Iran released reknowned human rights lawyer/activist Nasrin Sotoudeh for three weeks due to her serious COVID-19 infection -- but now they've put her back in prison, even though she still has it and is still contagious! For a 38-year sentence, for the crimes of, let's see, "encouraging corruption and debauchery and providing the means," "propaganda against the system," "disrupting public order," and gosh let's stop, because we all know why she's really in prison: she's represented, among other folks Iran's government consider "undesirable," like women who won't wear a hijab in public, protestors against the obviously-stolen election of 2009, and folks facing a death sentence for they crimes committed while they were minors. In short: a snowflake government imprisons a fighter for justice on trumped-up charges. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to drop charges against Ms. Sotoudeh and release her immediately. Time is short here -- and not just for her sake.
Meanwhile, we're going to have a hard time getting everyone a COVID vaccine (and not just because our current Administration decided not to get enough, amirite?), but we certainly don't need the World Trade Organization (or WTO) making it even harder. Some countries have proposed temporarily waiving WTO rules that give corporations monopoly protections for their putative intellectual property, but our Administration, naturally, opposes such a waiver. Big corporations make COVID vaccines with massive public investment, so we should get a say in this, and the families of the dead do not give one rat's hind quarter about intellectual property rights in the middle of a pandemic. And why should they? Our job on Earth is to help each other, not hide behind rules designed to help already-rich big pharma corporations maintain their unearned monopolies. Hence Rethink Trade helps you tell your House Reps to urge our outgoing President to reverse course on this matter and save a lot more lives.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) not to permanently waive media ownership restrictions in the New York market, then Free Press still helps you do that. I'm of the mind that no corporation should own any other corporation, let alone three media outlets in one market, but (guess who?) Fox owns WWOR, WNYW, and the New York Post, and if the FCC goes through with its plan, Fox gets to own them not on a "temporary" basis, but a permanent one, and I don't know about you, but I've sure had enough of Rupert Murdoch-created drama, even if his right-wing cable news channel is on the outs with our soon-to-be-ex-President and his votaries. Seriously, local news media is dying all over America, and media consolidation is the main reason why -- one corporate owner makes three or 10 or 300 news media outlets into cookie-cutter outlets, none of which reflect the diversity and uniqueness of the people they serve. As Americans, we deserve better -- and we must demand better.
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