Portland has a long history of protests. President George H W Bush referred to my hometown as "Little Beirut" because he was greeted by protests as soon as he stepped off the plane. I have personally attended many demonstrations. I felt safe enough to bring my young daughter and her friends. Portland demonstrations are largely peaceful, orderly and more like a festival than a protest. Since the DHS and other federal agents have arrived this has not been the case. I will continue to protest for a cause that I feel needs attention but I no longer feel safe. The lives and physical welfare of innocent citizens are at risk. Our government leaders need to take action to protect Portlanders exercising their 1st Amendment rights. While Governor Brown and Mayor Wheeler may not have the authority to order the federal agents to leave, they can send the state and local police to stand between them and the protesters. This is an opportunity for the Portland Police Bureau to prove that it is here to protect and serve the community. The real violent agitators are federal agents. If we can’t make them leave, please sign to protect Portlanders from them.

Today’s election results for New York's 16th district are a major victory for progressives across the country who demanded fundamental change in Congress. On the most consequential foreign policy issues—illegal wars, regime change, brutal sanctions, and bombs sales to dictatorships—the Democratic House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair has been on the wrong side. We are asking Congressman Joaquin Castro, currently HFAC Vice-Chair, to run for committee chair on a bold, progressive agenda to overhaul the status quo and make sure that the priorities of grassroots Democrats—peace, diplomacy, and human rights—are finally the priorities of the committee.

All over the United States we are witnessing the negative impact of Confederate monuments aimed at controlling the narrative of history and attempting to perpetuate notions of white supremacy. These monuments were originally installed to revise the history of the Confederacy as an honorable cause fostering false ideologies by a small group of wealthy donors. Although we do acknowledge they represent a piece of history, they are by no means an honest nor accurate depiction of everyones history. By removing the statues, we are making the public space a space for all people in the community to take pride. We are also making a statement that Black people are welcome and racism will not be perpetuated, nor tolerated in Savannah. Please sign this petition to remove and relocate the monument!

Atlanta must ensure the safety of its communities of color who are more susceptible to COVID-19 due to more residents who are considered “high risk” (specifically pre-existing conditions such as heart disease, asthma, and other respiratory challenges). With cases surging in Fulton County, including within the mayor’s own family, this lawsuit and emergency order are both rooted in partisanship and a lack of scientific reasoning. Atlanta is home to a vibrant college and working community—the governor’s weak stance will be the root cause of continuous death in Atlanta. This decision is not only ignoring the safety of the people of color who reside in Atlanta, but shows bias as he has not also sued other mayors mandating masks. Kemp must halt his biased actions against Keisha Lance Bottoms and do his job by supporting the mayor by ending his divisive and ineffective partisan policies NOW!

Brian Kemp exercised unconstitutional authority over localities and undermined their right to "Home Rule" and the ability to take action to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.

The NRSC has taken hundreds of thousands from Occidental/Anadarko Petroleum, the company responsible for the 2017 Firestone home explosion. The claim that Gov. John Hickenlooper did not levy a fine against Anadarko is false. An 18M fine was levied against Anadarko after a nearly three-year investigation into the tragedy initiated by Hickenlooper's administration. The NRSC is using donations from Occidental/Anadarko to finance an ad making false claims about the response to the Firestone home explosion over the objections of the survivor of the tragedy. This almost incomprehensible act of hypocrisy and malice toward the victims of negligence by the oil and gas industry cannot be allowed to stand. The NRSC must take this ad down and apologize to Erin Martinez.

OUR SURVIVAL DEPENDS UPON SCIENCE NOT PARTISANSHIP. THIS VIRUS CARES NOT WHETHER ONE IS A REPUBLICAN, DEMOCRAT OR ANYTING IN BETWEEN. IT IS AN ORGANISM BEST UNDERSTOOD BY THE WOMEN AND MEN OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE. MEANWHILE OUR POLITICAL EMISSARIES ARE STYMIED IN POSTURING AND PARTISANSHIP. WE ARE A COUNTRY ADRIFT. NOW IS THE TIME TO LET SCIENCE AND MEDICINE BE OUR GUIDE, BEFORE ITS TOO LATE. IF WE DO NOT RAISE OUR VOICES NOW, WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO LATER.

Parents, students, teachers and school employees want to be back in brick and mortar schools as soon as it is safely possible. We are calling on you, our county commissioners to shut down all non-essential businesses immediately to slow the community spread of COVID. We are calling for a substantial increase in testing and contract tracing. We are calling for maximum transparency on COVID data, including which local child care centers are dealing with a COVID outbreak. We are calling for a carefully measured reopening that does not begin until we have 14 days of declining cases in a row AND a positivity rate of 5% or less. We are calling for financial and community support for furloughed workers so they can continue to provide for their families during the necessary shut down. We are calling for a moratorium on evictions and rent relief for furloughed workers and affected businesses. We are calling for a county wide limit on all indoor gatherings to 10 people or less. We are calling for adequate PPE protection for our social services workers so that they can continue supporting families and investigating abuse allegations during the shut down. We are calling for adequate PPE for our front line healthcare workers so they can safely take care of our community.

We don’t want to set CITA apart from OHS, adding Osbornes name to the marquee will bring a sense of unity and pride to the school and community.

While high tech companies and corporations are profiting upwards of millions to billions of dollars during the pandemic, CTCs are preparing for the upcoming academic year with furloughs, laying off faculty, and discontinuing tenure tracks. Our CTCs and their faculty, staff, and students deserve better, especially our students of color. While long term investments centering racial equity support our CTCs and students, austerity will only hurt them. Our CTCs have always been pillars of higher education in Washington state, but they are now even more important as our state faces the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences. Currently, 1 in 7 Washington workers are unemployed. As more and more workers are being pushed into unemployment, we need both a strong workforce and support for our most vulnerable communities who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. CTCs can be the key to recovery for both Washington’s economy and its communities. Investing in CTCs keeps CTC faculty and staff employed while providing the resources needed to train and retrain Washington’s students and workforce. We urge state Senators and Representatives to consider CTC budgets from an equity lens, especially as CTCs provide more accessible resources to Washington’s communities of color. 45% of Washington CTC students are also students of color, and COVID-19 has already had a disproportionate effect on people of color. Systemically racist forces such as redlining, racial housing segregation, and limited resources on reservations contribute to higher rates of infection in these communities. Budget cuts due to COVID-19 would only affect these communities even more negatively. Washington’s CTCs serve 60% of our students while only receiving 40% of the state funding for higher education. Our CTCs already receive less of a share of the state funding compared to private institutions. CTCs are not only an affordable source of education for communities of color as well as low income students, but they also provide the support they need through programs such as TRIO, diversity and multicultural programs, and academic and career counseling. We also know that when budgets are cut at CTCs, diversity programs are cut first. It’s already difficult to attend school, especially as a student of color, and these programs are vital resources for students to find a supportive community while in school. Budget cuts will lead to both the defunding of these resources vital to student success and an increase in tuition, making CTCs even more inaccessible at an especially critical time. Our students need investment now more than ever.

The United States Postal Service offers crucial services for Americans nationwide -- including enabling millions to vote safely from home this year. But if Trump’s new postmaster general gets his way, the agency will become so overburdened that it can no longer reliably provide these services. That means voters' ability to cast an absentee ballot during this pandemic will be limited -- potentially disenfranchising countless Americans in November, or forcing them to risk their health at the polls. Since the Postal Service’s founding, USPS workers have been committed to ensuring that every piece of mail gets delivered in a timely, reliable fashion -- and that the mail is picked up from every address every day, even despite staffing shortages. But DeJoy -- a Trump mega-donor with no previous USPS experience -- just implemented extreme new regulations that will inhibit postal workers’ ability to do their jobs. He is eliminating all overtime, cutting all extra trips, and directly instructing mail carriers to leave mail behind at distribution centers -- if delivering it might extend their hours. This will lead to serious delivery delays of everything from life-saving medications to vote-by-mail ballots and 2020 Census forms. And it’s particularly dangerous as we get closer to Election Day -- when there will be a substantial increase in vote-by-mail usage across the country, straining the Postal Service’s now artificially limited capacity. DeJoy claims these changes will cut costs -- but more likely, they’ll put the already beleaguered agency in even deeper financial peril, while also crushing customers’ confidence in the USPS. Instead, our senators need to step up for the Postal Service and follow the House’s lead in passing crucial funding to save it. Right now, we need a massive outcry directed at DeJoy from everyday Americans who rely on the Postal Service. Add your name today.

We would like NFCS to offer free credit recovery for all high school students who require it. COVID-19 has created an extremely difficult experience for all of us, having had to continue to work, support our families, and also learn to be high school teachers, paraprofessionals, etc. Some of us have done this as grandparents on fixed incomes, as parents who have lost employment during this time, as survivors of COVID-19, or just as parents who have been trying to navigate a new terrain of living for which none of us were prepared. Unfortunately, we are now tasked by New Foundations Charter High School to take on the additional burden of paying for summer school for our students who were not successful during remote learning. We applaud the effort of many teachers but as you can imagine, many of our students were, also, not prepared for this event. Our children were conditioned to learning with reliable assistance, with peers, and the shift to remote learning was difficult. Many of us are caregivers for multiple students in multiple grades, of students with disabilities, and people who have had to try and support our kids while trying to sustain our own livelihood. This is why it is extremely disappointing that we are now having to emotionally support our children through the possibility of retention because some of us are not able to afford the cost of summer school. We need you to understand that their inability to pass these courses was not merely a reflection of their academic abilities and effort; any grading of any student during this pandemic was more a grade on a child’s life circumstances than it was on any single child’s academic ability. We ask that New Foundations Charter High School pay the cost of summer school for students who are unable to afford it and reimburse the cost of summer school for the students who were required to pay in order to earn credit. To impose such a financial burden on families during a worldwide crisis is unjust and borderline cruel. Our children could, yes, simply be retained next school year but educators are well aware of the long-term research that links retention to adverse outcomes. Students and families should not be penalized because of a crisis that even our government is struggling to manage. We want nothing more than the best for our students. We are asking that NFCS support us as caregivers with the utmost compassion.