Long story short: tell your Philadelphia City Council to replace lead-contaminated drinking fountains, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act and the Scientific Integrity Act, ban members of Congress from trading in defense stocks, investigate corruption allegations against Postmaster General DeJoy, and pass the Reducing Waste in National Parks 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.
Philadelphia residents, take note: Penn Environment helps you tell your City Councilmember to pass Bill # 220221, which would force the city school district to replace all drinking fountains in schools with lead-filtering ones by 2025. That's because a recent study found 98% of Philly school drinking fountains had lead in them, and recall that no amount of lead in drinking water is safe, and that any amount of lead a child ingests can cause brain damage. So doing something about this shouldn't be this difficult, particularly since the American Rescue Plan Act delivered an extra $1.1 billion to Philly public schools and the district would only have to spend (per Penn Environment) around $6 million of that to fix the problem. But politicians won't do the right thing unless we demand it.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 963/S. 505, the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act. I don't want to downplay the importance of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act; it is a major piece of legislation, and I don't think I ever described the Affordable Care Act with that phrase. But why not press your advantage? Forced arbitration is unjust in every contract, for every reason -- and if arbitration is so great, why do corporations force you to use it? If you want to band together in a class action suit with other similarly-wronged folks, why should corporations get to stop you? Because they "deserve" more say than you? They don't -- but they'll get it, if we don't speak out.
Breast Cancer Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 849, the Scientific Integrity Act. The Scientific Integrity Act would force Executive3 branch agencies to create (and enforce!) a scientific integrity plan that keeps politics out of scientific decisions. After all, we just had President Troll pack EPA scientific boards with corporate polluter hacks, and that's not the kind of thing that free people should have to put up with. The bill would also keep political employees from muddying up scientific data and give whistleblowers more power to expose wrongdoing. Oh, and it ain't just about the EPA: our Food and Drug Administration sure hasn't earned a reputation for sobriety as of late, what with their greasing the skids for the Alzheimer's drug that may not even work. So, yeah, let's put a stop to that kind of thing.
Inequality Media helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban members of Congress from trading in defense stocks. Why can't we cut the defense budget, even though we spend more money than the next 8 nations combined and still never feel secure? It couldn't be because nearly 50 members of Congress have almost $7 million in investments in defense contracting corporations, could it? I'm still appalled how cheaply people can be bought -- yes, $7 million is a lot of money even when divided among 50 individuals, but you know that's a drop in the budget next to our annual defense budget, meaning that defense contracting corporations can purchase a lot of legislative power for their buck. We need to make a world where our leaders avoid even the appearance of evil.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to investigate Postmaster General DeJoy for yet another potential conflict-of-interest, this one concerning the free COVID tests our Postal Service delivered to our houses. Turns out Mr. DeJoy owned stock in one of the corporations that supplied COVID testing kits to the public, and didn't divest himself of said stock; some folks no doubt think this is no big deal, but owning stock in a corporation that might get work from our Postal Service while you're running said Postal Service is an invitation to corruption, the kind of thing our laws proscribe precisely because we don't want such corruption to happen. America may be the get-ahead country, but we don't want it to be the get-over country, and that's why we fight corruption.
Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5533/S. 2960, the Reducing Waste in National Parks Act, which would ban single-use plastics in our national parks. Not just because you don't want to see that while you're hiking or climbing, but because our national parks protect a lot of our clean air and clean water, not to mention ecosystems you don't see anywhere else. And seriously, how many cheap plastic bags do you need at the Sequoia National Park? There are plenty of alternatives to plastic bottles, coffee cups with plastic lids, and take-out containers, and the internet is anxious to tell you all about them. I suppose some folks must oppose a bill like this, but I suspect they're the same folks who think freedom is mainly all about being as obnoxious as possible and preventing others from shunning you for it.
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