ParentsTogether Action

New Campaign Campaigns

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  Stop arresting and prosecuting Black Kindergarteners!

  Recently: - A Delaware State trooper arrested a third-grader over the theft of $1 - A 5-year-old with ADHD was charged with “battery on a police officer” in California - A Florida officer arrested a 6-year-old girl and zip-tied her hands The National Juvenile Justice Network recommends 14 as the minimum age for prosecution. But in most states -- 30 total -- there is no minimum age for at all prosecution. That means little kids who can’t read, write, or understand the concept of a crime can be prosecuted. And these ridiculous prosecutions disproportionately impact Black kids. In North Carolina, for example, nearly half of complaints are against Black children despite them being 22% of the population. This creates a school-to-prison pipeline that starts before kids even know what a “prison” is. We must end the school-to-prison pipeline and stop arresting and prosecuting little kids!

  64 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
• AT&T: Help Families Afford Remote Learning

  Distance learning is hard enough, but for 9 million kids without reliable internet access, remote school is nearly impossible. AT&T, one of the largest internet providers in the U.S, had been offering low-cost, high-speed internet to families at $10/month - but the waiver expires September 30, just as the school year is ramping up.

  28,916 of 30,000 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  Stop Child Marriage!

  A new report found that hundreds of thousands of children were married in the US over the past 20 years. These children are usually girls and usually marry adult men. Some are even forced to marry their own rapists. Children married to adults face high rates of abuse, as well as losing opportunities for education and careers. They are not protected by laws against statutory rape, and often cannot turn to local Child Protective Services Agencies or agencies meant to protect adult victims of abuse. Five states have banned this, but it’s perfectly legal in most. We need to stop letting these children slip through the cracks - Congress should make these marriages illegal.

  244 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Raz Pollex
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  Stop Racist Proctoring in Schools!

  My daughter Amaya could not easily sit down to take a biology quiz like her White classmates because proctoring software would not “recognize” her as a person. She took the test at noon with sunlight streaming through her window, and turned on all the lights in her room. It still didn’t work. She tried 10 times. She literally had to shine an LED flashlight in her face before the software would allow her to take the quiz. This type of bias piles additional stress and anxiety onto kids of color who are already dealing with the challenges of remote learning, and it tells them they don’t belong. During remote learning, thousands of schools have paid billions for proctoring software that will watch kids via their computers to ensure that they aren’t cheating. However, this type of facial recognition software is notorious for not working well on people with dark skin because the companies that develop the product mostly test it on white people. The consequences for children of color can be devastating -- higher stress, unfounded accusations of cheating, and a clear message from their school that they aren’t welcome. And it's not just students of color. Students with facial tics or differences, neurodivergent students, and students with anxiety have all been discriminated against by online proctoring software. As a special educator who has worked in elementary education for years, I know the harm this will do to kids. Please join me in urging Secretary Cardona to support equity in education and reject the use of invasive, racially biased online proctoring software in K-12 schools.

  41 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  TikTok: No unrealistic “beauty” filters for kids

  "Thank God these weren't around when I was 13 but also... how are teens supposed to learn to accept themselves with this sh*t?". - Demi Lovato, apologizing to her TikTok fans for using unrealistic beauty filters. Demi is right. TikTok -- immensely popular with teen girls -- has multiple types of beauty filters that let young people change their skin tone, jaw structure, facial features, body shape and more. The result is images that are more computer-generated than real -- doe-eyes, poreless skin, chiseled jawlines, and emaciated stomachs. These filters create an impossible standard for young girls forming opinions of themselves and send girls an unmistakable message that they are “not enough.” TikTok should immediately disable all beauty filters for teen accounts to support healthy and realistic standards for teen girls. It’s clear these filters fuel depression, disordered eating….TikTok knows exactly what it is doing.

  237 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  Make teachers a priority group for Covid-19 vaccine and re-open schools safely

  56.4 million children and their families have been suffering without in-person school for almost a year. The fastest way to end that suffering is to get teachers vaccinated quickly. Teachers are essential workers and giving them high priority to receive the Covid-19 vaccine in phase 1B is the only way to ensure that all of our schools can reopen safely and quickly. The loss of in-person school has already impacted the mental health and growth of this generation of students. Most American kids are showing some signs of mental health problems and millions are significantly behind in academic and social development. Other kids face significant hunger and food insecurity due to the loss of school meals. Parents also rely on teachers and schools to provide child care when they need to work during the day. Without this resource, families have been forced to reduce their work hours or leave their jobs, losing income they need to pay their bills. Students need to return to school as fast as possible, but we cannot achieve that goal without making sure that teachers and support staff are given the protection they need to return to the classroom.

  98 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  Kids can’t vote, but OUR vote shapes their future.

  Here's the kids' letter to all voters: Dear Grownup, We need your help. As kids, our role in the election is usually seen as sitting by and then living with whatever president we get. But not this year. We can’t just sit by and let this happen, while innocent people get hurt, and guilty people go free. No one benefits from a world like this. But by law, we don’t have a say in this, we don’t have voices. You Grownups are the only ones with voices. Last time when grownups screwed this up, kids got put in cages. Separated from their families for life for no reason other than the color of their skin. Black people keep dying from police shootings for no reason. And so many more people are going to die from Coronavirus. And the only help our president can offer is to tell us to eat disinfectant! We want to be able to learn--we want to be able to go back to school. We need leaders who care about the whole world. If we don’t do something to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, the worst results of climate change will be impossible to avoid. So here’s what we’re asking: If you care about what you can do to help the whole world, if you care about your kids, if you care about our future, pledge to vote with kids in mind--and bring as many people as you can with you. Vote for us, the people who can’t. -Osa, Ishara and Charlotte, Age 11, New York

  353 of 400 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  Petition: Stop Apple giving kids access to chat-with-strangers apps

  Personal stories underscore the danger posed to kids by such apps. After confiscating her 14-year-old daughter’s phone, one mom was shocked to find a flood of sexually explicit photos from older men delivered via stranger-chat app Yubo, many pressuring her to reciprocate. Reviews on the App Store detail how many of these apps are filled with people asking for sexually explicit images. At a minimum, Apple must: - Block anyone whose Apple ID shows they are underage from adult-only apps - Require that adult apps institute substantive age verification processes and close loopholes that allow them to ignore evidence that a user is underage. - Enforce Apple’s own guidelines and remove chat roulette apps from the App Store

  130 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  Petition: Don't Let Child Pornography Thrive on Android!

  Apple recently announced an important new step in the fight against child sexual abuse: they’ll scan all new iPhones for CSAM and report it. This change means abuse can be discovered much sooner -- not days or weeks after when images are uploaded or shared -- and could save child victims and protect their privacy. These scans are done entirely by machines that exclusively look for a “digital fingerprint” of abusive material and flag it as potentially illegal -- a solution that balances the welfare and privacy of kids with that of iPhone users. Android phones, owned and operated by Google, don’t have the same device scanning in place. Users must upload photos to a service for abusive images to be detected -- allowing millions of images to be shared stealthily and victims to go undetected for longer. Google, stop failing kids and start scanning for CSAM on Android devices.

  434 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben
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  Stop forcing teachers to lie about racism.

  Since the Black Lives Matter protests erupted last summer, we’ve been in the midst of a national moment of reckoning around our painful history of racial exclusion. This has been driven in paet by brave young people asking tough questions and speaking out for justice. But in Republican-led states across the country, Legislatures have been responding by trying to ban teachers and students from even having the conversation. New laws, and bills under consideration in states like Idaho, Texas and Oklahoma would ban teachers from teaching about current events like Black Lives Matter, or even talking about systemic racism. Kids should be learning to think critically in school - and to understand the full history of our country, even the painful parts. And our politicians should be focused on helping students and teachers who are still struggling with fallout from COVID--rather than punishing teachers for speaking the truth.

  6,090 of 7,000 Signatures

  Created by Justin Ruben