President Trump, as you know, has informed Congress of his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a.k.a. NAFTA. I'm quite pleased he withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," which more than one observer described as "NAFTA on steroids," but you can excuse me for thinking Mr. Trump doesn't really have the American people's best interests at heart, as evidenced by his stated intention to keep the most odious thing about NAFTA -- the "investor-state tribunals" that let corporations exact tribute from American taxpayers for having the temerity to pass laws that "cost" those corporations money (you know, like labor and clean air/clean water laws). And here you thought Donald Trump was the law and order President! I'd hope a good lawyer would argue at one of these tribunals that good environmental regulations actually save corporations money in health care costs, but I'd rather defend our right to make laws. Hence Sign for Good helps you tell the Trump Administration to negotiate a trade pact that actually does right by American workers.
Meanwhile, Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressperson to help pressure Israel to drop charges against Palestinian activist Issa Amro. Mr. Amro founded Youth Against Settlements in 2003, after successfully campaigning to reopen Palestine Polytechnic University (where he was an engineering student), which the Israeli army had closed; for the past decade and a half he has preached nonviolence and civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation, and for his trouble he's been arrested dozens of times. Now Israel has indicted him on 18 charges, and some of these -- like "insulting a soldier" and "spitting in the direction of a settler" -- sure bear the mark of a state that can't win an argument on the merits. And you couldn't reasonably claim that Mr. Amro's commitment to nonviolence is a sham (if that were true, I think we'd know by now!), nor could you claim that Mr. Amro's aims are so unpalatable it doesn't matter what his methods are, particularly when we've founded a nation on precisely the notion that folks should be free to express themselves in a civilized manner, regardless of their ideas.
Finally, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell ExxonMobil and Chevron to help fight climate change. This action alert comes hot on the heels of the news that an astounding 62% of ExxonMobil shareholders approved a resolution at last week's annual shareholder meeting calling for ExxonMobil to plan for the changes in its business model that fighting climate change would require; that resolution is non-binding, of course, but if you're a CEO, you ignore a six-in-ten majority of your shareholders at your own peril. Resolutions involving climate change and corporate lobbying also gained ground at the annual Chevron shareholder meeting. I've long said that shareholders don't care exclusively about money, and though the behavior of shareholders (particularly during the Obama years) has sometimes challenged that belief, I'm pleased to see my faith in them rewarded here. Yet I'm also quite irritated that shareholders ever had to tell fossil-fuel executives (our best and brightest, supposedly) to do the obvious. The sun and the wind always come back eventually, but fossil fuels will be gone sooner than we think.
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