If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to oppose FCC Chair Ajit Pai's plan to roll back net neutrality protections, then Save the Net from Trump still helps you do that. Word on the street is that a lot of our Congressfolk are on the fence about net neutrality -- the principle that says only you, not some corporation, should be able to determine where you want to go and what you want to do on the internet -- and supposedly they're waiting for their constituents to tell them what to do; considering how many of their constituents have written in to the FCC about keeping net neutrality protections, that all seems a little silly, but we can play their game, too. Big telecoms are falling all over themselves saying that of course they'd never block or slow down websites or force junk news in front of you if we just give them more power to block or slow down websites or force junk news in front of you, but you know Our Glorious Elites, right? The minute we turn our back on them, they'll do whatever they like, because fuck-you-we-won. So don't turn your back on them.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has cut off Temporary Protected Status (or TPS) for about 3,000 Nicaraguans, and plan to do so for 300,000 other TPS residents who hail from Haiti and Central America, so CREDO helps you tell the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) to extend Temporary Protected Status for these areas. If you're wondering why we're still giving TPS to folks escaping Hurricane Mitch in Honduras when that was over 20 years ago or the earthquakes in El Salvador when that was almost 20 years ago, I have two answers for you: one, that these nations tend to rebuild from such disasters a lot more slowly than we do, and two, such objections are less important than the fact that once folks have TPS status for years on end, they've made a life here, and what do they have to go back to, exactly? Particularly the children, who may be American-born and have never seen their original homeland? So cutting off TPS is just another way for Mr. Trump to be cruel and stoke rage among his followers. The good news? Trump votaries don't get all the say around here.
Finally, Osceola Township, Michigan, has denied Nestlé a permit to extract more groundwater, and conservatives all over America applauded the small town's efforts to control its own destiny! I kid, of course -- right-wingers extoll Nestlé's "right," under Michigan's Reasonable Use doctrine, to extract resources from its property. Of course they forget the "reasonable" part of "reasonable use" -- generally, that you should take what you need without hurting others, and specifically (per the Michigan Department of Environmental Protection) that Nestlé's efforts shouldn't harm public streams, wetlands, and lakes, a matter about which Nestlé has been suspiciously mum. It really doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to think that "reasonable use" ought to apply to public groundwater, too, and Nestlé has some chutzpah to undertake this project in the era of the Flint water crisis. Why, they've even sued Osceola Township, so Sum of Us helps you tell Nestlé to respect Osceola's right to clean water and drop their bullying lawsuit.
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