call to action: write your US House member to save Net Neutrality

[alexseanchai]

H.R.4585 - To prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from relying on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the matter of restoring internet freedom to adopt, amend, revoke, or otherwise modify any rule of the Commission.

This is currently before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. If Wiki says your congresscritter is on that list? CONTACT THEM. PLEASE. (Though if your rep is GOP, perhaps switch around my script paragraph on the press!)

My congresscritter-contact script (CN suicide; substitute "Delawarean" as appropriate for your state; "our" before "suicide rate" should be "their" if you are not yourself queer or trans):

I understand HR 4585 is a recently introduced bill to save Net Neutrality. I don't see the text on congress dot gov yet--if it will do what it says, please support it with everything you have. Net Neutrality is an issue of freedom of speech and of the press, and of freedom to do business:

If Comcast can up the price of accessing MSNBC and drop the price of accessing Fox News, they can skew the political dialogue to favor the conservative and right-wing views.

If Comcast can up the price of accessing Etsy and drop the price of accessing Amazon, they can direct consumer money from small businesspeople to already-wealthy business entities.

If Comcast can up the price of accessing informational sites about queer and trans existence and otherwise-free-to-access fiction about queer and trans people, and drop the price of accessing harangues about the evils of being queer or trans, they can make it infinitely harder to be a self-confident and self-aware queer and/or trans person, and raise our suicide rate in the process--and just noting, a dead queer Delawarean can't vote for you next election.

This is one of the most crucial issues we face at this time. Help save Net Neutrality. Please.

Thank you.

Organisations fighting voter suppression

[tanaqui]

While we're all celebrating the wonderful result in Alabama, it's worth noting that the (narrow) result was achieved despite confirmed reports of many different attempts at voter suppression.

Various commentators are suggesting the Republicans will only intensify their efforts to suppress votes for their opponents in future races. So it seems a good time to gather together links for a number of organisations who are working to combat voter suppression, improve voter education and get out the vote:

The League of Women Voters

Vote Latino

ACLU (They have a match funding donation drive on right now.)

NAACP

NAACP Legal Defense Fund (Note: this is a separate charity from the NAACP and handles the most prominent cases. They also have a match funding donation drive on at the moment)

VoteRiders

SecondChancesFL -- a campaign to get a voting rights amendment onto the November 2018 ballot which would restore voting rights to 1.6 million felons, many of them people of color, in Florida. They need enough signatures in the next 50 days to get the measure onto the ballot.

If you know of any other resources, please link them in the comments!