Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act and pass the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act, the Protecting Data at the Border Act, the People's Response Act, and 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.
Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act, so our government can't use it to oppress reporters and whistleblowers. Like him or not, that's what our government is doing to Julian Assange right now, who has hid out in the British Embassy in London for the last dozen years after publishing a slew of government documents that made our government look idiotic, which admittedly isn't very difficult. (The British High Court ruled that our government could extradite him, but he's appealing.) And Mr. Assange ain't the only one: our government convicted drone whistleblower Daniel Hale under the Espionage Act. More than 20 years after the "war on terror" began, we continue to let our government oppress those good citizens who expose governmental wrongdoing. And we must stop that.
Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1384/S. 445, the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act. Currently the FDA-approved drug buprenorphine can cut opioid-related deaths in half, but folks who need it face obstacles they can't do anything about, because our laws limit how many patients a doctor can treat and force them to jump through unnecessary bureaucratic hoops; the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act would remove these barriers. Buprenorphine is itself a narcotic, which is why our government put these obstacles up in the first place, and folks do get high with it, but the bill doesn't hand the drug out on the corner, but allows doctors to dispense it more easily. Seems to me I'd put up with the small potential for abuse if I knew I could keep more good Americans from dying, and give them a chance at a better life.
Restore the Fourth helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5524/S. 2957, the Protecting Our Data at the Border Act, which would, as its title suggests, limit our government's ability to access your personal data at the border. The bill would require that our government get a warrant for that info -- warrants, how quaint! -- and it would also prevent our government from simply denying you entry (or delaying your entry for more than four hours) simply because you've refused to hand over your personal data without a warrant. Plus our government would have to destroy any data seized in violation of the bill (and your rights). The bill provides other protections as well, and we deserve them. It's simple: if they want to investigate us, they have to get a warrant. That's only worked for hundreds of years.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4194, the People's Response Act. If you've heard this is a "defund the police" bill, tell folks it's not -- it's a bill that stops using police like Swiss Army knives, demanding anything and everything of them rather than sending people to deal with problems (like mental health and drug addiction issues) that they're actually trained to deal with. The bill would establish grants so that local governments can create better approaches to these issues, and it would give the folks most impacted by these issues a bigger voice in the creation of these approaches. Police shootings went down 13% in 2021, and cities like Orlando that stopped sending police to deal with mental health issues helped drive that change. It's the kind of change we could make happen all over America, if we but have the will.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3076, the Postal Service Reform Act. You may have heard that our USPS Board of Governors held an "emergency meeting" to install a pro-DeJoy Chair, not long after postal workers demanded Mr. DeJoy's removal as Postmaster General. Frankly I suspect a lawsuit will discover that the Board can't produce the "emergent" situation that "required" the meeting, but in the meantime, how about we pass a bill that'll actually solve the service issues Mr. DeJoy is making worse? All of our Postal Service's financial problems stem from being forced to prepay retirement benefits 80 years in advance; the Postal Service Reform Act would repeal that mandate. And then, to quote a famous philosopher, problem solved! If we have the will, that is.
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