Lessons picked from peaches
COURIER L 22 IFE, JANUARY 8-14, 2021
OPINION
I’ve only spent a few hours
in Georgia, but because of their
particular election rules, Georgia’s
on my mind. Those election
laws resulting in Warnock
and Osoff Senate wins propels
Park Slope’s own Chuck
Schumer to Senate Majority
leader. The wins, coupled with
Donald Trump’s defeat, gives
me more hope than any New
Year Resolution ever could for
the year 2021.
The consequences of better
federal policies — starting
with funds to close COVIDcreated
budget gaps — will be
a great help to New York State
and City and us here in Brooklyn.
I also think since Trump
kept threatening it would happen
if the Democrats won, we
could continue to break down
zoning barriers to suburban
integration for those seeking
that lifestyle. I mean, I wouldn’t
want him to have a reputation
as a liar.
The Georgia elections were
more than just wins — they
will help save lives and bolster
our democratic institutions.
They also highlighted a fundamental
truth: campaigns
should be clear about what you
want to and will strive to do if
elected. In this case, Osoff and
Warnock very clearly stated
voting for them was a vote for
those $2,000 emergency aid
checks, which Senator Mitch
McConnell has blocked. It’s
simple, to the point, and directly
benefi ts people without
needlessly getting into targeted
policies of “means testing”
that cause a signifi cant
delay in an emergency. Don’t
do complicated inexplicable
tax cuts and labyrinthian programs
that are too often dead
ends. As we’ve seen most recently
with vaccination skepticism,
we are suffering from
low social trust levels and a
lack of faith in institutions to
do right by people.
When people need help,
help them. While means-testing
may be well-intentioned,
hell is down that road. The argument
of means-testing does
not want people to get benefi ts
if they can scrape by without
help. Of course, that standard
doesn’t apply to corporate welfare
and ever-greater tax cuts
for billionaires. The “undeserving”
wealthy end up with
even greater wealth while
people who could benefi t from
what is, relatively speaking, a
pittance of extra cash are cut
out due to some arbitrary line
in the sand.
We’re all in this togetherapproach
of Social Security
and Medicare on the federal
level. Universal Pre-K, implemented
by the de Blasio administration
in 2014, has proven to
be sustainable and popular.
Universal Pre-K guarantees
a seat to all four year olds
in New York City and is widely
popular in part because middle
class parents don’t have
to shell out thousands of dollars
for private school Pre-K.
No program is perfectly structured
or executed, but Social
Security, Medicare and Universal
Pre-K are here to stay.
All the mayoral candidates
are tripping over themselves to
fi nd ways to demonstrate how
they’d be better and different
than Bill de Blasio. However,
despite his lack of popularity,
you won’t fi nd a single candidate
looking to cut his biggest
policy achievement. There’s
a lesson in there, and I hope a
couple of James Madison High
school alum remember it.
Mike Racioppo is the District
Manager of Community
Board 6. Follow him on
Twitter @RacioppoMike.
MIKE DROP
Mike Racioppo
Climate change, COVID, and
changing our behavior
Human beings are much
better at reacting to
short-term stimuli
than long-term stimuli. So
you’ve maybe heard about
frogs being boiled to death
by being placed in a pot of
cool water where the temperature
is slowly raised. If
you were to just throw them
right in the boiling pot,
they’d be able to jump out to
saftey.
You’re probably familiar
with some movies and
TV shows about zombies.
At first the zombies are rumors,
they are normally
caused by some sort of human
meddling, but then the
characters realize they are
real.
We have all had to change
our whole lives because of
COVID-19. That occurred
quickly and then settled
in, month after month. In
an hour this Wednesday we
saw protestors storm the
country’s Capitol.
So change occurs at different
speeds, but the biggest
and most important change
of all is climate change —
and maybe the events of the
last four years have finally
prepared us to keep making
the big changes.
I recently listened to the
May 31, 2020 episode of The
Generation Anthropocene
podcast, which was about
climate change and zombies.
The guest was University
of Tampa scholar Sarah Juliet
Lauro, a zombie expert.
“Geologic time and the
anthropocene: all of this is
happening but it’s happening
too slowly for us to really
feel as terrified of it as
we need to be. I think that
the zombie is like a timelapse
vision of what we’re
doing anyway. Maybe it’s
not that the dead are going
to come back to life but it is
in effect that what we have
done now is we have made
all of ourselves ‘The Walking
Dead’ because we are
becoming extinct,” Lauro
said. “We have done this to
ourselves.”
“That’s where COVID is
actually offering us this opportunity
to really see what
it would be like if we could
all recognize a disaster unfolding
in real-time, and act
accordingly. I don’t know
that we’re going to rise to
the challenge. That’s for me
what the zombie has always
been about: this dress rehearsal
for catastrophe, if
you can be smart enough to
recognize it for what it is.”
“These zombie movies
normally don’t end very
well,” host Mike Osborne
observed.
“Yes, but Fear can be
our friend,” Lauro replied.
“What’s getting us into a situation
that’s completely untenable
for our planet is not
the base instinct of fear but
the base instinct of greed.
And if we can channel a
good kind of fear — a fear
that we are actually rendering
ourselves extinct, and
destroying this planet —
into a good kind of action,
then we can use fear to surmount
the greed of a certain
segment of the population
and then we will bring
about real change.”
Amen, sister.
Nick Rizzo is a former Democratic
District Leader and a
political consultant who lives
in Greenpoint. Follow him on
Twitter @NickRizzo.
WORDS OF
RIZZDOM
Nick Rizzo