Meet the grassroots activists who protected San Francisco's most vulnerable from COVID

View in browser   March 19, 2021 Last week, I asked you all what you were looking forward to doing once you're fully vaccinated. Many of you are excited to see your grandchildren, or grandparents, for the first time in over a year. Others are planning faraway vacations. Some simply want to see their friends' maskless faces. Here are a few responses that stood out: I want to travel to Belgium on December 16 to experience the 77th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge on the ground with a professional battlefield guide. —Bill Stringer Play live music with some friends the minute they're all vaccinated! I moved to Maine eight years ago and was lucky to find a bunch of people who got together weekly to play fiddle tunes, something I hadn't done since I began teaching at UT-Austin years ago. After COVID began, a few of us did get together outside, 6 feet apart, and played our hearts out for a couple of hours, a couple of times. But it gets cold fast in Maine, so nothing since then. With spring coming, we can play outside again. —Gale Greenleaf My husband and I have most missed our Friday classical music concerts at Rockefeller Research Institute followed by a lunch on campus. Their faculty cafeteria had a great selection of delicious food in a light-filled room, or you could eat outside on a terrace that overlooked the East River and the Queensboro (Koch) Bridge. We'd have lovely talks outside in that terrace garden. It was a weekly date out of our then-busy, hectic lives. —Cynthia Gale Valdes Keep up that optimism, and enjoy the weekend. —Abigail Weinberg Advertisement   Can an Oversight Board Created by Facebook Actually Fix the Company's Failings? Deciding what to do about Trump's ban is only one thorny question. They just might ignore the others. BY PEMA LEVY   More than 100,000 kids could show up alone at our border this year. What's going on? BY ISABELA DIAS COVID relief efforts want to offer citizenship to essential workers. But this group is falling through the cracks. BY FERNANDA ECHAVARRI Police unions have enormous war chests to defend officers like Derek Chauvin BY SAMANTHA MICHAELS Wall Street may finally be taking climate change seriously BY DOMINIC RUSHE Advertisement   The Grassroots Activists Who Protected San Francisco's Most Vulnerable—and the City—From COVID Unidos en Salud "made the pain undeniable." And then got to work. BY JULIA LURIE AND MADDIE OATMAN   Support from readers allows Mother Jones to do journalism that doesn't just follow the pack. Donate SOME GOOD NEWS, FOR ONCE More Sounds From Mars A few weeks ago, Recharge boosted you with the good news that you can hear the first sounds ever recorded on the surface of Mars. Well, now there’s more. NASA released the sounds of the Mars rover’s wheels as they clank across the planet’s surface. “The sounds were picked up by one of the two onboard microphones. This audio is taken from a 16-minute sequence recorded during a 27m-drive on 7 March,” says the BBC. My take on space noises? They’re cool. And, dare I say it, weird. The second sounds from Mars are like you’re inside a metal can being thrown down a stairwell (at least to me). As last time, this is an opportunity to pontificate, long and hard, on the connection between our planetary existence and sound. My colleague Daniel King scratched together a Mars playlist (Mars Volta, Bruno Mars, Mars Breslow, John Coltrane's "Mars"). But I’m going to give myself more leeway here. A few “space” albums or songs I’d listen to post-rover noises: “Spaced Out on Your Love,” by Errol Stubbs; the album Guitar in the Space Age! by Bill Frisell; and (sorry, a weird one) the art “recording project” writ album Captured Space, released just last year. Finish off with “Spaced Cowboy” by Sly & the Family Stone, one of the greatest songs of all time, and you’re good to go. Do you have a “space” playlist? Are you going to get mad at me about the “Spaced Cowboy” hot take or just realize I’m right? Email us at recharge@motherjones.com. —Jacob Rosenberg Did you enjoy this newsletter? Help us out by forwarding it to a friend or sharing it on Facebook and Twitter. Donate Subscribe This message was sent to franchmaverickk.secretwords123@blogger.com. To change the messages you receive from us, you can edit your email preferences or unsubscribe from all mailings. For advertising opportunities see our online media kit. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today. www.MotherJones.com PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755