Take Action

Help Prevent a Bhopal in the US

Nation Action on August 14, 2012 - 11:04 AM ET

The bulk use and storage of poison gases like chlorine at chemical facilities and wastewater and drinking water plants currently puts millions of Americans at risk of a Bhopal magnitude chemical disaster. In fact, as Greenpeace's John Deans points out at thenation.com, one in three people in this country live in the danger zones around the highest risk plants.

TO DO

It is time for President Obama to authorize the EPA to fully implement chemical disaster prevention under the Clean Air Act. This could help temper the risk of chemical disaster. In recent months, fifty-nine organizations filed an official petition with the EPA while more than 60,000 people have signed a petition calling for safer chemical plants. Add your name to the cause. After weighing in, share this post (and this interactive map) with friends, family and your Facebook and Twitter communities.

TO READ

In this post and related slide show at Huffington Post, Deans details ten of the most dangerous chemical plants in the US.

TO WATCH

For this video, Greenpeace talked to residents of Los Angeles about local chemical plants that put their communities at risk.

A weekly guide to meaningful action, this blog connects readers with resources to channel the outrage so many feel after reading about abuses of power and privilege. Far from a comprehensive digest of all worthy groups working on behalf of the social good, Take Action seeks to shine a bright light on one concrete step that Nation readers can take each week. To broaden the conversation, we’ll publish a weekly follow-up post detailing the response and featuring additional campaigns and initiatives that we hope readers will check out. Toward that end, please use the comments field to give us ideas. With your help, we can make real change.

End Polluter Welfare

Nation Action on July 26, 2012 - 10:47 AM ET

Summer 2012 has broken thousands of heat records so far, bringing misery to millions of Americans. The United States is suffering its worst drought in fifty years, leading the Department of Agriculture to declare 1,000 counties—one of every three in the nation—natural disaster zones. Meanwhile, President Obama, writes Mark Hertsgaard in the new issue of The Nation, has remained shamefully silent on climate change, refusing to say a word about what is fueling these disasters.

TO DO

There's still time to trigger the reaction that would make the 2012 heat wave a landmark event, but the impetus will have to come from citizens rather than mainstream politicians. Implore your elected reps to support the End Polluter Welfare Act—sponsored in the House by Keith Ellison and in the Senate by Bernie Sanders—which seeks to end the $11 billion annual subsidy that taxpayers give the richest industry in history. After you’ve weighed in, share this post with friends, family and your Facebook and Twitter communities. And, if you have children, sign on to Climate Parents, a new initiative co-founded by Hertsgaard and longtime organizer Lisa Hoyos to demand action on behalf of a huge, yet largely voiceless constituency: America's youth.

TO READ

In a sweeping essay for Rolling Stone, seminal climate change writer and activist Bill McKibben calculates global warming’s terrifying new math and calls for the climate movement to begin a divestment campaign against Big Oil, similar to the divestment drives that helped end apartheid in South Africa.

TO WATCH

Hertsgaard recently joined Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! to talk about how Climate Parents might be able to marshall the moral authority to increase the national urgency to curb fossil fuels.

Paid Sick Days for All

Nation Action on July 25, 2012 - 12:16 PM ET

As Katrina vanden Heuvel blogged recently, paid sick leave is the kind of pro-family policy that we should be able to take for granted in a civilized democracy. By averting senseless firings, it reduces unemployment. By letting sick people stay home, it advances public health. Momentum is growing on the local level but federal legislation has stalled in the face of the anti-regulation crowd's well-funded opposition.

TO DO

Urge your elected reps to support the Healthy Families Act, which would guarantee up to seven paid sick days per year for workers to recover from their own illness or care for a sick family member. After weighing in, share this post with your friends, family and Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

The Institute for Women's Policy Research has compiled a comprehensive set of resources, briefing papers, articles and comparative studies outlining the critical importance of family leave and paid sick days in the modern economy.

TO WATCH

In this comment, Toni Park, a restaurant worker without benefits, talks about the times when she or her children have been sick and she has lost pay because of it.

Ad Policy

Investigate Sex Abuse at Lackland

Nation Action on July 19, 2012 - 1:26 PM ET

Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has become the center of the nation’s biggest military sex abuse case in years. Over the past several months, a widespread sexual crime epidemic has been uncovered at the camp, reports Soumya Karlamangla in a new report at thenation.com. Twelve of the base’s instructors have been accused of either rape, sodomy and aggravated sexual assault and at least thirty-one female trainees have been identified as victims.

TO DO

Dozens of lawmakers are calling for a Congressional hearing to investigate the incidents at Lackland. Hoping to build momentum, Protect Our Defenders, an organization dedicated to combating the prevalence sexual violence in the military, recently launched a petition demanding an immediate hearing. Add your name to the call. After weighing in, share this info with friends, family and your Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

Juliette Kayyem’s opinion piece in the Boston Globe debunked the pernicious notion that sexual abuse in the military is somehow tied to the the emergence of women in closer proximity to combat. Kayyem calls this argument a complete ruse and contends that women in combat are not only not a cause of sexual assault, but they could, in fact, be the cure.

TO WATCH

In this recent CNN interview, Representative Jackie Speier argues that an independent inquiry is immediately required and makes clear the magnitude of the scandal at Lackland, where every American airman (a fifth of whom are women) goes for basic training.

Ending Solitary Confinement

Nation Action on July 12, 2012 - 2:03 PM ET

With some 80,000 prisoners in solitary, the United States leads the world in isolating its citizens as well as incarcerating them. Though growing local and national movements are fighting solitary confinement as costly, dangerous and fundamentally inhumane and have made great headway in some places, in New York State, report Jean Casella and James Ridgeway in the new issue of The Nation, the prison system is in effect rigged to keep thousands of inmates in solitary for weeks, months, years, even decades.

TO DO

In the first-ever hearing of its kind, a Senate panel heard testimony recently on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in US prisons. Casella and Ridgeway’s organization, Solitary Watch, is urging citizens to contact Committee Chair Dick Durbin and other members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, thanking them for holding the hearings and imploring them to take further action. The ACLU is also sponsoring a public statement to show widespread opposition to the misuse of solitary confinement. Join the call, and check out the venerable civil liberty group’s page of activist resources detailing how to get more deeply involved in the fight against solitary confinement. After you’ve weighed in, share this information with friends, family and your Facebook and Twitter communities.

TO READ

In a 2009 New Yorker essay, Dr. Atul Gawande rightly asked : “If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any country in history has?”

TO WATCH

Many of the witnesses called to testify at Durbin’s recent hearing described how solitary confinement can cause intense suffering and mental illness. A recent episode of Democracy Now! featured Anthony Graves, a former Texas prisoner who was fully exonerated of a murder conviction after spending eighteen years behind bars, much of that time in solitary confinement, and veteran journalist Ridgeway explaining why this practice needs to be stopped.

Stop the TPP

Nation Action on June 26, 2012 - 5:46 PM ET

Behind closed doors corporate America is implementing a stealth strategy to consolidate its rule. As Public Citizen's Executive Director Lori Wallach explains in the new issue of The Nation, the mechanism is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy and whose essential function seems to be to act as a stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny. Branded as a “trade deal” by its corporate proponents, the TPP would actually establish new corporate rights to undermine environmental and health laws, offshore millions of American jobs, flood the US with untested food products, and extend the duration of medical patents.

TO DO

Sign Public Citizen’s petition imploring US Trade Rep Ron Kirk to stop the secrecy and publicly release all TPP proposals. Tell him it’s a simple request and that transparency matters. Then, go to tpp2012.com to find out how you can get more involved. After you've made your voice heard, please share this post with your friends, family and Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

This timely report from the Vancouver Sun shows how even the countries involved in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership are highly skeptical about whether it is a good thing.

TO WATCH

With apologies to the Jackson Five, this new music video created by Public Citizen makes clear why the stakes are so high and what we can do about TPP.

Amend 'Citizens United' Out of Existence

Nation Action on June 25, 2012 - 1:39 PM ET

Today, the US Supreme Court summarily struck down Montana’s law shielding its elections from the influence of corporate cash. The court’s 5–4 decision in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock significantly expands the scope and reach of the Citizens United ruling by striking down state limits on corporate spending in state and local elections.

“The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law,” the majority wrote. “There can be no serious doubt that it does.” What this means, as John Nichols explains, is that if Exxon Mobil wants to spend $10 million to support a favored candidate in a state legislative or city council race that might decide whether the corporation is regulated, or whether it gets new drilling rights, it can.

TO DO

What to do? “The court leaves us no choice but to continue to fight for stronger campaign finance laws to prevent corruption,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen. “We will do this at the congressional level, at administrative agencies and in the states, as well as work to overturn Citizens United by amending the US Constitution.” Public Citizens’ Democracy Is For People project aims to arm a citizens army with the tools it needs to limit the corrosive impact of money in politics. Find out how to plug into the movement and then share this info with friends, family and your Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

Writing last week, Katrina vanden Heuvel surveyed the Resolutions Week campaign in which city and town councils and state legislatures pushed for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. This movement will only grow stronger in the wake of today’s Montana decision.

TO WATCH

This video, produced by the Story of Stuff collective, offers an invaluable primer on why the Supreme Court’s closely divided Citizens United decision is incompatible with basic notions of democratic governance.

Reform the NYPD

Nation Action on June 14, 2012 - 10:40 AM ET

As Ramzi Kassem reports in the new issue of The Nation, the NYPD has created perhaps the largest spying program by a local law enforcement agency on record—a sprawling effort to map entire communities that emerged from the toxic convergence of the permanent state of emergency gripping our society since 9/11 with the NYPD’s historic tendencies.

TO DO

In the face of stop-and-frisk and surveillance of Muslims, Communities United for Police Reform, a campaign to end discriminatory policing practices in New York, is working to build a lasting movement that promotes public safety and policing based on cooperation and respect—not discriminatory targeting and harassment. Stand with CPR and t ake this pledge to demand increased transparency and accountability from the NYPD, and an end to discriminatory and abusive law enforcement. After you've weighed in share this post with friends, family and your Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

A team of Associated Press reporters first exposed the NYPD's intelligence operations surveilling Muslim citizens. To get a sense of the scope and enormity of the program, start with this story.

TO WATCH

This video of a "know your rights" workshop at a CUNY Muslim Students Association took place late last fall in the wake of the AP reports, which included confirmation that this particular MSA had been targeted for surveillance and infiltration by the NYPD Intelligence Division.

Help the Davis Dozen

Nation Action on June 11, 2012 - 2:20 PM ET

At UC Davis and other institutions, student-led protests against austerity have been met with thuggish riot cops and the criminalization of speech, writes Professor Joshua Clover at thenation.com.

Clover is an indicted member of the “Davis Dozen”—a group of eleven activist students and one professor (Clover) who were served with arrest notices one month after the US Bank on the Davis campus closed its doors for good, following weeks of protests against the banks’ role in increasing student costs and student debt. Twelve people are now threatened with eleven years each in jail and one million dollars in fines for a purported conspiracy to shut the bank down.

TO DO

Join your name to this petition calling for the UC Davis administration to solicit immediate withdrawal of all criminal charges against the Davis Dozen. Call, fax and write the Yolo County DA and ask him to drop all charges. Contact Chancellor Linda Katehi imploring her to cease criminalization of protest on the Davis campus. After you've weighed in, share this post with friends, family and your Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

This International Open Letter Protesting Charges Against the Davis Dozen, signed by literary heavyweights around the world, highlights the travesty of the charges and calls for the twelve to be fully acquitted.

TO WATCH

In this public Town Hall meeting last November Clover and Chancellor Katehi engaged in a telling back-and-forth on the question of police violence against students.

Kill the 'Kill List'

Nation Action on June 6, 2012 - 5:14 PM ET

The drone policy that President Obama has developed not only infringes on the sovereignty of other countries, insist Nation editors in the new issue of the magazine, but the assassinations violate laws put in place in the 1970s after scandals enveloped an earlier era of CIA criminality. What’s more, by allowing the executive branch to circumvent judicial review, the kill list makes a mockery of due process for terror suspects, even US citizens—in clear violation of the Constitution.

TO DO

Liberals raised a ruckus about President Bush’s human rights abuses. Silence now is not an option. The women-initiated grassroots peace group Code Pink has started a campaign imploring President Obama to ground the lethal drones and kill the “Kill List.” Add your name to the call. You can also add a personal message. After you’ve weighed in, share this post with friends, family and your Twitter and Facebook communities.

TO READ

This extensive investigative report by the New York Times revealed who is actually making the final decision on the US’s biggest killings and drone strikes: President Obama himself. Last February in The Nation, John Sifton offered a brief history of drone warfare.

TO WATCH

In an appearance on Democracy Now!, constitutional lawyer and political blogger Glenn Greenwald made clear why Obama’s “Kill List’ is such a big deal: “I really do believe it’s literally the most radical power that a government and a president can seize, and yet the Obama administration has seized this power and exercised it aggressively with very little controversy.”