If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1/S. 949, the For the People Act, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. After all, if you've been watching this space, you've very likely already advocated for most of the things this bill would do, like redistricting reform, automatic voter registration, campaign finance disclosure for large donors, and public campaign financing. You've also very likely fought efforts to remove voters from voting rolls for no good reason other than that they might vote against the kind of politician who'd like less people to vote, and the For the People Act does something about that, too. Plus it'd make Election Day a national holiday and keeps House Reps from serving on for-profit boards. Who could oppose such things? The Republicans who parade their hatred of all that's good, that's who. And that's why we need the For the People Act.
Meanwhile, H.R. 2407's title, the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, will set off some rageheads right off the bat -- you'll hear them say how dare you call it an occupation! as if that's the worst thing a human being could possibly do. Or as if it's anti-Semitic! But criticizing Israel's actions in Palestine is not in-and-of-itself "anti-Semitic," and nor are attempts to induce better behavior from Israel. And even if you think people criticize Israel too much, you should be put off by reports of Israeli soldiers separating Palestinian children from their families and torturing them while in detention. These things may not create terrorists, but they do create broken people, and we can't keep creating broken people and calling ourselves civilized. Hence Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose cruel treatment of Palestinian children by passing H.R. 2407.
In other news, S. 1187, the Safe School Meals for Kids Act, would phase out food tainted by the ubiquitous pesticide chlorpyrifos from our school lunch programs. Scientists have linked chlorpyrifos to numerous neurological and developmental disorders, and indeed our EPA banned chlorpyrifos from home use almost 20 years ago. Yet our Administration drags its feet on imposing a broader ban, even though our courts have mandated it, and even though kids who eat fruits and vegetables sprayed with chlorpyrifos -- which they likely are, since big ag corporations spray about 10 million pounds of it on crops every year -- may well be getting 140 times what our EPA has considered safe exposure. After all, cutting pollution doesn't make executives richer! Where our Administration won't act, perhaps our Congressfolk will -- but not unless we act. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep kids safe from pollution by passing the Safe School Meals for Kids Act.
Finally, Roots Action helps you tell Facebook to stop with its bogus attempts at "fact-checking." You'd think we'd be happy that Facebook is actually checking facts, since so much BS gets spread around there, but they've partnered with decidedly-non-objective outlets like CheckYourFact.com -- a Koch brothers-funded project of the Tucker Carlson-created The Daily Caller -- and the right-wing Weekly Standard. That can't be an accident, could it? Nor could it be an accident that Facebook actually purged pages (including ZeroHedge) because the previously unknown website PropOrNot smeared them as pro-Russian propaganda hounds right after the 2016 election? It never occurred to them to seek out the decidedly non-liberal FactCheck.org? But all we need from Facebook, really, is an end to speech that our First Amendment doesn't protect, like terroristic threats. We certainly don't need "fact-checking" that's worse than the Wild West.
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