Poor desperate immigrants try and come to the United States to earn money for their families back home, but are instead taken advantage of and sold as sex slaves. They are extremely traumatized and have no where to turn to for financial and psychological help.

This holiday season, 2 million people in Illinois, including 886,000 children, will have less to eat because of recent cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). Now, some in Congress want to cut another $40 billion from an effective anti-hunger program that helps families put food on the table. We need to act quickly so that Rep. Rodney Davis understands that taking food from kids and other vulnerable populations is just wrong.

My 80-year old, widowed mother, who worked up until a year ago, depends on her Social Security benefits. Like many seniors, she has paid into this system for the majority of her life in order to have these benefits now. Making a cut to Social Security is unconscionable.

Third St. Is too narrow to safely support four lanes. The outside lanes are virtually unusable by all but the smallest vehicles. Trucks and SUVs typically take up both lanes, leading to a higher risk of accidents. Local residents and truck drivers avoid Third St., using Southern Parkway instead. If you want to restore Southern Parkway to its former glory, start by fixing Third St.

Anyone crossing into Mexico or Canada must cross at an International bridge or tunnel. During the major holidays, traffic coming and going into the United States is severely impacted and on occasion, individuals have been killed due to the unsafe conditions on our roadways. These crossings belong to the people, not the politicians. By signing this petition you will not only help us speed up border crossings but also show that we "can" control our destiny.

This petition is to stop Baltimore City from closing our Child Care Centers. These centers are providing child care, education, and after school care for working parents. Baltimore City Public schools would like to use the child care center buildings to start Head Start program, which only provides half a day learning for children. We are trying to keep academies, like Dukeland Child Care Academy open. They have provided our children,ages 2 and up, with great education, such as sign language, spanish, and dance. Please help us save the centers. Thank you.

Having worked for the last 54 years, I am now living on social security and it is not enough. Even with my 401K, it is not enough. We need regular increases in the amount paid.

There are better ways to strengthen Social Security and none require cuts. Do not hurt seniors by tying Social Security Cost of Living to a chained CPI.

We have all been personally affected by the recent crime on campus, and serious change needs to happen to make us feel safe again. "As a result of increased crime, I recognize the immediate need for additional police presence on the University of Minnesota campus and the surrounding neighborhoods."

There is so much evidence to support the fact that Fluoride is harmful and not helpful to our health. Just do a quick internet search for "fluoride in drinking water" if you want the details. We won't sit back and allow our cities to be poisoned through our water supplies and we shouldn't have to purchase expensive reverse-osmosis machines to remove Fluoride from the water in our homes. It just doesn't need to be added and shouldn't continue to be added to our water. Let us decide what we put in the water we drink. Period!!

We want to keep our neighborhood the way it is. We do not want flag lots, condos, apartments, or large multifamily structures invading our neighborhoods. Families in Lake Balboa love the quiet oak lined streets, and we will fight against anything that diminishes our quality of life.

"Dean" was a young, easily influenced resident of a halfway house for alcoholics and addicts where I volunteered for many years. Over 10 years that I knew him, I saw our criminal justice turn him into a hard, possibly lifelong criminal by treating his drug problems with increasingly long incarcerations, rather than the mental health and substance abuse treatment he needed. "Dean" was like a lot of people I met at that halfway house. They told me that the majority of prisoners had drug and alcohol problems -- and for many that's why they were locked up. Now,we're hearing the call for more jail cells in Los Angeles. But a better use of our taxes would be to improve community-based mental health and substance services. And that would give "Dean" and thousands like him a better chance at a useful, productive. Please make this issue a central plank in your 2014 election campaigns.