Long story short: tell Iran to release Vahid Afkari, tell President Biden to require campaign finance disclosure for federal contracting corporations, and tell our EPA to protect good Americans from chemical spills and explosions. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.
First things first: Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to release political prisoner Vahid Afkari immediately, expunge his record, and drop any charges against him. Mr. Afkari's story has a lot of recognizable particulars: participated in peaceful protests against Iran’s repressive regime, got arrested on trumped-up charges, got sentenced to over 30 years in jail (plus 74 lashes), has spent the last two years in solitary, and now has health issues that I’m sure are completely unrelated to the injustices his government has inflicted upon him. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, only a snowflake government does this to their own people. And if we pressure them enough, they’ll fold, because that's what snowflakes do.
Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to force corporations that contract with our government to disclose their campaign spending. This should be a layup – most corporations do business with our government sooner or later, and they spend taxpayer money, which is to say our money, so we deserve to know which politicians they’re funding. Right-wingers will whine that this would have a “chilling effect” on “free speech,” but it won’t, because money is not speech. Corporate executives will still be able to say what they like; they’ll just be less able to bribe their way to getting what they like. And why should they have it so easy, when the rest of us must howl to be heard?
Finally, the National Resources Defense Council helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous Risk Assessment Plan possible for American chemical plants. More than one out of every three Americans lives within three miles of a chemical facility, meaning more than one out of every three Americans faces a significant chance of exposure to toxic leaks, fumes, fires, and explosions. And not for nothing, but most of these Americans are Black, Brown, or poor; why, it's almost like that's the idea. But if we believe that everyone deserves a chance in America – and even right-wingers make a show of believing that – then we must protect everyone from the toxic waste that could sicken, injure, or kill them.
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