If you are a rich white woman, the easiest thing you can do to be accepted in the cool social justice circles is to listen to NPR, read prestige media, "listen to and learn from Black women," internalize those opinions, & start espousing them. I know because I was this woman. 1/

https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1781533467576037561

It's really very easy to do. I did it for years - it was fun, mostly subconscious, & most of the time not even that nefarious. I learned a lot about a lot of topics. I can still talk good social justice talk, and sometimes do it to my husband because it annoys him 😂 2/

I read the attempt to discredit the NY Times reporting on Hamas's systemic sexual violence so you don't have to. You should, so you can see the full extent of the depravity & misogyny enabled & required by antisemitism. But here are the highlights. theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new… Top line, the argument is that there is insufficient forensic evidence of any mass rape; if there were rapes, they were committed by ordinary Palestinians, not Hamas; the rapes were incidental, not systemic; and anyway, reporter is not credible because she liked bad tweets.

Am I supposed to feel bad for people like this?

Because I don't.

My only thought is what is wrong with you, crying over a home you've never been to and olive trees that existed 75 years ago. 🧵 Virtually every Jewish person has this story. Almost all of our grandparents were expelled, with various levels of violence, from their homelands.

Very few of us harbor illusions that we're going back. We moved on and focused on the future.

This mindset makes no sense to us.

This is for every single "education equity" activist who called open schools parents racists or white supremacists. You fought to keep schools remote, and as a result you took an already abysmal system and somehow made it even worse.

https://twitter.com/AstorAaron/status/1671917862942916624

Relatively wealthy white kids gained in reading because their private schools opened or their parents hired tutors. Asian families are super organized around education and were able to activate the community. Black and Hispanic kids weren't as fortunate. Oops!

Someone asked me today how covid had affected my relationship with Jewish institutions and the answer is negatively, probably irrevocably so.

In August 2022, almost every non-Orthodox synagogue in NYC requires masks, vaccines, or both. For everyone, including babies. 🧵 None of these synagogues is my synagogue, but mine has similar policies. Everyone over 6 mos has to be vaccinated, and everyone over the age of 2 has to wear a KN95 mask. My younger children cannot go to services or Hebrew school because they're not vaccinated.

I spent about half an hour today chatting with a high level employee at NYCDOHMH and I'm still kind of processing it, but my main takeaway was that if we let these people continue to call the shots we are going to be dealing with restrictions for a very very very long time. 🧵 The thinking is that we don't know the long term effects of covid, so we need to continue protecting people. But won't we not know the long term effects for a very long time? Are we going to continue these restrictions for 20 years? No clear answer to that.

We did when instead of giving new moms paid time off to support breastfeeding, we stuck a pump in their hands and said, "You figure it out." It is now, at most, "breastMILK is best." And there is very little evidence that breastmilk is better than formula.

https://twitter.com/eekymom/status/1524717737129488385

New moms are guaranteed time to pump at work but that time doesn't have to be paid. So a shift worker who takes 45 mins to pump, needs to stay at work 45 mins longer. Is it better to give your baby breastMILK or is it better to get home earlier and spend 45 mins with your baby?

When the dust settles & we're able to have a rational convo abt closed schools & prolonged child masking, many will claim they were always against it. Luckily people like @GiniaNYT are willing to go on the record as a school closure & mask proponent. 🧵
nyti.ms/3Lhzu0i Let's start with @GiniaNYT's article last year, in which she highlighted @drkysr, who claimed *in May 2021* that reopening schools was white supremacy. No pushback from Ginia, obviously. nytimes.com/2021/05/07/nyr…

Kids did everything right. They "stayed home to stay safe" (even though they were never at risk); they "masked up" (even the littlest kids, those learning how to speak & read); they got vaccinated. And we are still actively making their lives worse, smaller, because we can. In my neighborhood, the annual (outdoor) children's Halloween parade was canceled "because COVID." Meanwhile, NYC's Village Halloween Parade went forward. npr.org/2021/10/29/104…

Does anyone remember this #flattenthecurve graphic from March 2020? It's been a while so I want to revisit it. A thread. In March 2020, we were told that we had to take extreme measures to "flatten the curve" and avoid overwhelming our hospital system. That was the goal. Eventually most of us would get covid, but we had to do what we could to avoid all getting it at the same time

PSAL athletes have mandated vaccination and are still subject to arbitrary, senseless rules that are hindering their ability to compete, showcase their talent, and be recruited.

@NYCMayor can you please cha he these rules to allow our @NYCSchools
athletes to compete? 🧵 I spoke to @Coachlanese13 last night about the city's restrictions on PSAL. Right now, PSAL can only compete against other PSAL athletes. So our public school athletes cannot participate in state competitions, because athletes from other cities and towns will be there.

Ahem.

SURVEILLANCE TESTING DOES NOT KEEP SCHOOLS OPEN. IT KEEPS THEM CLOSED.

Thank you. I honestly, and in good faith, do not understand how testing asymptomatic kids keeps schools open. Finding asymptomatic cases requires classrooms to quarantine and keeps healthy kids out of school. I am willing to entertain good faith arguments to convince me otherwise.

This afternoon, I was contacted by a producer at a network news show asking if I wanted to be interviewed about "the new CDC school and mask guidance." I readily agreed. 🧵 Before we get any further I want to make my point upfront: the media has a story to sell, and the story is not "everything is ok and will continue to be ok." The story that sells is one of fear and panic.

Infrequently discussed long term effects of closed schools:

* Public opinion in blue areas turning against teacher's unions;

* Public sentiment increasingly viewing unions as a big money special interest group; * School boards filled with people who are anti-union, pro-school choice;

* States defunding public ed as they pass laws that "fund students, not systems;"

* Public ed defunding itself as there's a massive shift of people out of public ed into charters and private schools.

I am a registered Democrat. I have voted in every election (primary & general) since I turned 18. I have never once, not ever, voted for a Republican. I thought after Trump I never would.

Guys, this is really bad. Really, really bad.

nyti.ms/3dbTGTg Every day I meet someone who thinks that once teachers are vaxd, schools will magically go back to full time. But there is zero effort to tie teacher vax to open schools. A Rep Sen attempted to tie vax to a commitment to open schools. Was it a cynical move? Yes. But also smart.