Good Tuesday morning.
There are 25 days until Christmas (Dec. 25), 19 days until Chanukah (it starts on Dec. 18 and runs through Dec. 26), and 27 days until Kwanza (it starts Dec. 26 and runs through Jan. 1, 2023).
But who’s counting?
After all the consuming we’ve been doing over the past week or so – physically (Thanksgiving plus leftovers galore) and financially (Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday) – it’s time to exercise our giving muscles to get into the true spirit of the holiday season, focusing on what we can do for others, especially those who are less fortunate than we are.
Welcome to Giving Tuesday, a 24-hour period of giving back that is described as “a global generosity movement that unleashes the power of radical generosity around the world.”
The day was the brainchild of then-producing director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia of Chicago’s non-profit Mary-Arrchie Theater Company, who urged shoppers during the holiday season of 2011 to consider donating to charity after they had finished their Cyber Monday shopping.
This initiative was formalized the following year by Henry Timms, director at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation in response to the commercialization and hyper-consumerism of Black Friday.
Giving Tuesday, which broke off from the 92nd Street Y in 2019 and is now its own independent entity, is now a multibillion dollar global movement. Since 2012, GivingTuesday activity has spread to more than 200 countries.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic and its attendant economic crisis, donations hit record highs in 2020, when Giving Tuesday reported that total giving in the US alone reached $2.47 billion – a 25 percent increase over 2019.
Almost 35 million people participated in the movement that year, which represents about 10 percent of the national population.
To be clear, the nonprofit Giving Tuesday organization does not directly solicit or accept donations on behalf of any other group or cause. Its purpose is to inspire people to give, which means that every group is responsible for its own appeal and messaging, though it can receive support in the form of resources, toolkits etc. from Giving Tuesday.
Participating in the movement can help introduce nonprofits to new donors and elevate their brand to new heights.
Despite the ever growing participation in Giving Tuesday, the most important days of giving in the year are still Dec. 30 and 31, which enable donors to get in under the wire for tax purposes. And the amount that is donated on this day makes up just a fraction of what Americans give to charity every year, which also hit an all-time overall high in 2020 at $471.44 billion.
Still, it’s fun to participate in something far bigger than yourself. And if you’re thinking of giving anywhere this holiday season, why wait? Lots of local organizations are participating, so pick your favorite charity, open up that wallet and prepare to feel good about your spending (for a change?)
It will be a standard late-fall day, weather-wise, with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-40s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden in a statement called on Congress to pass legislation “immediately” averting a rail shutdown and officially adopting a September tentative agreement approved by labor and management leaders.
The president cited the potentially devastating economic effects of a strike that could shut down freight trains just days before Christmas.
“I am calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the Tentative Agreement between railroad workers and operators – without any modifications or delay – to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi immediately announced she will call a vote this week to carry out Biden’s request, which will mean that paid sick leave for the 115,000 workers involved in negotiations won’t be included in the deal.
French President Emmanuel Macron is headed to Washington for the first state visit of Biden’s presidency — a revival of diplomatic pageantry that had been put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A stronger-than-expected midterm showing has quieted the party’s public hand-wringing about a re-election campaign for Biden. But it hasn’t put those worries to rest.
Biden is scheduled to be in Boston for a political fundraiser Friday – the same day the Prince and Princess of Wales will be in the city to announce the winners of their Earthshot Prize awards.
William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, are going to visit Boston this week – their first U.S. trip in eight years, a time spanning a swell of change for the royal family as it tries to rebrand itself as a modern monarchy.
The Biden administration is responding cautiously to weekend protests across China, reflecting in part a U.S. desire to stabilize a vital but increasingly adversarial relationship with Beijing.
The demonstrations over Covid lockdowns present a challenge for Biden, who has insisted he will call out abuses by authoritarian governments.
Legal counsel for the Supreme Court responded to an inquiry from Democratic lawmakers by reiterating Justice Samuel Alito’s denial of a report alleging that the outcome of a pending religious liberty case in 2014 was disclosed to Alito’s dinner guests.
Republican officials in an Arizona county voted to hold up certification of local results in this month’s midterm elections, reflecting an expansion of partisan battles into obscure elements of the election system and largely uncharted legal territory.
Nearly a quarter million voters cast their ballots in Georgia’s Senate runoff yesterday, breaking the state’s record for a single day of early voting as incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and challenger Herschel Walker (R) vie for the key seat.
Donald Trump will not cross the Florida state line to campaign with Walker during the final week of the Georgia Senate runoff election, after both camps decided the former president’s appearance carried more political risks than rewards.
Days after bringing white supremacist Nick Fuentes to meet with Trump, rapper and 2024 presidential wannabe Kanye West has reportedly added the notorious Holocaust denier to his campaign team.
Some Republican lawmakers criticized Trump for his meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Sen. Bill Cassidy (and Sen. Susan Collins both said the former president should not have given a platform to the notorious hatemonger at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Supporters who looked past the former president’s admirers in bigoted corners of the far right, and his own use of antisemitic tropes, now are drawing a line. “He legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters,” says one. “And this scares me.”
Trump Organization lawyers rested their case yesterday as a Manhattan judge chewed them out for throwing “anything and everything” at a jury as they heard remaining evidence in the tax fraud case.
Closing arguments in the tax-fraud case are expected to begin Thursday after lawyers argue over the instructions jurors will receive from the judge.
More than 300 people are still dying each day on average from covid-19, most of them 65 or older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Stocks in Hong Kong led gains in the Asia-Pacific as Chinese health authorities encouraged its elderly to get vaccinated.
China’s protests against Covid restrictions which erupted over the weekend appear to have died down, as authorities begin clamping down.
Researchers are still unable to answer basic questions about it, such as how vaccination impacts one’s chances of long-term symptoms or which groups of people are most at-risk, thanks to gaping holes in long COVID data.
Rory McIlroy believes he gave Tiger Woods Covid as the two prepared for his year’s Open.
Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to propose “a very comprehensive” plan to staunch the tide of illegal guns into New York, she signaled ahead of her State of the State address in the coming weeks.
Just after being elected to a full term, Hochul wielded her veto pen on key pieces of legislation.
Hochul has unleashed a spigot of gubernatorial rejection over the past week after going 11 months without vetoing a single standalone bill passed by the state Legislature this year.
The governor has vetoed 39 bills aimed at creating commissions and task forces because of their financial impact.
Hochul wants the crypto-based industry to flourish in New York, but she said it can’t come at the expense of the environment.
A proposed expansion of New York’s wrongful death law is coming down to the final weeks of the year as the measure remains one of the more high-profile proposals yet to be considered by Hochul.
College graduates who are pursuing careers in agriculture are in line for expanded student debt relief under a measure approved by Hochul.
New York state is providing $9 million in loan repayments for mental health care workers in an effort to recruit and retain psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners.
Twelve Downtown Revitalization projects were announced for Gloversville by Hochul at the Glove Theatre.
The computer network has crashed and been offline for more than a week at a Brooklyn hospital group chaired by a billionaire mega donor to Hochul — causing chaos for patients and medical workers.
Though the state’s one-year grace period opened last week for adult victims of sexual crimes to file once time-barred lawsuits against their alleged abusers and workplaces, only a handful of cases were filed over the long weekend.
Two NYPD officers who saved a homeless man after he fell onto the subway tracks in Harlem over the weekend were on the clock thanks to the police department’s “omnipresence” initiative in the transit system, Mayor Eric Adams said.
The FDNY’s efforts to diversify its ranks are likely to pick up steam under five new measures Adams signed into law at the department’s Randall’s Island training facility.
As a result of this latest election, five of America’s ten largest cities will soon have Black mayors.
The Brooklyn DA has created a single division for gender-based violence — a major restructuring that will bring 20 percent of the entire office, including more than 100 lawyers at least 30 social workers, under central leadership.
A corrupt former Rikers Island guard detailed how he used to smuggle pot into the notorious jail complex, providing testimony against a detainee accused of bribing correction officers to bring in drugs for him to sell.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made clear to a judge that he wants to dismiss the murder case against Tracy McCarter, whose arrest touched off a debate about criminalizing victims of domestic violence.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged that some aspects of its long-delayed East Side Access megaproject will not be ready this year, as has long been targeted, but is still aiming to run LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal by the end of 2022.
A struggling single mom filed suit against Leon Black, alleging the billionaire raped her in Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse two decades ago, new court papers show.
The self-proclaimed white supremacist who carefully planned and then carried out the mass murder of 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket pleaded guilty to 15 charges against him, guaranteeing he’ll serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely to overturn the wire fraud convictions of Alain Kaloyeros and his co-defendants in the Buffalo Billion bid-rigging case that led to the 2016 downfall of the Albany Nanotech founder.
The fraud convictions of Joseph Percoco, a former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Louis Ciminelli, a contractor in Buffalo, appeared likely to be overturned.
After what it calls “a number of complaints,” the state attorney general’s office has ordered a landlord of a mobile home park on Saratoga Lake to “cease and desist your harassment of tenants.”
Retired Price Chopper CEO Neil Golub is buoyed about the city’s prospects and wants everyone to feel the vibes of a “New Schenectady.”
“Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” exhibit at the Armory Studios, which has attracted 100,000 people so far, will run through at least Jan. 2.
Rather than sit behind redshirt freshman Reese Poffenbarger for the foreseeable future, two University at Albany backup quarterbacks announced they’re entering the NCAA transfer portal.
The owner of the Remsen Street property that has been an entertainment and dining spot for nearly 150 years is willing to give a qualified operator a year’s free rent to reopen an eatery in the space.
Mauna Loa, located on the Big Island of Hawaii, erupted for the first time in 38 years late Sunday night, following a series of striking eruptions in recent years of the smaller and nearby Kilauea volcano.
The volcano has been spewing lava and ash since about 11:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to the USGS’s volcanic activity service.
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2022 was so widely used it has been uttered by politicians, TV talking heads and even the bickering contestants of reality dating show “Bachelor in Paradise.” The word? Gaslighting.
Kim Kardashian said she was re-evaluating her business ties with Balenciaga after the fashion brand ran a controversial campaign featuring children holding teddy bears that appear to be clad in bondage gear.
