Americans still want to believe in the power and beauty of democracy in our United States. We value the citizens, voters and voices in our communities. We respect and value women, we believe women. So while we also believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty, we cannot in good conscience vote for a candidate who has looming sexual assault allegations. All voters deserve a candidate who is free from such controversies and the DNC needs to take the accusations against Mr. Biden as seriously as its voters do. It is unconscionable that the Democratic Party would support a candidate with so many potential skeletons in his closet, especially in our post-MeToo culture. By supporting Biden as the nominee, the DNC would effectively be saying they don’t believe women. By moving forward with Biden as the nominee, the DNC would also be alienating voters who demand a candidate be not only a smart choice but an ethical one. We need a candidate we can vote for without becoming a party of hypocrites (only outraged when the accused isn't one of our own). If the DNC provides no alternative to Biden as the presidential nominee, they will be degrading their own integrity. The result will be disillusioned voters and fewer people voting for the Democratic candidate in November. We won’t simply “vote blue no matter who” because we will NOT be manipulated by fear of another Trump presidency. The danger of losing our own integrity and of losing strength in the Democratic Party (making way for future Trumps to be elected) is far greater. We won’t “vote blue no matter who” when we haven’t been given a candidate who deserves of our votes. We will vote our conscience for a candidate who represents the honesty and respectability that we want our country’s name to evoke. We will not settle for less. The DNC must not make Joe Biden our nominee. There are alternatives. Please show us that we can still be proud to vote blue, and that the Democratic Party is still a party with integrity. There’s no limit to what we can do with a united party, but we may not be able win in November if we don’t get everyone on board with a candidate we can trust! We know our voices matter: if you want to count on our votes, first be a party we can count on.

This is putting not only Mr. Norman at risk due to his health issues but also other inmates who are currently healthy and are non-violent offenders who could be home and a life saved.

Inmates in all 122 federal prisons across the country have had their visitation rights revoked to curb the spread of COVID-19. While many facilities have offered additional phone minutes and video calls in place of in-person visits, many families still have to pay for the extra time. In the United States, the average rate for a 15-minute phone call from a federal prison is $3.75. As more reports detail just how vulnerable prison and jail populations are to the spread COVID-19, it is now more important than ever for families to stay connected with incarcerated loved ones. Families say they are left in the dark about facilities’ plans to contain and treat the virus, and suspended visitation means that families cannot see their loved ones for themselves to determine if they are safe and healthy. As of April 8, the Bureau of Prisons had confirmed 253 federally incarcerated people and 85 staff members have already tested positive for COVID-19, including 8 inmate deaths. These numbers will continue to rise as prisons face shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), soap, and hand sanitizer. Starting April 1, all federally incarcerated people will be confined to their cells for the next 14 days, effectively putting them on lockdown. Though the BOP said that “to the extent practicable” inmates should still have access to services like mental health treatment and education programs, questions still remain concerning the impact this will have on access to phone calls and other forms of communication. Add your name to this petition to demand the Bureau of Prisons and DOJ act to allow phone calls, video calls, and other communication to be free and more accessible to incarcerated individuals.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, only 7 percent of Black men in federal prisons would be considered low-risk enough to get out using PATTERN—compared with 30 percent of white men. Additionally, Justice Department policy excludes non-citizens convicted of immigration-related offenses from serving out their time at home. Barr’s use of PATTERN is unacceptable and unethical as it excludes some of the most vulnerable groups from release. At a minimum, Barr must reconsider incarcerated people with immigration-related offenses, low-level drug offenses, compromised immune systems, 12 months or less left on their sentence, and pregnant people who fear for the health and safety of their unborn children. These requests are in line with steps that have already been taken in other localities across the country in recognition of the unique vulnerability incarcerated people and correctional staffs have to the spread of COVID-19. As facilities, institutions and businesses across the country are doing their due diligence to #flattenthecurve and stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, correctional facilities in the United States are still dealing with the issue of overcrowding. It is nearly impossible to practice social distancing in federal prisons, which exposes incarcerated people and prison staff to infection. The PATTERN risk assessment algorithm had never been fully tested or independently reviewed before put to use. Allowing an algorithmic system founded upon predominantly white databases to make human decisions puts people of color at a higher risk of mistreatment than their white counterparts. Please sign this petition to urge Barr to eliminate the barrier of race in the home confinement selection process and ensure that federally incarcerated Black and brown people are not disproportionately subjected to the inevitable spread of the coronavirus.

New York is in crying out for help. But our federal government is failing us. We have socially distanced. We have stayed home--or risked our health to do essential work. We have lost income, put our lives on hold, shuttered businesses. We are homeschooling our kids, checking on our neighbors, and begging our parents to stay in. We are masking up. We are doing what we can. But the government is leaving us to die. This moment urgently calls us to exercise our collective power in spite of physical distance. Our communities, already ravaged by years of extraction and exploitation, now face a once in a 100 year crisis — the economic and political fallout of which will leave many of our people jobless, homeless, hungry or, even worse, dead. We need #Recovery4All, including immigrants! And in every crisis, the human spirit of solidarity, community and support also lives. We are asking you to open your window and bang on pots and pans at 2pm on Friday for 10 minutes to demand government action. We will do this in NYC every Friday until May Day. Then we will do it EVERYWHERE. We will keep banging until we are heard. In this moment, we can move beyond Zoom meetings and tele-town halls and elevate our struggles by directly confronting corporations, Wall Street, landlords, and the carceral state. May Day provides the perfect opportunity to link our struggles, lift our stories, confront those choosing to profit from our community's pain, and advance our urgent and long-term needs. We need a #Recovery4All On FRIDAY, APRIL 17TH FROM 2:00, let's take to our windows, our fire escapes, our roofs, our doors and our stoops, and make a racket loud enough to be heard in Washington. Let’s make noise and cry out for our state and federal elected officials to cancel rent, to house the homeless, to get a recovery for all people including the undocumented and hard hit Black and Brown communities, to get PPE to all healthcare and essential workers, to free our people from dangerous prisons and detention centers. We need a #Recovery4All! We need a #PeoplesBailout! We know that this is #TrumpsCOVIDFail We Demand: #CancelRent — Cancel rent and mortgage payments, establish a housing emergency fund, Freeze evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs in all housing, Declare a moratorium on all work requirements for housing, house the houseless, $100 billion in rent assistance. #ReleaseThemAll - Decarcerate — Immigration and Justice Transformation. Release everyone currently in immigration detention, release particularly vulnerable populations from prisons and jails to relieve concentration of risk to coronavirus, close immigration courts and cancel check-ins and other immigration interviews, hold telephonic bond hearings, divest resources from wall construction and border enforcement to provide medical care and create cash-based disaster relief to out-of-work households regardless of status. CASA, MRPA, MRNJ, TOP, #EssentalWorker — UBI, UI, Green New Deal, Medicare For All, Childcare for All, Paid Sick, Hazard Pay, PPE, Paycheck guarantee #AmazonStrikes — Paid Leave, Hazard Pay, care subsidies, shutdown and clean facilities with workers paid, personal protective equipment, no discipline or raising safety concerns, end work practices such as production quotas. #ClimateStrike — The 50th anniversary of Earth Day is 4/22, which was planned as a day of mass action. #MedicareforAllCOVID Here's how it works: Wear something red, because it’s an emergency. Make a sign or banner saying something the government needs to do to protect us. Hold it or hang it out your window or off your roof. At 2 PM, make a racket for 10 minutes. Whistle, shout, sing, pray, bang on a pot, hoot, holler, drum, blast music and dance--it’s up to you. Just do it loud enough to wake up our leaders--and remind each other that our country is better, and stronger, than this. (Don't forget to follow social distancing.) Take pictures or videos and post with #PeoplesBailout #Recovery4All Send those photos to [email protected] Do it again next Friday Tell all of your friends to do it on MAY 1st!!! Huge national day of action Please sign this petition to pledge to participate if 1,000 other people commit as well. Then spread the word. [UPDATE 4.10. Good news!! Momentum is building. Several big NYC grassroots groups have decided to join, and asked to move the date back to give them time to spread the word. We have updated this to reflect the new date. Please keep sharing!] [UPDATE 4.16 - The date has been moved to Friday 4.17 AND the next two Fridays, building up to a huge push on May 1. Make The Road NY, the Working Families Party, NY Communities for Change, Center for Popular Democracy, and the Met Council on Housing are driving this — they represent the neighborhoods and communities that are being crushed by this crisis and they are demanding #Recovery4All and a #PeoplesBailout — please support their call.]

Once the worst of the pandemic is over and it is considered safe to travel, there will be a tremendous backlog of people applying for passports and renewals. This will hurt the travel industry even more than it is hurting right now, not only here, but all over the world. Also, many people have to travel on business. Many of them can't work remotely.

Since President Thomas Jefferson founded the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1802, the federal government has expanded and improved the education of military leaders. Two centuries later, however, the national declaration that "all men are created equal" remains unfulfilled. Naming academy buildings, roads, and other infrastructure for Confederate leaders at West Point and Annapolis perpetuates American inequality. At West Point, a barracks constructed in 1962--the height of the civil rights movement--was named for Robert E. Lee. At the Naval Academy, an engineering building and the superintendent's house were named for Confederate naval leaders in 1907 and 1976, respectively. Both academies also have roads and other infrastructure named for Confederate leaders. I recently urged West Point Superintendent LTG Darryl A. Williams, a fellow West Point graduate, to rename Lee Barracks and other infrastructure to "serve the nation’s paramount quest for a more equitable and just society under law." He wrote that "the Academy -- as a subordinate command of the Army -- will not act independently on this issue," "Confederate memorialization is an Army issue," and West Point recognizes "individuals who are a part of our history as an institution and a nation, not as representatives of a cause." The Confederacy and its leaders, however, will always stand principally for disunity, racism, and white supremacy. Honoring Confederate leaders at military academies reveres those values over equality and liberty. It is time for the nation's self-described premier leadership development institutions to replace Confederate names so they more fully express and honor Americans' highest values. Those values are clearly expressed through countless state and local officials who have removed Confederate statues and other divisive symbols from public spaces since the violent racist attacks in Charleston, SC in 2015 and Charlottesville, VA in 2017. State and local officials are fulfilling citizens' interests and leading an important democratic change movement where the federal government is failing. Sign this petition to: - tell the Defense Department and Congress to align the academies' values with your values; - support legislation that will require and fund the removal of Confederate honors at the military academies; - give your children better environments to learn leadership and selfless public service.

This is important because the mayor allows and even encourages the doe to be run by mountebanks and grifters who have corrupted public education under the guise of learning and caring, all while destabilizing, demeaning and damaging the children and the workforce of the NYC public school system.

DEMOCRACY: We are in the middle of a Democratic Primary. 27 states have not yet voted 43% of delegates are still available COVID-19: We are living in an unprecedented time where a global pandemic is testing the nation and revealing the deep flaws in our system. Record-breaking numbers of people are applying for unemployment. Millions are losing their jobs and their employment-tied healthcare. Millions are at risk of being evicted. This is the precise time for people to have a voice in how America should move forward beyond this world-changing crisis. Regardless of the path we take, life as we know it will fundamentally change. PATH FORWARD: We still have a choice. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have very different visions for how to proceed through this crisis. Let the American people hear them and make this very important decision before the remaining states cast their votes. Give us the debate we deserve.

It is vital to track how COVID is affecting people differently depending on race in order to address racial disparities now and in the future. The numbers of people who are dying and infected in NY, Milwaukee and Chicago are disproportionately people of color, and Black people in particular. the CDC is not keeping track of race nationally for the pandemic, although it should, because not doing so makes it seem like this is an equal opportunity illness, and it is not. generational and historical wealth and injustice are not abstract moral issues, they are the difference between life and death generational and historical injustice translate into the unequal distribution of resources like hospital beds, trained staff, infrastructure and healthcare facilities, and availability of medications generational and historical injustice affects the quality of living spaces, pre-existing conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic illnesses, and the ability to quarantine COVID is not the great equalizer. Viruses may not discriminate, but the ways in which the pandemic is panning out is clearly surfacing the inequalities that we desperately need to address. Tracking race is paramount to understand how racial inequality factors in COVID-related deaths and illnesses.

Small businesses are the engine of our economy. In many communities small businesses are the largest employer and the lifeblood of the community. We create meaningful jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs to thrive. By unilaterally requiring that your small business clients have pre-existing lending relationships with Bank of America you are putting up unnecessary roadblocks to saving jobs and saving communities from devastation. Worse, this practice may even be discriminatory, as it may impact black, Latino, Asian, and Native American business owners disproportionately, who are more likely to have been denied access loans due to historic and current red-lining practices and institutional racism. The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to provide forgivable loans to Small Businesses to keep people employed during this time of emergency. In determining clients of Bank of America's eligibility for these lifeline loans, you have instituted an unnecessary pre-existing lending client requirement that is preventing many desperate smaller businesses and nonprofits from even applying for PPP. We all need to come together at times like this, not put up barriers to resources. You have the power to eliminate this arbitrary requirement and we ask you to step in and address this issue with the urgency the present emergency demands.

Like most kinds of porn, inspiration porn is exploitative, unrealistic and harmful for disabled people. Imagery of individuals "overcoming" the disabled body serves only to de-value those of us who cannot for the enjoyment of those who never had to. This is particularly gross given that this imagery is being used to increase shareholder profits for Hyundai, a global corporation that did $91 billion in sales last year. In the time of COVID-19 this also means a very real chance of disabled people being denied life-saving treatment because of the mere perception that their lives are less valuable than a “healthier” person.