#call congress

[cakemadeofbacon]

Hey everyone! Congress is only in session for three more days. You can use this website and call members of Congress to stop funding genocide for Palestine and attacking Lebanon

[cleolinda]

It was a cat 3 when I woke up this morning. It’s escalating that fast. Please stay safe out there, y’all. I know some people can’t evacuate for various reasons, but if you can, please do. This page lists Florida shelters (including pet friendly and/or special needs) by county:

Plus Pinellas and Sarasota, which didn’t have any listed up there.

I don’t know who actually needs this info this late in the game, but if you’re affected, consider writing down some shelter locations (i.e. saved offline) in case you end up needing to go to a different location than the one you planned on.

All I know is, I didn’t take tornadoes in my town seriously until I saw one, and I know I would insist that everything will be just fine. If you can evacuate and you just aren’t convinced that it’s necessary—please consider it. I hope you’re all safe out there, whatever you end up doing.

[plutonicbees]

secret calls in the phone/sewing/cat room (chapter 4 of bllb u will always be famous to me)

[calicojack1718]

Call Your MoC: Pass a Clean Continuing Resolution & Why the Freedumb Cockus is Damn Dumb

Recharge your batteries, top up your phone, it's time to call your members of Congress. We need a clean continuing resolution and we need it now. Then we need the GOP to comply with their budget agreement. Calling works. Here's how.

SUMMARY: This urgent post highlights the impending government shutdown and the severe consequences it holds. It sheds light on the historical ineffectiveness of government shutdowns and their exorbitant costs. It emphasizes the detrimental impact on government employees and businesses depending on government contracts. The author passionately calls on readers to take action by contacting their…

[bonesashesglass]

They only blocked the bill because the package didn’t include aid to Ukraine, it’s a small step but it’s still a step.

In the meantime, we need to keep sharing, posting, and calling or messaging our reps. Even just talking about it with people goes a long way to spreading the word of what Israel is doing.

Let’s keep it up. We won’t stop until Palestine is free 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

[remindertoclick]

This is your reminder to Click for Palestine today!

And donate directly to UNRWA you have the means!

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Repost from @adcnational

•

🚨 Urgent Alert: Congress is considering several bills with serious implications. Swipe left for a breakdown of four concerning pieces of legislation we’re tracking closely. These bills demand our attention.

Take action now with two action alerts in the link in ADC bio to fight H.R. 6408 and H.R. 6090.

[thefirsthogokage]

(link to post) (link they put in bio)

This is the article they put in the comments:

[solarpunkwitchcraft]

CALL YOUR SENATORS AND TELL THEM TO VOTE FOR TO STOP MILITARY FUNDING FOR ISRAEL!

Sanders has introduced resolutions in Congress that would prevent a $20 billion weapons transfer to Israel. Please call your senators and tell them to vote yes on these resolutions! This is something that you can do to prevent the country sending more money to fund this genocide

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

shout-out to my public library for getting me an inter-library loan copy from the fucking LIBRARY OF CONGRESS?!?

[dancingastralwitch]

A Palestinian man is asked in an interview by a white woman if he condemns Hamas while his people are being slaughtered in the open, and HE is the one condemned when he yells that it's injustice to insulate that his people deserve to be murdered, because "Hamas chose this."

A black woman is attacked first in a fight and SHE is the bad guy when she strikes back, she is the one whose face is plastered all over social media to be condemned and shamed for "aggression."

Two sisters are appropriately reacting to their oppressors by ripping off posters promoting their propaganda, and THEY are shamed and attacked for their lack of politeness when their people are being killed for existing.

An American democrat watches her colleagues cheer on genocide and ethical cleansing, the murder of children and the rape of women and the slaughter of families, and SHE is the one censored for speaking out in defense of them, despite her grief of losing family members.

Zionists are not condemned for enjoying the thought of children being killed, for calling Palestinians "animals" or saying Gaza should be "turned into a parking lot", Israeli doctors can get away with demanding that Palestinians, HUMAN BEINGS, should be murdered, that their only remaining hospital should be crushed.

They are not condemned for saying they wanted nuclear weapons unleashed on Gaza, they are not condemned for the imprisonment and torture of children, for desecrating dead Palestinians' corpses and mauling their bodies, for mocking Muslim Palestinians by rubbing their bullets against pig's skin before shooting them, for bombing Palestinian churches, for bombing universities, for shutting electricity from Gaza, cutting Palestinians from food and water, not letting them access to aid, for bombing CANCER hospitals and CHILDRENS HOSPITALS, for turning the sky of Gaza RED from explosions, for killing enough students that the entire school year was canceled, for annihilating families, for attacking Jewish people in Jerusalem, for cutting dead fetuses off dead mothers, for STEALING THEIR SKIN AND ORGANS and using them for their benefit, for forcing CHILDREN to hold a press conference to say that hey, they want to live.

Insinuating that this is about religion is the basis of Zionism. 60 members of Hamas were killed, and 10,500 civilians killed, 4000 of which are children. Over 800 bloodlines erased. Israel says they aim for "damage, not accuracy." Implying this is about Hamas is lies.

When white people in power tell you from their air-conditioned studios this is Israel defending itself, refuse to let Palestinian journalists explain things happening from their point of view, watch those journalists lose their entire families for speaking about what's happening to them, demonize Arabs who rage about injustice, ask Palestinians grieving if they condemn Hamas, know this is propaganda.

You shouldn't need them to tell you they're parroting lies to you. Their lies kill people. Their lies destroy people. Their apologies are insincere and their "sympathy" is limited only to those who look like them. It is unjust. It is cruel.

If I was were to narrate to you every atrocity Israel commited that I am aware of, I would never stop typing.

[phoenixyfriend]

The Shift in America's Support of Israel as of 3/25/24

Okay, so there have been three specific incidents recently that I'd like to cover for you guys.

Chuck Schumer's speech calling for a new election in Israel, which I have spoken about here and here. (3/14/24)

Congress voting to ban UNRWA funding until 2025, which I've seen a lot of people talking about, but often without an actual understanding of what the situation actually is. (It's bad, but it's not the same type of bad as people think.) (3/24/24)

The US abstaining from a UN Security Council vote, which is effectively voting against Israel when they have thus far been the only ones to use veto power in this manner. (3/25/24)

I'm not going to go into detail about Schumer, since I've already covered it. tldr: it's a very specifically worded speech that does not explicitly threaten Israel, but if you do even the slightest bit of reading between the lines, that is absolutely what is happening.

Also, before I move forward: the US may not be donating to UNRWA for the rest of the fiscal year, but you can. They have direct donation links.

UNRWA funding has been on hold for a while, but this is... complicated. Not morally, because UNRWA does need funding and to defund it is truly unconscionable, but many of the "Biden signed it into law" posts are approaching it with this implied message that UNRWA would have funding if not for Biden signing it.

Except that isn't really how the US government works. Especially this government.

Funding for 2024 was supposed to be passed months ago. We are on the verge of another government shutdown. UNRWA funding is not on the table until the House swings blue. I hate to be the one to say this, but it's... like, it's not something I can change alone. I know you're tired of hearing it, but voting in November is the key to fixing a whole lot of problems.

One of the core duties of Congress is passing budgets. For those budgets to pass, they need to be approved by the House (Republican Majority), the Senate (Democrat Majority), and the President. The reason it has taken five months to pass a yearly budget (the deadline iirc was September or October) is because anything approved by one chamber is shot down by the other.

UNRWA's de-funding is tied to Ukraine funding (and a few other things). Biden refusing to sign would not have brought back UNRWA funding. The funding is already on hold. We do not have the votes to bring it back. We just straight up do not have enough seats in the House to make that happen. Biden refusing to sign would have resulted in both UNRWA and Ukraine not having funding, indefinitely. Signing it resulted in one of the two getting funding.

This is not a situation where funding was approved and now cut. This is not a situation where money was already flowing to UNRWA. This is a situation where money wasn't going anywhere, because Congress is a split shitshow.

Think of it like this: Funding is water coming from a spigot. Congress can turn it on or off, and it's currently off. Biden can smack away the hand coming to twist the valve, but he can't touch the valve himself. That's what the presidential veto is. Unfortunately, the spigot is already off, and Biden can't twist it back on when Congress isn't already reaching to do so.

Is this bad? Yes! UNRWA's funding should never have been cut! We should still be very, very upset about this! But I need you to understand that the way the US government works is not a dictatorship. Biden cannot just overrule Congress, especially when we're on the verge of another shutdown.

I do not think it is fair or even really acceptable that UNRWA's funding was viewed as an appropriate point of compromise. I'm just, unfortunately, also aware that this particular legislation is a tug-of-war that was never going to end with funding going to Palestine, not with the current Republican control of the House.

"But Biden sent money to Israel a bunch of times--" Yeah, and he's paying for it in the polls. He's aware that people are pissed at him. That choice is already biting him in the ass.

Biden is not perfect and I am never going to claim he is, but please recognize that the UNRWA funding pull is not a current action. It is a past action that is now being sustained because the House is red. You want to bring back UNRWA funding? Get rid of Marjorie Taylor Green and her entire cohort.

The other reason I'm less than eager to view that UNRWA thing as Biden being pro-Israel is because the US has finally abstained on a UN vote instead of vetoing.

When the US has been the only voice on Israel's side in the Security Council this whole time, abstention is functionally voting against them. We already knew that 13-14 of the other 14 members were going to vote pro-ceasefire. They have been this entire time. The US abstaining is functionally agreeing.

Why did the US not just vote for the ceasefire, then? No idea. Might be a treaty thing. I don't really need to know, because the result is that the UN Security Council has finally passed a measure against Israel, and those things are legally binding, and we know it's a big step because Israel's government is not happy.

When paired with the Schumer speech from a week and a half ago, it indicates a major shift in US foreign policy.

From the Al Jazeera article:

The US had repeatedly blocked Security Council resolutions that put pressure on Israel but has increasingly shown frustration with its ally as civilian casualties mount and the UN warns of impending famine in Gaza. Speaking after the vote, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the delay in passing a ceasefire resolution. “We did not agree with everything with the resolution,” which she said was the reason why the US abstained. “Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said. [...] The White House said the final resolution did not have language the US considers essential and its abstention does not represent a shift in policy. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the US failure to veto the resolution is a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would hurt war efforts against Hamas as well as efforts to release Israeli captives held in Gaza.

This action has also resulted in Israel pulling plans for "a high-level delegation" to visit the US for discussions on the invasion of Rafah (which Biden has purportedly been warning against for a while).

“We’re very disappointed that they won’t be coming to Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to them going in on the ground in Rafah,” [John] Kirby told reporters. [...] Last week, Netanyahu promised to defy US appeals and expand Israel’s military campaign to Rafah even without its ally’s support.

There are other complications and details here, such as that the resolution does not call for a permanent ceasefire, and that US tensions with Russia and China are still somehow playing a role in the negotiations over the ceasefire text, but ultimately...

The US abstaining is a good thing. Schumer's speech is a good thing. They are not enough, but they are good things. They are steps forward.

The pull of funding from UNRWA is not a good thing. It is, in fact, a very, very bad thing. It just also looks a lot like it was unavoidable.

So call your reps, and vote come November. It's a long slog and we all know it, but we can't make change without dedication.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post.

[that-neet-girl]

Full Article Here: https://x.com/TrackAIPAC/status/1833187415760195679?t=Kv7FqB2e1lT_EMMZvhbayw&s=19

CALL YOUR SENATORS TODAY. Tell them to REJECT the misleading and overreaching Antisemitism Awareness Act!

☎️202-224-3121

"Hello, my name is [Your Name], and I’m a constituent from [Your City/State]. I’m calling today to ask Senator [Senator's Name] to reject the Antisemitism Awareness Act."

[cakemadeofbacon]

USCPR

Jewish Voice for Peace

You can add more I’m just busy rn

I’m feeling very depressed because I was forbidden from calling congress anymore

[bonesashesglass]

God. You know, with everything going on, I don’t understand how we find ourselves moving backwards instead of forwards.

I’ve never seen people mobilized like this in my lifetime. The amount of outcry and backlash the US government is getting because of their support of Israel is bigger and louder than any I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve also never seen the democrat party so against what their actual voters are advocating for.

Republicans and democrats are finally agreeing on something, and that something is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Not only that, but apparently they’re working together to create a bill that will send aid to Israel, and restrict immigrant rights. And they’re both so proud of it.

Where is the humanity? Where is the party that actually cares for and values human life? Turns out there isn’t one. Republicans and democrats are the same: they only care about maintaining power.

It’s days like this that I just feel so hopeless, I want to curl up in a ball and hide, or move to a different country completely.

You know something? I used to roll my eyes whenever a book or movie character would preach about hope. It just seemed like lazy writing or an annoying character trait. But I get it now. I see the real value of hope. It’s what drives people to keep fighting when everything around you makes you want to curl up into a hall and hide.

Don’t give up hope. Keep fighting, even when things suck as much as they do now, never stop fighting.

Palestine will be free in our lifetime. That we know for sure. But you know what? I truly believe that we will all, Americans included, be free of the corruption and greed of the US government in our lifetime too.

[carsonjonesfiance]

New corollary to Poe’s Law that if a Leftie starts calling you Blue MAGA they’ve already lost the argument.