Gov. Edwards is pushing a political agenda that goes directly against the guidelines of medical professionals. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, along with several other medical organizations, issued a statement calling abortion "...an essential component of comprehensive health care" and that the "...consequences of being unable to obtain an abortion profoundly impact a person’s life, health, and well-being." People choose to have an abortion for a myriad of reasons, all of which are valid. At a time of great financial and employment uncertainty, forcing people to continue unwanted pregnancies is a gross violations of their rights. Abortion clinics in Louisiana are open and we need to pressure Gov. Edwards to make sure they stay that way.

Update: The Essential Workers Bill of Rights is now part of the HEROES Act, which the House passed on May 15, 2020. Now it's up to the Senate to bring the HEROES Act to the floor for a debate and vote, to pass critical protections for essential workers and other urgent forms of pandemic relief. Essential workers are on the frontlines of this pandemic, and many are working in high-risk conditions without appropriate equipment, safety standards, or job protections. Workers who remain on the job without the ability to telework during this emergency include doctors, nurses, home care workers and other healthcare workers, grocery store and drug store employees, domestic workers, food service workers, federal, state, and municipal employees, janitorial staff, farm workers, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, transportation workers, and child care workers. These workers put their health on the line when they go to work every day. In New York City, 41 transit workers have died as of April 8, and reports of essential worker deaths are on the rise. There are grocery workers who are denied sick leave and whose companies won’t provide masks or allow masks to be worn in stores. And health care workers including medical technicians, orderlies, EMTs, nurses, doctors, hospital employees are working long hours to save lives while their own families are on the edge of health and financial disaster. The country has a moral responsibility to protect essential worker’s health, to create financial security for their loved ones, and to offer peace of mind during a time of heightened mortal and emotional stress. This includes policies like healthcare, paid sick leave, and workplace health standards to protect against more workers getting sick. We need hazard pay and childcare to properly compensate the risk workers are taking to benefit us, and enable them to keep coming to work. And we need to hold corporations who don’t follow these guidelines accountable because lives are on the line. Congress continues to debate more relief efforts as the coronavirus pandemic deepens the health and economic crisis hitting our nation. The next bill must meet the needs of people and our communities, with an essential worker bill of rights, and not provide more corporate bailout funds. Congress should ensure that any taxpayer dollars handed to corporations go to help workers, not wealthy CEOs, rich shareholders, or the President’s cronies. Congress should pass an Essential Workers Bill of Rights, including: 1. Health and safety protections 2. Robust premium compensation 3. Protections for collective bargaining agreements 4. Truly universal paid sick leave and family and medical leave 5. Protections for whistleblowers 6. An end to worker misclassification 7. Health care security 8. Support for child care 9. Treat workers as experts 10. Hold corporations accountable for meeting their responsibilities

The COVID-19 pandemic is tragically displaying the consequences of our world's broken relationship with wildlife and wild places. Experts believe that the current coronavirus likely originated with the close interaction with wildlife—that may have been illegally trafficked—in a live animal market in Wuhan, China. The disease may have originated in bats and moved to an intermediary host—possibly the highly endangered pangolin, the most trafficked mammal on earth—from which the disease jumped to humans. We have been here before. SARS, Ebola, and HIV all likely originated from the exploitation of wildlife, including threatened and endangered species. Now is the time to learn from our past actions. We must put an end to wildlife trafficking immediately. And, we must stop the unsustainable exploitation of wildlife more broadly. This is the second leading cause of the biodiversity crisis. The destruction of biodiversity, including the poaching and trafficking of wildlife, puts people in incredible danger in a variety of ways: it spreads disease, jeopardizes security, undermines the rule of law, and threatens local economies that depend on nature. This current situation helps to crystalize that good wildlife policy and conservation funding, including for enforcement, must be a very high priority to protect our health, communities, and future. Finally, it is essential to recognize that humans have all contributed to the biodiversity crisis we face, with a million species at risk of extinction in the near future. But this is no excuse for racial, ethnic, or other discrimination or retaliation. Cultures across the globe, including ours and yours, engage in some practices that are not compatible with protecting the diversity of life that exists on our planet and ourselves. And every culture has something to mend and contribute to global efforts to protect our gift of biodiversity that sustains us all. We applaud countries that have re-acknowledged the threats of wildlife trafficking by establishing and enforcing permanent bans on this illegal and deadly trade. Please join us in calling for the World Health Organization, UN and World Organization for Animal Health to take immediate action to close live wildlife markets and ban wildlife trafficking.

As an ordained clergy person and seminary professor, I am witness to the stories of many colleagues in ministry during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clergy of many faiths have shared stories of mourning that has been interrupted by isolation and disrupted by distancing. Clergy are doing their best to provide funerals when no one can gather, and comfort families who have had to let their loved one die alone. Still, it is becoming more clear all the time that our country as a whole will need an opportunity to grieve the losses we have all felt. We especially need to honor those whose lives were taken by the virus while they were serving the common good as doctors, nurses, first responders, and other public servants. We call upon congress to provide leadership, making time and space for the nation to grieve together when the time is right. We call upon congress to close all government offices on that day, and ask other institutions to close as well. Let us be a nation that mourns together, even as we affirm the value of serving the common good. (photo: Mark Zastrow - creative commons)

Independent Beauty Professionals rely on the income from clients. We cannot perform a haircut online. While the “beauty industry is deemed “Non essential”, the ability to practice our craft and make a living is very ESSENTIAL to our livelihood. A lot of us did not qualify for Unemployment. A lot of us did not receive any business Loans. A lot of us have not received a Stimulus Check yet. We are facing a grave financial hardship.

Every day we're being bombarded with falsehoods and misinformation from Trump and his cronies during these so-called CV-19 briefings. Every question that reporters ask during these paloozas just gives Trump and co. the opportunity to continue distracting Americans from seeing the mess he's made because of his administration's lack of preparations and his narcissism, which has and will continue to kill innocent citizens. Without the networks'/medias' complicity in these paloozas, there would be no ability to spread Trump's propaganda. What they don't realize is that it is undermining their own credibility and that of their reporters.

Sanitation and hydration are basic to human life in the best of times and we are now in a State of Emergency because of COVID-19 and those needs even more important. Use your power as Mayor to comply with Governor Gretchen Whitmer's executive order establishing a moratorium on water shut offs and turning on water across the state. Save the lives and health of the people you serve. Use the information and resources at your disposal to turn everyone's water on with all deliberate speed.

There is absolutely no need to have all the lights and advertisements going 24/7 when there’s no one there to see them anyway. It’s 100% waste.

We are longtime GE employees and proud IUE-CWA union members who know that we and our co-workers can make a real difference during this crisis by producing ventilators, but GE has failed to act. We are calling on President Trump to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to require GE to start producing ventilators at its underutilized facilities immediately! We have the skills necessary to make ventilators and GE has the manufacturing capacity, but instead of producing this desperately needed equipment the company has announced massive layoffs of its workforce and GE factory space is sitting empty. GE is partnering with other corporations to jumpstart ventilator production because its existing GE Healthcare production plant is now running at capacity. Meanwhile, thousands of Americans are dying every day. We need more companies producing more ventilators in more locations now, and the quickest way for GE to do that is to put its skilled workforce and excess capacity to work. Workers like us are ready to start producing ventilators to help our country get through this crisis and save lives. President Trump must act now to require GE to do the right thing and start producing live-saving ventilators immediately. Please join this fight and sign our petition.

Since the first case of the Covid-19 was diagnosed in the United States on January 20th, the response from the federal government to this pandemic has been slow and ineffective. From personal protective equipment to ventilators and tests, healthcare workers are still being left to treat Covid-19 without the supplies they need. Many clinics and hospitals have run out of respirators and even simple procedural masks are running low. In some hospitals, providers are being asked to use a single mask for multiple days even though these masks were designed for one time use. New reports are coming out everyday highlighting the desperate, war-like situation in some of our nations’ hospitals, with patients lining the hallways and refrigerated trucks being used as a supplementary morgues. In the United States, the only institution with the power to lead a strong and coordinated response, ensure adequate production of medical equipment, and provide widespread testing is the federal government. Our leaders need to step up, right now, to ensure the health and wellbeing of our healthcare workers while also taking the necessary steps to slow this pandemic. That starts with passing the Medical Supply Chain Emergency Act This is not a partisan political issue. Our loyalty is to our patients and our colleagues who are on the frontline sacrificing so much for their communities. We need our federal government to do their job. By passing the Medical Supply Chain Emergency Act, Congress can force the White House to take this critical action. Congress must immediately address this issue when they return to session for the next emergency Covid funding bill. Without sufficient access to testing and necessary protective equipment, the crucial shortage will become healthcare workers. We must do something now. Sign the petition. Demand your members of Congress vote to support the bill. Why is this important? I’m a doctor in Portland and I am spending all of my free time volunteering with #GetUsPPE. My fellow healthcare workers don’t have the PPE they need to protect themselves during this pandemic. Losing these workers due to infection or quarantine not only risks their health but also endangers the stability of our entire healthcare system. I am afraid. I’m afraid that I might become infected and die, or worse that I might transmit the virus to my loved ones. I am afraid tThat my fellow doctors and nurses and support staff might die. That my hospital might run out of PPE. That I can’t adequately treat my patients. That they might die alone and afraid. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to drag his feet on using the Defense Production Act, our most important law supporting the production of necessary supplies in times of emergency. Due to this delay, Senators Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz have introduced the Medical Supply Chain Emergency Act (Senate Bill 3568) to force the White House to utilize the Defense Production Act, and the bill is gaining momentum. But Congress won’t act unless enough of us demand, loudly, with one voice to #GetUsPPE and all of the other supplies and equipment like ventilators and medications that we need to save lives. Will you help me get Congress to pass this bill? Add your voice to ours. #GetUsPPE Dr. Val Griffeth, MD, PhD GetUsPPE.org

Now more than ever, every Healthcare worker in the United States deserve this recognition.

Coronavirus has spread to over 50 Amazon facilities across the country. Amazon delivery lead Kathy Knight said "I'm worried that I have infected 1000 people in the last three days." She and her 22-year-old son, who is also an Amazon driver, are awaiting test results for COVID-19 after her son began showing symptoms. Amazon workers across the country have been organizing strikes and actions demanding safer working conditions and paid leave. Instead of protecting workers, Amazon fired one of the worker organizers, Christian Smalls, and planned to smear him with a racist PR campaign. Thousands of workers are packed together with few protective measures in Amazon facilities. Workers report that Amazon is refusing to shut down and properly sanitize warehouses, that Amazon is not providing gloves and masks, is not adhering to social distancing measures, and isn’t being honest about the risk of infections in its facilities. Jeff Bezos has already hired 80,000 new warehouse and delivery workers during this pandemic without doing enough to protect workers. Health experts say that if we are not successful at slowing the spread of COVID-19, as many as 1.5 million people may die in the U.S. alone. If Jeff Bezos continues to risk the safety of Amazon workers, their families, and neighbors, COVID-19 could spread even faster around the world. The Squad is pressuring Amazon and leading the way in Congress--but we need more congressional support to take federal action if we’re going to slow the spread of COVID-19 across all Amazon facilities. Jeff Bezos is riding this pandemic out in comfort while Amazon profits from coronavirus. We can’t wait for Jeff Bezos to prioritize the health of our communities. We urgently need your voice now. Tell Congress to investigate Amazon’s unsafe working conditions and shut down unsafe warehouses.