Hispanic immigrant business owners face significant exposure from the coronavirus-induced economic downturn. They accounted for 51% of all Hispanic-owned businesses in 2016, shares similar to the percentages of Hispanics who are immigrants. They are now closing their businesses at a staggering rate. Historically, there are racial and gender inequalities in business ownership. Nationally, people of color represent about 40% of the population, but only 20% of the nation’s 5.6 million business owners with employees. The U.S. could have millions more businesses if women and minorities became entrepreneurs at the same rate as white men. Now, with the COVID-19 crisis, millions of “missing businesses,” are facing a massive potential disruption and some risk permanent closure. There is not the same urgency to address it—COVID-19’s impact on minority-owned small businesses—, because it is already established that’s been built up over decades, even if closing these disparities would result in the creating of millions of new small businesses.

On September 11th, Amazon appointed General Keith Alexander to their board of directors. Gen. Alexander headed up the NSA when they secretly built a massive domestic surveillance system, the same system to which we were alerted by Edward Snowden, who risked his life to bring this operation to light. General Alexander headed up U.S. Cyber Command along with the NSA during the Obama Administration. Alexander retired in 2014 and went on to found the private cybersecurity firm IronNet. Last week the US Court of Appeals ruled the NSA surveillance program built under the directorship of General Alexander was unlawful .

Muslims have been gunned down in their homes and houses of worship by people who believe in the very same hateful, false smears that Reid shared on her program. This is a longstanding pattern of Reid’s, who has spread anti-Muslim bigotry on her blog in the past and continues to do so on her platform on MSNBC today.

Inciting violence on a national stage is dangerous for America

Every year, California’s forest fires get worse as a result of climate change and our burning of fossil fuels. As the planet gets hotter, California’s forests get drier. And when lightning strikes or humans make mistakes, the state is devastated. Tens of thousands have to flee their homes, with many becoming climate refugees. The pollution sends hundreds of thousands more indoors for weeks on end. Unfortunately, while Governor Newsom talks a good game on climate, his administration continues to approve new drilling and fracking. We can’t fix climate change if we don’t stop increasing fossil fuel production and use. Under Newsom, California’s oil and gas regulatory agency recently approved a dozen new permits for Chevron to conduct even more fracking in the state. Newsom has also approved drilling permits for more than 1,400 new oil and gas wells so far this year. This is a reversal of Newsom’s previous decision to put a pause on fracking in the state. California needs to move off fossil fuels. But Newsom is continuing our addiction. Meanwhile, California burns. Sources: Center for Biological Diversity, “With New Permits, Newsom Ramps Up Fracking in California, 360 New Fracking Events Approved So Far This Year,” July 6, 2020. https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-permits-newsom-ramps-fracking-california-2020-07-06/ Food & Water Watch, “Promises, Promises: Gavin Newsom Has Broken His When It Comes To Fracking,” April 16, 2020, Alexandra Nagy. https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/promises-promises-gavin-newsom-has-broken-his-when-it-comes-fracking “Newsom blocks new California fracking pending scientific review,” Los Angeles Times, Phil Wilson, November 19, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-19/california-fracking-permits-scientific-review-gavin-newsom (Original photo by JD Lasica. Used and modified under license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

Privatized ICE detention exacerbates the mass incarceration crisis created by the U.S. prison-industrial complex. Mass incarceration allows those in power to continue to exploit, forcibly displace, abuse and profit from people who are marginalized, disenfranchised, criminalized, and silenced. As one particularly brutal wing of this privatized system, ICA-Farmville has a history of failing inspections, failing to prevent and contain disease outbreaks, and failing to treat our immigrant friends, family, and neighbors with basic human dignity. Their profit-focused management has resulted in maggot-infested food, mumps and COVID outbreaks, and repeated inappropriate and unnecessary uses of force. Join our call to tell the investors who made this operation possible that profit from pain is inhumane.

The U.S. military is targeting kids — as young as 13! — while they play video games online. The Air Force, Army, and Navy ALL advertise on Twitch, an incredibly popular video game platform that has 140 million users — 45% who are under the age of 18. Military recruiting laws prohibit recruiting anyone under the age of 16. But this insidious practice targets young people who are vulnerable to abusive online advertising. It’s a blatant violation of recruitment laws and unacceptable. And Twitch has called them out before — the U.S. Army was recently ordered to stop posting ads for a fake contest designed to get people to hand over their contact information to recruiters. These ads must be stopped.

Every year at the “Border Security” Expo in San Antonio, HUNDREDS of companies feature the “hottest gear” — THOUSANDS of military-grade weapons and surveillance products. And it’s all for sale. Lucky for these vendors, the Trump administration is willing to pay with dollars AND our civil liberties. Trump’s secret police in Portland included Department of Homeland Security agents, who beat and arrested Black Lives Matter protestors with impunity and without cause. This has got to be the LAST straw. Expos like these are one place militarization thrives and we need to shut them down— the arms dealers, the surveillance companies, and the dehumanizing us vs. them rhetoric. All of it. Planning is ALREADY underway for the 2021 Expo. But just like any big industry conference, the Expo is built on corporate sponsorships. So we’ve got to get LOUD and to tell last year’s lead sponsor — Verizon Wireless — if they support this event again, they’re only doubling down on hate and militarism. Tell Verizon Wireless: Stop fueling CBP’s hate and abuse! Make 2020 the last year you sponsor this Expo.

The most essential reason this is important is that it sends a signal from MoveOn to the U.S. military community that we are not worth including in their movement or campaigns. This in turn seems to reinforce the notion that the military is a monolith of conservatism, which is not borne out in the data, particularly amongst the younger, diverse, enlisted ranks (see: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-soldiers-really-vote/). Further, there are a large contingent of civilians, including teachers and other education professionals, living and working on military installations who exclusively rely on their APO address and are therefore prohibited from participating and receiving similar treatment as living in the U.S. and teaching at public schools. These teachers physically reside overseas, but retain a U.S. domestic mailing address through their APOs and teach at U.S. public schools. Then there is the matter of the USPS itself. Recently, MoveOn pushed a campaign, including a petition, to save the USPS from its current difficulties and threats by the POTUS to defund and disband the service. Those associated with overseas military installations rely exclusively on the USPS for their mail and packages, making it all the more ironic for those of us who supported that campaign whilst MoveOn continues to not support us through inclusion. MoveOn could do more for the USPS by including APOs than they might imagine. Don't exclude military and military associated personnel oversees from participating in MoveOn. The matter of adding APO addresses to the drop down menu and including our domestically-treated mailing addresses to the campaigns would be an easy, minor fix comparative to the gains of including those of us otherwise supportive of MoveOn.

This is extremely important because thousands of students looking to better their lives and future were mislead. We were overcharged and given false information. This school is no longer open. It started as Southwestern college then changed to Lincoln College if Technology. Teachers were not educated on what to teach and we were charged multiple times for books/scrub uniforms we had to reuse. We were told credits could transfer to other institutes and they do not. At all. The school isn’t even acknowledged by other accredited institutes and you can’t call because it’s no longer open. It’s a bait and switch... they get you in, young and eager and lie about it all. Never received a layout of what we were actually paying for either. I have no idea what my $40,000 paid for! Now thousands of dollars in debt, I can’t afford to go back to school because of this debt I no longer qualify for federal loans! These loans should be forgiven. We were told we would have job placements and I’ve never once had a job placement from this place. “Graduated” in 2011. I am praying to get these loans forgiven considering I now am eligible to receive any loans due to my debt. I would LOVE to return to school and earn a business degree to further my career for me and my daughter. Thank you!

Progressives have been sidelined by the DNC for far too long. The people have spoken and they favor progressive politics. We will not allow our party to be taken over by never Trumpers. We believe in healthcare as a human right, a wealth tax, criminal justice reform, and so does America. We refuse to be pushed aside.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started and restaurant dining rooms throughout town began to close for safety, Meritage Hospitality was the very last quick service restaurant (referred to as QSR from this point on) to close their dining room doors to the public. Less than one week after local restrictions were altered to allow for dining rooms to be open again Poplar Bluff Missouri’s location 5009 was reopened for dine in orders; requiring all crew to wear face masks and gloves but applied no restrictions to patrons of the restaurant. Steps have been taken to make the customers feel safe and slash the possibility of crew spreading any germs to them but the staff of the restaurant is put in danger constantly with the only protections in pace for them being a plastic barrier in front of the register which customers often will stand to the side of to better hear the cashier and refuse to maintain a 6 foot distance from the order taker. Meritage has jumped the gun by allowing people back in their restaurant putting all their employees in danger, blinded by the profit to be had by being among the only restaurants with open dining rooms. As of this petition being written on 8/10/2020 only 2 other QSR establishments have opened their doors to the public again; with no plans to open before December or even this year. Just over 4 weeks into the dining room being open store 5009 has already tested with a positive COVID-19 case. The confirmed cases for the county have been rapidly increasing every day for weeks with over 500 cases between 7/28 and 8/8 alone. Every day that the dining room remains open your employees are at higher and higher risk of becoming infected and passing it to family and friends. The response to the positive test has been the dining room closing for the remainder of the week before reopening on Monday 8/17. By closing the lobby for these few days Meritage is acknowledging the safety increase that restricting the public to the pick up window brings, but also shows how little they care for the well being of their staff by making it last only one week. One week for the employees to be safe. One week for the staff to not have to worry about passing COVID-19 to the ones they love, but Meritage only sees a week of reduced profit. No amount of money is worth strengthening the spread of an infectious disease through a community, especially not a Frosty. The only responsible response to a clear indication of unsafe working conditions with an open dining room should be to reinstate the restrictions that limit customers to the pick up window to limit direct contact with crew and patrons; the current precautions are nothing short of laughable in the face of a global pandemic.