Tag Archives: Gun violence

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Blair Mountain …


 

Rainforest Action Network
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Blair Mountain used to be an idyllic place in southwestern West Virginia where the hills rolled for miles. Blair is also a historical treasure—the mountain is the site of arguably the most important post-Civil War battlefield in the US. Now, Arch Coal is planning to decimate this historical treasure for the tiny seams of coal that lie beneath the mountain. This is mountaintop removal coal mining at its worst.

These devastating coal mining practices could not happen without nine big banks (Bank of Montreal, BBVA, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial, Royal Bank of Scotland, Union Bank, and Bank of America as a lead lender) pumping $250 million dollars into keeping Arch coal afloat last November.

Protect Blair Mountain and tell these 9 big bank CEOs to STOP funding Arch Coal.

Blair used to be a thriving community of 700 people—and now has merely 50 residents because of the extreme dangers posed by existing mountaintop removal mines near the town. And the people who stayed behind live with constant dynamite blasts behind their town, carcinogenic dust rolling off the mine sites, and heavy metal contamination.

Tell these 9 big bank CEOs to stop pumping money into the outdated practice of mountaintop removal coal mining, which poisons our water and pollutes our air.

Enough is enough. When bank financing enables Arch Coal to displace an entire community and wreack havoc on mother nature we cannot remain silent.

If we want to protect the future of these communities and our climate we need to cut funding for coal.

Sacrificing Blair Mountain and its residents for small seams of coal is deplorable—urge these 9 big bank CEOs to stop funding Arch Coal today.
~ politics petitions pollution &pop culture

TransCanada’s US location and Keystone XL tar sands pipeline (Texas)


Yesterday, a group of courageous people just like you were arrested in the belly of the beast: TransCanada’s U.S. headquarters in Houston, Texas. These were mothers, fathers, grandfathers, great grandmothers, scientists, and teachers who staged a peaceful sit-in with a clear message: No Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

March to TransCanada Headquarters

At RAN we have a policy never to ask you to take an action, online or offline, that we don’t believe will make a strategic difference and have an impact that is worth your time. What I’m about to ask you to do might be one of the most important political acts you take this year.

Right now President Obama and his State Department are weighing their decision on whether this disastrous dirty energy pipeline is in our national interest. Our job must be to show enough opposition to the pipeline to ensure the president stands on the right side of this historical moment. That’s why we need you to join those standing up against Keystone XL in protest.

Will you join more than 75,000 people saying No to Keystone XL? Sign up for an action near you TODAY!

More than 75,000 people, including many of you, have signed RAN, Other 98% and CREDO’s Pledge of Resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline—pledging to participate in peaceful civil disobedience, to risk arrest if necessary, to stop this dangerous tar sands pipeline.

This is our next big step in the Pledge of Resistance together. This summer, after months of hard work and organizing, more than 400 volunteers have stepped up to lead acts of dignified protest in towns and cities across the country.

Will you join them by signing up today to participate in a local protest in your hometown?

To be clear, this is a serious request of your time, your passion and, potentially, your liberty. We’re asking now because it’s critical.

These actions are coming together because of months of work by literally hundreds of people. A group of seasoned direct action organizers built a training curriculum and traveled to cities around the country to teach people like you how to plan and lead a safe, strategic sit-in. Hundreds of activists stepped up to attend these rigorous two-day weekend trainings, and then went home to put that training into action. Now we’re asking: Will you join them?

The dates for these local actions have not been set, but the dates of action trainings have. We’re asking everyone to get in touch with local action leaders so we can prepare for action now and are ready to respond if President Obama signals his intention to approve the pipeline. That is our most strategic window to have the biggest impact.

Find your nearest Pledge of Resistance action and sign up to be a part of it!

Soon after you sign up for an action, you’ll be contacted by your local action leader, who will send out a time for your group to meet in person, get trained up, and move forward to put together everything you will need for a local sit-in action. There will be roles for everyone: those risking arrest and those not risking arrest.

The location for these actions will be relevant to your town. Likely locations will be: Administration buildings like State Department, EPA and Federal offices, oil industry contractor offices, and branches of TD Bank, a major investor in tar sands development.

All that’s missing is you.

Scott Parkin

In Solidarity,
Scott Parkin
Senior Energy and Finance Campaigner
Twitter:@dirtyenergy

P.S. Got questions? Check out http://nokxl.org/why-pledge-resistance/.

~ politics petitions pollution &pop culture

We need your help : the other Washington


It’s up to all of us to ensure the safety of Washington State’s children.

We must reduce gun violence and protect our shared future, even though legislators in both Olympia and Washington, D.C., have ignored the outcry for sensible gun safety reforms.

The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility needs your help.

Without legislative action, enacting commonsense reform like requiring criminal background checks on all gun purchases will take a successful ballot initiative. To get on the ballot means gathering thousands of signatures.

The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility is working to do just that, and they need your help.

Click here to request your own official petition form, and help us get one name closer to our goal of 250,000 petition signatures by the end of September.

As a registered Washington voter, you can provide the first signature on your petition (and there’s room for four friends to sign too).

With our ambitious goal of 250,000 signatures by the end of this month, we need your support to help protect Washington’s children from the threat of gun violence. But, unfortunately, state regulations do not allow you to simply download an online petition.

All it takes is clicking here to request your petition form — and we’ll mail it to you right away!

We’ve just printed hundreds of new petition forms, and it’s time to put them to good use.

And I would very much appreciate seeing your signature alongside mine, and those of hundreds of thousands of our fellow Washington voters.

Thank you for helping to make Washington State a national leader in responsible gun ownership.

Sincerely,

Dow Constantine King County Executive

~ politics petitions pollution &pop culture

A snap shot


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President Obama Speaks to the People of Berlin

Nearly 50 years to the day after President John F. Kennedy delivered his historic speech to a city divided by the Cold War, President Obama spoke to the people of Berlin about the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Germany, and the values we share.

The Brandenburg Gate has long been a symbol of Germany’s progress, and the President spoke from its east side – something that would have been impossible if not for the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Click here to watch the President’s full speech and learn more about his trip to Germany.

Intellectual Property: A Key Driver of our Economy

Innovation and creativity have always been the foundation of our economy, and effective enforcement of intellectual property rights enables us to promote economic growth, ensure our global competitiveness, and protect the health and safety of our citizens. Today’s release of the Administration’s 2013 Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement provides a roadmap for our work over the next three years.

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White House Rural Council Growing Rural Economies, Creating Jobs

This week is National Small Business Week. The U.S. Small Business Administration, along with agencies across the Obama Administration, are hosting events in five cities.

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State and Local Officials in the South Speak Up to Fix the Broken Immigration System

Across the country, Democratic and Republican state and local officials are speaking out about the need for commonsense immigration reform. This week, we’ll share thoughts from governors, mayors, county executives, state legislators, attorneys general, treasurers and more about why they support immigration reform and how fixing the broken immigration system would impact their communities.

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The Fight to Reduce Gun Violence Is Far From Over

A little more than six months after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, Vice President Biden said yesterday that he and President Obama have not given up the fight to reduce gun violence.

And although a minority of the Senate voted down common-sense legislation that would keep our kids and communities safer, President Obama has “moved forward on what was within his power, what executive actions he could take,” the Vice President explained. “Today, I can report that he announced 23 executive actions; 21 of them have been completed or there has been major progress made toward the total completion and that we’re on track to finish the job.”

Click here to learn more about how President Obama is fighting to reduce gun violence.

How Immigration Reform Will Shrink the Deficit

The independent Congressional Budget Office released its score of the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill, providing even more evidence that commonsense immigration reform is good for the budget and good for economic growth. CBO estimates that fixing our broken immigration system will reduce federal deficits by about $200 billion over the next 10 years, and about $700 billion in the second decade.

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President Obama Discusses the National Security Agency on Charlie Rose

President Obama discussed a range of issues in his interview Monday night on PBS, but the National Security Agency was the topic for an extended part of the conversation.

“My job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life, which includes our privacy,” he said. “So every program that we engage in, what I’ve said is let’s examine and make sure that we’re making the right tradeoffs.”

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Partnership for Sustainable Communities Marks 4th Anniversary with Web-Streaming Twitter Town Hall

June 16, 2013 marked the four-year anniversary of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, a collaboration of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since 2009, our three federal agencies have been working together to help communities build stronger regional economies, improve their housing and transportation options, and protect the environment.

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