particularly enamored with Macron, but given the binary choice between him and Le Pen, it was an easy call for most French voters.

Lastly, while hard-left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not endorse Macron outright, Macron easily lined up center-right, green and socialist parties immediately after the first round. If democratic governments are going to hold off the onslaught from authoritarian, nationalist challengers, they must enlist the widest coalition possible.

That means those factions must curb their disappointment and form a national front against the far right. In the United States, a left-wing figure such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) does the cause of democracy no favors by suggesting he would run for president if Biden, who has said he will seek reelection, bows out. Self-promotion is inconsistent with the sort of cross-ideological and cross-party alliance democracy needs to survive.

In sum, the key to winning for center-left problem-solvers is to make elections about a choice between democracy and authoritarianism; between free markets and crony capitalism (or revenge capitalism); and between freedom and Christian nationalism. If Biden — like Macron — is going to hold the right-wing, reactionary and delusional GOP at bay, he must do a much better job explaining what the voters’ options are. They must understand what they stand to lose by ceding power to right-wing nationalists who deplore pluralism and remain intolerant of dissent.

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Opinion | Biden hasn't lost young voters' love. He never really had it. - The Washington Post

If the youth are the future, President Biden, by the latest numbers, might not have much of one.

The Harvard Institute of Politics released the 43rd edition of the Harvard Youth Poll on Monday. The national survey of political sentiment among 18- to 29-year-olds comes at an opportune moment — right on the heels of two other polls this month that displayed a stomach-turning drop in the commander in chief’s approval rating among young voters. The lurch left a lot of commentators asking why. Now, there’s somewhere to search for answers.

What does the data show? Biden hasn’t ceased to inspire a rising generation. Instead, he may never have really inspired that generation much at all.

Whether millennials and Gen Z like the country’s leader matters. They helped put him in the Oval Office in the first place by turning out at record rates to vote overwhelmingly blue. But what appeared to be zeal might actually have been a mirage, according to polls from Quinnipiac University and Gallup. Boomers rate Biden about seven points lower today than they did at the beginning of 2020; among zoomers, he’s lost about 21 points.

Maybe, observers have speculated, the problem is broken promises. People expected action on the climate, on policing, on voting rights. So far, they haven’t gotten it, and the planet creeps ever closer to burning up. Young folks are society’s most capable at dreaming big — but they’re less proficient in anticipating that these dreams might not come true.

Perry Bacon Jr.: Team Biden believed their own hype — and that has cost them

Yet the groups most likely to show declines in their approval of a president, pollsters say, are the groups paying the least attention. Those whose inboxes teem with newsletters on Capitol Hill happenings usually are committed enough to a team that they won’t change their minds. And as it turns out, young people feel decreasingly loyal to political parties.

So maybe young people feel bad about the president because they just feel bad. Back during the thick of the pandemic, stimulus checks padded early professionals’ wallets, and prices stayed steady while wages rose. This spring, inflation has started to soar, free money is no more and, somehow, covid still hasn’t totally split town. Plus, there’s word students might soon have to start paying off their debt again.

Both these explanations probably have something to them. But more compelling are revelations from the Harvard Youth Poll’s findings that suggest today’s dissatisfaction is less an evolution than a return to the inevitable.

Survey chief John Della Volpe homed in on the differences between those who voted for the president and approve of him today and those voted for him but disapprove of him today. The disapprovers, it turns out, consume less political information — though they spend more time in the cultural war zone that is Twitter. They view the current system as ineffectual, and they think the movers and shakers in Washington look out for elites instead of the little guy, or gal.

Young people in general, the poll discovered, are disenchanted with D.C. and unconvinced that, under the status quo, government can meet modern-day challenges. The catch, though, is that they believe more than those before them that government is valuable: that it should provide more things to more of the vulnerable, from health insurance to food and shelter.

This type of young person doesn’t have to be particularly partisan to identify with a philosophy, and they don’t have to listen to podcasts or follow every legislative tussle to feel that today’s president, and today’s Democratic Party, don’t stand for what they believe in — or at least, don’t stand up for it. They just have to look at a country around them that is, for the most part, unsatisfyingly the same as it ever was; a few minutes’ doom-scrolling Twitter would do the trick, too. They also didn’t have to pay much attention to realize that Donald Trump basically embodied everything they’re against.

That explains why Biden had so far to fall in young people’s eyes. Their abhorrence of a corrupted Republican Party sometimes manifested and sometimes masqueraded as enthusiasm for him. He was many voters’ only hope of avoiding something, or someone, a whole lot worse — and his victory was enough of a relief that it inspired an era of good feelings unlikely to last. Now, with at least Trump’s threat less immediate, Biden seems old again. And when young, idealistic and casual observers of politics get asked how they feel about him, they’re sending back just that message.

The president couldn’t pull off the society-wide transformation many young people yearn for even if he tried. Maybe that kind of revolution would yield some durable devotion, but so long as possibility stays constrained by political reality, what he does and doesn’t do on the margins may not matter nearly as much as how scary the alternative is.

Democrats still shouldn’t despair. The Harvard Youth Poll finds that, despite everything, expected turnout remains on track to match the last midterms. The menace of the GOP may remain clear and present enough to push young people out the door — even if Biden doesn’t.

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