Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to give our IRS the resources it needs to catch rich tax cheats, permanently protect the Boundary Waters from pollution, and pass national rent control legislation, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment 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.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our Internal Revenue Service (or IRS) so it can catch wealthy tax cheats. You've heard that we lose $1 trillion every year in unpaid taxes, and you've also heard that our IRS goes after low-level tax cheats simply because they don't have the money to fight rich tax cheats and their well-paid lawyers. And that's why we should fund our IRS properly! It won't break the bank and it'll bring back far more money than it'd cost. If certain people would stop with the BS about how they'll come for the little guy if they come for the big guy, that'd be nice, too. I mean, again, our IRS can't afford to do anything but go after the little guy. So less drama, more reality, as usual.
President Biden cancelled two mining leases that would have polluted the famous Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, which is terrific, but it doesn't offer any guarantees about the future, so now the Wilderness Society helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect the Boundary Waters from mining for good. Among the many other reasons to protect the Boundary Waters -- like, that lots of wildlife lives there, and that it's a big, big tourist draw, which also means it supports lots of jobs and brings in lots of money -- the Boundary Waters is also sacred to several Native American nations. We still care about religious freedom, right? Or do we only care about religious freedom for bigots? You could forgive me for thinking that's all we care about. But I'd prefer to live in a better America than that.
Hot on the heels of a Senate banking committee hearing about the matter, the Center for Popular Democracy helps you tell your Senators to support various reforms that would curb corporate control of housing. These would include more investment in public housing and one of my personal favorites, national rent control. Only a few states and municipalities cap the rents landlords can charge, and most states actually prevent any of their municipalities from instituting any kind of rent control, but as recent events have shown us, we can't count on "market forces" to ensure everyone has a place to live any more than we can count on "market forces" to keep us healthy and well-educated. To those who would assert that "all price controls are bad," you need only retort "so paying less money is bad?" I think everyone can get behind that argument!
The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1065/S. 1486, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require employers to make reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers at the workplace, including giving them less strenuous work and more bathroom breaks while they're pregnant, and I said the word "reasonable" with the italics hammer in a perhaps-vain attempt to forestall right-wing arguments like "they'll let pregnant workers run the place!" The bill would also prevent employers from firing workers just for being pregnant, and would also prevent them from refusing to consider a pregnant job applicant just because she's pregnant. It feels like we've been fighting for this bill forever; sometimes it takes this long, and we have to just keep fighting. I'd prefer not to wait until men can get pregnant before it passes, though.
Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4445, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. So many employment contracts mandate forced arbitration for all employee grievances, but forced arbitration more often than not results in your boss winning, and you losing -- and in some cases, you paying for the forced arbitration! You'd have a better chance of winning in a court of law, and H.R. 4445 would at least prevent corporations from forcing you into arbitration over sexual abuse or harassment charges. Yes, I'd prefer to end forced arbitration for all disputes, but bosses seem to go even further out of their way to ignore sexual assault/harassment charges, and passing H.R. 4445 would get our foot in the door toward that end. And that's worth doing.
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