CNN and The New York Times are two major news outlets who largely control narratives and public perceptions on any given topic. We deserve fair and honest coverage. CNN and The New York Times must stop the journalistic malpractice NOW. Recently, a freelance Israeli journalist for The New York Times was exposed for liking a social media post that called for Israel to turn the Gaza Strip “into a slaughterhouse” and other horrific content. This exposes a clear bias in traditional news media, and they must do better. And The New York Times' language to describe the killing of Israeli people versus Palestinian people has been damningly passive. The words "slaughter," "horrific," and "massacre" have been used in relation to Israelis 86 times but only three times for Palestinians. And when discussing the prisoner exchanges, The New York Times referred to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.” Since October 7, news outlets have been partially responsible for messaging to the American people about what's happening, and some of the facts are just not adding up. CNN agreed to terms that condition that in order to enter Gaza, they'd have to submit all materials and footage to the Israeli military for review prior to publication, giving the Israeli military the opportunity to suppress content and materials that might showcase Palestinian suffering. CNN also hired a former Israeli military soldier, who was a member of the IDF’s Spokesperson Unit which is responsible for public relations, to report on CNN’s war coverage. There are record reports of increased acts of hate against Muslim, Arab, and Jewish communities throughout the country. Outlets’ choice to publish articles that inflame tensions and increase hatred against communities already experiencing a record number of hateful threats is irresponsible and dangerous. The media plays a huge role in public perception and opinion. Media outlets have a responsibility to publish factual articles and to act with journalistic integrity that promotes the peace and safety of all peoples. CNN and The New York Times have staff that are sounding the alarm about journalistic malpractice. We must come together in solidarity to hold CNN and The New York Times accountable and to demand that they report fairly and honestly. Will you take action now and sign the petition?

From jaw-dropping fight scenes to thrilling car chases, stunts take incredible creativity and skill to pull off safely. Action designers deserve to be honored as the artists and professionals they are. Action and adventure stories—like the Marvel comic book franchise—dominate the box office. Adding a stunt award would give the Academy the opportunity to recognize the popular action genre and keep the industry relevant with new audiences. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has rejected action designers every year from 1991 to 2012. But there is precedent for change. The last major category added was Best Animated Picture in 2001, and more recently the Academy has announced Best Casting as a category slated for the 2026 award season. Stunts have been a part of creating movie magic since the very beginning of filmmaking, making the stories we know and love more exciting and engaging. Urge the Academy: It’s time to finally pay homage to the action industry experts carrying the filmmaking tradition forward.

Country music is Black history. Country music, like many, many other genres, was invented by Black people, but racism, gatekeeping, whitewashing, and erasure in country music actively prevents Black artists from getting credit and being celebrated for their work. But this is not new. The latest? Beyoncé dropped two new country singles “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” and it wasn’t long before the racism, revisionist history, and gatekeeping began. First, Apple Music categorized the songs in the “Pop music” category when the songs are clearly country. And when fans started requesting Beyoncé’s new songs at their local country stations, many of their requests were rejected. One station, KYKC, even responded to a fan’s request saying “We do not play Beyonce on KYKC as we are a country music station." The country music industry must finally reckon with its own racism and anti-Blackness, celebrate the roots of country in Black history, and celebrate Black artists reclaiming a genre they birthed. A study discovered that out of 11,000+ songs played on country radio from 2002 to 2020, only 3% of those were from Black and brown artists, and of that 3%, only ⅓ were from Black and brown women. That means that Black and brown women represented only 0.001% of songs played by country radio over the course of 18 years. It’s outrageous, but unfortunately, unsurprising. This has to end NOW. The banjo, one of the central instruments in country music, originated in Africa and was brought to the United States by enslaved African people. White people then appropriated the banjo and began using it for minstrel shows, where they would wear Blackface and mock Black people and Black culture. It's disgusting and dehumanizing. This led to the rise of hillbilly music as a marketing category, which became associated with a white, rural, Southern audience. That’s when “race records” were created to segregate Black people out of the genre that they created, and music executives refused to let Black folks record songs that they deemed to be “hillbilly,” purposefully white-washing the genre even further. This history of country music shows how Jim Crow segregation harmed Black country music artists then, and still harms them today. Black music artists like Beyoncé are reclaiming country, a genre that was theirs to begin with. And we need to be in solidarity with them and challenge the status quo to pave the way for Black people to get a seat at a table that they created. We can’t sit idly by and watch this continue. Getting the country music industry---from radio stations to awards to other prominent artists---to honor Beyoncé’s new songs as country is just one small step to bringing about change. But with Beyoncé being the biggest artist in the world, this is an opportunity for us to keep pushing, educating, and fighting for change, and the impacts of our advocacy will pave the way for other Black country artists for generations to come. Will you take action now and sign the petition?

Country music is Black history. Country music, like many, many other genres, was invented by Black people, but racism, gatekeeping, whitewashing, and erasure in country music actively prevents Black artists from getting credit and being celebrated for their work. But this is not new. The latest? Beyoncé dropped two new country singles “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” and it wasn’t long before the racism, revisionist history, and gatekeeping began. First, Apple Music categorized the songs in the “Pop music” category when the songs are clearly country. And when fans started requesting Beyoncé’s new songs at their local country stations, many of their requests were rejected. One station, KYKC, even responded to a fan’s request saying “We do not play Beyonce on KYKC as we are a country music station." The country music industry must finally reckon with its own racism and anti-Blackness, celebrate the roots of country in Black history, and celebrate Black artists reclaiming a genre they birthed. A study discovered that out of 11,000+ songs played on country radio from 2002 to 2020, only 3% of those were from Black and brown artists, and of that 3%, only ⅓ were from Black and brown women. That means that Black and brown women represented only 0.001% of songs played by country radio over the course of 18 years. It’s outrageous, but unfortunately, unsurprising. This has to end NOW. In 2016, Beyoncé performed at the CMA awards and invited The Chicks to join her on stage to sing “Daddy Lessons.” The incredible performance was met with backlash from racist conservatives who said Beyoncé wasn’t “country enough” and didn’t belong. They felt the need to “protect” the genre from artists like Beyoncé (who has always been country). The day after the performance, fans noticed that there was no mention of Beyoncé, The Chicks, or their rendition of “Daddy Lessons” on the CMA website or social accounts, despite posting other performances from the night before, which made it seem like they were caving to the backlash from racist conservatives. Around 4:35 p.m after fans called them out, they finally shared the performance on its page. The CMA has a chance to make this right. Will you sign the petition to demand that they invite Beyoncé to perform at this year’s awards? The banjo, one of the central instruments in country music, originated in Africa and was brought to the United States by enslaved African people. White people then appropriated the banjo and began using it for minstrel shows, where they would wear Blackface and mock Black people and Black culture. It's disgusting and dehumanizing. This led to the rise of hillbilly music as a marketing category, which became associated with a white, rural, Southern audience. That’s when “race records” were created to segregate Black people out of the genre that they created, and music executives refused to let Black folks record songs that they deemed to be “hillbilly,” purposefully white-washing the genre even further. This history of country music shows how Jim Crow segregation harmed Black country music artists then, and still harms them today. Black music artists like Beyoncé are reclaiming country, a genre that was theirs to begin with. And we need to be in solidarity with them and challenge the status quo to pave the way for Black people to get a seat at a table that they created. We can’t sit idly by and watch this continue. Getting the country music industry---from radio stations to awards to other prominent artists---to honor Beyoncé’s new songs as country is just one small step to bringing about change. But with Beyoncé being the biggest artist in the world, this is an opportunity for us to keep pushing, educating, and fighting for change, and the impacts of our advocacy will pave the way for other Black country artists for generations to come. Will you take action now and sign the petition?

Being a cancer patient or having a family member with cancer is already a very difficult situation, besides the immense emotional pain, the cost of treatment can be a heavy burden. The consequences of increasing the price of Keytruda are alarming and for many families, unbearable.Many patients rely on this medication as their best hope for survival, and price hikes could place it out of reach for those who need it most. Price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry not only threatens the lives of vulnerable patients but also reflects a disturbing trend of prioritizing profits over human welfare. We cannot allow greed to dictate access to life-saving treatments. Lowering the price of Keytruda is not only a matter of fairness but a moral imperative to ensure that individuals battling cancer have the opportunity to receive the care they deserve without the already inevitable financial hardship.

Children are often abducted from their homes and later sold to cocoa farmers, potentially never to see their families and loved ones ever again. Most of the children are 12-16 years old, but reporters have found children as young as 5 years old, many of whom are forced to work up to 14 hours a day. And when children attempt to escape, they are beaten and tortured. It’s unacceptable. Children forced to work on cocoa farms often use machetes to cut cacao bean pods down from trees and then pack them into 100-pound sacks and when they’re full, they have to carry them. Aly Diabate, a former enslaved cocoa worker said, “Some of the bags were taller than me. It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn’t hurry, you were beaten.” The chocolate industry has a revenue of over 254 BILLION dollars per year, yet, even though it is estimated to only cost the industry a little over 5 million dollars a year to trace cocoa beans to track where their cocoa is coming from, there has been little interest in the technology from any chocolate company. It’s shocking, but not surprising. Greedy corporations in the chocolate industry like Nestlé and Mars have enough money to pay workers a living wage AND ensure that they DO NOT use child slave labor. But instead, they are prioritizing their corporate profits. No more. Major chocolate companies have claimed to be concerned and to make efforts to end child slave labor, but they are a multi-billion dollar industry, but it’s been over two decades since they were exposed, and there is still child slavery in their supply chains. It’s wrong. Together, we can keep getting loud and pressuring chocolate industry companies like Nestle until they end child slave labor once and for all. Will you take action now and sign this urgent petition? Image credit: Duchesse layenah

The FCC’s current proposed rule is the best chance we’ve had to reinstate net neutrality since the Trump administration destroyed the regulations in 2017. But telecom lobbyists and their allies are hitting DC in an all-out effort to water down or block the recently proposed net neutrality rules. They’re even placing misleading, sensationalist op-eds in local papers across the country. While these lobbyists and their Republican allies want to characterize net neutrality as a “takeover” of the internet, the fact is that these protections act to keep broadband free and open for all, and out of the hands of Big Cable. Net neutrality remains hugely popular across the country. In October, Demand Progress joined with over 30 partner organizations to relaunch Battle for the Net, so people can tell the FCC and Congress why net neutrality is important to them. At the end of the comment period in January, over 100,000 activists had filed comments in support. That’s an incredible start, but now we need to pile on the pressure as the FCC prepares to finalize the rule! This is the best chance we’ve had at reversing the Trump administration’s disastrous policy and winning a free and open internet! Add your name: The FCC must save net neutrality now!

TikTok is one of the largest social media platforms right now, and taking direct, actionable steps to support artists and their labor, as well as to prevent artificial intelligence from stealing their work and likenesses, could be a model for how other platforms handle these issues moving forward. But it’s not just about being able to dance and do trends with some of our favorite music. Universal Music Group is pulling its music from TikTok after negotiations failed to extend the licensing agreement between the two companies, and those negotiations centered around prominent issues in today’s society: paying people for their labor, the effects of generative artificial intelligence more broadly, and benchmarks for online safety in a world that has become increasingly reliant on digital communications. TikTok needs to support artists and their labor.

In addition to the companies that have unleashed the technology the enables deepfakes, hosting and cloud computing providers like Amazon have continued to provide the infrastructure needed to run large websites specializing in non-consensual deepfake porn, even though the harm they;re doing has become clear. They, too, are part of the problem. Normally, when a company releases products that cause unexpected harm, they’re responsible for fixing it. Like when Toyota found it had cars on the road with faulty gas pedals that could result in crashes, or when Samsung got reports of Galaxy smartphones overheating and catching fire, they recalled their products. Tech companies releasing, distributing, and hosting content generated by cutting edge AI technology should not be an exception. Now that deepfakes have become a major media story, you have Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, saying “we have to act,” while not specifying or committing to real action—and with most other tech leaders remaining completely silent. There are good conversations in the AI safety community about what the best approaches are for reining in deepfakes, but until the tech companies at the root of the problem act, it will be meaningless. Some parts of solving the problem are harder than others, but there is plenty that can and should be done right now: - AI companies (like Microsoft) should stop releasing software that has been shown to create harmful, non-consensual deepfakes, until they can prove that it is safe. - Social media platforms (like Facebook and Twitter/X) should take much stronger steps to detect deepfakes; freeze accounts that appear to have distributed harmful, non-consensual deepfakes; and permanently ban those that have been determined to have done so. - Cloud providers (like Amazon) should drop large websites that are clearly and overtly in the business of creating and distributing non-consensual deepfakes. Congress is now working on The DEFIANCE Act of 2024, which would make it a crime to produce and distribute non-consensual deepfake images, audio, and video–an important part of what’s needed and which Sexual Violence Prevention Association has recently started a campaign to support. But Congress has yet to hold accountable the tech companies that are at the core of the problem, and that control the means of production and distribution of deepfakes. These companies have poured billions into the technology that makes deepfake creation and sharing possible. It’s time they prioritize addressing the harms they’ve created as a result, and invest in making such technology safe from causing harm. Until they can demonstrate that a baseline level of safety has been achieved, with no one in the future being subjected to what Taylor Swift and others currently are experiencing, these companies need to do all that’s in their power to stop the harm created by the spread of non-consensual deepfakes.

17 Problems: How Dollar Store Chains Hurt Communities https://ilsr.org/17-problems/

On January 21, 2010, SCOTUS in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission expanded the constitutional doctrine that corporations are persons, widening their constitutional right to buy elections and run our government. Since that ruling, 14 states that previously banned corporate contributions had their laws overturned by the courts. And subsequent rulings, following the precedent of Citizens United, paved the way for the creation of Super PACs and unlimited corporate spending in politics, flooding our elections with dark money.  Enough! Our democracy should reflect the will of the people, not greedy corporate entities. We can reverse Citizens United, end “corporate personhood,” and take our democracy back by introducing a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution: the We the People Amendment. “We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United and other related cases and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.” The majority of Americans, when asked if they believe corporations should have the same rights as people, believe the Constitution should be amended to state that corporations do not have constitutional rights. Add your name to demand that Congress pass the We the People Amendment NOW!

Out of 30 NFL teams, 14 use real grass, 14 use artificial turf, and 2 use a hybrid field of grass and artificial materials. It would only cost the NFL 12 million dollars to replace the current turf fields to grass, compared to the nearly $12 billion dollars in revenue that the NFL made in 2023. And that’s not all: Over the last 8 years alone, the NFL has made over 74 BILLION dollars in revenue. Yet, many NFL team owners (30 out of 32 of whom are billionaires and have a combined net worth of over 260 BILLION DOLLARS) would rather prioritize their corporate profits over their players’ safety. For over a decade, NFL players themselves have been very vocal about how much of a toll turf takes on their bodies, and how they dread games where they know they will be playing on turf. The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), the labor union that represents NFL players, has been advocating for grass fields despite the league’s PR attempts to defend the use of artificial turf. The NFL has a history of putting corporate profits above players: • In the 2000s, Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered a link between football and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) , a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head causing concussions. But instead of thinking of ways they could protect their players, the NFL went after Omalu and other scientists studying CTE. After nearly a decade of denial and suppressing scientific evidence, the NFL finally admitted the truth: There is a link between football and CTE. • Back in 2021, after shamefully using “race-norming” which prevented hundreds of Black football players with dementia from qualifying for awards in a $1 billion settlement of concussion clamps, the NFL agreed to end this practice. • The NFL has continued to come under fire for their lack of guaranteed contracts for players. The sham contracts offered by the NFL give so many outs for the corporation that players rarely see the full payouts from their deals. Meanwhile, every other major league in professional sports has guaranteed contracts. This is greed and exploitative, plain and simple, and it's costing players. And these are just a few examples. The NFL must do better and put player safety above corporate profits NOW. Add your name to the petition.