Tag Archives: Thomas Jefferson

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Support NMAAHC


National Museum of African American History and Culture

Help us ensure that we meet our goal and stay on schedule.

You’ll be surprised to see all that’s been done since we broke ground for the National Museum of African American History and Culture on February 22, 2012.

The concrete has been poured. We’ve begun building some of the exhibition galleries. We installed two signature objects: a Southern Railway railroad car (segregated) and a 1930s guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. And we have acquired more than 25,000 items.

But there’s much more to do. And to accomplish this work, we need your support to ensure that we open in late 2015.

To make this museum a reality, we were charged with raising $250 million from individuals and private resources. To date, we have raised approximately $160 million and need to raise an additional $90 million to meet our goal.

That’s why we urgently need your help to build this important cultural addition to the American landscape.

None of this is possible without support from friends like you. Your tax-deductible gift today will ensure that we keep our construction timetable on schedule and ensure that other elements of this grand project stay on track, too.

Together, you and I are creating a center of learning and inspiration that will attract millions of visitors from across the country and around the world. It is here they will come to understand the African American story in full — the moments of great pain and the moments of soaring triumph.

We’re moving closer to reality with each passing day!

Thank you for your support.

Lonnie G. Bunch All the best,
Signature
Lonnie G. Bunch
Founding Director
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Washington​: Tell the EPA to ban bee-killin​g pesticides


save-the-bees200Honeybees, native bees, and other pollinators are responsible for 1 out of every 3 bites of food we eat. Many fruits and vegetables, including apples, blueberries, strawberries, carrots, and broccoli, as well as almonds and coffee, rely on bees. These beneficial insects are critical in maintaining our diverse food supply. 

U.S. beekeepers have been consistently losing 40-100% of their hives. Widespread use of a new class of toxic pesticides, neonicotinoids, is a significant contributing factor. In addition to killing bees outright, research has shown, even low levels of these dangerous pesticides impair bees’ ability to learn, to find their way back to the hive, to collect food, to produce new queens, and to mount an effective immune response.

Already, 15 countries have imposed a two-year restriction on the use of several of these chemicals. However, the EPA continues to ignore scientists—even those employed by the EPA—and has delayed action until 2018.

We request an immediate moratorium on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Bees can’t wait five more years—they are dying now. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the power and responsibility to protect our pollinators. Our nation’s food system depends on it.

Europe has already fought back against powerful chemical companies and took a big step to protect bees by putting into effect a ban of the top bee-killing “neonic” pesticides. Now it’s our turn!

Bees are critical in producing the majority of our food crops, and the evidence is mounting that Bayer and Syngenta’s pesticides are a key contributor to mass bee die-offs. However, the EPA continues to ignore scientists—even those employed by the EPA—and has delayed action until 2018. 

But the bees can’t wait—and neither can we!

U.S. beekeepers have been consistently losing 40-100% of their hives, and are likely facing yet another season of historic bee die-offs.

We can’t let the EPA wait another five years to address this crisis. Please take action today and tell the EPA to ban bee-killing pesticides.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thanks!

–Peter Stocker

This petition was created on MoveOn’s online petition site, where anyone can start their own online petitions. Friends of the Earth didn’t pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell the MoveOn.org list.

 

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Support Congressman Keith Ellison



Thomas Jefferson’s Koran.

Congressman Keith Ellison started life outside the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant English-Speaking Straight mainstream.  He is African-American, and he was raised as a Catholic.

Many people who find themselves out of the mainstream swim desperately toward it.  They seek the shelter and comfort of conformity.
Not Keith.

At the age of 19, Keith Ellison converted to Islam.  He has raised his four children within Islam.  He explained it this way:  “When I looked at my spiritual life, and I looked at what might inform social change and justice in society . . . I found Islam.”

Converting to Islam is perhaps not the best way to further political aspirations in America today.  But in Keith Ellison’s case, it shows the courage of his convictions.

When Keith Ellison was sworn into Congress, he took the oath of office with his hand on the Koran – specifically, Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy of the Koran.  And remember, he’s a Muslim; what did you expect him to put under his hand, “Green Eggs and Ham“?  (That would definitely not be halal.)

And that’s when the hating started.  The poorly-named Congressman Virgil Goode from Virginia bleated: “If American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office, and demanding the use of the Koran.”  It’s interesting to think about what kind of immigration policy would have kept Keith Ellison’s ancestors out, since they arrived in America in chains.

Glenn Beck, then on CNN, invited Keith Ellison on his show, and asked this not-so-perspicacious “question”:  “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”  Keith responded with a quiet dignity utterly foreign to that show:  “I have a deep love and affection for my country.”

Think about how much easier it would have been for Keith Ellison to change his religion not to Islam, but to Protestantism, and to go along, and to get along, and to try to fit in.  But that just wouldn’t be Keith Ellison. He draws his strength, and his courage, from not being just like everyone else.

Keith Ellison understands that the things that make us special are not the things that make us the same – they’re the things that make us different.  That our differences are not something to overcome, or even to tolerate, but something to cherish.

Keith Ellison is facing a primary next Tuesday.  I hope that you will support his campaign.  Because the mere existence of Congressman Keith Ellison represents a very important principle:

E Pluribus Unum.

Courage,

Alan Grayson