UPDATE!

From Rachel Rivera, the mom who started the petition to keep Sandy families from being evicted"

"My family and other families displaced by Sandy will sleep tight tonight knowing that, at least for the time being, we won’t be evicted from our hotels. This evening, just before the city’s arbitrary deadline to evict us, a Manhattan Supreme Court Judge ordered the city to extend the hotel program for families like mine for 15 days as a result of a lawsuit filed by Legal Aid. NYCC members will continue to fight to secure long term affordable housing for all families displaced by Sandy."

Read more about this great victory in the Wall Street Journal, click here.

Thanks to all who signed the petition!
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Six-months after Superstorm Sandy, shore towns are rebuilding, but recovery is slow. Remnants of Sandy's destruction are clearly visible. Towns are working hard to complete boardwalk projects to draw tourists back in time for summer, notes the Associated Press. But while the media wonders where tourists will spend the vacations, 600 families who fell victim to Sandy are wondering if the only place left for them to call "home" is the streets.

The following message is from Rachel Rivera and her petition pleading for the NYC Department of Homeless services not to throw her and her 7-year-old daughter out on the street.

Via CREDO, and New York Communities for Change:

Families who were displaced by Sandy and are living in hotels need long-term affordable housing, not to be thrown out into the streets for the second time since the storm. Extend the April 30th deadline until all displaced families are placed into apartments that they can afford.

Why is this important?

My seven year old daughter Marisol and I have called our room in the Holiday Inn Express on 29th Street home for the past six months since the roof in our apartment collapsed during Hurricane Sandy. But in a few days, we are going to lose our home again—this time because of an arbitrary deadline set by the Department of Homeless Services. No one wants to call a hotel home, but the only other option we’ve been given by the city is the streets.

My daughter and I are not alone. Hundreds of Sandy victims, living in hotels throughout New York City will be evicted from our rooms on Tuesday April 30th. Like Marisol and I, many of those families have nowhere else to go. The number of New Yorkers sleeping in homeless shelters is at an all-time high and families like mine are about to join them. We are victims of natural disaster and deserve to be treated with dignity.

Sign my petition demanding that DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond postpones the April 30th deadline to evict Sandy families living in hotels until there is a plan to find us all housing that we can afford for the long term.

Please sign Rachel's petition to the Department of Homeless services commissioner, Seth Diamond.

For more information about the impending eviction of 600 Sandy families, click here.

Lori Hass' daughter was shot twice at Virginia Tech in 2007. Lori created a petition at MoveOn.org calling for commonsense gun violence prevention measures. On Monday, April 15, 2013, Lori delivered the signatures of 1.4 million MoveOn members to the offices of U.S. senators.

Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined a large coalition of groups representing organized labor, seniors, veterans, women and progressives in delivering over 2 million petition signatures to the White House demanding no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and disabled veterans' benefits.

In his speech, Bernie said:

“Our job in the coming weeks and months… is to rally tens of millions of people who understand that in this country the middle class (and) working families are hurting, and we’re not going to balance the budget on their backs.”

“Anybody in the Congress who believes in cutting these … benefits … may well not be returning to Washington.”

President Obama's budget, released Wednesday, would cut benefits for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans through a so-called "chained consumer price index"(Chained CPI). This proposed change in how cost of living adjustments are calculated would mean that if you're 65 years old today, you would lose more than $650 a year when you reach 75 and more than $1,000 a year when you reach 85.

The proposed change would also affect more than 3.2 million veterans receiving disability benefits. Veterans who started receiving disability benefits at age 30 would have their benefits reduced by $1,425 at age 45, $2,341 at age 55 and $3,231 at age 65. Benefits for more than 350,000 surviving spouses and children would also be cut.

If you haven't yet done so, contact your members of Congress and tell them not to touch Social Security.

The Chained CPI, deceptively portrayed as a reasonable cost of living adjustment, is a cut to Social Security that would hurt seniors.

Watch Robert Reich explain why Chained CPI is so stingy in this video, and then sign his SignOn.org petition to President Obama at http://www.signon.org/sign/mr-president-please-do-1/.

Those of us who aren't wealthy have already sacrificed enough!

Two and a half weeks after sequestration took effect, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) is not standing on the sidelines in the face of the severe cuts.

The Other 98% released a video on YouTube Tuesday evening, showcasing Grayson's efforts to give a voice to hundreds of thousands of Americans in favor of repealing sequestration. Grayson delivered a petition signed by 300,000 individuals (I signed, too!) directly to House Speaker John Boehner's office. While Boehner was not present, the message was said to have been passed along.

"It will cause pain," Grayson says in the clip. "It will cause economic dislocation. And then, the wailing will begin. The wailing will begin."

Grayson cautioned that the GOP conversation would then shift toward more serious cuts, the so-called "entitlements."

"This is the first step down a slippery slope called "you work until you die,'" Grayson added. "And that's why this has to be fought so vigorously."

Back on March 3, Boehner criticized the automatic spending cuts as "silly" and "random," adding that he was "concerned about its impact on the economy." His blame has been placed on President Barack Obama, with the House Speaker saying in February that sequestration is a product of Obama's "failed leadership."

On Wednesday, the movement will be back in the hands of the people. March 20 National Day of Action will bring together those in favor of repeal at congressional offices and communities across the country.

Narrated by Oscar winning actor Morgan Freeman, "Breaking the Taboo" is produced by Sam Branson's Sundog Pictures and Brazilian co-production partner Spray Films and was directed by Cosmo Feilding Mellen and Fernando Grostein Andrade. Featuring interviews with several current or former presidents from around the world, such as former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, the film follows The Global Commission on Drug Policy on a mission to break the political taboo over the United States led War on Drugs and expose what it calls the biggest failure of global policy in the last 40 years.

From the film's website:

"The War on Drugs has failed. After 50 years of prohibition, illicit drugs are now the third most valuable industry in the world after food and oil, all in the control of criminals. Drugs are cheaper and more available than ever before. Millions of people are in prison for drugs offences. Corruption and violence, especially in producer and transit countries, endangers democracy. Tens of thousands of people die each year in drug wars."

"Improving our drug policies is one of the key policy challenges of our time. The time for action is now."

There is also a petition on the film's website to the head of the United Nations and all heads of state calling for an end to the war on drugs.

Following the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, a habitually abusive public school administration in Harlem subjected over 300 disabled students and staff to a horrific staged school shooting.

Planned in secrecy, without any warning or notice to any of the victims, desperate students and staff were traumatized and struggle today with the aftermath. Hundreds of stories have emerged of teachers holding doors down to save their students while calling loved ones to say good bye. Staff falling to the floor in prayer. And brave acts of protection and heroism. Some arrived at hospitals for heart pain. 300 fragile students, starting at the age of 12, who have worked all their lives to be strong and overcome emotional hardships were terrorized by this action, and most do not have the voice to respond. Or even to tell their parents.

NYT:

Police officers raced to the school. Some students trembled as they crouched in corners trying to hide. A few staff members began to pray.

“We really thought we were not going home that night,” one teacher said. “It was probably the worst feeling I ever had in my life.”
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P.S. 79, the Horan School, serves 300 students with special needs, including those with severe emotional disabilities, autism, cerebral palsy and other disorders. The students range in age from 12 to 21, one staff member said.

The lockdown drill began about 10 a.m. on Tuesday with a woman’s voice on the school’s loudspeaker saying, “ ‘Shooter,’ or ‘intruder,’ and ‘get out, get out, lockdown,’ ” said the staff member, who added that it seemed so realistic that it was hard to tell if the woman speaking was actually talking to a gunman or to teachers and students throughout the school.

At 10:01 a.m., a woman dialed 911 from her cellphone and said she had heard a message over the loudspeaker “that there was an intruder in the school, and that she was in the class with her students,” said a Police Department spokeswoman.

Officers from the 25th Precinct station house responded, she said. When they arrived a minute later, school officials told them that it was just a drill.

The school had already been under a genuine alert the same Friday of the Sandy Hook shooting due to a volatile former student who was believed to have entered the building.

On the day of the "lockdown drill," many students began to cry, shake, and scream in horror. Some students ran and hid into classroom closets, under their desks, and others became aggressive —not knowing how to deal with the chaos and fear.

A movement is growing to hold the school's administration accountable for terrorizing the students and staff. The students need help after being traumatized, and the teachers need to be protected from retribution by the administration for exposing this cruel and unusual assault.

There is a petition calling for justice for the students and staff of that Horan school that will be submitted to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, if enough signatures are gathered. If you'd care to join the friends of Horan and sign the petition, it's available online here.

Young children wait outside Sandy Hook Elementary School after a shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012. Photo by Reuters.

Donations for the families of the shooting victims are now being accepted.

And you can sign the petition asking President Obama to help start a national conversation about gun control.

Don was lucky. His is one of the last houses left standing on his street...

Friends of the Earth announced today the launch of its new Climate Stories campaign. The project, produced in partnership with HEIST (http://heistprojects.com), uses powerful, emotional video shot entirely on location to bring to light the very real and tangible effects that climate change and extreme weather are already having on Americans all across the country.

Inspired in part by the devastation left in the wake of Superstorm Sandy and this summer’s record-breaking drought, Climate Stories documents unique, personal stories from Americans living across the country, from Alaska to Nebraska, Louisiana to Vermont.

“We’re already seeing the effects of climate change everywhere, affecting Americans regardless of political affiliation or background,” said Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica. “This campaign represents a new way of approaching the issue. It’s time to hear from real people whose lives are already being transformed. Stories are a powerful way to mobilize and inspire everyone -- most importantly, President Obama -- to act now to on climate change.”

The website, found at www.ClimateStories.us, highlights short videos of Rockaway Beach, New York, and Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, emphasize the large-scale loss of neighborhoods and homes to Superstorm Sandy and encroaching sea levels, respectively. In the videos, interviews with residents draw contrasts between past weather patterns and the recent, erratic events that are destroying their ways of life.

The campaign also compiles user-submitted stories and invites visitors to submit their own accounts, pictures and videos. In Wisconsin, unseasonable temperatures ruined apple crops for a farming family and other apple-growers across the state, while in Colorado, a family explains the heartbreak of losing their home in recent record wildfires.

By focusing on the universal effects of climate change and extreme weather -- and the degrees to which they are being felt already -- Friends of the Earth intends to push President Obama to take a strong policy stance on climate change early in his second term.

“President Obama has an opportunity right now to take strong action to address climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, calling for a carbon tax, and ending fossil fuel subsidies in the fiscal cliff negotiations. Acting now would set the tone for the next four years and mark a first step in fighting the climate-driven weather that is affecting Americans everywhere,” continued Pica.

The Climate Stories website includes a petition asking President Obama to make climate change a major focus in the next four years. Friends of the Earth will gather signatures in order prove to the president that climate change is not an issue delegated to political conveniences, but rather one that affects Americans of all walks of life.

New from the folks at Moveon.org:

First, Donald Trump demanded that President Obama show his birth certificate, repeating a racist conspiracy theory that Obama isn't really American. Then Trump wanted to see his academic transcripts, implying that he got into Harvard because he's black. And on Election Night, Trump accused President Obama of essentially stealing the election and called for a "revolution."

So why does Macy's have a special deal to promote Donald Trump's line of clothes, including a major holiday season TV ad campaign? Macy's should not continue to allow this kind of racism by association with their family brand.

It's time for Macy's to tell Donald Trump: "You're fired."

Click here to sign the petition urging Macy's to dump Trump.