spoonlessactivists | Recent Entries

Link: Here
Deadline: 5 October 2017
Time estimate: <5 mins
Requirements: personal information
Anything else: Restricted to British citizens and UK residents

randomling

Link: here
Deadline: 23 September 2017
Time estimate: 2 mins
Requirements: personal information (name, email address, postcode)
Anything else: Restricted to British citizens and UK residents

redsixwing

Link: https://action.donaldjtrump.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey/
Location (if relevant): Asks for a US ZIP code, but open to the internet
Deadline: ??
Time estimate: <5 minutes
Requirements: decision-making, critical reading, name/ZIP personal information
Anything else: I almost listed "bullshit handling" in the above, because this survey has some verrrry slanted questions.

Let's go tell them how the media is doing on reporting President 45's performance. :)

redsixwing

Requirements:
<10 minutes depending on phone wait times
Phone call

A bill has been introduced to end membership of the United States in the United Nations.

Do you like the UN? Do you like the US being part of the UN? Do you like the US having an influence on the UN?

If so: please, call your House representatives and ~~raise an unholy fuss~~ encourage them to vote against HR 193.

Current Mood: angry

redsixwing

- United States activism
- internet connection
<5 minutes

For call option:
<10 minutes
Phone conversation

Petition at MoveOn.org.

1600 species are covered by the Endangered Species Act. Fewer than 70 have ever been delisted, but that doesn't actually mean failure - that means some species are under enough pressure to be considered "conservation-dependent." If we do not work to keep them alive, they will become extinct. They're still here, and that means success.

Republicans oppose the law because it limits drilling and logging.

If you're feeling ambitious, call your representative as well and tell them you don't support this.

redsixwing

Link: Democratic Underground
Location (if relevant): USA (entire)
Deadline: December 19th is the vote, so ASAP is better.
Time estimate: <5 minutes
Requirements: phones / possible interaction

Originally posted December 13th.

In a live Facebook session yesterday, a couple of the Hamilton Electors said that at this point what's needed aren't more letters and emails to the electors.

They recommend instead:
(1) Contact your representatives and governors to ask that they demand that the electors be debriefed on the CIA information on Russian interference prior to Dec. 19, and to delay the electoral vote if that's not possible, given the time-frame;
(2) Contact the U.S. Attorney General and ask that the Electoral College vote be postponed until a full investigation of Russian interference and the Trump campaign's potential coordination with Russia is complete. You can reach the Attorney General's office at 202-514-2000 (Comment line...press 4)
Please cut and paste to share this, and let's flood the office with calls. You can call non business hours and leave voice message.

Source:

davidgillon

Location: UK
Deadline: 17th Feb 2017
Time estimate: 2 hours?

The Green Paper on Work and Health will form the core of future government policy towards disabled people and those in ill-health, especially those of us unable to work. As you might imagine from a Green Paper that brings together Jeremy 'Privatise the NHS' Hunt's Department of Health and Damien 'IDS Mk II' Green's Department of Work and Pensions, it is more than a little problematical, starting from the whole idea that to be healthy you need to be in work. Other highlights including extending conditionality to the ESA Support Group, i.e. forcing those furthest from the labour market, including people with terminal illnesses, to engage in 'work related activity' or potentially face sanctions.

There is a government consultation on the Green Paper, with responses required by 11:45pm (!?!) on 17th February 2017.

Details of the Green Paper, in multiple formats, including signed, spoken word and Easy Read, with Braille available on request, can be found here, with details on the consultation available here. However, it appears it is only possible to respond to the consultation online and the only available format it is presented in is written English/HTML, which really is a particularly poor example to set.

If you intend responding I would suggest copying the questions into a Word, or similar, document and preparing your answers offline, then cutting and pasting them into the web-form when done.

Catherine Hale has some good thoughts on the implications of the Green Paper when viewed from the perspective of our human rights as disabled people: A Rights Based Response.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Not on DWP's Christmas Card List

davidgillon

Location: UK
Deadline: 9th Jan 2017
Time estimate: ~1 hr?

The Crown Prosecution Service are holding a consultation on their updated Disability Hate Crime Policy. Responses are due by midnight on 9th January 2017.

You can find the policy, in multiple formats, including signed, Easy Read and spoken work, and how to respond, on their website at this link.

Current Mood: Productive
Current Location: Saying No to Hate

randomling

Hey all.

My spoons have taken a serious nosedive the last week or so, not sure why except depression is continuing to eat my head.

Would someone be up for a) volunteering to join me as an admin for the comm and b) maybe making and looking after a tag-modding sign-up post so we can get the ball rolling there? (I'm thinking of maybe a weekly rota with one person per day, plus people volunteering to cover in an emergency if possible, but if someone can think of a better way of running it please go ahead.)

a) and b) don't have to be the same person, though I think it will also make sense for tag mods to be admins (it makes sense for tagging to be admin-only, I think, 'cause that will make curating easier). In fact a few people signing up to be comm admins would be fantastic. I'm up to making people admins, just monitoring the tag-modding post and keeping control of that feels like too much right now. :/

Thanks, folks.

sathari

Link: Change.org petition
Location (if relevant): N/A
Deadline: probably ASAP
Time estimate: ~1min
Requirements: N/a
Anything else: You can also call and email ~~the Department of Justice: 202-353-1555 and voting.section@usdoj.gov respectively, as well as~~ ETA: per comments, this may be the wrong place; your own Congressbeings and those of the states mentioned here: Florida, Wisconsin (which is apparently already conducting an internal audit, whether as part of their election SOP or otherwise), Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

(Also posting to

thisfinecrew .)

nanila

Link: WriteToThem
Location (if relevant): UK-only
Deadline: none
Time estimate: 5 minutes, thanks to kaberett's provision of the WriteToThem link!
Requirements: mental / personal information
Anything else: h/t to cesy

(I've adapted the text below from

cesy's entry.)

This action is to express support for vulnerable refugees entering the UK. For unaccompanied children, particularly those coming from Calais, the Home Office/central government has responsibility. However, for adults and families who are being relocated, the next action is on local councils rather than central government. MPs are used to being flooded with petitions and form e-mails. Local councillors are not as, so an email has a much bigger impact.

Suggested action: (Now even easier thanks to

kaberett.) Use the handy WriteToThem link above and enter your postcode. This should provide you with the identities of your district and county councillors. Clicking on a name should link you to a form which sends them an e-mail. Send them something like this:

"I'm a local resident, and I'd like to understand what our council is doing to welcome Syrian refugees. I would like us to welcome more refugees to our local area. What are we doing to implement the Government's resettlement scheme, and what local charities are involved? Thank you." Don't forget to include your name and address/postcode so they can verify you're a local resident.

sathari

- I went back through the archives and didn't see this posted, but the #ACALLADAY newsletter has been the single resources I've found most personally useful in getting myself to DO STUFF. There's also a Googledoc which is chock full of scripts and ideas, as well as doing a weekly call to action, where there's an issue of the week to call about, presumably in the name of strength in numbers.

- Relatedly, this comic on "How to call your reps when you have social anxiety" was excellent for me.

- Last, from Bustle.com, "How to protest when you're socially anxious."

Current Mood: determined

randomling

Link: Sign the petition
Deadline: 17 May 2017
Time estimate: 2 mins
Requirements: personal information (name, email address, country, postcode)
Anything else: Restricted to UK citizens and residents

As a result of being investigated by a United Nations committee for not fulfilling the terms of the UNCRPD, the government have been found guilty of grave & systematic violations of the rights of disabled people as a direct result of austerity policies introduced into welfare & social care.

(Sorry for the brief stub post, I accidentally posted before I was ready somehow...)

the_rck

I’ve been thinking that it would be useful to have a central post (possibly a sticky post?) for people to leave comments with links that aren’t immediate action things or that go to somewhere that has a lot of different things going on or to somewhere that features information that will be useful long term. Someone would then compiled submitted links, sorting them by type (more on that below).

My assumption is that keeping up with submitted links wouldn’t take a lot of time at any one time, so I’m willing to undertake the task. If it gets to be too much, I’ll ask for help, but this is the sort of thing that I know I can do.

( Lots of questions and more details )

I’m now also thinking that a sticky post index to some or all posts in the community might also be useful, but tags will cover that to some extent, so is that something we might need/want? If we do, would it be for all posts or just for some? I think it would be most useful for things that don’t have expiration dates. If we do want it, is anyone up to taking on the job?

randomling

I'm thinking about tagging posts - specifically the action-suggestion posts that we've already started generating (yay!).

I think we need a) a tagging scheme and b) a roster of people/mods who would be willing to tag entries. For this purpose I think it might make sense to restrict tagging to mods only - that way we can curate the tags a bit more easily.

So:

a) Tagging scheme
I'm thinking that we could have, for example, tags like:
req: personal info
req: mental
req: physical

location: wherever (obviously for in-person events these things will be probably town-specific, which means we might end up with quite a few if the place gets busy, but we have a 1000-tag limit so we don't need to worry too much about proliferation yet)

current for things that either don't have a deadline or haven't passed it yet

Plus an "action" tag just to differentiate those posts from... discussion posts like this, people's questions, general advice, etc.

Any other thoughts on what tags we might use?

b) Tagging mods

I think that if we go with my method here, we'd be looking at two tasks for tag mods

- go through the new/untagged posts and adding appropriate tags, maybe once a day
- go through the "current" tag and check for stuff that's passed its deadline, expired, the link is now broken, whatever - probably less often than daily, once a week might be fine for this?

So the question here is who'd be willing to do that? If you don't know how to do it technically I'd be happy to describe or hop on IM to explain! (I'm not generally up for Skype or other voice or video calls at the moment, sorry.)

ETA: I'm an idiot! I didn't mean that one person has to do the tag-modding every day for the rest of time! I'm looking for a group of us who can do the modding and hopefully cover for each other in times of sickness/exhaustion/overwhelm/etc so we are each only doing one every few days. (Hopefully less potential for burnout that way.)

Thanks folks!

randomling

Link:
Location: (if relevant)
Deadline: (if relevant)
Time estimate:
Requirements: money / mental / physical / social / personal information / decision-making / other
Anything else:

For easy c&p with bolding:

If you have suggestions for how to modify this template to make it more accessible or otherwise better, please leave a comment! We'll update this post with any changes.

(ETA: Thanks to

rmc28 and

alatefeline for help putting this together!)

randomling

If cuts to Universal credit go ahead, hard-working families will be left struggling to pay for things like school shoes and the weekly shop. The fact these cuts will hit hardest for families who want to work more hours just doesn't make sense.

No one should be left out of pocket because they want to work more. Will you please use the Autumn Statement to reverse plans to cut support for hard-working families?

There's an option to donate after you sign.

Link: Sign this petition
Time estimate: 2 mins
Required: personal information (name, email address, postcode), money (optional), decision-making (optional: how much to donate)
Restriction: UK only (probably; UK-specific issue, and it asks for a postcode, I haven't checked whether it rejects a non-UK postcode)

cesy

Link: Avaaz, change.org, 38 Degrees, UK Parliament, White House
Location (if relevant): Online
Deadline: None
Time estimate: 15 minutes
Requirements: mental / social / personal information
Anything else:

Join one of the major petition/activism sites, so that it remembers your details for future petitions, lowering the barrier to signing things. Tick the marketing boxes to say if you want them to send you other petitions you may be interested in based on things you've already signed. It makes finding and signing future petitions easier, and you'll get notified of big/important things.

redsixwing

Found on Tumblr.

Time requirement: <5 minutes
Spoons requirement: phones (no conversation or socialization required!)

For the millions of you that will lose your insurance if Obamacare is repealed please call Paul Ryan. It took me about two minutes, most of that waiting patiently for the recording to end.

Paul Ryan is conducting a phone poll on the ACA (Obamacare), hoping to hear overwhelming popular opposition to it. If you would like to express your support for the Affordable Care Act, call (202) 225-3031. Press 2 to weigh in on the issue. You’ll hear a brief recording about HR-3762, Paul Ryan’s proposal to gut the ACA, and President Obama’s use of his veto power to stop it. Then, you will have a chance to indicate your opinion with the press of a button.

Press 1 if you support Obamacare, 2 if you oppose it.

There is also an option after making your choice to leave a voicemail for Speaker Ryan, which I did, and recommend doing, but is obviously not required.

The voicemail inbox is full, but I did this. Took four tries to get through as apparently people are interested in this. :)

redsixwing

Requires: phone, social activity spoons.
Time period required: short (but possibly repeated)

Transcribed from something I saw on Tumblr.

"I just called the House Oversight Committe (202-225-5074) to support the call for a bipartisan review of Trump's financials and apparent conflicts of interest. It took me two minutes, and the woman on the phone said that they are absolutely tallying calls - the more they get, the more likely the Committee is to demand ALL of Trump's financial information

She said that there's not much time left, as they are out of the office next week for Thanksgiving, and after that, they're going to make a decision."

I called the number this morning (repeatedly, as I kept getting a "this box is full" message and trying again a little later until I managed to leave a voicemail. I'll be calling again shortly to see if I can't get a live person on the phone.)

The phone number again is 202-225-5074.
The committee website is https://oversight.house.gov. If you see anything else you want to hound someone about on that site, this is the place to do it.

Please be polite but firm to our civil servants.