Category Archives: ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Banned For Life …


By

Like CAP Action on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

NBA Takes Decisive Action On Clippers Owner Donald Sterling After Racist Comments

The National Basketball Association has banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life, fined him $2.5 million, and urged the league’s Board of Governors to force a sale of the team. The decision was announced this afternoon in a news conference by NBA commissioner Adam Silver after confirming that it was in fact Mr. Sterling’s voice making racist comments on an audio recording that surfaced Saturday.

The ban will prevent Sterling from attending any of his team’s games or participating in any operations or personnel decisions. The $2.5 million fine is the “maximum allowable under the NBA’s constitution,” Silver said (it is really just a drop in the bucket for the billionaire Sterling). And the decision to force the sale of the team can only be made with the approval of three-fourths of the league’s owners, whose support Silver “fully expect[s]” to get.

Reaction to the initial comments came swiftly from across the sports world and beyond. NBA legend Michael Jordan — who is also the only current African American principal owner in the league — was “obviously disgusted” and “completely outraged”. Major advertisers dropped their Clippers sponsorships. President Obama chimed in to say, “when ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk.”

The league’s decision today has been met with similar speed and almost universal acclaim. Numerous players voiced their support for the commissioner, including League MVP LeBron James:

Screen shot 2014-04-29 at 5.05.08 PM

The NBA Player’s Association, the union representing the players, held a press conference in which they universally praised the commissioner for showing “zero tolerance for institutional racism.” And other NBA owners, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who previously stated that efforts to remove Sterling from the league could be a “very very very slippery slope,” stood behind the decision “100%.”

But Donald Sterling has had a long history of charges of racial discrimination and sexual harrassment, which has caused some to ask why it has taken the NBA this long to act. Here is Travis Waldron at Think Progress:

Sterling’s racism is first and foremost an indictment of Sterling, and Silver should, on some level, be commended for taking strong action now. But as ESPN’s Bomani Jones so eloquently stated yesterday, the transgressions that went unnoticed and the implications of them are even bigger problems than Donald Sterling. And if we let this situation pass now without exploring why it took this long to hold him accountable and how we can address — or at least talk about — the litany of larger problems that Sterling both profited from and perpetuated, we will have accomplished far less from all of this than we could and should have.

BOTTOM LINE: Whether it comes from a rural rancher in Nevada or the owner of a major sports franchise in one of America’s biggest cities, racism clearly has no room in our culture. And given our country’s history, that’s progress. But we also must keep working to insist that discrimination — racial or otherwise — existing outside the spotlight is brought forward and treated with the same zero tolerance that we saw today.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

We Stand with Texas Women


WPThisIsPersonallogoThe situation in Texas is dire — women are being forced to travel hundreds of miles to seek care, some are crossing into Mexico, and recent reports describe women harming themselves in attempts to self-abort.

It’s been almost a year since thousands of women rallied to stop one of the most sweeping packages of abortion restrictions in the country. Despite their efforts, the legislation passed, causing clinics across the state to close and providers to stop performing abortions. By the time all the provisions take effect, it is estimated that more than two-thirds of Texas clinics will have been forced to stop performing abortions or close their doors completely.

Now more than ever, we need passionate advocates who will continue to fight for women in Texas and across the country. One of these women is Candice Russell, winner of the Generation Personal Community Choice Award. She and countless others, like local groups Nuestro Texas and the Lilith Fund, are working hard to ensure that women in Texas are able to get the care they need, despite the hurdles and barriers politicians erected.

Tell Your Friends — The fight in Texas is far from over. It’s time to take a stand for women in the states.

Texas is just one state where new abortion restrictions have put women at risk. Across the country in places like Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and others, legislatures are considering and passing laws that could have similar outcomes for women. In addition to closing clinics and imposing other barriers to care, many are working to ban abortion altogether.

Visit State Your Action to see if your home state needs help and tell your friends to act now.

Our community was moved by Candice’s testimony to the state legislature, her work with the NARAL Texas Next Generation Board, and by her desire to get involved. Now is your chance to show that you’re committed to the fight for women’s health in Texas, and in states across the country. As Candice said, “We might have lost the battle, but the war is far from over and we can only win if we are all fighting together.”

Visit State Your Action and spread the word — we’re not going anywhere. The fight is not over.

Thanks for keeping it personal,

Thao Nguyen
Campaign Director
This Is Personal

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Urgent plea


Rainforest Action NetworkThe message below comes to you from Rudi Putra, a longtime ally and hero of RAN’s and winner of the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize – the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism.Dear friends,

My name is Rudi and I feel like the luckiest person alive.

I grew up in a place teeming with wild orangutans, elephants, tigers, sunbears and Sumatran rhinos. My family and I lived in balance with the mountains, forests and rivers surrounding us. From an early age, I knew I had to take care of the beauty that surrounded me. But as huge multi-national companies expand their reach and palm plantations spread, I know that I can’t protect these pristine places alone. That’s why I’m asking you to join me in telling PepsiCo to eliminate the Conflict Palm Oil from its products.

I have worked much of my life to protect the 6.4 million acres of prime tropical rainforests in the Leuser Ecosystem. I fell in love with the Sumatran rhino, the smallest and the most critically endangered rhino of all – and have spent years tracking, researching and protecting these special creatures from poachers.

I have left my home in Indonesia to come to yours to deliver a very important message. I need your help to protect the last rhino’s and rainforests of Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem from Conflict Palm Oil.

I have witnessed vast areas of forests destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations, forests I knew were the homes of endangered species. I’ve removed traps from the forest corridors used by the last Sumatran elephants and tigers. I have even found animals poisoned, speared, and burned alive by poachers and plantation workers.

And still, the plantations keep growing across Aceh, always feeding the demand for Conflict Palm Oil. It must stop. We must protect the world’s rainforests. We must stop powerful and wealthy international corporations from exploiting and destroying irreplaceable Indonesian ecosystems for profit.

My community and I work tirelessly to shut down and destroy illegal palm oil plantations inside the federally protected Leuser Ecosystem, using chainsaws and uprooting illegal oil palms. We do this to protect our families from the floods that result from the destruction of the forests on the hillsides that surround our homes. But we can not do this alone. We need your help.

It is with great honor that I am here in the US and receiving the Goldman Prize. But it is an even greater honor to know that YOU will stand with me and hold PepsiCo to account for the impact of its products.

For the rhino’s and our life,
Rudi Putra
_______________________________________________
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Keep In Mind


By

Like CAP Action on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

11 Things The Senate Should Remember While Voting On The Minimum Wage

After returning from a two-week recess, the Senate is planning to vote on raising the minimum wage to $10.10 this Wednesday. The bill, called the “Minimum Wage Fairness Act,” needs 60 votes to advance thanks to the de facto GOP filibuster threat. And while in the past we have used this space to outline many of the different benefits of raising the minimum wage to $10.10, in anticipation of this important vote we wanted to go over some of the most important reasons one more time. Here they are:

1. Increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 and indexing it to inflation would raise the wages of 28 million workers by $35 billion. Raising the minimum wage would provide Americans who work hard a better opportunity to get ahead while giving the economy a needed shot in the arm.

2. In 2013, CEOs made 774 times the pay of minimum wage workers. While the top CEOs made an average of $11.7 million in 2013, full-time workers making the minimum wage took home only $15,080 a year.

3. Nearly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers are women. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would benefit 15 million women.

4. One million veterans would benefit from a minimum wage increase. After risking their lives to protect our country, 1 in 10 veterans working in America today are paid wages low enough that they would receive a raise if the minimum wage is raised to $10.10.

5. Raising the minimum wage will cut government spending on food stamps. Millions of workers earning the minimum wage make so little that they qualify for food stamps (SNAP benefits). This, in effect, amounts to taxpayers subsidizing corporations paying low-wages. Raising wages for low-income workers would actually cut government spending on SNAP by $4.6 billion a year, or $46 billion over the next 10 years, as workers earn enough on their own to no longer rely on the program.

6. Minimum wage workers are older than you think. Nearly 90 percent of minimum wage workers are 20 years or older. The average minimum wage worker is 35 years old. A higher minimum wage doesn’t just mean more spending money for a teenager, it means greater economic security for the millions of Americans who rely on it as their primary income.

7. Businesses see the value in increasing the minimum wage. Nearly 60 percent of small business owners recognize that raising the minimum wage would benefit businesses and support raising it. In fact, 82 percent of those surveyed don’t pay any of their workers the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

8. It won’t hurt job creation. States have raised the minimum wage 91 times since 1987 during periods of high unemployment, and in more than half of those instances the unemployment rate actually fell. Over 600 economists signed a letter agreeing that a minimum wage increase doesn’t hurt job creation.

9. In polls, nearly three-quarters of Americans support a minimum wage increase to $10.10. Pew Research found that 73 percent of Americans back a minimum wage increase.

10. Millions of children will be more secure. If we raise the minimum wage to $10.10, 21 million children will have at least one parent whose pay will go up.

11. A $10.10 minimum wage means a $16.1 billion boost for people of color. Raising the minimum wage is a matter of racial justice: people of color are far more likely to work minimum wage jobs and those who do are far more likely to be in poverty. A $10.10 minimum wage would lift three and a half million people of color out of poverty and add $16.1 billion to their incomes.

BOTTOM LINE: Over the next few days, as Senators take to the chamber floor to debate and then vote on this legislation that would help the economy and millions of American workers, they should make sure they keep in mind these vital facts on why the minimum wage should be raised to $10.10. A vote against increasing the minimum wage is quite simply a vote against working Americans.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

50 Million


Campaign for America's Future