Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act so our Executive branch can't keep abusing it, tell your Senators to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness 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.
The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act, so that our government can't use it to put journalists in jail. Yes, that's what Julian Assange is, regardless of whether or not you agree with him! And that's what releasing the Wikileaks papers was, too, and if we're going to put him in jail for that, then we should have put Daniel Ellsberg in jail for releasing the Pentagon Papers, and nobody's in favor of that, are they? I must say I find it disheartening to find President Biden continuing the unfortunate trend under President Obama of using the Espionage Act to punish truth-tellers, be they journalists or whistleblowers from within the Executive branch. American democracy demands more of President Biden, just as it demands more of us.
Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to vote on S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, this month. Especially now that Democrats have actually snuffed out the shutdown and debt limit dramas! And easy as it is to make fun of Joe Manchin's objections to the For the People Act, his Freedom to Vote Act is about as good -- it gets rid of ethics provisions I wonder why! but it adds provisions that would keep states from hijacking the people's will during elections, as many states have moved to do this year. And early voting for 15 days in all states, same-day voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, clamping down on partisan gerrymandering, restoring ex-felons' voting rights, and restricting dark money campaign contributions are all good works. So let's make our Senators do them.
Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4718, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act. In the wake of our government selling over $100 billion in weapons to nations we know abuse the rights of their citizens, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Philippines, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act would allow our President to impose sanctions against any nation that breaks international human rights law, and that sure seems prudent -- I mean, you wouldn't want to be an accessory to someone else's genocide, would you? The bill would also establish a Commission on Atrocity Accountability and Human Rights, which would be able to supply Presidents with the information they'd need to determine human rights violations and impose sanctions. How would this bill's opponents object? Probably by yammering on about "socialism."
Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5263/S. 3276, the Stopping Grinch Bots Act. What are "Grinch bots"? They're pieces of software that roam the internet and buy up all the most popular items, so they can resell them at a high markup. Nice work if you can get it! Actually, since you're not a Grinch-bot -- and, very likely, you're not someone who writes Grinch-bots -- you can't get it, and more to the point, you can't get something nice for your nephew for Christmas this year because some bot has already bought it up and now wants twice as much as it paid for it. In a time of supply-chain bottlenecks caused by COVID, this ain't exactly what you need this holiday season. But Congress has done this kind of thing before, with 2016's Better Online Ticket Sales Act, so they can do it again.
Finally, the ACLU helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1065/S. 1486, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. We've been trying to get this passed for years, since too many bosses fire pregnant workers, won't hire pregnant workers, or make their pregnant workers' lives miserable; the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would prevent bosses from doing any of these things, by forcing them to make, and I quote, "reasonable accommodations" to their pregnant workers. Note well the word "reasonable," for when some right-wing prick rants about Big Gummint letting workers spend their entire shift in the bathroom, which the bill does not allow, because it is not a "reasonable" accommodation. Our House passed this bill in May by a wide margin, but the bill still needs a vote before the whole Senate, so let's prompt them to do that.
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