Category Archives: ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

We’ve got a story to tell you . . .

Once upon a time (August 2016), Obama announced that the Federal Bureau of Prisons would phase out the use of private prisons. GEO Group, a multibillion-dollar for-profit prison company, saw their stock plummet 40 percent.

The very next day, GEO Correction Holding Inc. gave $100,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC. And when Trump won, GEO Group shelled out $250,000 to support his inaugural festivities.

Now, guess what? The Trump administration just awarded the GEO Group $110 million of our federal tax dollars and a 10-year contract to develop and operate a new immigrant detention center in Conroe, Texas. What is going on?

Your donation of $25 today will help us begin production on this piece.

The private prisons that bankrolled Trump are controlling policy to collect the returns on their investment; anti-immigrant policies mean big payoffs for private detention. It’s sickening. But we will not be silent. We will tell this story.

Earlier this month we launched our immigration campaign with the release of The Call to Sanctuary. We want to continue our immigration campaign with an investigation into immigrant detention, but we need resources to keep telling these stories.

Right now, the Trump administration is serving the interests of private prison pushers over the interests and safety of our communities. We will not be silent as immigrants are rounded up, removed from their communities, forced to detention centers and criminalized for profit.

detention?

Thank you for your support.

Jim Miller, Executive Director

BRAVE NEW FILMS

P.S. Would you like to screen our current films about immigration? To kick-off our immigration campaign we just released a curated collection of shorts and new discussion guide, Home is a Human Right: A Series on Immigration. To sign up to screen this with your friends or in your community click here.

Sources

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Everything you care about is gone: Trump vs Earth, Episode 2

05/25/2017 Nativegrl77

Today we know it’s true. Trump’s budget robs from our kids in order to further enrich the super wealthy and destroys everything you care about.

If Trump gets his way, here are 16 of things that go:

Environmental education
Healthy school food for kids
Support for new forms of energy that don’t poison our planet
Support for fact-based scientific research
Climate science programs
Ability to protect clean air and clean water
Programs for the poor, including health care and disability payments
College loan programs for the poor and those who take jobs in nonprofit organizations
Protection for women’s health
Food assistance for older Americans
Nutrition programs for low-income women, infants, and children
Support for public libraries, PBS, and arts
Heating assistance for low-income people
Before and after school and summer programs for children in low-income communities
Emergency food assistance
Efforts to revitalize public housing

Help us keep fighting Trump’s policieis and building the environmental democracy we need to protect our future.

You’ve been helping us build the movement. Now we’ve got to stay strong, stand up for what we believe in and fight for our future.

PLEASE DONATE

— The Earth Day Network Team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Stand in Solidarity With Persecuted Indigenous Peoples

05/25/2017 Nativegrl77

When indigenous communities take to the streets to express their continuing opposition to destructive mining and oil drilling projects in their ancestral territories, the Ecuadorian government often uses the judicial system to persecute and prosecute them. Over 200 people – indigenous leaders, human rights defenders and environmental activists – are in prison or under investigation for their resistance.

But the Ecuadorian indigenous movement refuses to succumb to these attempts to silence them and have launched the Amnesty First campaign to demand amnesty and pardons for those who have suffered legal repression for exercising their rights. And now they are asking for your support.

The campaign is collecting petition signatures all around Ecuador, and on May 30th they’ll deliver them all directly to the newly-elected president, Lenin Moreno, and the president of Congress. They’ll also deliver our messages of solidarity at that time.

AMAZON WATCH

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Dalia Hashad – Avaaz

05/24/2017 Nativegrl77

100 MILLION plastic bottles are thrown away every day, choking our oceans in plastic waste. Governments meet in days to outline clean ocean commitments. If a million of us call on top polluters to stop the flood of plastics, the Head of the UN’s Environment Programme will announce our petition to the plenary and use our voices to help oceans breathe again.

SIGN NOW

Dear friends,

By 2050, our oceans will have more plastic trash than fish.

It’s shameful. Half of the plastic made we use just once and throw out, choking our seas and all the animals in it.

But in days, our governments can stem this tide when they meet at a historic summit to outline their clean ocean commitments. Public pressure just got #2 polluter Indonesia to commit to a 70% reduction in plastic waste! Now we need to go after the other top polluters.

If one million of us get behind a global call, the Head of the UN Environment Programme will announce our petition from the summit podium and work with us to push countries to ban single-use plastics and let oceans breathe again. Add your name:

Click to save our oceans!

No matter where we live, each breath we take connects us to our oceans. Most of our oxygen is generated by them. They regulate our climate and weather, turn water into clouds that give us rain. And oceans provide a home for near 80% of all living things on earth. We can’t live without our oceans.

But now, our oceans can’t live without us.

Humans have destroyed ocean health and we need to fix it. The good news is, more than half the plastic trash in our oceans come from just five nations. If we focus global attention on the biggest polluters now, we can create global system-change for plastic-free seas. What’s missing is the motivation — and that’s where we come in.

Let’s build a massive call on our governments to stop suffocating our oceans. Once we reach a million signers, Avaaz will launch targeted campaigns on the top polluters to ramp up the pressure for them to act.

Click to save our oceans!

Our community has fought fiercely to protect magnificent rainforests and vast areas of our oceans. Now time is running out to kill plastic pollution before it kills us.

With hope and determination,

Dalia, Lisa, Alice, Carol, Danny and the entire Avaaz team

MORE INFORMATION:

The Oceans Are Drowning In Plastic — And No One’s Paying Attention (Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/plastic-waste-oceans_us_58fed37be4b0c46f0781d426

The Arctic Ocean Is Clogging With Billions of Plastic (The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/the-arctic-ocean-is-filling-with-billions-of-plastic-bits/523713/

Even your sea salt is almost certainly contaminated with plastic (Quartz)
https://qz.com/979101/sea-salt-is-likely-to-contain-microparticles-of-plastic-according-to-a-new-study/

Full scale of plastic in the world’s oceans revealed for first time (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/10/full-scale-plastic-worlds-oceans-revealed-first-time-pollution

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Ask jeff sessions why have mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders?

05/24/2017 Nativegrl77

Petitioning Jeff Sessions

Don’t escalate the failed war on drugs.

Petition by Weldon Angelos

Midvale, Utah

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has just ordered federal prosecutors to seek the harshest punishments possible, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

In 2004, I was given a 55-year mandatory minimum sentence as a first-time marijuana offender — virtually a sentence to die in prison. I had sold marijuana three times to an informant who stated that I had a firearm in my possession.

I never used or even showed the firearm, but this allowed prosecutors to charge me with three counts of using a firearm in the course of a drug trafficking offense, that carried a mandatory minimum of five years for the first offense and 25 years for each of the other two offenses.

At my sentencing, even the judge disagreed with the sentence. He called it “unjust, cruel, and even irrational,” and pointed out that shorter federal sentences have been given to violent criminals such as murderers, child rapists, and even terrorists.

I was only 24 years old when I was sentenced. While imprisoned for 13 years, I missed my children growing up and the fruits of a promising music career. Yet, no problem was solved. This waste of human life must end.

I’m only free because bipartisan lawmakers and advocates, and even the man who prosecuted me, came together to say that my sentence was wrong. My release was part of a changing attitude toward nonviolent drug offenders, with both Republicans and Democrats working together to make sentences fairer. But now, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is working to undo this progress.

Sessions decision to order prosecutors to seek the longest sentences possible reverses a directive from former Attorney General Eric Holder that instructed prosecutors to use their discretion and avoid long sentences for low-level drug offenders.

Please sign my petition asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reconsider his push for mandatory minimum sentences.