Long story short: tell your House Reps to pass the reconciliation budget blueprint, tell your Congressfolk to repeal the "war on terror"-era AUMFs, tell President Biden to raise the refugee cap on Afghan refugees, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, eliminate qualified immunity for police officers, and pass the Postal Service Reform 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 and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first: call your House Reps and tell them to vote in favor of the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint the Senate passed a few weeks ago, the budget blueprint that will enable all sorts of good things to happen in America -- higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, a stronger care-based economy, and paid family/medical leave for all workers, just to name a few. A few "moderate" Democrats are trying to take the bill hostage, but theirs is the calculus of cowardice -- the result of their actions, which may also be the aim of their actions, will be to scuttle both the reconciliation bill and the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" at whose altar they kneel. If they do that, they will lose not only their own seats, but the House and Senate -- and this time, they'll lose them to Republicans who openly identify as fascists. So brook no silliness from your House Reps about "the difficulty of raising taxes in an election." You know what's harder than raising taxes in an election? Winning elections in a fascist state when you're not a fascist.
Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Authorizations to Use Military Force (or AUMFs) that started the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and thus end our "forever war." Some people, and by some people I mainly mean people on the right side of the political spectrum, just aren't happy unless we're at war. Put six beers in them and they'll say war is the way to remake the world! Helluva job they did in Afghanistan, if so. War isn't the way to "remake the world," it's the way to redistribute income from taxpayers into defense contracting CEOs' pockets. You may note that Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) has sponsored these AUMF repeals, as she has done in the past, and you may remember that Rep. Lee was literally the only "nay" vote against the Afghanistan AUMF. If I were her, I'd wear an "I WAS RIGHT" baseball cap from now until the day they put me in the ground. But first, let's have her being right about that count for something.
In a related note, Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to raise the refugee cap for Afghans fleeing from the Taliban, so that more of the 300,000-plus Afghans who helped our military during the war effort can get out. You've already heard famous right-wing blowhards warn us about the coming "invasion" of Afghans, but this should be pretty simple to figure out from a moral perspective -- we did this to them, by invading their country, toppling their government, and promising them we would make their lives better. Now the government we toppled is back in power like the last 20 years didn't happen, and right-wingers expect we'll put racism above letting the Taliban murder the folks who helped us? So much for being the "guardians of morality." Let's not let them make all the damn decisions around here.
Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Remember when our Supreme Court knocked the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder? H.R. 4 would put those teeth back. In the aforementioned Shelby County v. Holder, our Court held that the Voting Rights Act discriminated against Southern states by forcing them to pre-clear their voting law changes with our Justice Department -- but our Court also held that a pre-clearance formula that didn't discriminate against the South would pass Constitutional muster. God only knows if that's true anymore, what with Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Barrett on the Court now, but H.R. 4 would subject any state or locality with a record of voting rights violations to Justice Department pre-clearance. And with so many states trying to suppress the vote as we speak, we need H.R. 4. So brook no silliness about "how the South has changed," because this is about America.
Black Lives Matter helps you tell your Congressfolk and the Biden Administration to prioritize ending "qualified immunity" for police officers when they execute Black folks without even charging them with a crime. I put that last phrase in there because it gives some people pause -- folks will "support the police" without thinking very hard about what it means, but they generally will not support "killing people without charge." A few will, believe it or not, but then every generation has had to deal with crazy people. Without getting too inside-baseball (I've done that in other posts about this matter!), "qualified immunity" restricts your ability to sue a police officer for a wrongful death, and restricts that ability way, way beyond the bounds of common sense -- to the point where parents of teenage kids shot by police can't get the justice they deserve. So let's get our government to do the right thing here.
Finally, Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3076/S. 1720, the Postal Service Reform Act. Postmaster General DeJoy's response to USPS funding shortfalls? Raise prices and lower services. The Postal Service Reform Act's response? Stop forcing our USPS to pre-fund retiree benefits for employees who ain't even born, get postal retirees into Medicare, and allow our USPS to offer additional services like postal banking -- though the bill doesn't specify postal banking, so you may want to say that you want that in the bill when you talk to (or write) your Congressperson. Virtually all of our USPS's problems can be traced to the pre-funding of retiree benefits, and in my experience, our Post Office continues to deliver exemplary service even with all the crap they have to put up with, and services that work you want to keep working. So let's keep our Postal Service, and let's help it thrive.
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