Anti-Bullying Legislation

 
A message from AAUW:

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the introduction in the Senate of the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) and the one-year anniversary of the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. At the White House conference last year, President Obama spoke of creating "climates in our schools where all children can feel safe, climates in our schools where all children feel like they belong."

 

SNDA will accomplish that by extending to sexual orientation and gender identity the same protections against harassment and discrimination that are already in place regarding race, gender, religion, or disability. 38 Senators and 157 House members, and dozens of churches and community groups have endorsed this legislation, but it is unclear whether it will get a vote.

 

We can't afford to wait! After several tragic suicides, new initiatives aimed at preventing bullying and harassment, and AAUW's ground-breaking report on sexual harassment in school, the public and the media are finally paying attention to the critical issue of bullying. Now is the time to pass strong, meaningful anti-bullying and harassment legislation. 

 

Take action: Ask your senators to cosponsor the Student Non-Discrimination Act (S. 555)!

 

All students deserve a safe and nurturing environment in which to pursue their educational goals. Yet currently, there is no federal law that explicitly protects students on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. SNDA would protect students from various forms of bullying and harassment, such as sex stereotyping and bullying based on their actual or perceived gender identity, and would give students the ability to enforce protection from discrimination and harassment.

 

As Congress works to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it should address the bullying and harassment problem. Since 1965, ESEA has served as the fundamental blueprint for education in America, yet it doesn't currently provide any protections against bullying and harassment for students. ESEA is long overdue for this update, and SNDA is an excellent way to begin addressing this pervasive national problem. 

 

Call your Senators and encourage them to cosponsor and pass the Student Non-Discrimination Act. All students have the right to a safe education! You can call by clicking the "Take Action" link above or by going to http://bit.ly/yCDVAt.

 

Remember: You can always help strengthen AAUW’s efforts to protect students bymaking a tax-deductible donation to AAUW's Public Policy Fund!
Double your impact! Tweet, Facebook, and forward this action alert to friends and family. 

No Pink Slime!

A message from CREDO Action:
Pink slime is a beef-like product created by grinding together connective tissue and beef scraps normally used in dog food, and treated with ammonia hydroxide to kill salmonella and E. coli.

It is "not meat" according to a 35-year veteran USDA microbiologist,¹ and was recently rejected by the likes of McDonalds, Taco Bell and Burger King.²

So it's pretty disturbing that the USDA continues feeding this stuff to kids, and plans to buy seven million pounds of it for school lunches.

Tell the USDA: Stop putting pink slime "Lean Beef Trimmings" in kids' school lunches. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

In an all too familiar story, despite concerns raised by USDA inspectors and minimal safety inspections, the USDA approval of Beef Products Incorporated's "Lean Beef Trimmings" was pushed through by USDA undersecretary JoAnne Smith, a George H. W. Bush appointee and former president of the National Cattleman's Association.

The USDA allows beef products like hamburgers to contain up to 15% of the ammonia-treated, meat-ish stuff, but inadequate labeling requirements prevent parents from knowing if it's included in the meat being served at their kids' school.

Tell the USDA: Don't buy any more pink slime for school lunches. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Aside from the lack of nutritional value, pink slime raises a number of health and safety concerns. The New York Times exposed in 2009 that despite being treated with ammonia, three E. coli contaminations and four dozen salmonella contaminations occurred between 2005 and 2009, during which time school lunch officials three times temporarily banned hamburger makers from using pink slime from one facility in Kansas.³

Ammonium hydroxide is itself of course harmful to eat, and can potentially turn into ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in homemade explosives.

Kids need nutritious food to be able to learn in school, and many of the tens of millions of kids who rely on school lunches come from low-income families where they are less likely to get a healthy diet. While pink slime is a nutritionally inferior and potentially risky product, the school lunch program saves only three cents more per pound of ground beef by continuing to put this filler in kids' hamburgers.⁴

Over the past few months, numerous fast-food chains have rejected the product and say they no longer use it. School lunch officials should clearly follow suit.

Click below to automatically sign the petition to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Audrey Rowe, USDA Food and Nutrition Service Administrator:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=5538180&id=36270-2593817-%3DUJniCx&t=10

Thank you for fighting for safe food in school lunches.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

1. "Partners in 'slime': Feds keep buying ammonia-treated ground beef for school lunches," The Daily, 3/5/12
2. "Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals," Huffington Post, 3/5/12
3. "Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned," New York Times, 12/30/09
4. "Pink Slime, Ammonium Hydroxide Fast Food Ground Beef Additive, Dropped By McDonald's Et Al.," Huffington Post, 1/27/12

Military Reading Your Emails?

From DemandProgress.com:
The message still hasn't sunk in. Congress is proposing yet another law to monitor your activities on the Internet -- Here's the ACLU's take on John McCain's new cybersecurity bill:

"This is a privacy nightmare that will eventually result in the military substantially monitoring the domestic, civilian Internet."

Will you fight back against McCain's legislation by emailing your lawmakers? Just click here.

There's a power struggle brewing over cybersecurity, with two Senate factions butting heads. One group is backing a bill that is - surprisingly - not horrendous in its privacy implications.

(You can take partial credit for this, as that bill was written with every desire to avoid awakening the powerful coalition that killed SOPA a few weeks ago.)

But McCain's side wants to enable the military to snoop on civilian Internet users:

As Reuters notes, the "types of information that could be shared are broad, and the data would go to 'cybersecurity centers' that specifically include the National Security Agency's Threat Operations Center and the U.S. Cyber Command Joint Operations Center."

We have a key opportunity to help steer this debate away from McCain's inanity and towards a more reasonable alternative.

Please click here to email your lawmakers and urge them to oppose McCain's bill.

Thanks.

-Demand Progress

PS: Will you urge your friends to join our cause?  You can forward this email or just use these links.

	If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
	If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet

Overturn Citizens United

A message from CREDO Action:

We deserve a country where our elected officials are not bought and paid for by big corporations.

But the Citizens United vs. FEC Supreme Court decision overturned over a century of precedent and opened the floodgates for unlimited amounts of corporate money to flow into our political system.

Shockingly, the court came to this decision based on the notion that a corporation is legally a "person" entitled to First Amendment rights, and by equating a corporation's right to spend unlimited amounts of money influencing an election with our right to free speech.

Tell your senators and member of Congress to support a constitutional amendment to overturnCitizens United and end corporate personhood. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Even before the

 Citizens United decision, we too often saw the interests of Main Street subverted in favor of the interests of Wall Street.

But with the Citizens United decision now the law of the land, large corporations have the power to spend unlimited amounts of money from their general treasuries to buy elections.

To put things in perspective, the roughly $745 million Barack Obama raised to run for President in the 2008 election cycle (which was the most money raised by any candidate ever to run for office in the U.S.) is dwarfed by the $45 billion in profits a single company (ExxonMobil) made in 2008.

What's more, Citizen United opened loopholes that allow corporations to hide their campaign expenditures by laundering the money through non-profit advocacy organizations.

Tell your senators and member of Congress to support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end corporate personhood. Click here to sign the petition.

The Supreme Court recently indicated that it would hear a challenge to Montana's campaign finance law. While it's possible the Court could narrow the scope of Citizens United, it's very unlikely that the Supreme Court will fix the issue any time soon.

But, because Congress cannot pass a law that supersedes a Supreme Court ruling, it may take a constitutional amendment to undo the worst aspects of the Citizens United decision and end corporate personhood.

Clearly, the bar to successfully amending the Constitution is very high. But with 85% of the public opposed to the Citizens United decision, there is a potential for a broad coalition of Democrats, Republicans and Independents who all want to restore our democracy.

And let's remember, the stakes are too high to allow inaction on this issue. It's no exaggeration to say that the Citizens United decision fundamentally threatens the integrity of our democracy.

We need a government of, for and by the people. And sadly, we might need to work really hard to re-establish the common sense and democratic view that only people are people, not corporations.

Your senators and member of Congress need to hear from you, regardless of where they stand on this issue. We need to show them that their constituents are part of a broad movement demanding action - not only to convince them that overturning Citizens Unitedis the right thing to do, but also that it's possible.

Today, take a step to be part of that movement.

Click the link below to sign our petition telling your senators and member of Congress to support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end corporate personhood:

http://act.demandprogress.org/go/496?akid=1244.1607650.Our1rq&t=12

Thank you for standing up for democracy.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets