We need to face one of the greatest domestic humanitarian crisis that our country has seen since the Japanese Internment Camp post World War II and Segregation. Sadly, the approach of the 'resistance' has not been enough to face this crisis. We need to join non-profit local advocacy groups that are actually protesting at the border through a nationwide effort to take buses to the border. Currently, protesting at the border is much more dangerous than protesting in Washington. This is because the number of activists and the location of the protest is remote. Authorities currently have the power to punish local activists with felony charges - while protesters in DC get off with a slap of the wrist. The reason for this is lack of nationwide support for this issue. Yet - millions of people donated to Raices - a non-profit organization that helps people at the border. Unfortunately, Raices is limited in its power to stand up to the government's authority on separating children from their parents...thousands of which have gone missing. Active protest is needed even more than legal action. Mass bus protests to the south have a long history. Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. If it were not for the support of people that went to the South from across the country, voting rights would never have been enforced in this country. We believe that this kind of mass mobilization is necessary today at the border. Join us now to support the movement to bus it to the border. Please note by signing you are not committing to marching on the border. We are in the initial stages of this effort, to see if there is any nationwide interest, beyond the groups that currently focus on this issue. Thank you for your participation!

Open 530-1030 Monday through Friday Field Trips Real time notifications (sent right to your phone/e-mail) easy billing Health Habits (brushing teeth, washing hands, ect) Play based learning Community involvement School aged summer activities (grow a garden, make own food from garden goods grown) Art, Science, Sensory, Math, Social Emotional Open door policy Conferences (if chosen by parent) Scholastics 4K School readiness Inspire each child to be their own unique person building health positive relationships

We, concerned community members of Victor Ultra Omni, write in full support of Victor UltraOmni, a 21-year-old educator, organizer, thinker, and friend. As of March, Victor received multiple fully-funded graduate admissions from top Universities to pursue their Ph.D. This time, however, has been anything but celebratory. Pitzer College’s students, Campus Safety Officers, and especially their Dean of Students’ have subjected Victor to homo/transphobic and anti-Black violence. Victor came to study at the Claremont Colleges seeking refuge from such abuse, after first experiencing a litany of hate crimes at Hamilton College, where they began their undergraduate career. During their tenure at Pitzer, Victor has overcome recurring and nearly lethal institutional violence. Most recently, on March 8th, 2019, Victor received anonymous hate mail riddled with anti-black, xenophobic, homophobic and transphobic slurs from an account named “Trans Slayer.” Just the evening before, a Claremont Colleges Inc. unmarked Campus Safety officer, who was impersonating a police officer, followed and harassed Victor. The Dean of Students’ Office in collaboration with Corinne Vorenkamp, Pitzer College’s anti-Black part-time Title IX Coordinator, refused to investigate student retaliation against Victor. Mrs. Vorenkamp also further violated Victor’s Title IX rights by refusing to begin an investigation into Dean Sandra Vasquez’s institutional history of bias, particularly around anti-Blackness and anti-trans sentiment. Despite nearly a month of harassment, Victor is now under investigation by Pitzer College. The Pitzer Latinx Student Union fears retaliation for publicly supporting Victor, and has still not published a statement condemning the violent death threats and campus climate. Dean Sandra Vasquez’s retaliation has resulted in Victor being homeless, vulnerable to food insecurity, fired from both work-study jobs--effectively leaving them without income--and open to slander from students working in admissions, residence life, and Student Senate. We charge, The Claremont Colleges, Inc., especially Pitzer College, lead by the abuse of the current Dean of Students Sandra Vasquez, with failing to protect Victor and other Black and Brown trans students. In this political moment, we must be visible in standing unapologetically in solidarity with Black trans homeless youth-- often the most vulnerable members of the queer community. We write this with three concrete actions in mind. First: We demand a formal statement from Pitzer College condemning the anti-Black and trans-antagonistic acts their students have committed against Victor. By choosing to remain silent, Pitzer College officials and the larger community have made themselves complicit in the various forms of intimidation that Victor has faced. We ask that the Black Student Union and Office of Black Student Affairs receive a trans inclusivity training from the hosts of podcast Marsha’s Plate alongside the Transgender Law Center. We ask that the Diversity Committee, The Civil Rights’ Fund, and Student Senate’s Reserve Fund allocate parts of their budget for this training. Second: We call for the resignation of Pitzer’s Dean of Students, Sandra Vasquez. Not only has Dean Vasquez abdicated her responsibilities by ignoring Victor in their obvious time of need, she has violated Title IX and the California Safe Schools Act. Her career speaks to a lack of compassion, criminalization, dishonesty, and a lack of commitment to student life. Fueled by abuses of power and anti-Blackness, Dean Vasquez has sought to protect students actively retaliating against Victor Ultra Omni. Third: We ask that Laverne Cox cancel her commencement speech. Ms. Cox was selected as speaker largely due to Victor's work as Senate Diversity Chair. Pitzer has shown total apathy to the real needs of their Black trans students. We ask Dr. Laverne Cox, a pioneering community member, to stand in solidarity with Victor in holding Dean Vasquez accountable. We ask for Pitzer to implement Student Senate Bill R-55-03 to begin redress for trans students. We refuse to be silent when Black trans lives are threatened. We support the rights of all students to learn free from fear. We honor and support Victor in the face of anti-Blackness, anti-Latinx sentiments, and anti-TQLGB+ violence. We refuse to accept a world where some lives are deemed more worthy than others. Black trans lives matter and we demand Pitzer College hold its community accountable for this harassment and gross historical pattern of a failure to keep their Black students safe. Receipts of campus climate: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aT9xbanKtYR9h9TIU9p8HtspV80fc4Hp?usp=sharing thecenterforblacktransthought.org venmo: @bucks4yaboi

What if I told you YOU could save a life? We are all at risk because of the rise of vaccine-preventable disease in our country. It can end here!

A petition to ban single use plastics in Michigan and require substitution of biodegradable alternative products would be a great way to protect and promote environmental stewardship of the State of Michigan and of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

I'm a teacher and am infuriated by the subsidies coming out of the school budget to fund vanity projects of the 1% through Tax Increment Financing program!

The Kansas Senate has voted to put a $100 a year tax on electric vehicles and a $50 tax on hybrids. This will affect you in the future regardless of what you drive right now. You will one day be driving an electric car. I bought a hybrid because I wanted to reduce the pollution that is making our children sick. My next car is going to be an electric vehicle if I can still afford to keep it registered in Kansas. Because our former governor raided the highway funds is no reason to punish every low or zero emission car owner in Kansas for his mistake. It is unfair! No New Taxes! It is also a short-sighted tax, as it will raise only $300,000 next year for the highway fund. Encouraging the use of electric vehicles could potentially save us billions of dollars in healthcare costs. Air pollution, especially particulates, nitrogen oxides, and ozone are leading factors in lung diseases, cancer, and heart attacks. Electric vehicles reduce air pollution by half, or even more if charged from renewable energy. The electricity to charge them is produced at power plants and, the large power plants are about twice as efficient as internal combustion engines. Even if charged from a coal fired power plant, the electric vehicles would account for a 50% reduction in air pollution, or 75% if charged with Westar electricity which produces half of its energy from nuclear and wind. Which is the most fiscally responsible? Raising $300,000 with a tax on electric vehicles, or saving millions of dollars on healthcare costs? And, what value can be put on clean air and a healthy environment for our children and grandchildren?

Background It has come to our attention that Lido Island Community Association (LICA) Board of Directors (Board) and the Major Capital Improvements Committee (MCIC) have requested permission from the City of Newport Beach to redesign the medians, the windows to the bay and other public spaces on the island. The cost is estimated upwards of $100,000. Due to this cost and the extent of the proposed landscape changes, we, the undersigned, request such improvements undergo further and more comprehensive input from residents. An island-wide improvement is planned. However, information has been shared inequitably among residents about proposed changes. In February, Lido Isle residents whose homes border the landscaped islands located on Piazza Lido received a hand-delivered flyer informing them of an MCIC decision to re-landscape the Piazza medians. The flyer also invited these particular residents to attend a February 26 meeting at the Clubhouse to review proposed plans for Piazza Lido only. For most recipients, this notice was the first news of the project although meeting minutes of LICA Board (2/13/19) and MCIC (1/31/19) appear in the March 2019 Lido Islander. Residents living on other streets, i.e.non-recipients of the flyer, were given no notice of the February 26 meeting. To wit, the landscaping of the Piazza Lido medians is part of a larger plan to re-landscape all medians on Lido (Via Antibes; Via Genoa and Via San Remo) as well as parks off main streets on the island (Via Firenze, Koron/Soud, Orvieto/Soud, Waziers/Soud, Antibes/Nord). While efforts to improve the island landscapes are appreciated, many of the residents whose homes face the medians as well as others who pass by them daily, have specific concerns about the proposed improvements. At the same time, updating the Landscape Design Guidelines for Lido Isle is crucial. These guidelines will bring a comprehensive design to all landscapes on Lido in conformance with City standards and will serve as a template for future island improvements. Islanders deserve attractive landscapes consistent with other areas of comparable property values overseen by homeowner’s associations, for example, Newport Coast and Emerald Bay. Any proposed design should be in keeping with Lido’s Mediterranean heritage and consider water-wise garden practices as is consistent with Mediterranean landscapes. All Lido property owners’ dues ensure them input into decisions made in their interest. With the extraordinary resources available on Lido we should be setting the highest standard for innovation, conservation, and aesthetics within the City and beyond. While the undersigned appreciate the time and effort LICA has expended on these projects, we request further community-wide discussions before moving forward on any landscaping projects now under consideration. These issues affect all Lido residents. Concerns include the establishment of updated design guidelines by qualified professionals that provide for unity of design and plantings on Lido in conformance with City standards as well as equitable input by residents.

This is the height of hypocrisy, bad faith, and bullying. In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has launched a vicious attack on Kim Foxx -- the first black woman to ever serve as State’s Attorney for Cook County -- and her criminal justice reform agenda. The FOP says their attack is about Kim Foxx’s decision not to bring Jussie Smollett’s case to trial. But the FOP has consistently attacked Kim Foxx ever since she was elected on a platform of holding police accountable when they abuse their power. Here’s the ugly truth: Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police is cynically trying to politically kneecap the one official in Chicago with the power and the will to stand up to them. The fact is that the FOP has never cared much about the rule of law. Let’s look at their track record for the receipts. When Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17 year old Laquan McDonald in the back -- and then Van Dyke and other officers covered it up by lying on a police report and suppressing evidence -- the Fraternal Order of Police defended the dirty cops to the bitter end. Then, after the city fired Van Dyke for killing McDonald, the FOP gave the killer cop a job! For decades the FOP defended a disgraced Chicago cop, Jon Burge, who was fired for torturing people until they confessed to murders they didn’t commit, putting them on death row. When Burge was fired, the FOP tried to honor him with a float in a parade. They paid for his legal defense when he was finally brought up on charges years later. When Burge died last year, the FOP didn’t disavow his heinous actions. Instead, they declared, “The Fraternal Order of Police does not believe the full story about the Burge cases has ever been told.” Former FOP president Dean Angelo took it a step further, saying, “I don't know that Jon Burge got a fair shake based on the years and years of service that he gave the city.” This is just the tip of the iceberg. Time after time, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police has stood by crooked police officers who committed heinous acts that violate the rule of law, the public’s trust, and the oath they took to defend us all. We need to put their dishonest attacks on Kim Foxx in this context and recognize them for what they are: a nakedly political attempt to destroy the first black woman to serve as state’s attorney and hamper her reformist agenda. It could be that Kim Foxx erred in her handling Jussie Smollett’s case. But she certainly doesn’t deserve to lose her job or the public’s trust over one mistake. The fact is that the Chicago police union doesn’t care about Jussie Smollett. They don’t care about justice. They care about maintaining a culture of impunity and lawlessness for cops, an agenda that Kim Foxx opposes. Whatever we think of Jussie Smollett, now is the time for people of good will -- folks who believe that police should be held accountable when they violate the public’s trust -- to call out the Fraternal Order of Police for their bullying, bad-faith attacks on Kim Foxx.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation states “Research shows that placement into a secure detention facility can have an outsized impact on the ultimate case outcomes for court-involved youth – with potentially profound and negative consequences….Youth who spend time in custody are less likely to complete high school, less likely to find employment, and more likely to suffer mental health problems than comparable youth who are not detained. In addition detained youth are more likely to be re-arrested, adjudicated or convicted for new offenses and incarcerated than youth who remain at home awaiting court or pending placement”. · The Governor has recently been quoted as saying that the “Raise the Age” Bill is a progressive piece of legislation. He is sadly mistaken. New York State is the 49th out of 50 States to start treating 16 and 17-year-olds as juveniles and furthermore, the implementation of the Bill is outdated and regressive. There is a disconnect between the actual legislation and the implementation. · The State adopted a reform bill called “Close to Home” in 2012. This means that children should be kept in their communities and close to their families and not shipped away. The bill appears to apply only to New York City and not the surrounding counties. Therefore the State is encouraging Westchester County Department of Probation to build an 80 bed detention facility for a 14 county region. Most of these youth have not been adjudicated. The counties are: Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, Delaware, Broome, Duchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Columbia, Greene, Schoharie, Nassau and Suffolk. Some of the counties are over two (2) hours away. Shouldn’t the “Close to Home” policy be applied to all children in New York State? · As part of the Raise the Age agreement, New York State is willing to pay $1,200 a bed for County children and $2,400 for out of County, thus creating an incentive to ship children away from their communities. (In contrast, the 40 year old Youth Shelter Program of Westchester located in Mount Vernon has a per diem rate of $200 and provides many more services and a much lower recidivism rate than the County detention center.) Why these discrepancies in per diem rates? · The Raise the Age funding is limited to incarceration. It does not include any money for community prevention/diversion. We recommend that for every dollar spent on incarceration there be a dollar for dollar match for prevention/diversion. · Community Prevention/Diversion starts with the Police. When police officers are poised to arrest a youth they have many alternatives to arrest and incarceration at their disposal: community service; church sponsored youth groups; community centers with tutoring programs, youth courts; alternatives to incarceration centers; and wrap around mental health services all imbedded in the community. Arrest should be the last resort. · As compensation for a strain on the Juvenile Justice System New York State is providing money for construction and staffing of a jail for children. Is there data to justify this thinking? Is there an agency looking at the Juvenile Justice System as a whole? Will the incipient legalization or decriminalization of Marijuana affect the numbers? Will we continue to have a disproportionate number of Children of Color incarcerated in our County? Do we know who is being diverted and who is being incarcerated? Have we consulted with the other 48 States as to what is the most effective and appropriate system? This incarceration plan is a travesty for our young people and needs to be stopped, and re-evaluated. We need to redirect funding and reach deep into our communities to raise up the services that would welcome our youth as a diversion from incarceration. We need to do it NOW!

Right now, 1 in 3 American families struggle to afford diapers for their babies. We need to fix this, because when families can’t afford diapers, it can put a baby’s health at risk and negatively impact the overall financial well-being of a family. This is why we need to pass the Diaper Need Act of 2019. The inability to access diapers can force parents to keep their children in soiled diapers (exposing them to health risks) and can prevent them from enrolling their babies in childcare. And families who experience diaper need have increased stress on employment and finances. In fact, one impact study showed that over half of parents with diaper need missed work or school because they didn’t have enough diapers when dropping their children off at childcare. The Diaper Need Act that was introduced by US Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT) will create a $100 million program charged with distributing free diapers and diapering products (including cloth diapering supplies, diaper cream, and wipes) to neighborhoods across the nation to help reduce the diaper need among families. The bill also defines diapers as “medically necessary” so that families can purchase them through health savings accounts and HRAs.

I would like to catch the attention of the "World Wide Wild Life Federation" to help stop the trafficking and the extinction of the pangolins, also known as the anteater. They have been around for about 80 million years and have a lifespan of about twenty years. They are located in Africa, East Asia, India, and China. They are delicate, have needs that are not easily met in captivity, and therefore do not survive long when captured ... All species of pangolin are classified as "Threatened to Extinction" by the IUCN. Please help me save the pangolins!