Last year, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy made headlines for his efforts to bring the Postal Service to a grinding halt. DeJoy -- a GOP mega-donor with no previous USPS experience -- became a pawn in ex-President Trump’s scheme to undermine vote-by-mail by sabotaging the Postal Service. Trump himself admitted this was his plan -- when he said he was against funding the USPS because “they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.” [1] And though millions of Americans were able to vote successfully by mail last fall -- one of the reasons we saw record voter turnout, despite the pandemic -- DeJoy has proven that he cannot be trusted with the enormous responsibility of running the USPS. Millions of Americans are still counting on the Postal Service to safely deliver their paychecks, life-saving medications, letters from their loved ones, and more. That’s why President Biden must make defending this cherished institution a top priority. Biden himself doesn’t have the power to fire DeJoy directly -- that responsibility lies with the USPS Board of Governors. But Biden can appoint new members to the Board -- and create a majority bloc that can fire and replace DeJoy. As long as DeJoy is in charge, the integrity of the Postal Service is at risk. If you agree that Biden should prioritize fixing Trump’s manufactured USPS crisis and make sure DeJoy is fired -- add your name today. 1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/12/postal-service-ballots-dejoy/

This is important because the notion of Cuba as a "sponsor of terrorism" is absurd--Cuba sends doctors all over the world so that other countries can deal with health emergencies and endemic diseases.

Mike Liddell is still trying to overturn the election and espousing that our votes were fraudulent. Only way to make these people understand is to hit them in the pocketbook.

We, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, call on President Biden to take action for immigrant rights. We will hold President Biden accountable to the immigrant rights reforms he already promised AND also demand that he works to demilitarize the border and provide legalization for all. We have not forgotten the three million people who were deported under the Obama-Biden administration. Justice today does not only look like reversing anti-immigrant policies but actively seeks to repair the harm that has already been done to countless families. MIRAC will continue to push for legalization for all and an end to the whole system that profits from the mass-incarceration and the mass-deportation of immigrants, and also from the superexploitation of the labor of immigrants who live under constant fear of deportation. Please sign our petition to tell President Joe Biden to meet these demands! If you would like to get involved with MIRAC, please provide your email here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1uUMnByB-S6JGMOd7q9wgyavae_5sXwQEcpsbTOKFOgk/edit

The post office is a public good. The USPS delivers to every address regardless of location, even if you live somewhere rural or hard to access. They deliver essential life saving prescription medication, and they are the backbone of our democracy, especially during this pandemic. Over 100 million ballots were delivered during this past election, and during the pandemic, packages have continued to be delivered for small businesses and families alike. The USPS keeps our society going and has been the truest of essential services. Despite all this, Louis DeJoy deliberately sabotaged the functioning of the USPS. DeJoy eliminated overtime pay, reduced retail hours, closed and consolidated post office locations, began removing mail-sorting machines before the election, and implemented tactics to slow down delivery speeds. These delays disproportionately targeted communities of color, which added insult to injury after decades of voter suppression against Black and non-Black communities of color.(1) DeJoy has said that he’s working on a ten year plan for the post office that will come out soon, and we can expect it to feature more price hikes and service cuts, more attacks against Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and rural communities, and other measures to carry out Trump’s OMB report calling for the post office to be privatized and sold for parts. He's already announced plans to cut service to Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii.(2) The public pressure is working. A broad coalition formed to come to the defense of the post office this summer, and there were over 1100 #SaveThePostOffice events at local post offices across the country. Both the House and the Senate called DeJoy to testify about the service cuts in August. Federal Court Judge Stanley Bastian called DeJoy’s changes, “a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service.” After public outcry, our advocacy, and multiple lawsuits, DeJoy was pressured into reversing all slowdown changes before election day. But DeJoy immediately began reinstating those changes on November 4. The stakes couldn’t be higher: we saw this holiday season the effects of Louis DeJoy’s project to slow down the mail, jack up prices, and privatize the post office, in the middle of a pandemic that is decimating the postal workforce. In the lead-up to the holidays, 20,000 postal workers either tested positive for COVID-19 or were quarantining due to exposure. Facing an astonishing 100% increase in holiday package volume due to COVID, the private carriers FedEx and UPS got overwhelmed, cut off large retailers, and left it to the USPS to deliver. Postal workers were pushed to the breaking point, working double shifts to deliver our packages. The volume increase was entirely predictable, and a different Postmaster General would have planned for it. If we don’t stop Louis DeJoy, a national treasure will be lost. That’s why in his first 100 days in office, President Biden and the Senate need to fill the empty seats on the Postal Board of Governors with with pro-post office members who will prioritize the USPS’s mandate to serve all of us, and stop DeJoy’s ideological project to kill the agency in its tracks. Sources: (1) https://blog.ucsusa.org/taryn-mackinney/the-postal-service-is-under-attack-our-research-shows-who-this-hurts-most (2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/21/dejoy-testimony-usps-senate

Unless policies change, billions of people around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries will not get access to a COVID-19 vaccine until 2024. This is a threat to people around the world, to the US, and to the entire global economy. We can address this problem by ensuring that intellectual property restrictions do not interfere with vaccine access. President Biden himself committed to share vaccine technology with other countries when asked this past summer by activist Ady Barkan. One critical way to remove barriers to vaccine access is to reverse the Trump administration’s deadly opposition to the WTO TRIPS Waiver proposal. U.S. opposition to this waiver, a hallmark of the Trump administration’s COVID-19 failure, is a huge roadblock to efforts to produce and manufacture accessible and affordable vaccines for all. The waiver would allow for the production of generic versions of vaccines and treatments necessary to end the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives worldwide. The people of the U.S. stand with South Africa, India, and over 100 other countries: we want President Biden to stop opposing this proposal to temporarily waive World Trade Organization (WTO) rules that protect pharmaceutical corporation profits over human health.

We’ve come to expect police union leadership to defend cops’ violence and abuse—but now Mike Mazzeo, president of the Rochester Locust Club, is saying it’s appropriate for a 9 year old—who wasn’t even a suspect—to be manhandled, handcuffed, and ultimately pepper-sprayed by police officers. It’s beyond excessive use of force, and it appears that the child’s 4th amendment rights were violated. But Mazzeo thinks the cops’ actions were appropriate: • “Those officers in those scenes, they broke no policy. There’s nothing that anyone can say they did that’s inappropriate.” • “I don’t know who could do any better job.” • “It resulted in no injury to her. Had they had to go and push further and use more force there’s a good chance she could have been hurt worse.” No community, especially its Black and brown folks, should be expected to trust or respect a police department with someone like Mazzeo in a position of leadership. Mike Mazzeo is the same police union leader who defended the officers who mocked, suffocated, and killed Daniel Prude. Mazzeo is also suing the state of New York to stop it from releasing the disciplinary records of Rochester police officers. Mazzeo’s defense of these officers—and his defense of the officers who killed Daniel Prude—are textbook examples of the playbook police unions use to shield violent and dangerous cops who are caught abusing their power and breaking the law: • When police are caught doing something that is clearly wrong, say they were following protocol and blame their training. • Deceive and lie to obscure and confuse the truth about what happened. • Attack city officials, activists, and others in a position to hold police accountable. It’s not just outrageous for Mazzeo to justify these officers’ violent actions towards a 9 year old girl—it’s a big part of what helps violent and biased police continue to get away with abuse. If Mazzeo can say these things and remain the leader of the police union, it virtually guarantees that Rochester police will continue to be unaccountable and violent. His behavior and way of thinking encourages police brutality, and it makes accountability for police and necessary reform impossible. Mike Mazzeo has to go. Please join us in calling on Rochester’s Mayor, Chief of Police, City Council members, and Police Accountability Board to force Mazzeo’s departure, now.

Facebook’s decision to suspend Donald Trump’s account was too little, too late. For months, he used social media to perpetuate groundless and incendiary lies about the 2020 election. His posts about “voter fraud” or “#StopTheSteal” -- none of which provided a shred of evidence for their claims -- were shared over 12 million times, based on our analysis. And even though voting rights groups like Common Cause warned Facebook that giving Trump free rein to lie on its platform was a threat to our democracy -- it took the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to finally move them to action. But as of now, Facebook has only “indefinitely suspended” Trump’s account -- meaning they may be on the cusp of letting him back onto the platform to wreak additional havoc with his disinformation, abuse, and hate speech. We cannot let that happen. Facebook has created a new Oversight Board that will review its decision to ban Trump -- but by design, it’s accountable to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, not the public. That means it’s no substitute for government action to hold Facebook accountable. But the most impactful thing that this Oversight Board and Facebook can do is decide to permanently ban Trump. If Facebook’s policies are to have any meaning, they must be strictly enforced -- and we’d expect any other Facebook user who abused the platform like Trump has to be kicked off. Facebook cannot give Trump another opportunity to mislead voters and stoke chaos again on its website. And if they don’t listen to us right now and start enforcing their own civic integrity policies -- we’ll demand government action to hold Facebook accountable.

This is extremely important because we do not want to send out the wrong message to members on our campus or elsewhere, nor do we want to give a platform to someone who has explicitly expressed views contrary to our call to respect the dignity and life of all people. While she may have a unique testimony to becoming an anti-abortion activist, Abby Johnson, in recent videos and Twitter posts, has expressed beliefs and values that do not embody the Church's or Catholic University's consistent life ethic, including egregiously racist remarks and arguments.

Governor Cooper just held a press conference asking schools to begin offering in-person education. However, coronavirus numbers are still revising, with dangerous, more transmittable variants spreading, and the state isn't offering any protection to keep teachers safe. Teachers need to be protected before requiring them to return to in-person instruction. The variant strains identified in North Carolina make the virus much more infectious and allow transmission with much less viral load. Statistics have also recently shown that children make up 1/5 of the cases in North Carolina and have been key in virus transmission. Everyone is talking about the kid's safety while ignoring that school buildings are full of adults too- many of them high-risk. This response by Governor Cooper is not based on science and what is best for our teachers and students- it is based on pressure to return to in-person school regardless of the consequences. If teachers are being required to return to in-person instruction, they should at least have the option for protection of the available vaccine. Vaccinate teachers now.

This is so important because we need to honor her hard work. First, she was passionate about freedom and rights for all Black people. Next, she didn’t back down no matter how hard it got. Finally, she was strong and caring even when she went to freedom herself, she risked her life to get other enslaved people back to freedom too. We also think it would be great to put a statue of Harriet Tubman in Lake Eola Park, but we know that might be expensive so only if you can. I think that our City of Orlando should make Harriet Tubman day because we are a City where all that work that we believe in needs to be celebrated.

Life skills education courses were cut in my school district; however, the need for life skills education increases during the pandemic. Life skills classes have been decreasing due to factors such as a job shortage in life skills teachers, as well as the courses being cut by schools due to budget issues. The life skills classes are supposed to teach you skills like cooking, cleaning, finance, and first aid that can be helpful for kids to have during a pandemic. With kids staying at home for remote learning, they should be able to feed and clean for themselves. Some families may have to budget their money due to the pandemic causing many people to go out of a job. So, knowing how to handle finances can be beneficial for kid’s futures, but especially right now. Lastly, if a kid were to injure themselves at home and no adult was present, it would be helpful if the kid was able to take care of the situation.