You've heard that stupid Skittles rant lately emanating from Donald Trump, Jr.? About how you wouldn't eat from a bowl of Skittles if you knew three of them were poisonous, and how that's supposedly just like the choice we face when admitting refugees, ha ha ha? Setting aside the utter stupidity of the metaphor (if a single Skittle could kill a human being, what might it do to the other Skittles in the bowl? And how is a single terrorist attack a poison that destroys an entire country?), the metaphor isn't even apt: refugees have perpetrated precisely zero terrorist attacks in American history (perhaps because they themselves are running from terror in their own countries), meaning that particular bowl contains precisely zero poisonous Skittles. Hence the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to increase our support for refugees when they come to America. And let's only use the word "poison" as a metaphor for things that actually hurt our beloved country -- you know, like Donald Trump's ongoing quest to legitimize racists.
Meanwhile, hot on the heels of at least two more senseless killings of black men by police, the ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5221, the Preventing Tragedies Between Police and Communities Act, which would mandate state and local police departments receiving certain federal funding to train their officers in de-escalation, and would also mandate that states and localities require their officers to use de-escalation techniques before they use violence. Though certain individuals would like you to think that police always do the right thing and don't need to be told what to do by Big Gummint, de-escalation training is, frankly, not a big ask -- we already ask soldiers in war zones to perform half a dozen tasks before shooting to kill, and no matter what Donald Trump tells you, inner cities are not war zones, so why do we tolerate the notion that police officers have "no alternative" but to shoot to kill where black men are concerned? The America I love is not the country where we throw up our hands and decide we have no choice but to kill black men. Not on my watch, anyway.
Finally, The Consumerist told us not long ago that most big restaurant chains still rely too much on antibiotic-raised meat, Consumers Union helps you tell those big restaurant chains -- including Burger King, Applebee's, Starbucks, and Olive Garden -- to do better at keeping antibiotic abuse out of their meat supply chains. As you know, four out of every five antibiotics in America get used not on sick people or animals but on nominally healthy farm animals, partly so they'll produce more meat and partly so they'll endure miserable factory farm conditions better. But you may well be asking: OK, but why the big restaurant chains? Why not just avoid eating at them? For one thing, you're perfectly free to use more than one tool to complete a task, particularly when the Big Stick of Bad PR works pretty well in this area. For another thing, a lot of people eat at these restaurants, and you won't be able to convince them not to just by telling them that eating too much antibiotic-raised meat could bring about a world of superbugs that medicines can't cure anymore.
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