Actions

Weekly Actions

Members of Congress

  • Sen. Patty Murray
    (202) 224-2621 | Email

  • Sen. Maria Cantwell
    (202) 224-3441 | Email

  • Rep. Suzan DelBene (1st)
    (202) 225-6311 | Email

  • Rep. Kim Schrier (8th)
    (202) 225-7761 | Email

  • Rep. Adam Smith (9th)
    (202) 225-8901 | Email
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    For the Week of September 18, 2023

    ???? In April, King County voters approved the Crisis Care Centers levy, a $1.2 billion nine-year levy that will create five Crisis Care Centers, restore and increase mental health residential treatment beds, and grow the workforce that provides mental health and substance use disorder services. Now the county is undertaking the work to implement the levy and need your input. You can take a survey and attend community meetings to learn more. The Community meetings are monthly, 3rd Tuesday, 1-2 pm (next meeting 9/19), and will provide an overall update on the Levy planning process and its paramount and supporting goals. Register here.

    ???? If you’re interested in housing issues and have maybe the read the book The Color of Law: A forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, take a look at this event with the authors, Nov 2 at 2 pm.

    ???? Postcard writers, don’t forget that Postcards For WA will be at the Crossroads Starbucks in Bellevue (1350 156th Ave NE) on Tuesday mornings from 10-12. With the October mailing date approaching and lots of great candidates to write for, it’s not too late to sign up to help out.

    Here are your 2 actions this week.

    ✊ Action 1 – Urge Senate committee leaders to hold Supreme Court Justices accountable

    From Indivisible National

    All summer long, we’ve seen a barrage of revelations about Supreme Court justices and their apparent inability to adhere to basic ethical rules and regulations. This Indivisible webpage about SCOTUS ethical violations, which went out as an email on September 9, provides background. Here are some brief highlights:

    Justice Clarence Thomas: Justice Thomas has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in lavish gifts and travel, school tuition for a family member, and rent payments for his mother, all from wealthy MAGA donors.

    Justice Samuel Alito: Justice Alito has taken multiple questionable actions, including accepting free luxury travel from a person with business in front of the Court. Justice Alito later took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to defend his corrupt behavior and claim, unbelievably, that “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” It seems as if Justice Alito missed “separation of powers” day in law school, or possibly an entire semester’s worth of Constitutional Law. Congress does, of course, have the constitutional authority to restore integrity to the Supreme Court.

    To address this blatant corruption, Indivisible National has put together a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin. The letter urges thorough investigations, with subpoenas of Justices Thomas, Alito, and their billionaire benefactors, as well as a Senate vote on the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. This Act would require the Supreme Court to adopt and abide by a code of conduct. (You can read the full text of the letter in the link below, before signing.) The sign on period for the letter closes September 28!

    Action: Read and sign the letter to Senators Schumer and Durbin

    To ensure that this letter has real impact, Indivisible will take it, with all the signatures, and hand-deliver it to Leader Schumer and Chairman Durbin.

    ✊ Action 2 – Tell Senate to oppose the KOSA act

    The Kids Online Safety Act would place various requirements on websites and online platforms in order to protect children, but it would also empower state attorneys general, who are mostly elected politicians, to dictate what content younger users can see online. Trans rights organizations, the LBGTQ+ community, and data privacy groups are sounding the alarm about the harm this could cause trans kids in states with right wing attorneys general. We know exactly what right wing attorneys general would do with this kind of authority: bully platforms into suppressing content related to LGBTQ issues, gender affirming care, abortion, racial justice, and other important topics.

    Even the Republican lead sponsor, Senator Blackburn, has said the quiet part out loud that “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture” should be among the top priorities of conservative lawmakers.

    The bill has been endorsed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as by President Joe Biden, so we need to communicate with our Senators about it. Fight for the Future has drafted this email template that anyone can take talking points from, or you can use the sample script below to voice your concerns to Senators Schumer, Murray, and Cantwell. This is particularly urgent due to the support from many Democrats in the Senate. Senator Cantwell voiced some concern over the bill, but in the end voted in favor of it in a voice vote during its most recent markup.

    Also send emails to:

    You can email all of the above congressional staff by clicking on this EMAIL link. It will generate a prefilled email for you. Please review the email carefully and sign your name before sending.

    ☎ Sample Script (when contacting the offices of Senators Cantwell or Murray, add “and I am a constituent” to the first sentence):

    Hi, my name is [NAME] from [CITY], Washinton. I am writing to urge your office to OPPOSE the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA, S.1409). While I strongly support regulation of Big Tech companies and agree that their data harvesting business practices are harming young people, human rights, and our democracy, I stand with dozens of other LGBTQ+, social justice, and civil liberties organizations who believe that KOSA would make kids less safe, rather than more safe, while specifically endangering transgender and LGBTQ+ youth. We cannot leave this in the hands of rightwing attorneys general who use this kind of authority to bully platforms into suppressing content related to LGBTQ issues, gender affirming care, abortion, racial justice, and other important topics.

    Please consider alternatives to KOSA. Lawmakers can address the harm of Big Tech by passing strong data privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation, rather than advancing a dangerous and misguided proposal like KOSA that violates the constitution and would do more harm than good.

    Thank you.

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