If you've missed previous opportunities to call your Senators to tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, well, it's not too late, because Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell still refuses to hold a vote on any of these House-passed bills, since "I get to decide what we vote on," like the voters made him Sultan-with-Absolute-Power or something. And now you can add H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act, which our House passed late last week. So, we've got bills that promote voting rights, civil rights for gay and transgender folk, paycheck fairness for women who don't get paid the same way men do, internet freedom for all Americans, and a $15/hour minimum wage by 2025; these are all good things, and our Senators should support them. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Senators' phone numbers. You may have to call local numbers; I've found the D.C. numbers hardly work anymore, for whatever reason.
While you've got your Senators on the phone: the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may rule this week on our FCC's so-called "Restoring Internet Freedom" rule from 2017 -- the rule that repealed the 2015 Open Internet Order that made net neutrality the law of the land -- and if it strikes the 2017 net neutrality repeal down, the big telecom corporations will be in your Reps' and Senators' ears with a quickness, trying to get bogus "net neutrality" legislation passed so that big telecoms will still be able to block and slow down the websites you want to see. So tell your Senators that, if the D.C. Circuit rules against the 2017 net neutrality repeal, you want them to leave the 2015 Open Internet order as-is and reject any bill the big telecoms push. Big telecoms are among the least popular corporations in America because of their monopolist practices and lousy service -- but our politicians love them, because they give lots of money to political campaigns, so politicians would prefer to do their will, rather than ours. That just means we have to make our will unmistakeable. (Be sure to call your House Reps afterward.)
In other news, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight our Administration's monstrous behavior in re immigrants by passing H.R. 2203, the Homeland Security Improvement Act, and H.R. 3239, the Humanitarian Standards for Individuals in Customs and Border Protection Custody Act. H.R. 2203 would (among other good works) create a National Commission to investigate the inhumane practices conducted by our Administration and would prohibit family separation of would-be immigrants except under extreme circumstances (i.e., if the parents are abusing the children). H.R. 3239 would (among other good works) spell out food/water/shelter requirements for detainees -- you recall that this Administration told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that no law actually compels them to provide soap to detainee children! -- and would establish procedures for our Homeland Security Inspector General and our Government Accounting Office to oversee our Administration's detainment practices. Our House could vote on both these bills any day now (they both passed out of committee last week), so let's make sure we communicate our will to our Reps.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you demand that state governments restore all voting rights to formerly-incarcerated citizens without making them pay fines or fees. Let's not get stuck in the weeds over whether you should pay all your debts to society in addition to serving your sentence before you get your right to vote back, because you should never lose your right to vote in the first place. I don't care if you're a murderer, a child molester, or a corporate criminal -- you should never lose your right to vote. I put "corporate criminal" in there, of course, just to remind everyone why certain state politicians pressed to force felons to lose their voting rights in the first place -- because of racism! Politicians know that our justice system mainly puts folks of color in prison, at much higher numbers than white folks and usually for much smaller crimes than the kind big corporate executives get away with, hence taking away their voting rights is a way of keeping them down even when they're out of prison. So let's not let racism rule our lives.
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