Long story short: tell big clothing corporations to stop enabling China in its exploitation of Uyghur Muslims, tell President Biden to cancel private prison contracts, tell your Senators to pass the PRO Act, and tell your Congressfolk to spend new nuke money on vaccine development and pass bills that would curtail police brutality. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or on the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to find your Reps' and Senators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition links in the paragraphs below.
Sum of Us helps you tell big clothing corporation Zara to stop using Uyghur forced labor in China to manufacture their products. Nobody should profit from slave labor, and nobody should profit from the Chinese herding hundreds of thousands of Muslims into concentration camps where they get tortured and brainwashed, either. Some folks, most likely trolls, will tell you that opposing Zara's efforts to profit off the Uyghurs actually hurts the Uyghurs, because then the Chinese will take it out on them more, or something. Eject such people from your acquaintance! Wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR against corporations profiting from oppression always pressures the oppressors, and any evil they do because they feel pressure is on them, not you.
The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell the Biden Administration to cancel all prison and detention center contracts with private corporations. Regardless of how you feel about punishment, etc., getting private corporations out of the imprisoning business will save the taxpayer money and make our government more accountable. Private prisons don't "do the job better for less," they do it worse at more expense, and generally they "solve" their accountability problems with large campaign donations. When we inject the profit motive into a public good, the profit motive overwhelms the public good eventually. And this is all a bad way to rehabilitate prisoners or address immigration issues. We still are serious about these things, aren't we?
Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. The PRO Act would repeal state-level "right to work" laws (i.e., "right to work for less" laws!), stop employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings or sign forced arbitration agreements, would stop employers from retaliating against employees (including managers) who blow the whistle on labor law violations, and would let employees determine how to conduct a union election. And how does the other side respond? By saying people shouldn't have to join a union if they don't want to. Most people want to, most of the others will be fine with it once they see the benefits, and we can accommodate the political beliefs of the rest (by keeping dues and political contributions separate, for example).
Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2227/S. 982, the Investing Cures Before Missiles (or ICBM) Act. The bill would redirect funding away from new intercontinental ballistic missiles (which is what "ICBM" more traditionally stands for, see what they did there!) and toward an even better COVID vaccine. We spend too much money on missiles; we get too little for what we spend on drugs, of course, but you can make your tax dollar go a lot further on a vaccine than you can on yet another weapon. We already spend more on defense than the next eight nations on that list combined, and yet we still worry we're not safe! It's almost like the two facts are related. You know what makes people safer in this day and age, though? Knowing they're much less likely to die from a virus that doesn't have to kill them.
Finally, if you've missed previous action alerts about police brutality, Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to end militarization of local police. The Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act and the Demilitarizing Law Enforcement Act both await House consideration, after all, and don't worry about making your Congressfolk sick of hearing about this from you! They're supposed to get sick of hearing about it, and then they're supposed to do something about it! This note, I realize, is of a piece with the previous one -- just as we're wrong that more missiles will keep us safer as a nation, we're also wrong to think more weapons will keep police safer on our streets. You know what keeps police safer? Knowing their communities better, and positively interacting with their communities more. Tough to quantify in a spreadsheet, I know, but that doesn't make it wrong.
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