Wed 12/16: Biggest gift you can give this holiday season – Call Congress to stop ICE from deporting detained children.

These kids are running out of time. They can’t wait out Trump’s last days of destruction.

Over 20 families with young children who are incarcerated by ICE at the Berks and Dilley family prisons are in imminent danger of being deported as early as TODAY. Yesterday, a federal court in Washington D.C. lifted the stay of removal that had been protecting these families from being deported.

These families were denied the right to seek asylum under Trump administration policies that federal courts have since ruled were unlawful. ICE plans to deport these children to face death or torture in their home country. These families, who are from Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, El Salvador, and Ecuador, have been locked up in unsafe conditions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The government should correctly apply federal law to allow the families to have their asylum claims heard. The Shut Down Berks Coalition and a coalition of national organizations are requesting urgent Congressional intervention to stop the deportations.

PLEASE MAKE THESE 5 CALLS to these members of Congress and the USCIS to ask them to take urgent action to stop these deportations.

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“Call-a-Day” actions for the Arctic!

(This action was originally envisioned as an advent calendar of calls, starting on Dec. 14th. Now, however, you can start whenever you wish.)

One corporation each day this week – Call and email them, tweet and tag them – tell them “hands off” our Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!

This corporate-focused campaign is being done in coalition with the “Defend the Sacred: Protect the Arctic” (Defend the Sacred AK, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Gwich’in Steering Committee, and Native Movement).The goal to is to convince them not to bid on leases or have any involvement with Arctic oil extraction!

DAY 1: Hilcorp – use this graphic to target! Contact: @HilcorpEnergyCo, CEO: glalicker@hilcorp.com, Phone: 713-209-2400
- In 2015, The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission noted 25 instances of regulatory violations and stated boldly: “Hilcorp’s conduct is inexcusable” and “The disregard for regulatory compliance is endemic to Hilcorp’s approach to its Alaska operations.” In 2015, they were fined $100,000 for Clean Water Act violations following a 10,000-gallon crude oil and produced water spill at Milne Point. In the last five years, Hilcorp has reported 102 oil and hazardous substance spills on the North Slope.

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Friday 12/11: Fight Back! Write Back! Call the cowards out!

Everyone who participated in this”Seditious Abuse of the Judicial Process” should resign.

(Watch this great video by Anderson Cooper here. Quote by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro)

UPDATE: The Supreme Court just shut down Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al. This doesn’t change the crime against American democracy that +126 GOP legislators and 18 attorneys general tried to commit and the damage that they’ve done. Each legal action, no matter how ridiculous, solidifies the fiction that the election is being stolen from Trump and a lingering sense of grievance is extremely dangerous to a functional democracy. It’s time to call these guys out for what they are. Traitors to democracy. Toadies and lickspittles in the service of an incipient dictator. Send them a message!

It’s more than just a vote. At our local citizenship fairs, we volunteers see firsthand how hard people work to become Americans, and their pride in filling out their first voter registration card. We watch them bring their kids back to fill out cards as well. As polling place volunteer workers, we’ve cheered newly-naturalized citizens who came in to cast their very first vote and made sure they felt welcome, because in a secular democracy like ours, there is nothing more sacred than voting.

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Thurs 12/10: Justice for Casey – Let’s add our voice!

(ARTIST: ALEX ALBADR)

Black lives are still under attack. Casey Goodson Jr. was on his way home from the dentist in Columbus, Ohio. He stopped to get Subway sandwiches for him, his brother, and his grandmother. He got home, put the keys in the side door, and as he stepped foot into his home, he was shot repeatedly in the back by Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy Jason Meade.

Casey Goodson Jr. died on December 4th in front of his 72-year-old grandmother and two toddlers. He was 23 years old. His mother, Tamala Payne, shared in grief: “My son, as I’ve stated a thousand times, was an amazing little boy. And he was still a little boy because he is always going to be my baby. Just knowing that Jason Meade took his voice, he no longer has one. Therefore, I am his voice and I know that I have to be his voice. I have to stand up for my son because, if I don’t, no one else will.”

Stand up for Casey Goodson Jr., his family, and his loved ones.

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Wed. 12/9: Seriously, Georgia? Everybody is watching you! Call/Write!

(BLM tweet above) Cobb County helped Joe Biden become the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Georgia since 1992. It had been reported on Monday that their elections director, Janine Eveler, planned to cut the number of early voting locations for the runoff elections on January 5th from eleven to five, claiming intractable employee issues. This came among other GOP voter suppression news – Tuesday, GA Republicans called for throwing out their own no-excuse absentee voting system they created in 2005, and cut down early voting sites in Forsyth County and others.

However, a letter from the NAACP, the GA ACLU+friends has caused some backtracking for Cobb County…Now Eveler’s proposing 5 sites for the first two weeks and 2 more for the final week. (Early voting begins on Monday, Dec. 14, and runs through New Year’s Eve.) Still not enough, if the multi-hour lines from the general election’s 11 early voting sites are any guide.

To help visualize the numbers, here’s a comparison of rough early-voting access ratios, comparing several Cobb County scenarios, with the three other similarly-sized counties in GA.

County Name	Gross Population	#Early Voting locations	# of locations/per pop.
Cobb (Jan. 5th run-off) Original proposal	707,442	(5) originally proposed	(1) per 141,488 (!!!)
Cobb (Jan. 5th run-off) Revised proposal	707,442	(5) proposed + (2) to open in last week	(1) per 101,063
Cobb (2020 Election)	707,442	(11)	(1) per 64,312
DeKalb	707,089	(11)	(1) per 64,000
Gwinnet	842,046	(9)	(1) per 93,561
Fulton	1,041,423	(32)	(1) per 32,544

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Tues 12/8: Two actions to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling! Deadline Dec. 17th.

“The Gwich’in have been fighting for decades to protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known to them as “Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit” (The Sacred Place Where Life Begins). The Trump administration is taking aggressive steps to fast track plans to give oil and gas companies the right to drill on these lands. Drilling will destroy intact wilderness and violate the human rights of the Gwich’in, who rely on this sacred place to sustain their culture and way of life.

The Gwich’in are fighting to protect their future, but they can’t win this battle alone.“

Trump is pushing the lease sales through before Biden takes office. We need to help! But how did we get here?

The GOP’s 2017 Tax Act (aka “scam”) not only included ±$1.7 trillion of goodies for the richest amongst us, but also a gift to the president’s fossil fuel supporters – 400,000 acres of the Coastal Plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be opened to oil and gas leasing within 4 years, with a second lease sale within 7 years, all based on the fairy-tale estimation that the “1002 Area” would produce a $1.8 billion windfall for the treasury. The Act also stipulated that there can be up to 2000 acres of surface infrastructure, and rewrote the purpose of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as stated in ANILCA (1980) to include providing “for an oil and gas program on the Coastal Plain.”

So here we are. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), is now in the final phase of the process to hold a lease sale (“Record of Decision” document here) – which they expect to start as soon as January! Of the four options outlined in the “draft Environmental Impact Statement” (DEIS) (described at the bottom of this post), soon-to-be-ex-Dept. of the Interior Sec. David Bernhardt picked the worst of the worst – Plan “B,” which puts up for lease the entire Coastal Plain, 1.5 million acres, far more than required by the Tax Act, with minimal requirements. Under “Mitigation Measures” in the final report (p.19), Bernhardt promises only that “This Decision includes all practicable and reasonable means to avoid or minimize environmental harm consistent with the purpose and need of the action…” which is drilling.

Action #1: Call or email your legislators.

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Friday action wrap-up – D.C. statehood and House rules!

Action #1: Tell your representative to get rid of the “Motion to Recommit” and the “PayGo” rules

Our legislators are making decisions on these actions now! Read more from Indivisible here.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] to tell Rep. [___] to vote to remove two provisions that present a barrier to the progressive legislation we expect to see from [him/her): the “Motion to Recommit” (or “MTR”) and the “Pay as You Go rule” (or “PayGo”).

(Contact information at bottom)

Action #2: Tell your legislators that it’s time for D.C. statehood.

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Wed. 12/2: We’re being targeted again by big business, this time in Ventura County! Don’t sign the oil industry’s petition to pollute.

#1- SHARE with others you know on social media!

Share information, and sign up to counter inaccurate messages from paid petition gatherers!

(Action shared from CFROG and DoNotSignvc.com) Since Nov. 13, paid signature gatherers have been circulating petitions at big-box and grocery stores, to repeal recently-enacted county requirements that oil companies comply with up-to-date environmental practices for all new wells, no matter how old their original permit. To accomplish their goal of gathering 50k signatures (30,913 min.) before Dec. 10th, a group of oil producers from outside our county, mainly funded by Aera Energy a Shell-Exxon corp., and California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), are pushing the message that your support will save jobs, make gas cheaper, and help the economy. These claims are untrue or misleading. Please warn others about this campaign on your social media. Use the link: DoNotSignVC.com. CFROG has created great graphics for Twitter and Facebook in both English and Spanish here.

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Mon. 11/30: Tell the Senate to pass the HEROES ACT now!

Update 12/16/2020: The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) announced they will use the power of a voting bloc to force these necessary benefits — extended UI benefits and $1200 cash assistance — to be included in the relief bill. They’re wielding their progressive power and we’ve got to have their backs. Make calls now to your representative and demand that the relief bill include direct cash assistance.

Right now the GOP is trying to flip the script, saying that House Democrats are responsible for the hold up of stimulus funding.. But the same Senate that gave $1.7 trillion in tax breaks to our richest, proposes crumbs for us, and MORE COVID liability protection for their corporate funders. (See: “Tyson Managers Suspended After Allegedly Betting If Workers Would Contract COVID” and this article from the ACLU. Time to start “skinnying” things up for the 1%!

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Sen. [___] to immediately pass the HEROES Act, along with improvements shown to be necessary as this national emergency deepens. While the Senate has been malingering in their duty to “promote the general Welfare,” 20% of Americans now face food insecurity, a level equivalent to the Great Depression and 40 million people are in danger of being evicted into the twin dangers of the pandemic and winter. At the same time, states are having to cut back on essential services, which will harm the most vulnerable, including children. Here are basic minimums the Senate should secure to put us on the track to recovery. First, DIRECT CASH RELIEF including $1200 cash assistance for adults and $500 for dependents, like under the CARES ACT. THEN:

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Taking back our power during the holidays.

Thanksgiving is the traditional starting bell of our season of mass consumerism, the intensity of which is analyzed by investors and the stock market to determine the economic health of our nation. (“FALSE!” says Robert Reich, here.)

However, this year is profoundly different. Not only are we having to negotiate whether or not we can gather with loved ones safely, we face a wildly changed economic landscape, where, in the richest nation on earth, 20% of us face food insecurity, a level not seen since the Great Depression. Those photos of rows of cars, waiting at food banks, those are 21st- century version of earlier soup lines.

*(Left) Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone (Right) Image from San Antonio Food Bank line.*

A record 80 million of us banded together to overthrow an incipient dictator. If we thought of our holiday spending as an S.O.S. (Save Our-Selves) action, we would work to return money to the economy in ways that help ourselves and fellow workers, instead of enriching the offshore accounts of billionaires.

(Are you in need? Can you help others? Go here for local assistance and donation/volunteer opportunities..)