GOP extremist presidential candidate Herman Cain has teamed up with the
nefarious Koch brothers to turn the American Dream into a real life
nightmare for middle-class families. This Friday, Nov. 4^th, the Koch brothers’ front group Americans for Prosperity is
hosting a gala dinner as part of a conference in Washington, D.C., that
has been cynically titled “Defend the American Dream.” We won’t let the
Kochs’ extremist ploy go unanswered.

Join the 99% for Occupy the Kochs: Guerrilla Drive-In, a fun counter-event featuring edgy videos that expose the Koch brothers’ plot to buy our government in the name of the 1%.

Yes, I will be there at 7 p.m. Friday, at 1025 7th St. NW, in Washington, D.C.

Sorry I can’t make it, but I will chip in $9.99 and buy a drive-in movie ticket for a friend.

The Koch brothers and their cronies plan to increase income inequality, protect Wall Street banks, subsidize Big Oil and eliminate vital programs for America’s
families like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Now is the time
to show up and stop the greedy Koch brothers in their tracks.

Yes, I will be there on Friday.

No, I can’t make it but I will donate $9.99 to fight the Koch-Cain nightmare.

The Occupy Wall Street movement continues to gain strength across the
country. For more than a month, people of all ages and backgrounds have
been on the streets expressing their rejection of corporate money in
politics at Occupy events as well as at a variety of other struggles and
actions.

The Occupy the Kochs: Guerrilla Drive-In will bring the message of the 99% straight to the door of some of our most well-funded and despicable opponents.

In Solidarity,

Melinda Gibson

Health Care for America Now

P.S. Join us in Washington DC on November 4^th for the Occupy the Kochs: Guerrilla Drive-In.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Chicken of the Sea’s Recipe for Disaster … Casson Trenor, Greenpeace

11/03/2011 Nativegrl77

Take a random floating object, attach a radio beacon to it, and drop it in the ocean. Let it soak for a few weeks, then come back with a giant net and scoop up everything in sight.

That’s how Chicken of the Sea catches tuna — a deadly combination of fish aggregating devices (FADs) and massive seine nets. This indiscriminate practice is causing tremendous harm to our oceans, including the needless deaths of tens of thousands of sharks, rays, and baby tuna every year.

We launched our campaign to get Chicken of the Sea to clean up their act back in August with a video by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Mark Fiore. That video received such a strong response from the company and the rest of the tuna industry that we decided to make another. This time, we’re taking a closer look at their destructive practices, and offering indisputable evidence of their activities: actual footage of FAD-driven carnage on the high seas.

Help us keep the pressure on and check it out. Our goal is to hit 25,000 views in the first 48 hours.Simply click on the image below to watch the video and be sure to share it on Facebook and Twitter after you’ve watched it…

Chicken of the Sea and the entire tuna industry is scared. They’re scared that the public is going to find out the truth about what they are doing. So they’ve spent the last couple of months and untold amounts of money hiring expensive PR firms to attack Greenpeace, hoping that this will distract the public and confuse the issue.

But each and every person who watches this video and becomes aware of our campaign makes it a little bit harder for them to hide the truth. Take a moment and watch it yourself and then pass it along on Facebook and Twitter.

For the oceans,

Casson Trenor
Greenpeace Senior Markets Campaigner

P.S. One of the fastest and easiest ways to get people to watch the video is to forward this email to the people in your email address book.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Family’s legal error could cost student his life …Jackie Mahendra, Change.org

11/03/2011 Nativegrl77

ICE: Don’t deport a student who could be killed in his birth country of Pakistan.

Balal Parveez has nine brothers and sisters, a wife, and two parents who love him — they’re all American citizens. But because of a laeyer’s error from years ago, Balal is the only person in his family who is undocumented.

Now Balal is facing deportation: He’s been held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for eight long months, during which time the former athlete has grown thin and depressed. This week Balal required surgery to remove growths on his chest, and ICE threw Balal back into his cell right after surgery.

Balal’s family is fighting hard to keep him in America. Balal’s sister, Nosheen Dean, went to visit him in Florida last week. She says, “I told him, ‘I promise you I’m not going to let them deport you.’” Nosheen started a petition on Change.org begging ICE to let Balal stay in America. Click here to sign Nosheen’s petition right now.

Balal embodies the idea of a model American. He was brought to the US from Pakistan when he was five. He was a good student, played on his high school football team, went to community college, and married his high school sweetheart. Balal has no criminal record whatsoever.

But Balal first came to the U.S. with his aunt, and the family lawyer mistakenly processed Balal’s immigration case with his aunt’s instead of his parents’. That’s why Balal has spent 8 months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Florida, 1200 miles from his family in New York. He’s facing deportation to a country that’s foreign to him — a place where he could be killed because of his father’s outspoken opposition to the Taliban.

Balal shouldn’t be in detention in the first place. He clearly fits the new criteria laid out by President Obama that should make him an extremely low priority for deportation. ICE officials need to know that their actions are being watched, and that it is unacceptable for them to rip apart American families.

Please sign Nosheen’s petition demanding that ICE release her brother Balal from detention and allow him to stay with his wife and family in the U.S.:

http://www.change.org/petitions/release-dreamer-balal-parveez-to-his-family-and-stop-his-deportation

Thanks for being a change-maker,

– Jackie and the Change.org team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

AFL – CIO

11/03/2011 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

According to press reports, Democrats on Congress’s debt reduction
“super committee” proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to
Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as Medicaid, while
Republicans proposed even bigger and more harmful cuts to these
essential middle-class benefits.AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka recorded a video message to fill you in on what’s happening and
what you can do. Please watch right away.

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter

The
debt reduction “super committee” that’s considering these cuts is no
ordinary congressional committee. It is empowered by law to propose
legislation that cannot be amended and can be rammed through Congress
quickly, with minimal debate. That’s why we need you to get your friends
involved.

Once you’ve watched President Trumka’s video, be sure to share it on Facebook and Twitter with your friends and family.

And stay alert. We may soon need you to take action to save the middle class. Hours or even minutes could matter. We are the 99%, and Congress needs to represent us. It’s that simple.

In Solidarity,

Manny Herrmann

Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Department of Justice … Jim Dean

11/03/2011 Nativegrl77

“The universal rights of assembly and free speech must be protected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.” — President Barack Obama.

You may be thinking the above quote from President Obama was talking about the Occupy Wall Street protests — but he wasn’t. He was talking about the protests in Iran this past year.

Yet every morning, we read another story from a DFA member involved in an Occupy Wall Street action — stories about how protesters are struggling with authorities just to be able to exercise their basic rights. Every day we hear about some new dirty trick being pulled in an effort to stifle and break up the movement.

The tactics are varied. Some days it’s the Mayor of New York attempting to forcibly evict protesters from Zuccotti Park under the guise of “cleaning” or taking away the power supply. Other days, it’s mass arrests in Boston in the middle of the night. And just days ago it was the horrific story of police firing dangerous weapons on unarmed peaceful demonstrators in Oakland — and even seriously wounding a United States marine who served in Iraq.

The truth is: the universal rights of Occupy Wall Street protesters to free speech and assembly are not being protected right now. It’s time for our nation’s top law enforcement agency to stand up and defend its own civilians who are under attack — from New York to Oakland and every occupation in between.

Tell the Department of Justice to make a statement protecting the rights of Occupy Wall Street protesters to demonstrate in safety and peace. Sign the petition now.

At other pivotal moments in American history, the Department of Justice and the President have taken action to protect its citizens engaged in protest from injustice and police brutality.

We need that same leadership again now.

President Obama has stood up and showed great leadership in demanding that all governments worldwide protect the rights of their people to peacefully protest without harassment. It’s time for the Obama administration to lead again by demanding those exact same protections for peaceful protestors here in the United States of America.

Add your name to the petition now. Tell the Department of Justice to protect the rights of Americans to assemble and speak freely.

Thank you for everything you do,

– Jim

Jim Dean, Chair