First things first. Late last year, five-months-pregnant Marshae Jones started a fight with another woman, who then shot Ms. Jones in the stomach, killing her unborn baby -- but now the state has indicted Mr. Jones for manslaughter and let the actual shooter go free! Their reasoning: the would-be mother "initiated and continued the fight" with the shooter. Hopefully you'll recognize that as utter horsedoodle, since, hopefully, you never got away with anything as a kid by saying "he started it!" Call me old-fashioned, but I would charge the shooter for the shooting, in part because I accept our responsibility, as civilized people, not to respond to every provocation we get -- let alone with force! Hence Change.org helps you tell the Pleasant Grove police department to dismiss the charges on Ms. Jones and charger her shooter instead.
Meanwhile, hundreds of workers at the Boston furniture corporation Wayfair walked out last week in protest of their employer's furnishing of our Administration's border concentration camps for immigrant children, so Sum of Us helps you tell Wayfair's CEO to stop selling furniture to these camps. Now, you might be saying, I hate what our Administration's doing as much as the next guy, but don't these kids need beds to sleep in? But you should recognize that as a rhetorical hostage situation! You're not cramming these kids into squalid rooms, and you're not going before federal courts arguing that you don't have to give these kids soap because the law doesn't spell that out; our Administration is doing all that, and corporations like Wayfair are helping them. So if you bring the Big Stick of Bad PR upon corporations like Wayfair, you might help end our Administration's family separation policy, which will only help these kids.
Finally, your Senators are home this week, so go ahead and call them and 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. Long story short, since I've been telling the long story on these bills for months now: H.R. 1 would better protect our voting rights and make gerrymandering harder; the Equality Act would extend civil rights protections to gay and transgender folks, the Paycheck Fairness Act would help folks get equal pay for equal work, and the Save the Internet Act would restore internet freedom for people, not for corporations. I know, I know, Mob Boss Mitch says the Senate won't vote on these bills because (and I quote) "I get to decide what we vote on," but pressuring our Senators to pass these good bills is still our duty as Americans. And, you know, all Mitch McConnell has been doing for a dozen years is blocking good legislation. I shudder to think that's what he's taking to the Pearly Gates.
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