It's, well, close enough to Monday that it's time to call your Senators again and ask them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment (and thus, in theory, smooth its entry into our Constitution). No, we do not excuse the Senate from doing the right thing because of the pandemic! They use anything as an excuse to ignore the people's will! And they'll continue to do so until we make it impossible for them to do so -- and that means a lot more phone calls.
Meanwhile, you know how they tell us we should wash our hands more frequently now to stop the spread of the coronavirus? It's good advice -- and it's advice people literally can't follow if their water's turned off. Hence Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to mandate that localities can't shut off folks' water service during the coronavirus pandemic. If you're tempted to think of this as a way of coddling people who should have paid their water bills, please do the following things: a) slap yourself; b) contemplate whether death is a suitable punishment for failure to pay your water bill; c) contemplate more fully the absurdity that some folks buy penthouse apartments just to leave them empty for tax purposes while most folks don't make enough money to pay all their bills all the time; and d) contemplate more fully that when some folks can't wash their hands, all of us still face the threat of getting the coronavirus. See? It's not about helping freeloaders; it's about helping all of us. If you still don't see that, repeat steps a) through d) until you do.
Finally, in the wake of the news that New York Governor Andrew "the Lesser" Cuomo (D) would pay prisoners less than a dollar a day to manufacture hand sanitizer, Color of Change helps you tell Gov. Cuomo to try more humane policies in dealing with prisoners at risk of coronavirus. It's not like they can even use hand sanitizer in prisons, since the state's own laws would regard it as "contraband"! (Hand sanitizers contain over 60% alcohol, as you may know.) Hence you would call for Gov. Cuomo to end forced labor in prisons and institute a living wage for prisoners, stop blocking cash bail reform and thus stop artificially boosting prison populations, and grant clemency to the most immunocompromised prisoners (who will not necessarily then come to your door and cough on you, if you're of the paranoid stripe). I know a lot of folks would oppose such moves because they're mean to criminals as a way of feeling less insecure about themselves, but if we can't be humane to those who have injured our civilization and thus been put in prison, then we can't be humane, period. And I would like to think better of us than that.
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