H.R. 1498/S. 411, the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act of 2017, would do pretty much what its title suggests. I wouldn't blame you for flinching at Sec. 102(c), which says proof of law enforcement activities having "a disparate impact on individuals with a particular characteristic" is enough to "constitute prima facie evidence of a violation of this title." We do, for example, demand that prosecutors produce more than the fact of an unnatural death to convict a defendant of murder -- we also demand they prove the defendant intended to commit murder. But racism isn't murder -- you can commit racist acts without conscious hatred, and many folks hide their racism even from themselves. And racist practices can continue long after anyone feels strongly about them, and other institutional pressures can help perpetuate them. Hence the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Defending Dissent Foundation help you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1498/S. 411.
Meanwhile, because the Tennessee state legislature never seems to let up, their House Civil Justice Subcommittee will consider HB 892, the so-called Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act, which would, guess what, aim to outlaw same-sex marriage there. Now you may well be saying to yourself, self, didn't the Supreme Court make gay marriage legal all over America? Well, yes, they did. But HB 892 would try to do it anyway, even though a state can't just nullify a Supreme Court decision in this manner, and would sound like a state full of whiners in trying to do so. And check out their big cojones in calling gay marriage "unnatural"! What, exactly, about love between two consenting adults is unnatural? Have they not considered that gay folks wanting to get married is a sign of gay folks wanting to strengthen the institutions that sustain us? The Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell the Tennessee state legislature to reject their so-called "Natural Marriage Defense Act.".
In other news, the very first thing new Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did when he literally rode into office (because right-wingers aren't about drama at all!) was to roll back Obama-era rules phasing out the use of lead bullets on public lands. And thus Mr. Zinke did exactly the sort of thing that gives gun-rights advocates a bad name -- this whole "debate" is just more right-wing swordfighting, where one right-winger tells another he's "insufficiently conservative" because he never defended the "freedom" of gun manufacturing corporations to put as much lead into their bullets as they want! Trouble is that lead persists in public lands and waters, meaning more dead animals and more brain-damaged people, thus meaning less freedom for us. And hunters and fishers are fairly resourceful people, who can hunt and fish without enabling so much pollution. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell Secretary Zinke to restore this lead ban.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to protect your privacy by rejecting the "resolution of disapproval" that would overturn strong FCC privacy rules enacted late last year, then both the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help you do that. Again I feel compelled to ask: who could possibly be against good Americans having the right to tell their internet service provider not to sell their private data if that's what they want? And again I feel compelled to answer: evil people, who only want what fills their campaign coffers, and for what? So that one day they might have enough seniority to finally do something good? That never happens: the time to do your duty to your constituents is always now, and not once you're "entrenched" or whatever. I'm aware that I'm being generous in assuming that Congressfolk do so much evil because they're trying to do good later. But it doesn't really matter -- all that matters is that they're doing evil, and we must stop them.
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