The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/tompkins-county/)
While Cornell entered its spring semester with the experience of a fall semester that saw fewer COVID-19 cases than expected, 2021 may be off to a more tumultuous start.
As thousands of Cornellians flocked back to Ithaca for the spring semester, the nor’easter that brought heavy snow across the East Coast this week hindered students’ travel plans — creating move-in hurdles beyond testing and quarantine as students drove through heavy snow to get to campus.
On Saturday, the Tompkins County Health Department reported that a TCAT passenger had tested positive, and that the Bus Route 14S could have potentially exposed.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unevenly impact working-class and marginalized communities, it has become clear that no crisis can be separated from the influences of rampant economic inequality. The U.S. climate crises, which are reportedly increasing in frequency and magnitude each year, are no different. For this reason, the promise of the Green New Deal as a policy platform that can address climate change, environmental racism and economic injustice has inspired the imagination of millions across the country. But workers and union leaders nationwide are warning that a transition to clean energy that does not include strong worker protections can create dire consequences, further exacerbating the massive wealth gap by weakening organized labor and pushing workers into temporary, unstable, or unsafe work.
In the aftermath of Ithaca’s 2019 Green New Deal resolution, the local conversation has paralleled the national, with our community’s workers fighting for more worker-friendly policies to be prioritized in Tompkins county’s green jobs agenda. Currently, there is no worker representation on the county’s Industrial Development Agency, which is the department that provides tax abatements to developers seeking to build in the county and incentivizes many green development projects.
As most Cornell students have left the Ithaca area until spring, coronavirus cases have dwindled on campus — but across Tompkins County and throughout the nation, case numbers are soaring to record highs.
“Our goal is to keep going with our service levels as much as possible,” Vanderpool said. “I don’t want to take anything away from anybody.”
10 to 15 Cornellians have signed up to work as Tompkins County poll workers this year, a number significantly higher than the typical one to two per election.
The race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District turned to mudslinging last week as incumbent Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) accused his opponent, Tracy Mitrano J.D. ’95, of running an “anti-police campaign,” despite Mitrano’s multiple assertions that she is a supporter of law enforcement and against defunding the police. This is the second election where Mitrano and Reed are facing off for the western New York congressional seat. The change in tone comes as protests against police violence and, this weekend, protests in support of police, sweep Ithaca. The accusation came after revelations that an organizer with the Mitrano campaign posted the following on Instagram: “Fuck Tom Reed, fuck cops, fuck capitalism, fuck Trump.” Reed campaign communications director Abbey Daugherty called the comments “hateful and offensive” and claimed them as proof that “what truly motivates Mitrano [is] … a hatred of our law enforcement community and our capitalist system.”
Mitrano said that she only met the organizer once and that “the statements made in the post do not in any way represent me or my values,” in an Oct.
“Unemployment insurance is only a partial replacement for lost wages; if the worker doesn’t make a living wage to begin with, unemployment isn’t nearly enough.”
Ithaca High School and Cayuga Heights Elementary Schools closed Wednesday following three positive cases from IHS.