Thursday, January 26, 2017

Build the Wall!!! Between Trump and Congress

Build the Wall!!!!      Between the White House and the US Congress       January 2017 ACTION Alert           
Stop Trump’s ‘executive orders’ from crossing the border and taking our civility, sensibility, and common security.   Cutting UN funding, torturing suspected terrorists, withdrawing from climate agreements, and increasing military spending will only exacerbate a world of increasing chaos and persistent injustices.
Congress is our only effective barrier now.    Congress can keep his Executive Orders from:
a)      Hurting people’s lives here and abroad.
b)      Increasing the security threats we face from a world of growing chaos and injustice.
c)       Costing billions of U.S. tax dollars reacting to harmful global forces (war, more extreme weather conditions, pandemics, refugee flows, WMD proliferation, loss of our anti-biotic arsenal, terrorism…) by investing in wise and effective global prevention efforts before problems reached our borders.  The key word:  PREVENTION!
"The Trump administration is preparing executive orders that would clear the way to drastically reduce the United States’ role in the United Nations and other international organizations, as well as begin a process to review and potentially abrogate certain forms of multilateral treaties. "   Executive Director of the United Nations Association of the USA,  1-25-17  referencing the New York Times.


Your mission, should you accept it:  (Write a Letter to the Editor to the NYT and/or…)

Call your Member of Congress immediately and repeatedly, until you get an answer regarding the following request.  If you don’t know who your US Representative is call the Congressional Switchboard (202-225-3121) and give them your Zip code. They will connect you.  Or visit: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/map  . 

Talking script below (once you reach the right Legislative Aide that deals with Foreign Aid funding and/or National Security issues, or a recording where you can leave them a message).   Please feel free to adapt the words below to your own:

YOU:  Hi Jane!  My name is ________.  I’m a constituent of Congressman/woman ________.   Can you please relay an urgent message to him/her?  

(IF CALLING A REPUBLICAN office)  I’d like to support our new President but I’m a bit perplexed by some of his Executive Orders.   

Given our nation’s growing budget deficit … I urge you to resist any effort that would further reduce our nation’s already limited investments in funding ‘prevention’ efforts.  Many UN programs like WHO, UNDP, World Food Program, Peace Keeping deployments, and Refugee programs help keep threats like terrorism, infectious diseases, WMD Proliferation, and conflicts that end up costing Americans far more when they reach our shores.  
Please let me know what steps she/he will take to keep these cost saving investments in place, and do more to address the root causes of these growing problems.   I don’t believe building walls or weakening the UN any further will keep most of them from our Congressional District.  
The UN is nearly dysfunctional now given its lack of capacity to enforce human rights.  Cutting its funding more now will only cost us far more in the future.  I was really hoping President Trump would make changes that would really save US tax dollars AND make us more secure.

[make sure they have your Name, Address and phone/email…with your specific request to get back to you with an answer.]

Keep a log of who you spoke with, the date and issue you talked about.   Start to organize others in your Congressional District to do the same.   If you are not already a Global Justice Hill Corps volunteer with our ‘435 Campaign’, consider becoming one.
“If there were just 10 people in every Congressional District, who really pushed on the issue…we could literally change the world”.  Senator Paul Simon (as a U.S. Congressman)

We will never ask you for money.  Just your time and willingness to build a working relationship with your own U.S. Representative and with loving persistence, educate them on how global injustices are the primary source of threats to our own nation’s security as well as our individual freedom, security, health, and prosperity.
We invite you to document specific examples that you see or read about within your own Congressional District, where global forces are having a negative impact.  Zika, HIV/AIDS, Soldier suicides from PTSD, some extreme weather conditions, crop losses, exported jobs, terrorist attacks, crimes committed by troubled illegal immigrants, contaminated food, antibiotic resistant infections, and some counterfeit drugs that don’t help and may even cause harm, can often be linked to injustices beyond our shores. 
We will soon have a website where you can post these examples so others in our Congressional District can start to make the connections, and hopefully join with you in educating your own U.S. Representative.
There are only 435 U.S. Representatives.  We already have close to 70 covered with individuals taking on this mission.   Even if your Congressperson is good on these issues…we need more who are leaders.   We now know the cost of apathy in voting.  The great news is that we actually have far greater power in petitioning our elected officials with every phone call, letter, letter to the editor, and meeting with them personally.  
Make your citizenship really count by uniting with others between elections to influence policy direction before they become law.
"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do." -  John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) 


If you would like to write a Blog or ‘Letter to the Editor” on these global justice issues please let us know.   

No comments:

Post a Comment