It’s important because I was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Therefore, we are asking our Select Board to review the seriousness of this situation, reconsider the permit and using Board guidance, seek consultation and the good will of the property owner to re-locate this peddler to a more appropriate site that does not interfere with the safe, normal, daily life of our community. Thank you, petitioners for "NO PLACE TO PEDDLE HATE"

Krista Baldivia and Alonzo Wilds both left behind families. Krista left behind a mother, a father, 9 siblings, a husband, a daughter and a step-son. While Krista may not have been a pillar of the community she was a person and justice should be served the same as if she was the Frederick County Commonwealth Attorney's own blood. Her, and Mr. Wilds, criminal history should not overshadow the cause of their deaths and the actions of Heishman.

Congressman John Robert Lewis was an American Hero and one of our Forefather's of Civil Rights. From his early activism as one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, his speech at the March on Washington, his march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama on Bloody Sunday March 7, 1966, to his 33 years in Congress Congressman Lewis spent his life's work for diversity, inclusion, and equality for all. Congressman Lewis is a recipient of Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and the Presidential Medal of Freedom along with countless other accolades. Even as John Lewis was dying he continued to put others ahead of himself. Prior to his passing Congressman John Lewis had the forethought to have his letter published in the NY Times on the day of his funeral where he addressed the younger generations, “Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.” In his letter to the NY Times on seeing Black Lives Matter Plaza Congressman Lewis wrote "I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html This is the time that we recognize this true American hero and not five, ten, or fifty years from now. Let us be more like Congressman John Lewis and be on the right side of this history.

I am a tax paying American Citizen. Louis DeJoy is taking actions that are disrupting the mission of the United States Postal Service, which is to deliver US mail to the citizens of the US in a timely fashion. DeJoy has no experience or expertise that pertains to the USPS. In the last few months mail delivery has begun to take longer than it had prior to Mr. DeJoy being appointed to the position of US Postmaster General. Mail that would normally take 2-3 days to receive is now taking 4-6 days. This is in direct correlation to actions taken by Mr. DeJoy that deprioritize the timely delivery of our mail. In the midst of a global pandemic, when cases are surging and local officials are asking people to stay at home, it is imperative that the timely delivery of United States mail be made a priority. Mr. DeJoy is a barrier to this necessity.

The “bill,” to be known as “Banner of Reconciliation,” will signify the visible manifestation of all forms of government's willingness to recognize the history, contemporary lives, and future hopes of persons of African descent. This bill will signify the beginning of the United States' effort to remember and rectify its misconduct and blatant disregard for human life as it has affected people of African Descent.

The use of blackface elicits the painful racism and historical entertainment in which performers darkened their skin to play characters that perpetuated African American racist stereotypes in the United States. While the practice is progressively infrequent in North America with several instances in which politicians and celebrities in the United States and Canada apologized for wearing blackface or dark makeup long after it was generally seen as derogatory and insulting, it still persists in parts of Europe and Russia. In the case of Yellowface on stage, it was intended to be a mocking of the people in the far east by basically guessing the dances in 1892. With the world being much more connected and multicultural in many countries where diversity and inclusiveness is a crucial priority, it is ignorant to keep these racial stereotypical biases in ballet. It is time to embrace the changing world and not resolute in keeping outdated traditions- to be a citizen of the world rather than a country. Traditions are not unassailable.

New Fortress Energy and subsidiary Delaware River Partners are planning to build a port terminal to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) and natural gas liquids (NGLs) on the Delaware River in Gibbstown, NJ. This is about 15 minutes south of Philadelphia, 2.7 miles from Chester, PA and adjoins the back yards of people in Gibbstown, NJ. Trains and trucks would carry dangerous and potentially explosive LNG over 200 miles from Wyalusing, PA, where New Fortress is building a LNG processing plant from regional fracked gas to Gibbstown through communities who don’t even know about it. LNG would be transferred from trucks and rail cars directly to enormous ships 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The ships would travel down the river, past Wilmington and other Delaware and New Jersey bay communities, overseas to Puerto Rico, Ireland and other foreign ports where New Fortress hopes to make their fortune. We want to send the strongest message we can to the Commissioners! Please strengthen our message with your signature!

The last person you want making decisions for your children is Betsy DeVos. As Trump’s Education Secretary, DeVos has been a disaster from Day 1. But during the pandemic she’s only gotten worse. Secretary DeVos wants to hold federal school funding hostage to pressure schools to reopen in a couple of weeks, despite the nation still seeing spikes in COVID-19 cases.[1] Sign the petition: Tell Congress to block DeVos from using federal funds to pressure schools to reopen! Our nation’s schools are already massively underfunded. In a dangerous public health nightmare scenario like the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government should be funding schools to do whatever is necessary to protect students, teachers and staff, and slow the spread of the virus. Instead, if DeVos has her way, schools will have to reopen if they want federal funding that most districts desperately need. In short, DeVos wants to force cities and states to "re-open" - and doesn't seem to care if children, teachers, and school staff get sick or even die in the process. It’s worth remembering that DeVos has never once taught in a classroom, holds no degrees in education, and until Trump appointed her as Secretary of Education, had no government experience. DeVos is a right-wing billionaire donor whose pet project has been dismantling public education. Every year Trump has been in office, DeVos proposed massive budget cuts to the Department of Education. Now she’s only willing to put funds into schools if students, teachers, and school staff risk their health and their lives in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic. There’s not much time left to act before schools start in the fall. That’s why you need to tell Congress to stop DeVos immediately. Sign the petition: Tell Congress to block DeVos from using federal funds to pressure schools to reopen! [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html

On March 29, 2020, the state of Ohio shut down. The US Government passed the CARES act to ensure that US Citizens had a necessary financial lifeline to pay their bills in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The state of Ohio's unemployment system was grossly outdated and lacked the necessary infrastructure to facilitate the federal CARES act to supply Pandemic Unemployment Assistance to millions of Ohioans. As a result, there was a massive delay in providing assistance to those individuals and families who needed it the most. The tip waged, the contract employed, the freelance, gig-workers and the self-employed. These are some of Ohio's lowest paid workforce. The Ohio PUA system did not go live until May 12th, over a month after the shut down, a time when many fell egregiously behind on their bills and struggled to provide. They were assured that back pay would be given. On July 15, the ODJFS erroneously and maliciously flagged over 226,000 Ohioan's PUA claims as fraud, most of which are erroneous flags as these individuals did provide their proof of income, proof of identity and banking information upon filing and these claims were not approved until they did so. The Ohio Unemployment system was already exhaustively overwhelmed by the sheer number of claims which they are responsible to process. Now hundreds of thousands of workers and their families have had their only source of income taken from them without notice, without cause, and without explanation. Calls to the PUA hotline went unanswered as did calls to the adjudication centers. Individuals who did manage to reach a representative were given a plethora of flimsy excuses and outright lies as to what was going on. The reality is, they didn't know either and could offer no help whatsoever. The amount of misinformation provided by the agency was staggering. Calls and letters to the governor, the state representatives, and the news media went ignored for over a week. According to a recent interview with the news media, Kimberly Hall of the ODJFS finally addressed the situation and claimed that these 226,000 individuals are legitimate cases of fraud. She employed this excuse to justify not paying benefits to already struggling Ohio families in the midst of a global pandemic. There is no logical or conscionable reasoning for Ms. Hall's handling of this matter. There is no logical or conscionable reasoning for withholding benefits to individuals who have already submitted their information upon applying for assistance. Above all else, there is no logical or conscionable reasoning for the director of the ODJFS to be so concerned with fraud in the middle of a global pandemic as to go so far as to erroneously deny benefits to hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who are the most at risk for homelessness due to this crisis. With the abundance of resources available, to say that there was no other way to detect and address fraud in this system is not only irresponsible, but an immense dereliction of her duty to the people of Ohio to whom she is responsible for assisting. The reasons Ms. Hall has cited do not hold up. Her reasons were that individuals were having their personal bank accounts compromised, particularly online banking institutions and prepaid card systems. It is the responsibility of the individual and their financial institution to investigate fraudulent transactions to their personal bank accounts. It is the agency's duty to ensure those individuals are paid on time. Stopping the payments injures innocent citizens and does nothing to punish the criminals. Other reasons cited were failure to prove identity or income, to which each application could not be approved without, and if so, that responsibility falls on those who approved the claims without verifying the information from the start. The excuses are invalid, there is no justification in the world that the state of Ohio or the ODJFS can provide which can justify the course of action that they used to address this matter and their own incompetence. The already overburdened unemployment system cannot support the abundance of claims it currently has. We've spent 81 million on this failed system and now will require many more millions of dollars to adequately train and employ enough workers to facilitate the correction of Ms. Hall's incompetence. In the meantime, 226,000+ Ohioans are at risk of being homeless by next week when their rent or mortgages are unable to be paid. Children will go hungry as the lifeline providing for them has been unceremoniously cut without remorse or resolution. The freeze on evictions and foreclosures has been lifted and the food banks are empty. Ohio has failed it's most at risk populations by the choices and political motivations of one individual. This issue requires IMMEDIATE resolution to those affected. If Ms. Hall and the ODJFS is incapable of fulfilling that resolution, then further action by the State of Ohio to ensure that IMMEDIATE action is taken to prevent homelessness, hunger and poverty to those impacted by this crisis. The people of Ohio deserve answers. They deserve to be paid. They deserve a state that is aimed to see them succeed in the midst of this crisis. In the midst of a pandemic, there is a responsibility to ensure the livelihoods of ALL Ohioans, this was the very PURPOSE of the federal CARES act and the PUA. Ms. Hall has utilized this opportunity to facilitate an unnecessary fraud investigation against the people of Ohio with regard to their financial institutions. It is the responsibility of the individual and their financial institution to determine fraud, and is a gross overreach of the ODJFS Director. The State of Ohio has ignored its citizens for too long in this matter and immediate resolution is now sought.

Free and fair elections are the bedrock of American democracy. Trump’s call to delay them indefinitely - after months of spreading lies and misinformation about mail-in ballots - is authoritarianism plain and simple! With less than 100 days until the general election, Trump is doubling down on his attempts to reject election results he doesn’t like. And unless we call him out - and hold Democratic leadership, and every single elected official across the US who still cares about democracy to account, there's no telling what he and his enablers will do come election day. We need millions calling on Congress and every elected member of the GOP to shut down this blatantly dangerous, authoritarian, and anti-American move. Ring the Alarm: don’t let Trump get away with wrecking our democracy even more than he already has.

The damaging impact and ripple effects of Christopher Hickman's violence against Johnnie Rush extend far beyond their individual stories. Hickman’s violent actions cut open deep and historic wounds in the relationship between the Asheville Police Department and the Black community of Asheville, long overdue for healing. This Restorative Justice case will set a precedent one way or the other for the future of Restorative Justice in Asheville. On a national level, this case will set a precedent for the use of Restorative Justice in other cases of police violence. If done poorly, or cut short, this Restorative Justice process will only exacerbate the breach of trust between the Asheville community and the police department and will not lead to healing. We want to see Restorative Justice uphold the principles of equity, inclusion, and healing in this case and in all future cases. What we need for healing: * To make sure the voices of the black and brown community are heard relative to what has happened to Mr. Rush brought about by Mr. Hickman. * To ensure that Mr. Hickman along with Asheville Police Chief David Zack, take part in a meaningful facilitated dialogue with the impacted community (not just a few cherry-picked individuals) to talk about and agree on what can heal the harm. * To ensure that Mr. Hickman and the Asheville Police Department follow through with their agreements. Click here to see bodycam footage of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOR2P-nA3xI #AVLCantBreathe