Texas fracking company Southwestern Energy wants to drill for natural gas in the indigenous lands of the Mi'kmaq people of New Brunswick, Canada -- but the Mi'kmaq oppose it, and had been protesting peacefully (with allies) for some time, until the police raided the protest site with pepper spray and rubber bullets. The provincial government argues that we need to do this in order to create jobs as if there's only one way to create jobs, but the Canadian people by and large oppose fracking -- two-thirds of Canadians in the Atlantic region, in fact, which suggests that the provincial government of New Brunswick hasn't listened to its people very well. You know, in addition to ignoring the dangers to air, water, and climate that fracking presents. Hence Roots Action helps you tell Southwestern Energy and the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. to get the frackers out of New Brunswick.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to ban antibiotic abuse, then Consumers Union still helps you do that. Warning: you'll be addressing HHS Secretary Sebelius and USDA Secretary Vilsack, and Mr. Vilsack, at least, has proven a formidable lackey of the factory farm industry that smothers its animals in antibiotics so they can get fatter and better withstand the miserable life of tiny factory farm pens. Ms. Sebelius may listen a little better on the action alert's other demand -- that we monitor doctors and hospitals who overprescribe antibiotics. But you know and I know that when four out of five antibiotics go to healthy farm animals, the bacteria they're targeting gets stronger and stronger, and then you have superbugs like MRSA, which antibiotics can't even kill. It's easy to grasp, I know -- easy for everyone but our government officials and their corporate paymasters. Let's help them understand, then.