Peace Action West and Roots Action join together to help you demand that the Trans-Pacific Trade "Partnership"'s text be released to the public. Former U.S. Trade Rep. Ron Kirk has infamously said that the public wouldn't like it if they knew all the details of the TPP, thus revealing himself as yet another public servant who doesn't understand the "public" part of that phrase. Why Peace Action West, you ask? Because keeping our labor laws and our environmental laws and our product safety laws and our drug-patenting laws and our patenting laws and our internet freedom laws -- all of which the TPP threatens to negate, by subjecting all disputes between corporations and duly-elected governments to "investor-state tribunals" -- is a matter of making and keeping peace, too. Now, publishing the FTA won't necessarily get the "liberal" media to scrutinize the deal very closely, but even a little sunlight has proven withering to this "deal." Think negotiations have "dragged on" this long for any other reason?
Meanwhile, the ACLU helps you tell the Norristown (PA) City Council to repeal an ordinance allowing landlords to kick tenants out of their home if they call 911 too many times. The news hook? Lakisha Briggs had two children and had an abusive ex-boyfriend who once threw a brick at her and once stabbed her, but she was scared of calling 911 for fear that her landlord would evict her and her children. This would be one of them-there "nuisance" ordinances, folks, and while I don't like folks calling 911 for no good reason even one time, I also don't like laws preventing people from getting the help they need when they need it. If you're a domestic violence victim, you're just about always living under threat of getting hurt or even killed, as long as your abuser remains at liberty and knows where you are. And I should mention that "nuisance" ordinances violate your First Amendment right to redress grievances with your government. If the people in power find that inconvenient, tough -- with power comes responsibility.
Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell Nickelodeon to stop marketing junk food to children. If you're a parent (or, ahem, maybe even if you're not), you're probably well aware of Nickelodeon's cartoon programming, and you're probably also well aware that almost 7 in 10 Nickelodeon ads peddle some form of junk food -- in fact, a Yale Rudd Center study from earlier this year found that kids 8-and-younger saw more than 25% of all the TV food ads they saw on Nickelodeon. And it's not like it has to be that way, in an era where the Walt Disney Corporation aims to radically curtail the junk-food ads they'll show on their programs. And it's certainly not enough to tell the parents to shut off the TV -- those parents are at work trying to make ends meet most of the time anyway, and corporations go well out of their way to get at parents' pocketbooks through their kids, to the tune of almost $2 billion spent annually on advertising aimed at kids. I mean, responsibility is for everyone, is it not?
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