Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Environmental Justice for All Act and the EQUAL Act, and tell your Senators to confirm Gigi Sohn to our Federal Communications Commission. 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.
The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2021/S. 872, the Environmental Justice for All Act, which would enable Black and Brown communities harmed by corporate pollution to sue polluting corporations in court (if those corporations received federal funding to do their harm), and would also strengthen the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA) so that it takes this kind of historic racism into account. The racism of building factories almost exclusively next to Black and Brown neighborhoods is so obvious it was a joke on Mystery Science Theater 3000 some 20 years ago, so justice is long overdue.
The ACLU helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1693/S. 79, the EQUAL Act, which would (among other things) eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. These days, folks convicted of crack-related crimes get nearly 18 times the jail time folks convicted of powder cocaine-related crimes get, and why? No good reason, that’s why – our culture (wrongly) assumes that crack is much more addictive than powder, and our culture (also wrongly) associates crack with Blacks and powder with whites. The bill would also reduce sentences for some folks serving time now, so let’s fight this form of racism as hard as we fight all the others.
Finally, Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to confirm Gigi Sohn as the fifth Commissioner of our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC). Our FCC needs a fifth Commissioner to break all the 2-2 ties on FCC votes, and, to be frank, to break those votes the way of the people’s will. The American people have communicated their will favoring net neutrality at least a half-dozen times over the last decade – and justifiably so, since net neutrality gives you the freedom to visit the websites you like without being hamstrung by some corporation’s will. But we need a freedom-friendly third vote on our FCC if we want to get it back, and our Senate has dragged its feet too long.
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