Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, expand Medicare, provide paid family/medical leave, pass a bill that would let individual counties and localities accept the Medicaid expansion where states won't, and pass the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act; and attend a rally in favor of the For the People Act. 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 Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Voting Rights Act used to have a list of states that needed to pre-clear their voting law changes with our Justice Department -- until our Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, ruled that discriminated against Southern states (which comprised most of that list!). The Voting Rights Advancement Act would amend the Voting Rights Act so that any state or locality with a record of suppressing the vote would have to pre-clear their voting law changes. Don't brook any silliness about how "the South has changed" from the likes of Mitch McConnell -- the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would fight vote suppression everywhere, not just the South. So let's get to it.
Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to improve and expand Medicare, by lowering the eligibility age to 60 and adding hearing, vision, and dental coverage. As they say, seniors have ears, eyes, and teeth just like everyone else, so there's no reason Medicare shouldn't cover them! And though I'd rather lower the eligibility age to zero, lowering it to 60 would be a good first step. I can already hear right-wingers whine how are you going to pay for it? If we pass it as part of the next reconciliation bill, we'd get tax hikes on rich folks and corporations to help pay for it -- plus we could let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, which even the Mercatus Center has said would save Medicare about $84 billion annually. (Toward that end, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3, which would let Medicare negotiate prices for most of the drugs it buys.)
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk you want our government to provide paid family/medical leave to all our workers. That is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the American Families Plan, so we might as well tell Congress we want it, lest they think the American people care more about whatever manufactured outrage right-wingers want to flood the zone with today. And though asking HOWZ WILLZ WE PAYZ FOR TEH THINGZ!!!! does get tiresome, just so happens Sen. Gillibrand's previous family/medical leave bills have already answered that: with a payroll tax that would cost workers making $50,000 annually less than $9/month. Nine dollars! And that's not even how I'd do it! See, this is why I get tired of people who whine about paying for things.
Both Daily Kos and Moms Rising help you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that would let counties and cities sign on to the Medicaid expansion even if state governments won't do it. What would be the opposing point of view there? That "states' rights" are too important? Gosh, that would be a tired argument! States that have refused the Medicaid expansion didn't do so because of some serious policy disagreement, but merely out of cruelty. No, a desire to "stick it to Obama" counts as cruelty; I mean, the result is the same. And if Congress doesn't have a moral obligation to fight cruelty, then why do we have a democracy to begin with?
Both Color of Change and Free Press help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1541, the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which would stop big telecom corporations from gouging prisoners when they talk to their families on the phone. Is it right that we would take advantage of prisoners and their families in this way? Is any cruelty OK if it makes you look "tough on crime"? And don't be the fool who says well, don't commit a crime, then, since we all know that contact with families helps folks in prison stay out once they get out. Also, too, there's a pandemic on, which means less face-to-face contact with families, which means more phone contact. Like I said, it's cruel, and that means we must change it.
Finally, Deadline for Democracy will be holding rallies all over America this week helping you tell your Senators to pass the For the People Act; here's where to find one. You just enter your zip code and find the event nearest you. Some two out of three Americans support the For the People Act, but Republicans Senators just keep on with their propaganda that an end to gerrymandering, campaign finance disclosure for big donors, 15 days of early voting nationwide, same-day and automatic voting registration, and an end to racist caging practices somehow all constitutes a "Democrat power grab." As usual, Republicans doth project too much -- they're the ones doing all the power-grabbing, and the For the People Act would make it harder for them to do it! So let's get out there, in force, and remind them who they're supposed to serve.
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