Even though the UCLA Academic Senate passed the Diversity Requirement in October, a petition from faculty to push for a revote has stalled all progress from our efforts as Bruins! UCLA remains one of the last TWO campuses in the UC Undergraduate system to not institute a Diversity Requirement, please sign this petition to show that we as Bruins need to have a collective voice in favor of this program! Also, in order to show your support, please email your UCLA professors to encourage them to vote yes on the Diversity Requirement when the vote opens on Feb. 25 - March 10!

Weldon Angelos could have hijacked a plane and spent less time in jail. But due to mandatory sentencing laws, the father of two was sentenced to 55 years in jail for selling pot – a term so long even the judge who gave it to him protested its injustice. A group backed by the Koch brothers agrees, and is now fighting to get him out of prison. Angelos is an extreme case: even though the crime was considered non-violent, Angelos carried a firearm during a series of marijuana sales to a Salt Lake City police informant – so federal mandatory minimums required that he be put in jail until he’s 80 years old. Judge Paul Cassell protested the sentence when he was forced to make it in 2004, a move he told The Daily Beast he considers “the most unjust, lengthy sentence that I had to hand down.” At the time of the trial, Cassell noted that Angelos’ sentence exceeded the minimum required for an individual convicted of airline hijacking, detonating a bomb intended to kill bystanders, and the exploitation of a child for pornography. Angelos is now 35 years old and has spent some 11 years behind bars. Judge Paul Cassell told The Daily Beast he considers the mandatory sentence, “the most unjust, lengthy sentence that I had to hand down.” He has more than 40 years left to go. Even though his crime was non-violent, parole is not an option at the federal level. His only hope for relief from his sentence is an order by the president. “If we’re going to deprive someone of liberty, and deal with the high cost of incarceration, it better solve a problem. And in this case, it doesn’t solve any problem,” argued Mark Osler, Angelos’ lawyer, who filed a clemency petition on his behalf in 2012. This is where the Koch brothers come in. The case is being highlighted by Koch-backed group Generation Opportunity, which targets millenials, in a broader campaign to press for criminal justice reforms this year. They will kick off the campaign with a documentary highlighting Angelos’ predicament, premiering at Washington, D.C.’s Newseum next week. “[This year] offers a unique moment in history in which people of different backgrounds and political leanings are coming together to facilitate a substantive dialogue on how to fix [the criminal justice system],” said Evan Feinberg, the group’s president. “We can work towards a more just system that reflects the rule of law without overcriminalizing non-violent offenses.” The new campaign will target the overcriminalization of non-violent crime, mandatory minimum laws, and helping criminals who have served their sentences reintegrate into society. The demilitarization of police and the excesses of civil asset forfeiture will also be addressed. Generation Opportunity worked with Families Against Mandatory Minimums on the documentary. FAMM founder Julie Stewart was in the room during Angelos’ first sentencing hearing. It was, she said, a severe example of a worrisome trend in the criminal justice system. In 1980, the average drug offense sentence was four years. Now, it’s more than nine years. “Is the defendant twice as bad? Or have we just gone crazy with sentencing? I would say the latter,” Stewart told the Beast. For the Angelos case, she added, “we all know 55 years is too much.” “A lot of people just thought that because of the amount of time my brother was [sentenced to], he had done something terrible, just because of the ignorance that is out there about mandatory sentencing,” said Lisa Angelos, Weldon’s older sister and advocate. “Before the case, I had no idea that this was possible in America.” The judge who was forced to hand down the sentence, Paul Cassell, said the Angelos case is an example of “clear injustice marring the public perception” of the federal courts – and victimizing taxpayers who have to pay to keep him locked up. “We have in place in our country today some very draconian penalties that distort our whole federal sentencing scheme,” Cassell said. “When people look at a case like Weldon Angelos and see that he got 55 years, and they see other cases where victims have gotten direct physical or psychological injuries and don’t see a similar [result] from the system, they start to wonder if the system is irrational.” When he was sent to prison, Angelos’ children were small, now both are in their teens. Without their father, the family fell on hard financial times. His children rarely talk to him, Weldon’s sister says, because they can’t afford a cell phone on which they can be reached. “When I tell him stories about his kids, you can tell how very hard it is for him to hear it… to know that he can’t be here,” Lisa Angelos said. “It’s destroyed him in many ways.” The Angelos’ have waited for more than two years for word on their executive clemency request. The average successful clemency request takes approximately four years, according to his lawyer. Weldon Angelos deserves clemency, Osler said, because his sentencing “doesn’t correlate in this country with what’s wrong, and what those wrongs deserve.”

Like the majority of Americans, New Yorkers want to know what is in the food we're eating and feeding our families. But right now, genetically engineered (GMO) food isn't labeled, so it's hard to make informed decisions about the food we eat. Whether we want to avoid GMOs for environmental, ethical, religious or other reasons, without labels there is no clear way to know whether a food contains GMO ingredients. We label calories, fat and sodium, so why not GMOs? Please urge your legislator to support our right to know by co-sponsoring the Assembly bill to require the labeling of GMO foods.

Some RI lawmakers responded to a protest on a freeway against police abuses by proposing misguided laws on "interference with traffic"(S129, H5192). These bills apply not just to freeways but to many streets as well, can be used against someone inadvertently standing in the road as well as peaceful picketers or homeless people, propose an extended jail sentence as a penalty, and permit the threat of felony charges against those who have caused little or no harm. Whether last year's freeway protest against police abuses was right or wrong, it's a bad idea to respond by just giving the police more excessive power. http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText/BillText15/SenateText15/S0129.pdf

In every state except Mississippi and West Virginia, parents can legally choose to not vaccinate their children against common illnesses before enrolling them in school. The consequence of these vaccination loopholes has been the re-emergence of diseases like the measles—an illness that had all but been eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are over 100 reported cases in more than a dozen states, and the U.S. is "likely to see more cases." Mississippi hasn’t seen a measles outbreak since 1992 and West Virginia, not since 1994. That’s because neither state permits children to enroll in kindergarten without getting their full roster of vaccines—no matter their parents’ personal or spiritual beliefs. The anti-vaccine movement puts our most vulnerable populations at risk, including children under 12 months who simply cannot get vaccinated. Public health must trump parental choice. Tell your governor to introduce legislation to ban all belief-based vaccination exemptions.

Because the University of Wisconsin College system is one of the best in our nation, and also because the funds that will be cut from that system will also lead to firings, loss of students, and the online programs at these schools will be handed out to for-profit colleges. Our education should be our top priority and these cuts should be stopped.

It is outrageous that hard working people like James Robertson must walk 21 miles a day just to get to work! Southeast Michigan transit has failed Mr. Robertson AND thousands of others who struggle every day struggle just to get around. This is a crisis that has continued for far too long! It is time for our region's leaders to solve it!

Products containing PFOA or any of its derivatives have proven to be deadly to avian life and linked to human cancers. Thousands, perhaps millions of domestic birds have suffered horrific, suffocating deaths due to PFOA toxicity. On 01/11/2015 I witnessed my three parrots suffocate in their own blood after using a product made with PFOA or its derivative. Stop poisoining our innocent avian life. We, the consumers demand to be WARNED of the presence of such toxic chemical in any product sold to us.

Our entire country has been and is continuously affected, harmed and ill informed by virtue of NEWS CORP consistently and willfully misrepresenting opinions, obfuscations, half-truths and probably blatant lies, as fact. This has led most recently to a most embarrassing international incident tarnishing the very reputation of the entire United States in the eyes of the rest of the world, including some of our very close allies, causing them to question our veracity, understanding and discrimination of Fact versus Fiction.

This petition has been started in opposition to the people in Madison who have felt the need to villainize and discriminate against others simply on the basis of a personal lifestyle choice. Ultimately the opposition to this business is not about the business, it is about the people who keep the doors open. We live in a free country where everyone's rights and choices should be respected.

Our community members deserve to be heard, and gas stations should not be built adjacent to residential neighborhoods! Such an establishment will affect the health, safety, comfort, and general welfare of all our residents.

Gerawan workers are excited. The Los Angeles Unified School District Board (LAUSD), who contracts to purchase Gerawan’s products, is taking a stand for their rights. On February 10, the LAUSD Board will vote on a resolution asking its procurement office to inform the board about Gerawan Farming’s compliance with fair labor practices before any contracts with this vendor are brought to the board for approval. Can you sign the Gerawan workers’ petition in support of this resolution? Gerawan workers will deliver the signed petition when they testify in Los Angeles on February 10th. This vote will be held while an administrative judge in Fresno continues to preside over the months long state hearing regarding alleged flagrant labor law violations by Gerawan Farming Inc. The school board resolution “calls upon Gerawan Farming to comply with state and federal laws, including labor relations…and to immediately implement the agreement issued by the neutral mediator and the state of California.” The proposed LAUSD resolution vows to ensure “that agricultural vendors and suppliers be in compliance with all local, state and federal laws, including the Agricultural Labor Relations Act.” It also requests that the district’s “Procurement Services Division report back to the board updating Gerawan Farming’s compliance with fair labor practices before any contracts with this vendor are brought to the board for approval.” The Los Angeles City Council and Berkeley City Council both passed similar resolutions.