Congress comes back to work this week (please feel free to boo!), and, naturally, they plan to do some serious damage under cover of a bill whose title promises the opposite of serious damage, a bill called the First Amendment Defense Act. Of course, it wouldn't "defend the First Amendment" so much as injure other rights, by allowing people to ignore laws against discrimination if it conflicts with their "seriously-held religious beliefs," beliefs which apparently don't include "love thy neighbor." Don't believe the hype that it's hard to figure out exactly where to draw the line here, as if we haven't been drawing that line for over 200 years -- exercising your First Amendment rights does not give you the right to run roughshod over other people's rights under the law. And, frankly, if your religious beliefs compel nothing from you so much as denying gays their rights under the law, maybe you need to find another country. So Americans United for the Separation of Church and State helps you tell your House Rep to reject H.R. 2802 and thus protect good Americans' right to be free from discrimination.
Meanwhile, net neutrality is the law of the land in America right now, but not in Europe -- though EU regulators are crafting net neutrality regulations as we speak. They're fairly strong, as they are in America, but also (as in America) the issue of "zero rating," where telecom corporations offer some internet services for less money (or subject them to fewer pricing restrictions), has become a sticking point. Proposed EU regulations would largely leave it up to local regulators to stop "zero rating" practices, although these practices ultimately mean big telecom corporations will be able to herd their consumers into using the internet services big telecoms prefer, and that wouldn't protect your right to determine where you go on the internet. And this is not a matter you leave up to localities, because doing so would result in less freedom for Europeans, not more freedom. Whether we think there should be an EU or not, we still should make sure it protects the internet freedom of its citizens, so Access Now helps you tell the EU to implement the strongest net neutrality protections possible across its member states.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5313, the WATER Act, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. The obvious news hook, of course, is the Flint water crisis, where an unelected "emergency manager," in an effort to save a few bucks, moved Flint off of relatively clean Detroit water and onto polluted Flint River water, and then apparently didn't understand that the chemicals he used to decontaminate the Flint River water would also corrode Flint's ancient lead pipes. But the truth is that plenty of American cities, many of which have hundred-year-old lead water pipes, are on the brink of a similar disaster, and all it takes, apparently, is one "bold" Governor to destroy local democratic processes to achieve that disaster. Really, clean water is not only absolutely essential to everything we try to do as a nation -- for how can a people really be free unless they're free from pollution? -- it's also fairly popular. So, in a sane and healthy civilization, we ought to be able to make opposition to the WATER bill -- which would fund pipe repairs by closing corporate tax loopholes -- politically toxic. So to speak.
Comments