Keith Cole is a 61-year old black male prisoner whose life is in serious danger. In 2014 Keith Cole, along with 3 other prisoners, filed a federal civil complaint against extreme overheating in TDCJ facilities. The deadly heat lawsuit placed pressure on the Warden of the Wallace Pack Unit - where Keith was housed at the time - and thus made Keith a primary target for retaliation. The trial for the deadly heat lawsuit is set for February 2016. In this light, Keith was recently transferred to the McConnell Unit - one of the most neglected, dilapidated and understaffed prisons in Texas. Keith has a chronic heart condition that requires him to take multiple high-dosage medications daily and as a result, could suffer a heart attack at any time. The McConnell Unit is one of the few Texas prisons without emergency call buttons inside the cells. Keith Cole’s transfer to the neglected McConnell Unit is a deliberate attempt to place him in harm’s way before the upcoming trial in February. We worry that his medication is being withheld as retaliation for his extreme overheating lawsuit against the TDCJ. This lawsuit could change environmental standards affecting all TDCJ prisons, and Keith Cole's presence and testimony is needed to make that happen. Please sign this petition to demand that Keith Cole be immediately transferred to a unit with adequate, humane supervision and be placed in a cell with an emergency-call button!

The Netflix documentary *Making of a Murderer* makes clear their innocence. Read this: http://davidswanson.org/node/5013

The United States has hundreds of programs at universities, think tanks, and research institutes that claim to devote their attention to “security” and “defense” studies. Yet in almost all of these programs that receive many millions of dollars in Federal funding, the vast majority of research, advocacy and instruction have nothing to do with climate change, the most serious threat to security of our age. In an act of profound intellectual irresponsibility, so-called scholars of "security studies" spend their hours imagining fantastic military scenarios, rather than responding to incontrovertible threat of climate change which scientists have unanimously identified as a reality. We cannot waste any more of our tax dollars on security and defense studies that fail to address the primary threat to the well-being of the United States, and of the world. The time has come to put an end to this insanity. We demand that all programs of defense and security studies in the United States identify in their statement of purpose climate change as the primary security threat to the United States and that they dedicate at least 70% of their budgets to research, teaching and advocacy to the critical topics of mitigation of (primarily) and adaptation to (secondarily) climate change. Any program that fails to focus on climate change in this manner should lose its status for Federal funding. Mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change should be the primary concerns for all in security and defense field studies. Obviously other security issues deserve study, but granted the fact that the cost of climate change will run in the trillions of dollars over the next decade, and even more beyond then, we do not have the funds to support programs that are not dedicated to addressing this immediate threat. Signers include: Emanuel Yi Pastreich Director The Asia Institute David Swanson Director World Beyond War John Kiriakou Associate fellow Institute for Policy Studies John Feffer Director Foreign Policy in Focus Norman Solomon Cofounder RootsAction.org Coleen Rowley Retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel

Since 1979, the US interventionist foreign policy has created civil wars or failed states all over the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe -- the so-called "arc of instability" that the US has itself created. Most obviously, we have seen sectarian killing in Iraq, a failed state in Libya dominated by ISIS, and now an ISIS terrorist state in Syria and Iraq. These interventions do not serve the interests of the American people. In fact, they have violated American ideals of human rights, self determination, the rule of law and, in most cases, democracy. They have also resulted in blowback from people seeking revenge and indoctrinated with the extreme Islamism of our purported allies. They serve only the interests of arms manufacturers, military contractors and the minority of US military, CIA and State Department personnel who are motivated by personal aggrandizement rather than true patriotism. Rep. Gabbard is a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq and a member of the House Armed Services committee. She has spoken out against these policies, for example in interviews with Wolf Blitzer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Q8X60KQ9Q) and Scott Simon (http://www.npr.org/2015/12/12/459464247/are-efforts-to-overthrow-assad-counter-productive), and in the halls of Congress itself. Rep. Gabbard, please keep doing what you are doing. Know that Americans who are paying attention appreciate all that you do and that we "have your back." Please share this with others of both parties who are speaking out against these bipartisan neocon/liberal interventionist policies.

We know that the DNC is complicit to the corporations / .01% and we want to clean house and bring the DNC back to representing the people. Attacking the Bernie Sanders Campaign within the party is UNACCEPTABLE and foul play. Show the DNC you stand behind the values that Bernie Sanders brings to the Democratic Party and that these are the values to embrace. These backstabbing corporate ways are a thing of the past. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sanders-sues-dnc_56748b06e4b06fa6887d883e?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013§ion=politics http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/fire-debbie-wasserman-sch_b_8841576.html

Since 2011, the United States has sold a great deal of weapons. But the U.S. government has stopped reporting on its own and other nations' arms sales. CRS has its own internal government sources of information. The report it used to produce is not duplicated by any other publication. The United States is no longer documenting one of its biggest and most deadly businesses. In 2012, Richard Grimmett retired from the Congressional Research Service. He had been the chief author of its reports on international weapons sales and transfers. It is thanks to those reports that we know, with some reliability, that as of 2011 the United States accounted for 79% of the value of transfer agreements to ship weapons to governments in the Middle East, 79% also to poor nations around the world, and 77% of the value of total agreements to ship weapons to other countries. We can compare these numbers with earlier years, but not with later ones. Even if Congress doesn't want to know, it should not get away with denying us that right. Background: CRS Report for Congress, Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2004-2011 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R42678.pdf

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 15,000 AUMs and exploratory sites are located throughout the United States, posing substantial public health and environmental hazards. No existing federal laws require clean up of these toxic abandoned sites. Most of these AUMs were established under the “General Mining Law of 1872,” that does not require reclamation or remediation. Mining companies walked away from their clean up responsibilities after decades of mining, leaving the public to bear their toxic legacy. With 75% of AUMs located on public or Tribal lands, Indigenous communities have long faced disproportionate impacts from this toxic legacy. According to EPA data, approximately 10 million people are estimated to live within 50 miles of a recorded AUM. Radioactive pollution from AUMs have been linked to cancer, genetic defects, and increases in mortality. There is no minimum threshold for radiation damage (no dose which is harmless), and radiation causes cancer and other organ damage, especially during fetal development and in young children. It’s time to clean up the mines!

On Tuesday November 25, 2015 the video tape recording of the murder of 17 year old Laquan McDonald was released to the public. It is clear from viewing the police video that the police lied about Laquan McDonald's murder. Yet Prosecuting Attorney Anita Alvarez, the Independent Police Review Authority and Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department set on this video for 13 months knowing that a murder had been committed. They violated the law. The Department of Justice the DOJ needs to step up and hold all those who covered up the murder of Laquan McDonald accountable. :Laquan McDonald's murder was a clear violation of his federally protected constitutional rights as a citizen. We demand that the DOJ take action.

The rapid development of fossil fuel resources in the western U.S. and Canada has resulted in numerous proposed fossil fuel infrastructure projects through the West Coast. These fossil fuel infrastructure projects pose significant risks to the health and safety of people and their environment, and threaten the livability of their communities. Coal, oil and gas carried out of Northwest ports would carry as much carbon annually as five Keystone XL pipelines. Given the urgency of the threat posed to your city and to our global environment, we urge you to act on this issue now by pledging to build no new fossil fuel infrastructure.

The rapid development of fossil fuel resources in the western U.S. and Canada has resulted in numerous proposed fossil fuel infrastructure projects through the West Coast. These fossil fuel infrastructure projects pose significant risks to the health and safety of people and their environment, and threaten the livability of their communities. Given that Hawaii has already committed to be 100% renewable by 2045, it makes no sense to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure in your city or state. Given the urgency of the threat posed to your city and to our global environment by fossil fuel dependency, we urge you to act on this issue now by pledging to build no new fossil fuel infrastructure.

The rapid development of fossil fuel resources in the western U.S. and Canada has resulted in numerous proposed fossil fuel infrastructure projects through the West Coast. These fossil fuel infrastructure projects pose significant risks to the health and safety of people and their environment, and threaten the livability of their communities. Coal, oil and gas carried out of Northwest ports would carry as much carbon annually as five Keystone XL pipelines. Given the urgency of the threat posed to your city and to our global environment, we urge you to act on this issue now by pledging to build no new fossil fuel infrastructure.

The rapid development of fossil fuel resources in the western U.S. and Canada has resulted in numerous proposed fossil fuel infrastructure projects up and down the West Coast. These fossil fuel infrastructure projects pose significant risks to the health and safety of people and their environment, and threaten the livability of their communities. One leak from a Northridge, CA methane storage field has released daily methane emissions equivalent to one-quarter of all of California's daily methane emissions, according to the California Air Resources Board, sickening nearby residents. Given the urgency of the threat posed to your city and to our global environment, and the frequency of accidents associated with fossil fuel infrastructure, we urge you to act on this issue now by pledging to build no new fossil fuel infrastructure.