There are thousands and thousands of children being victimized by the criminal and corrupt acts of the family courts across America. Everyone is aware of this and yet NO ONE wants to help these innocent children. They deserve to have a voice and people need to LISTEN to them and not just HEAR them! Our current family court is nothing more than a bank that continues to destroy families. My son has been suffering by an abusive and alcoholic father. He has begged the police, Child Protective Services, the court ordered Best Interest Attorney, school counselors and psychologists, and other supposed child experts for help and NO ONE has LISTENED to him. I was my son's SOLE CAREGIVER his entire life, but had little money due to a physical disability, and his father has millions. The father claims that he owns "Howard County, Maryland" and can do "whatever" he wants. This has been the case because he continues to abuse and neglect my son and yet has sole physical and legal custody. THIS IS UNCONSCIONABLE! My son has been hospitalized for suicidal ideation, and has been found to be severely depressed. He has gained 72 pounds in his father's care, in less than three years. NO ONE CARES except for me and yet the Court continues to sanction me for filing motions to protect my 12 year old son. This needs to stop......PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION AND SAVE MY SON FROM SUCH CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT BEFORE HE BECOMES A STATISTIC DUE TO THE IGNORANCE OF OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM.

For too many kids, summer vacation means no classes, no homework -- and no source of food they can count on every day. More than 30 million children in the U.S. rely on school lunch programs during the school year. Yet once school lets out, only one out of every 10 kids who rely on school lunches get help from programs like the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). Now some in Congress are on the verge of cutting these programs even further. Congress must decide soon whether to strengthen or cut these programs. The National Commission on Hunger, a bipartisan congressional committee tasked with advising Congress on how to combat hunger, is holding hearings around the country to get input. It's the best shot we have to continue childhood nutrition programs that are essential to fighting hunger. These programs can help alleviate hunger for the 16 million children -- or 1 in every 5 -- who struggle to find a steady source of meals. Cutting these programs would mean millions of empty stomachs. Strengthening these programs would help fill them. And when kids have enough to eat, they have a better shot at a decent life. It's that simple. Add your name to stop cuts to summer meal programs for kids who depend on them.

The Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for the 2016 fiscal year has proposed a number of changes in order to balance and maintain the house budget for the upcoming year. However, there are several concerning budget cuts within this bill, including a massive funding cut to the National Corporation for Community Service which funds the National Volunteer Program Americorps; first signed into legislature by Bill Clinton in 1993. Primarily, the cuts, which will reduce the Corporation's funding to a fifth of what it was in 2015, will result in the termination of a massive number of Americorps's programs and the complete closing of one of its most prominent programs; The National Civilian Community Corps, or NCCC. As an alumni of the NCCC and one of Americorps State programs, these initiatives mean a lot to me and the alumni of the program and they mean a lot to all the communities across the country they have served. For wages less than the national minimum, these Corps Members have put time into helping Non-Profits all across America with labor of no cost to them. Recently, the program has provided aid to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, providing young new faces in the area of disaster and massively expediting the recovery process for disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Super Storm Sandy which are both still far from completion. In turn, the program gives individuals a chance to receive new skills, experiences, and a modest scholarship to allow them a boost in pursuing their education. This is a program that benefits all people involved in it, and the money received from cutting it is far less than the cost it will take to replace the thousands upon thousands of Corp Members it will displace. To cut the Americorps programs is just an ill-advised idea with no consideration for the future and defecits in labor it will cause. Please tell Congress that these programs are wanted and necessary for our country. Without them, many Non-Profits across America would've gone under by this time. NCCC in particular was one of the very first organizations on the ground in Hurricane Katrina and became a crucial asset to the recovery effort from the storm. As an alumni, I can personally attest to the experiences I had in NCCC. I met people I would know my entire life, helped people who had lost everything in Super Storm Sandy, went to places and experienced things I couldn't have otherwise, and most of all, it put me on track to the successful career I have now. If anything, Americorps should he receiving a budget increase as it's been facing shortages and deficits in it's recent years as it has struggled to engage even more individuals. Saving Americorps is a move to saving this Nation's devotion to helping one another in our times of need. Tell Congress this budget cut is foolish, pointless, and an entiely unsustainable move that is only considering the present instead of the future.

My name is Aleena Watson and I am pursuing my Computer Science degree at Portland State University. The money I get from financial aid barely covers tuition and housing fees, therefore I find myself with no money to use for food. I was encouraged to apply for SNAP food benefits and also because of the 75% usage rate, I applied. I was first denied because in the eyes of SNAP Oregon, as a student, we are expected to have extra free time to also carry a job of at least 20 hours a week; not every 2 weeks or month, but 20 hours a week! Once I finally got a month's worth of working 20 hours a week to show to SNAP, they approved my case and received my allowance of $16.00 in SNAP food benefits for an entire month. Please help students in Oregon qualify for SNAP food benefits without having to work a minimum number of hours, and to be treated like the rest of the community. Please ensure that we can continue with our education and also be able to eat. Allow students to concentrate on our studies without mandatory work hour qualifications for SNAP benefits. Please sign this petition to help students attain food benefits through SNAP Oregon without restrictions on work hours!

Representatives of the county have stated that the selected hauler will use mechanical collection trucks. This provision effectively eliminates local providers Ibarras and MCT and hands the proposed seven year contract to Waste Management, a national corporation with large, noisy trucks. The purported reason for the ordinance is to expand recycling by providing curb-side pickup of recyclable materials, probably excluding glass. Ibarras currently provides this service, including glass pickup. I am very satisfied with my current provider and disturbed by the intrusion of a government-sponsored monopoly into a locally competitive business and by the possibility that our local businesses will be harmed or eliminated. I urge you not to pass this ordinance.

I play for Westerly National Little League and it is frustrating to not only me but to other players, coaches and parents. A lot of us at Westerly National want lights so games can start later and we can play later. In the older leagues like the juniors and seniors league get frustrated when we are unable to finish a baseball game because we cannot see the ball. If we can all work together we can blast a grand slam!

The Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) is a billion dollar for profit industry. Harsh methods of "treatments" and isolation set the child up for a lifetime of issues. TTIs need to be regulated. I have a very personal reason and concerns about TTIs.

To bring awareness that Norwalk, CT needs a facility for learning the sport of golf with a facility that will provide a great learning experience and a prosperous revenue stream that will support all park upgrades.

This petition calls for the judge to be disrobed, because she abuses her power and allows fraudulent paperwork. She aims her abuses toward children by punishing them and putting them at risk for abuse by forcing them to live with their abusers. She tells protective mother's they aren't looking at the best interest of their children by removing them from their abusers.

I'm starting this petition because I'm tired of seeing the injustice.

Pennsylvania Counseling Services, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation company brand new to Harrisburg, rapidly and unexpectedly bull dozed down the LAST playground in South Allison Hill, an inner city neighborhood with one of the highest densities of children from single parent homes in the entire nation! Hundreds of high risk children played at that park every day. The adjacent building to this playground was a shuttered school and it and the park together were zoned institutional. In order to receive the zoning variance for a drug and alcohol counseling service in a residential community, this company had to prove that they had community support. They initially garnered support by offering a vision of restoring the playground and having a postive impact on the immediate community. Instead, without any warning to the people that his plans had changed, the new owner decided to “go another way,” which was his way of saying he was forcing the children out into the streets to play. He did this in order to put in a parking lot of almost 100 parking spaces. The children will be fenced off from the blacktop where they rode their bikes, played organized sports, and nightly organized old fashioned group games and ran happily. To add to the the atrocity, they began their demolition of all the playground equipment and basketball courts by cutting down down a thriving 60 foot maple that grew in the middle of the asphalt. The children loved that tree. It was the only tree they interacted with and because of its location, it was always 'home base'. It bloomed flowers in the spring and had stunning crimson leaves in the autumn. Generations of children sat in its shade and climbed up to read in its branches. They butchered it down in a couple hours and the children watched in shock, feeling marginalized, helpless, and victimized by the adults in this city. In addition, this created a tremendously negative community impact. Directly across the street from the park sits a free library, where there is a safe house and free books and food and snacks and playground equipment that the teachers who live there provide year round. The retired couple who have run the library for years had utilized the park to reach out to the children almost no one else can reach, working for free where no one else wants to go. That decades old heart of the city that tunneled children toward their safe house was taken in 36 hours, before anyone, anywhere had time to react and now they have to be seriously concerned with all that traffic coming into the easement sitting just about 20 feet from the free library steps where, for years, there has occurred heavy child pedestrian traffic. There wasn't so much as a construction courtesy notice. These children and good adults lost this park to a developer that made decisions about profit over people. He used insurance costs as an excuse but he was entirely aware of the playground and library and the condition of the community before he began gathering signatures for zoning variance. He should never have continued with his efforts to acquire the property once he realized he might have to eliminate the playground. He began to discuss that concern in the first of the zoning meetings but we cannot find where it was ever officially stated, in the many months of process and permit applications, that he had decided his company couldn't afford the insurance and was intending to tear down the only playground these children had. He never reached out to the community to partner to save the park, though meetings for collaboration were requested by local activists on more than one occasion. As a Dr. of Psychology he must certainly have realized the negative impact this would have on the morale of the community, on the effectiveness of the Stone Soup Library, and on the already traumatized and under served children of this neighborhood. The honest businesses and good people are working hard in this city, giving all they have to pick these kids off the street one hard case at a time, and this man instantly put hundreds of our youngest and most at risk kids on the streets. He had no right to make this unilateral and anti-transparent decision for this city. He never gave a single meeting or community gathering to make the decision WITH the residents, he never warned any of us. The city cannot allow this kind of abusive landlord behavior to continue, to be welcome in Harrisburg. We need to show our ethical businesses and our good people, that we won't let bad business and bad people continue to ruin our city and give us all a bad name. Please sign this petition to request the revocation of Pennsylvania Counseling Service's business privilege license. It is called that because it is a privilege to do business in our city and our investors should treat it as such. It should be wrong to make money at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens. Let's send a message that we won't settle for bad business here. Thank you.

Gary, Indiana is the only city on the Great Lakes Saint Lawrence Seaway System in the United States & Canada without a public access fishing spot. The average resident of Gary lives below the poverty level and can only take a staycation in Lake County Indiana. In Lake County Indiana, there are approx. 95,318 people who live below the poverty level. There is too much despair and nothing to do or anywhere to go but to the casino that purchased our fishing piers and will not allow us to fish on them. https://medium.com/@silasgsconiers/no-equal-opportunity-to-fish-in-lake-michigan-in-gary-indiana-5bc727af3cd