Long story short: tell Texas Gov. Abbott to grant Melissa Lucio clemency, tell Citigroup to get out of the Amazon rainforest, tell Verizon to recognize retail worker unions, tell our EPA to cut pollution from trucks and buses, tell our government to investigate Postmaster General DeJoy, and tell BlueTriton to stop taking the public's water. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.
First things first: Ultra Violet helps you tell Texas Governor Greg Abbott to grant Melissa Lucio clemency. A jury convicted Ms. Lucio of murdering her two year-old daughter in 2007, but, well, let's just say it's a bad sign for a verdict when five of the original jurors want a do-over because of evidence they didn't get to hear, evidence that included how thoroughly investigators coerced her to confess in the first place. I'm sure some folks would rather just adhere to the original verdict, not out of laziness but out of a sense that we've got rules, but I think they're misguided: one of the ways we protect our civilization is we make damn sure someone's guilty before we do something like kill them, since you can't really take that back. Erring on the side of innocence is a feature of civilization; too many folks think it's a bug.
Stand.Earth helps you tell Citigroup executives to stop funding oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest. Yes, that still happens, and not just because Jair Bolsonaro runs things in Brazil! But Citigroup executives meet today for their Annual General Meeting, so now's as good a time as any to wield the Big Stick of Bad PR against them. They've funded oil drilling in the Amazon -- the world's best weapon against climate change, I feel compelled to restate -- to the tune of $40 billion over the years, which doesn't just mean pollution, but also means running roughshod over the rights of indigenous folks who live there. And yeah, it also means collaborating with the aforementioned irredeemable asshole whom I hope Brazilian voters will be able to turn out of office this year. Yeah, I said collaborating. As Rush Limbaugh used to say, words mean things.
More Perfect Union helps you tell Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to recognize the Verizon retail workers' union in Washington state. Stop me if you've heard this before, but Verizon made over $4 billion in profits while cutting retail worker pay, which I guess is how they answer the question how do you think I got so rich? Verizon workers also suffer from the chronic understaffing and absurd scheduling practices that plague so many retail workers in America; could that be the reason Starbucks and Amazon workers are trying to unionize? Don't believe the hype that retail jobs are just unstable and workers should know that when they sign up. As if they have much of a choice! And anyway, calling misery "natural" betrays a profound lack of imagination.
Consumer Reports helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to cut pollution from buses and semi-trucks. Again, throwing up your hands and saying they're big vehicles and they're just going to pollute! shows a profound lack of imagination. Semis and buses pump out a quarter of all pollution from vehicals despite comprising only five percent of all vehicles, and if they only get, say six miles to the gallon, wouldn't they be twice as clean if they got 12? This is the kind of imagination that makes good policy! You can't just sit there and say we'll never get them to get 50 miles to the gallon, so let's give up, but right-wingers want you to make that mistake non-stop, because then their paymasters (like big corporations that don't want to buy all new trucks) get everything they want. And why should they?
Daily Kos helps you tell our Department of Justice and United States Postal Service Inspector General to investigate Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for possible lawbreaking -- specifically, by holding onto investments in the corporation that just so happened to produce all those free COVID tests we got in the mail. No, it's not a matter of using your connections in the business world! For one thing, our government should have made the damn tests themselves, and for another thing, you're not supposed to personally benefit from the decisions you make on behalf of the public. I'm old enough to remember when public servants avoided the appearance of corruption; now they wave it in your face. Waving it in our face should get them punished, but it won't, unless we act.
Finally, Sum of Us helps you tell BlueTriton CEO Dean Metropoulos to stop taking public water from the drought-addled communities, or, indeed, any communities. BlueTriton, as you likely know by now, used to be Nestlé’s North American water stealing ahem bottling operation last year, but it's time we reminded the world there ain't no putting lipstick on that pig. And why should there be? Why should corporations get to siphon public water and then charge hundreds of times the amount they paid for the water? They call it "preserving a resource," but governments can do that. The most important thing here is that water doesn't go the way of health insurance, higher education, child care, and, hell, rent -- as an essential item that working families can't afford anymore.
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