Long story short: tell Israel to end its apartheid against Palestine, tell California to stop importing oil from the Amazon rainforest, tell our FDA to vigorously limit heavy metals in foods, tell our DOT to force airlines to give refunds for cancelled flights, and tell airline corporations to pay flight attendants fairly for all the work they do. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.
Amnesty International helps you tell Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to end his nation's apartheid against Palestine. I hate to use that word, but for close to 50 years the word has had a meaning in international law; per the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid refers to certain crimes "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." That's the Israel/Palestine relationship in a nutshell, and if you're only thinking of the bad things Palestinians do, recall that Israel holds all the power in this relationship. You have heard, perhaps, that Mr. Bennett would be even less sympathetic to this call than his predecessor. Duty calls nonetheless.
Stand.Earth helps you tell California to stop getting oil imports from the Amazon. Now, you can think of a very good reason to stop buying Amazon oil right off the top of your head -- because the Amazon rain forest is the best carbon emissions sink we have on Earth, and what do you think oil drilling will do to all of that? But if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know there's another damn good reason to boycott Amazon oil: because that irredeemable asshole President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil wants to completely destroy the Amazon (and the numerous indigenous folks who live there) by turning it into money he and his cronies will never live long enough to spend. You certainly wouldn't want to enable him! So save the planet, certainly, but also poke Mr. Bolsonaro in the eye. He deserves no better.
Consumer Reports helps you tell our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) to set vigorous limits on heavy metals in food. Consumer Reports has lately found high levels of heavy metals such as lead and arsenic in almost one-third of popular herbs and spices, and if you're like me, you put that stuff in your food without even thinking about it! And this is like a lot of things: do it once and you'll probably get away with it, but do it many times and you'll have serious health issues. And so will your children -- they're even worse at just "getting the lead out" of their bodies than we adults are. Our FDA doesn't actually plan to consider this question until 2024. I don't need to tell you what else might happen in 2024 that ensures it never gets done. So let's prod them into doing the right thing now.
US PIRG helps you tell our Department of Transportation (or DOT) to force big airline corporations to give cash refunds for cancelled trips. Airlines have cancelled at least 20,000 flights just since Christmas Eve -- it wasn't that long ago! -- and I don't care whether that was because all of their workers had the omicron variant or not; if you can't provide a service you promised to make, you need to make it right, particularly when you're sitting on a mountain of cash with which you can make it right. It's a shame we even need to tell our Department of Transportation to do this! Big airline corporations should care enough about you to do it on their own! Of course, they're just another sector of our economy that thinks it's so indispensable it can do what it wants. But they ain't bigger than us.
Finally, in a peripherally-related note, Change.org helps you tell big airline corporations to pay flight attendants for the time they spend helping folks board the plane. It wasn't that long ago I was on a plane, so I remember the flight attendants being right there when I boarded, and to hear they make as little as $2 an hour for that even though they're supposed to be there was more than a little sickening. People think flight attendants don't do anything if they're not handing out peanuts and booze, but a lot of work goes on that either folks don't see or folks take for granted. I don't even take saying hello to me as I board a plane for granted; I don't know if I could greet a hundred people in a row nicely. If we are in that era where service is the main things folks have to sell, then folks ought to at least be well-paid for it.
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