Start of Year 5783: Last Two Parshiot of the Torah, On Doing Better

    This week we’ll hear Parashat VaYelech, and then Ha’azinu, at the end of the Torah.

These last two parshiot of the Torah essentially are the founding leader handing over the mantle to his protege, while telling the people that they will certainly fail, but that they could Do Better.  If only they wanted to.

Project Do Better is founded on the idea that by building empathy while educating around community mutual aid and public infrastructure, we can build a world that does indeed Do Better, starting right now.

I look forward to hearing your opinions on this matter, Thoughtful Readers.

We can really  Do Better. -Shira

                                       Last week was: Parashat Nitzavim (נִצָּבִים) 5782: Rule of Law -It’s Not Across The Ocean, Folks. …  ,

Action Prompts:

    Share your thoughts on how to build buy-in to create a more equal, or at least less inequitable, society, please.   Guest posts are always welcome.  Writing, by the way, is my personal contribution to Project Do Better. What would yours be, if you had the spare time and energy?

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Writing Process Wednesdays, and Writer’s Block

So, I have finally experienced the dreaded block: staring at my WiP, words stumbling over themselves refusing to be put in order, and refusing to be put down on paper, much less typed into the word processor.

After a few minutes of agonized worry that this would take up valuable time, I reached for a sheet of scrap paper meaning to write a throw away paragraph, but instead, out came the sketch of the scene that you see featured above.

Did it help?  Sort of.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Parashat Nitzavim (נִצָּבִים) 5782: Rule of Law -It’s Not Across The Ocean, Folks.

    This week’s Torah portion,Nitzavim (נִצָּבִים),  is the 51st (51/53 or 52, depending on the year: this year, it’s 53…) reading in the annual cycle.  It’s the 8/10th parashah in the book of Dvarim,  (although this parsha is normally read on the same Shabbat as Parashat VaYelech…) with the full reading in Dvarim/.  Nearly the end of the year.

I love how Moshe basically tells people, in the words of the USNA class of 1990, “it’s not that difficult,” in Parashat Nitzavim.  “Lo baShamaim, hi … ”   It’s not in the heavens, and not across the ocean, so no on has to go search for it, because it is right here.  I used to love preparing for leyning (chanting) those verses.  So clear and ‘smack myself in the head’ obvious that the foundation of a stable society is agreement upon a set of humane laws.  These laws obviously left a lot to be desired, but they were a start, and now, we can Do Better.

Photo by Alex Andrews on Pexels.com

Project Do Better is founded on the idea that by building empathy while educating around community mutual aid and public infrastructure, we can build a world that does indeed Do Better, right here on Earth.

I look forward to hearing your opinions on this matter, Thoughtful Readers.

We can really  Do Better. -Shira

                                       Last week was: Parashat Ki Tavo (כִּי־תָבוֹא) 5782, and Let’s Just Do Better, Please …  ,

Action Prompts:

    Share your thoughts on how to build buy-in to create a more equal, or at least less inequitable, society, please.   Guest posts are always welcome.  Writing, by the way, is my personal contribution to Project Do Better. What would yours be, if you had the spare time and energy?

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: The Souls of Black Folk, By W.E.B. Du Bois

I listened to a book by a pioneering scholar whom I have admired since elementary school:

This book is one that should be on every shelf in America, and I mean that in the widest sense, as in North America and South America. Since it’s in the public domain, it is available freely as an audiobook, beautifully read on librivox.org, and presumably also on both the project Gutenberg and the internet archives sites. Du Bois mentions, in fact, very nearly the same subjects spoken of by Dr. Anna J. Cooper in her work a decade earlier in A Voice From the South, By a Woman of the South, except that he rarely mentions women except for Phyllis Wheatley and one or two other women. He does however, not explicitly, but still, mention the Episcopalian clergy problem, bringing up the same issue that Dr. Cooper mentioned in her work about black people being trusted to lead and educate the black community. And also the problem of the history of slavery having very real lasting impacts into the present day at that time, and unfortunately still today. What he says is the same thing that she said earlier which is that both context and history matter.

1.0%“Librivox.org has a well liked reader for this classic. Excellent”

August 19, 2022 –

2.0%“Beautiful poem to start with by Ms. Simmons.”

August 19, 2022 –

3.0% “Had never thought of the Freedmen’s bureau as a government.

Going to SC, taking back the little land already issued to freed slaves.

😦

The Bureau and Gen. Howard had an impossible job, given the circumstances.”

August 19, 2022 –

4.0%“Mamon, unfortunately, appears to have won…”

August 19, 2022 –

6.0%“Had this call for education across the South, for all citizens, been heeded at the time, current events could have been avoided.”

August 19, 2022 –

7.0%“Exactly. Better living conditions give better work results.”

August 19, 2022 –

8.0%“Interesting, the irony of the fact that Booker T. Washington’s policies would in fact undermine the very existence of his own school, given that his de-emphasizing higher education would mean they wouldn’t be any teachers for Tuskegee.”

August 20, 2022 –

9.0%”Cunningly devised laws … to be preyed upon… handicapped… dangerous for the future… Here is the imperative for trained Negro leaders. … Educate them. Then by the ballot…”

August 20, 2022 –

11.0%”Beautiful homage to the risk of death in childbirth.”

August 20, 2022 –

13.0%”Same call as that of Dr. Anna J. Cooper for the Episcopalian clergy.”

August 20, 2022 –

14.0% “I will go to the king
… If I die, I die.”

Beautiful use of Esther’s words…”

   and yes:

“Exactly: the Toutons 1000 years ago were woefully barbaric, while knowledge came from beyond Europe.”

Hang on:  How did he manage not to mention Dr. Anna J. Cooper in this book?!

Doctor Anna J. Cooper   essentially builds the same  case that he does, and I love that question that she poses “who will care for our souls”.  I still wonder if that’s where W. E. B. Du Bois took the title for this book ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ from, as I’ve read somewhere that it was a response to this book by Dr. Cooper.

The United States can totally Do Better, can’t we?

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Parashat Ki Tavo (כִּי־תָבוֹא) 5782, and Let’s Just Do Better, Please

    This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo (כִּי־תָבוֹא),  is the 50th (50/54 or 52, depending on the year: this year, it’s 54…) reading in the annual cycle.  It’s the 7/10th parashah in the book of Dvarim,  (although the next two parshiot are normally read on the same Shabbat) with the full reading in Dvarim/Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8.  Nearly the end of the year.

Again with carrots and sticks.   Sorry, too tired to deal.  More next week, as we see some of the most beautiful imagery of redemption in all of the Torah, in Parashat Netzavim (chapter 30 of Dvarim).  I used to love preparing for leyning (chanting) those verses.

Project Do Better is founded on the idea that by building empathy while educating around community mutual aid and public infrastructure, we can build a world that offers more emotional carrots, and needs fewer sticks.  Of any kind.

What do you think this parashah full of carrots and sticks does to help us build an empathetic society?

I look forward to hearing your opinions on this matter, Thoughtful Readers.

We can really  Do Better. -Shira

                                       Last week was: Dvarim: Parashat Ki Tetzei, and Humanity vs. Law …  ,

Action Prompts:

    Share your thoughts on how to build buy-in to create a more equal, or at least less inequitable, society, please.   Guest posts are always welcome.  Writing, by the way, is my personal contribution to Project Do Better. What would yours be, if you had the spare time and energy?

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: Anna J. Cooper’s A Voice From The South, By A Woman of The South

I got this book from Gutenberg project, initially, but found a cleaner pdf, and then epub versions on The Internet Archive.

(What is it with the WP editor killing my paragraph spacing?!!)

Interesting ending, on belief. I held off on rating this for a while, and then rated it a 4 star -everyone should read this book, book, but maybe not use it as a current reference book.

Doctor Anna J. Cooper  starts off by building a case that if the United States is based on Christianity, then it has certain obligations, including not allowing a set of institutions based on bullying and hypocrisy to rule the country. From there she points out that these hypocritical and bullying, or ‘might makes right’, institutions, have taken advantage of Black labor, and kept Black people in poverty. She points out that it is a tremendous waste of potential, and also that history and context really do matter. Toward the end chapters, she is calling for the Black community to build institutions for what would later be called Negro uplift, and I love that question that she poses “who will care for our souls”. I wonder if that’s where W. E. B. Du Bois took the title for his book ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ from, as I’ve read somewhere that it was a response to this book by Dr Cooper. She is, of course, an extremely strong advocate for education, for understanding history, for context, and says near the end of the book that we should be using our trigonometry and physics to help our neighbors measure our fields and build up housing and businesses, banking institutions within the Black community given that that’s denied to us by the dominant society. The statistics that she cites are unfortunately not very different by percentage from those cited 50 years later by Dr. King and haven’t changed much to this day. She calls for the essentials of food, clothing, and shelter, and Universal education to be provided to the Black community because we have paid our debt in work, in inventiveness, and in blood in the cotton fields and on the battlefield.

Please also see the reading updates. She started off by building a case based on accepted ideas of the time, many of which are outdated, but were necessary to get her audience to listen, back then.

Leaves me saddened and angry that so little progress has been made in the century since she wrote this. As she wished for, more Black writers are finally being published, but context is still sorely lacking.

The United States can do better.

Reading Progress

August 10, 2022 – Shelved as: to-read

August 10, 2022 – Shelved

August 11, 2022 – Started Reading

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: bookgroup

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: racisme

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: policy

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: dcpl

August 11, 2022 –

page 11

2.99%“By pg 11 I had to take strong issue with her treatment of Islam both in the Arab countries and in Turkey especially. I have lived in Turkey, and still have many Muslim friends who will strongly object to her characterization of Muslim women as empty headed. Even during the time she was writing, 100 years ago, the women of the Harem were not so, and for a hundred years after Suleiman, they were powerful.”

August 11, 2022 –

page 12

3.26% “Exactly:

“… our satisfaction in American institutions rests not on the fruition we now enjoy, but springs rather from the possibilities and promise that are inherent in the system, though as yet, perhaps, far in the future.”

Even to this day. This is why I took the oath of office twice.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 13

3.53%“Cites a lady well before Viktor Frankl on happiness as feeling able to make progress on important work for others.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 14

3.8% “Mais, non. Europe got Chivalry from Arab poets via the Crusades. La chivalrie ne vient pas de l’église ni du feudalisme, elle a eu du “nos ancêtres les Gaulois.”. De la Sorbonne , sans doute c’est aussi pour ça que j’ai laissé la France.
No, chivalry did not come from feudalism and certainly not in the church. She must have gotten this while at the Sorbonne from the old French “our ancestors the Gauls” thing.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 15

4.08%“Like my grandma at Mt Zion UMC, she probably believes this, but, whether she believed this or not, politically speaking, she really had no choice but to praise and lift up the church and Europe in order to assure the white folks of our loyalty to the United States.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 19

5.16% “This was written only 21 years after the emancipation.

” Just at the age of ruddy manhood.”

A time for introspection indeed. Wow.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 22

5.98%“”We need men who can be a father a brother a friend to every week, struggling, unshielded girl.””

August 12, 2022 –

page 26

7.07%“Is she essentially calling for an Episcopalian talented 10th?”

August 12, 2022 –

page 33

8.97% “Beautiful:. “a people whose civilization was hoary headed before the parent elements that begot his race had advanced beyond nebulosity.”

Sorry, Gus, but this beats your “my people were writing poetry while your people were swinging through the trees !” (Gus to the white guy in My Big Fat Greek Wedding)”

August 12, 2022 –

page 34

9.24% “And the interesting thing is that ” this incarnation of power ” is still with us , unfortunately.

It’s what western civilization is built on.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 37

10.05% “Thank you: “… you will not find jurisprudence formulating as an axiom the absurdity that man and wife are one, and that one the man – that the married woman may not hold or bequeath her own property…”

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Cooper !!”

August 12, 2022 –

page 50

13.59% “”… deliberately fold their arms and turn round when Black Woman’s turn came to alight”

Yup.”

August 12, 2022 –

30.0% “” teaching GOOD MANNERS.”

Yup, things haven’t changed. Unfortunately.”

August 13, 2022 –

35.0% “”…and all the strong will have learned at last to deal justly , to love mercy, and to walk humbly; and our Fair land will happen taught the secret of universal courtesy…”

Exactly what Project Do Better is working for. Thank you for this encouragement, Dr. Cooper, of blessed memory.”

August 13, 2022 –

38.0%“Man or woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrng. The pleading of the American woman for the right and the opportunity to employ the American method of influencing the disposal… is based on principles as broad as the human race and as old as human society. Her wrongs are thus indissolubly linked with all undefended woe, all helpless suffering, and the plenitude of her rights will mean the final triumph of”

August 13, 2022 –

39.0% “”…lofty purpose of Spain’s pure-minded Queen”
??!

Seriously ?
Dr. Cooper didn’t read some of the original letters back and forth between Columbus and Isabel about those ‘cannibalistic barbarians’ that it was okay to force into slavery despite the church’s position against it.”

August 13, 2022 –

47.0%“”The community that closes its gates against foreign talent can never hope to advance beyond a certain point. Resolve to keep out foreigners and you keep out progress.””

August 13, 2022 –

48.0%“”-in 1619.””

August 13, 2022 –

49.0%“But in fact, the laboring man has nearly been ground to powder here.”

August 14, 2022 –

52.0%“Ouch! But, in my experience, also true…”

August 14, 2022 –

57.0% “Even today: “… we know that our present poverty is due to the fact that the toil of the last quarter Century enriched these coffers, but left us the heirs of crippled, deformed, frostbitten, horny-handed and empty-handed mothers and fathers.”

Still, today!!”

August 14, 2022 –

60.0% “”A man who’s acquaintanceship is so slight that he cannot even discern diversities of individuality, has no right or authority to hawk “the only true and authentic ” pictures of a race of human beings.”

Exactly!
Thank you, Dr. Cooper.”

August 14, 2022 –

66.0% “”… the South presents a solid phalanx of iron resistance to the Negro’s advancement…”

And she still does, even today, which is why I left.”

August 14, 2022 –

67.0%“” give him a fair wage and an honest reckoning and a kindly God-speed””

August 14, 2022 –

76.0% “”In cities, lower priced houses on streets are almost uniformly kept for the white poor.”

Alley dwellings and black infant mortality.”

   Comment: to be fair to Dr. Cooper wrt Spain’s Catholic Queen, the letters between Isabel and Colo. were only recently accessed, afaik, as shown in San Diego, CA, The Museum of Man’s “Cannibals” exhibit abt 2019, so they were not likely accessible to the Francophone or Anglophone world at her time.

   We really can Do Better, can’t we?

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Triangular Concepts and Context, on Day 27/67?

      My thoughts on  Day 27 of my 67 night-school class set of lesson plans for GED/HiSet learners, were on not only understanding what the concept of Manifest Destiny was, but also how in the modern context, it continues to shape points of view and ways of looking at the world by everyone who grew up in this country, however unconsciously, and current outcomes, particularly for poor and non-white citizens and residents.

   Voting in the upcoming midterms is crucial to our republic, and to our future.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/Protector & Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Writing Process Wednesdays, Editing Out Passages, and Why Phase II?

     Story,  language learning, and continuing education, all connect vitally to our democracy.  This passage, I decided to edit out, for brevity, from the Do Better Manual.   Please read it in the format best suited to you, after re-checking your voter’s registration.   So many re-writes, even in a fully and meticulously outlined book.

Here is another page from an edited out chapter that might bear posting as a separate blog post:

“This combination of greater empathy and learning opens the way for a far greater understanding of the importance to society of the Public Health Service, and of universal access to at least a basic standard of health care. The Covid-19 global pandemic has thrown into stark relief both the increasing levels of inequality world-wide, and the dangers that that inequality, particularly lack of access to basic health care and disease prevention via basic water and sewage infrastructure, pose to even the well-off in this world. Universal access to at least some minimal level of health care acts as a safe-guard for all members of society. In like fashion, the empathy built by traveling and seeing with one’s own eyes how other human beings share the potential for creating new tools, given the time and resources, should lead to the realization that all human beings need and deserve access to the basic tools for survival. Only education and a basic income can provide that security at a local and regional level, which in turn generates increasing security at all levels. A Universal Basic Income, similar to what Dr. King called for, and universal free education, much like what is available to citizens of many European Union member states today, is a start. That start, toward shared tools and shared food security, energy security, and security of life, limb, and person, can move us forward to the ultimate goal: a world in which no human being need fear for lack of the basic necessities of life.

Phase II thus prepares a cultural space for the potential of new policies and even new forms of governance, by laying the groundwork for the initial sets of new policies in Phase III.                Shared learning never stops expanding. That expansion of knowledge and of empathy necessarily leads to new understanding. Some of that understanding includes the basic need for tools, which is what distinguishes Homo Sapiens from other animals, as we continually use our existing tools to develop new and more effective tools for the variety of tasks we face.                Naturally, it takes time to learn to use tools, and more time to develop new ones. Given the time, and the basic resources, each and every human being can and should contribute to the security and well-being of humankind. But such contributions require basic security: food security, energy security, and security of life, limb and shelter. The Community Serving Adults forged in Phase II will be equipped to help make that happen for all of us. Secure and confident Serving Adults realize that each person needs the time and the resources to contribute the energy needed to build new forms of governance, with buy in and consensus at all levels, from local to global.               ”

It was initially part of a framing chapter that I decided, upon Beta Reader feedback, needed to be shortened, and later deleted.  But the chapter had a purpose, which had been to explain the need for each phase in it’s turn.  Specifically, the second phase in our 60-80 year sequence.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Relationships and Voting, on Day 26/67?

      My thoughts on  Day 26 of my 67 night-school class set of lesson plans for GED/HiSet learners, where the lesson 26 discussion is on relative relationships, mathematical and societal, are on how to build better availability for voting, for all of our citizens.

   Voting in the upcoming midterms is crucial to our relationship with our republic, and with our future.  Thanks to Annie for this info:

League of Women Voters. The LWV does voter registration via local and state chapters. They also encourage people to share voter registration tools by promoting http://www.vote411.org. And if you enter your state in the “Nationwide Voting Rules Quick View,” you can learn the voting options in your state and how they compare with those in other states.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/Protector & Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Public Financial Knowledge Infrastructure: Expired vs. Extinguished Debts

This is a topic I’ve written about before, but not in detail, as part of Project Do Better’s Phase I piece, Public Financial Knowledge Infrastructure.

In most states, expired is merely ‘unenforceable’ except that you have to defend by showing the court that the debt is expired. That is why so many suits (around 90%) win by default, as people rarely show up in court to defend, and so that expired debt then gets a loss by default, followed by a money judgement, often on expired, and thus Time-Barred, or, unenforceable or even

unvalidated debts, , past the SoL.

Unfair and injust, but frequent.

Two states do ‘extinguish’ the debts after some years (13 yrs, if I recall correctly, in the case of MS), but an expired debt is not extinguished, just legally unenforceable. The problem with that is the need to defend on the unenforceability. (Note that this should not be confused with the 7-year limit on credit reporting by CRAs…)

I find it incredibly obviously stacking the deck to require a defendant to appear in court just to say that the debt is expired, and so cannot be enforced! That is something that constituents can write to their state legislators about changing, and so I wrote a sample letter a few years ago, which should still be reasonably useful, I hope.

Some states now allow the fact that a debt is expired to be stated in ‘The Reply’ to the summons, btw, so that the case can be dismissed, due to clogged courts, but even in those jurisdictions, people have to know to do this, and most folks don’t know, which is addressed in Phase I’s Public Financial Knowledge Infrastructure section of Project Do Better:

“The Honorable Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher
California House of Representatives
1350 Front Street
Suite 6022
San Diego, CA 92101
Tel: 619-338-8090
Fax: 619-338-8099

your name
address,
city, state zip
email
your phone

Dear Assemblywoman Gonzalez Fletcher,

I would like to request a bill which would benefit California residents. The state of Maryland has recently passed a law prohibiting lawsuits on any debts which have passed the Statute of Limitation (https://www.dllr.state.md.us/finance/advisories/advisory-debtcol.pdf ). While California requires notification if a debt is expired, many debtors are not able to use that information. And while debt buyers are prohibited from suing on expired debts in California, original creditors are not. Many creditors, like exploitative landlords and lenders, never sell their debts, waiting years to sue, until details of the situation are less clear. Most lawsuits are won by default, even on invalid debts. The key injustice is that proportionately more poor debtors are sued than well-off debtors (due to the fact that the Statute of Limitation must be explicitly raised as a defense by the debtor in CA). Hence, growing numbers of illegitimate judgments against those who do not have either the time or the ability (due to illness, etc) to defend themselves. Debt, credit reporting, and court action can have a direct bearing on citizens’ abilities to access employment and housing. Disallowing suits on all expired debts could help correct this injustice.

Respectfully,
sig “

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.