Amnesty International helps you tell your Congressfolk to condemn Burma's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people. Rohingya are Muslim, in a Buddhist-majority nation, so I can already hear American right-wingers squealing TEH MUD PEEPULZ STARTEDZ ITZ!!!!, and though the Burmese military started its genocide against the Rohingya after a Rohingya attack at a weapons station, gosh, haven't they heard of law and order? Haven't they heard of bringing individuals to trial for their crimes? Genocide is never a response to a perceived wrong, and people who think it is are evil, no matter what rationalizations they've fed themselves. You'd be hard-pressed, also, to point out what code of civilized law authorizes "forcing half a million people to flee to Bangladesh" and "burning down villages and then shooting people trying to escape the fire" as a just sentence for any kind of crime. Still, they're as vulnerable to the Big Stick of Bad PR as anyone else, so let's wield that stick.
Meanwhile, closer to home, CREDO helps you tell your Senators to block the nomination of Eric Dreiband to direct the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. You may be surprised to learn that the Senate hasn't actually confirmed someone for this position for five years -- all Directors of the Civil Rights Division since Thomas Perez (who served from 2009-2013) have been "acting" directors, and so is our current Director, John Gore, himself notorious for (among other things!) defending Florida's 2012 racist voter purge and North Carolina's notorious "bathroom" bill. So you think President Trump has learned his lesson? Not a chance -- Mr. Dreiband just so happens to have made his life's work defending corporations and people from charges of discrimination. Maybe Mr. Trump think that makes Mr. Dreiband uniquely qualified to help good Americans suffering from discrimination! But, being sentient life forms, we know better, and being Americans, we deserve better, and should demand better.
Finally, Change.org helps you tell big poultry corporations to stop genetically engineering chickens to grow so quickly it cripples them. If you're tempted to say what does it matter, they're just going to wind up in my chicken nuggets anyway, please do two things: a) slap yourself, and b) contemplate more closely how happy you'd be if you couldn't walk, let alone see the sun or breathe clean air, which a lot of factory farm chickens also never get to do. And contemplate, also, whether an animal genetically engineered to get bigger than necessary is really a good thing for you. A lot of folks I respect would tell you I'm no better than a climate change denier for slamming genetic engineering the way I do, but look at what uses we put it to: growing animals so fast it yields more meat but cripples them, and making crops so resistant to proprietary pesticides that they invade other farms and ruin their crops. That's some future we've made there.
Comments