The Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell President Obama to release thousands of low-risk prisoners who committed non-violence offenses in time for the holidays. Hopefully, folks released would include folks still serving crack cocaine sentences under the sentencing regime before it was reformed in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. The Fair Sentencing Act reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine minimum sentences from a ratio of 500 to 1 to a ratio of 17 to 1, but quite a few folks are still serving time under the old ratio, and why do that? The newly emboldened racist right will squeal about TEH THOUSANDZ OF PREDATURZ ON TEH STREETZ!!!! -- and they may not even hide behind coded language anymore! -- but good Americans don't gin up drama like that, only bad ones do. Speaking of which, we sure ain't getting any clemency under a President Trump, who declares his Presidency will be a "law and order" Presidency. Of course, Mr. Trump only thinks of black people when he thinks of "law and order," not the corporate criminals he's putting on his cabinet. But we'll still be around to remind everyone of what mercy really means.
Meanwhile, investigators have found lead and copper in the water at the Eastham Unit Prison in Lovelady, Texas, and prisoners there have testified to the water's "sulfur-like smell," "offensive taste," and "gritty residue." The prison administration apparently knows about the problem, as it has provided its guards with clean water, but not their prisoners. I can already hear the Trump votaries rolling their eyes and saying so what? They're prisoners! But as civilized people, we keep the water clean for prisoners as much we do as for everyone else -- I mean, how can you rehabilitate prisoners if you're poisoning them at the same time? And why do we heap punishment after punishment upon prisoners when their sentences and prison rules (which surely do not say "poison the prisoners' water") already detail their punishment? Also, too, consider the quality of mercy, a matter Jesus said more about than he ever said about gay marriage. Roots Action helps you tell the U.S. Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control to investigate the water pollution at the Eastham Unit Prison.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to declare a national monument around the Grand Canyon National Park and thus protect it for future generations, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. You know why this is particularly urgent: partly because corporations want to get their grubby mitts on the uranium in the area, and they don't care if it pollutes the Colorado River or not, though the river provides drinking water to seven states -- but mainly because the Grand Canyon is a national treasure, part of that great American heritage we ought to be passing on to future generations, rather than digging into so we can get a little energy today for nuclear power plants that can hardly sustain themselves without massive welfare handouts from our government in the first place! No, really, they can't -- and we can't compare their reliance on government handouts to wind power tax credits, since a) wind power is a lot younger and b) fossil fuel corporations spend all their time trying to crush wind power, instead of embrace it.
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