ECHO BASE

When Al Franken vacated his Senate seat earlier this year, Tina Smith moved from Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota to serve as the state's junior U.S. Senator as appointed by Governor Dayton. She's running to keep the seat this November, first in a primary (you can vote early starting Friday, June 29th) and then (preferably) in the general. She deserves our support in both races. WHAT SHE STANDS FOR A former Planned Parenthood executive, Tina Smith has earned the support of Democrats with an aggressive policy agenda . She supports single payer health care.  She's the cosponsor of bills  to ban the sale of bump stocks, assault weapons, and high-capacity magazines, as well as to expand background checks. She's also working with Senator Amy Klobuchar to ban people convicted of stalking from having firearms. She's co-sponsoring the Paycheck Fairness Act to help close the gender pay gap. And she introduced the HELP Separated Children Act to help force ICE to de...

Angie Craig is a Democrat running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District, challenging incumbent Republican and Trump enabler Jason Lewis. She has a real shot at flipping the district. Let's help her out! WHAT SHE STANDS FOR Raised by a single mother in a mobile home park, Angie Craig stands with working and middle class people. She champions prioritizing funding for public education, the rights of teachers to organize and collectively bargain (and paying them more-- hey, there's an idea), fighting climate change with renewable enrgy initiatives, overturning Citizen's United, equal pay and full reproductive rights for women, common sense gun control, reining in the costs of the pharmaceutical industry, and moving away from a fee-for-service healthcare system toward universal health coverage. Find out more about her policy positions . Please consider supporting Angie's campaign any way you can! HOW YOU CAN HELP ...

Please re-post this entry! Gina Haspel, 45's new nominee to lead the CIA, personally helped torture detainees in a secret CIA-run prison during the Bush administration. She then made sure the video evidence was destroyed. More info about Gina Haspel from the good folks at Indivisible. Haspel has no place in the federal government. Please call your reps and ask them to refuse her confirmation to the cabinet. SENATE ACTION: WHAT TO DO: Call your U.S. Senator. Find your Congressional representatives here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members If you're in Minnesota: Senator Amy Klobuchar: (202) 224-3244 / 612-727-5220 Senator Tina Smith: (202) 224-5641) / (651) 221-1016 SCRIPT, if you need it (if you know your rep already supports what you're asking for, adapt your script as a thank you— yes, this is important to do too!): "Hello. My name is _______. My zip code is _____. I don't need a personal response. I'm calling to encourage Senator ______...

Please share this post! Urgent call to action: Anti-protest + Trespass bill (HF 3693 / SF 3463) This nefarious bill is sailing under many a civic activist's radar. It’s already passed committees in both houses and will soon be voted on or slipped into an omnibus. This bill increases the penalties for trespass on “critical infrastructure.” It also, incredibly, expands liability to the groups that those convicted of trespass or damages belong to. (The bills extend “civil and crimi nal liability to a group or organization that recruits, trains, aids, hires, or conspires with an individual to commit criminal trespass or damage to property,” according to a House Research summary.)  The environmental groups point out that this is a GOP, pro-fossil fuel maneuver aimed at pipeline protesters and the organizations that support their work. According to the ACLU, “this bill is unconstitutional, undemocratic, and unnecessary.” It's unnecessary; there are already ...

Please re-post this entry! 45 has nominated CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Not a good idea. Wall of Us has a good summation of why Pompeo is unfit to serve in the American government:  "While in Congress, Mr. Pompeo argued for domestic surveillance on a wide scale , insisted that waterboarding was not torture and dismissed a hunger strike by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as a 'political stunt'...  Pompeo also denies climate change and has said that the Paris Climate Agreement amounted to “ bowing down to radical environmentalists ”... and he is unapologetically and consistently anti-Muslim." It's time for us to raise our voices and make sure our reps know we don't want Mike Pompeo as the nation's top diplomat. SENATE ACTION WHAT TO DO: Call your U.S. Senator. Find your Congressional representatives here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members If you're in Minnesota: Senator ...

Minnesotans! Our state legislature is considering important new legislation. They could vote on these measures at any time, as they don't schedule votes in advance. Please call your district reps; script is provided below if you need it. If you like, you can use the script when you make these calls, and take our word for it that you'll be opposing legislation curtailing the free speech of protestors, rolling back environmental regulations, and locking the media and watchdog groups out of agricultural research data, while supporting legislation strengthening sexual harassment law. Or consult more background by Watch Your Reps MN (from whom we've received this info, as we're often fortunate enough to do). = = = = = WHAT TO DO: 1. MN HOUSE Call your MN House Rep (find him or her using this link ). Script, if you need it: "Hello. I'm a consituent of Representative ________. I'm calling to urge the Representative to oppose HF3280, HF3162, HF31...

As ever, thanks to Watch Your Reps MN for the good word here... The Minnesota House of Representatives is hearing 2 bills on Thursday 3/1 that will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people who are a danger to themselves and others. Please share this ACTION ALERT broadly! Actions: 1. If your representative is on the committee ( http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/comm/committeemembers.asp?comm=90019 ), contact them and tell them to support these bills. If they are not, contact the committee chair ( http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/members.asp?id=15403 ) and tell him to support these bills 2. Sign up to testify about these bills in person, contact the committee administrator at Mike.Valleau@house.mn or 651-296-9115 3. If you cannot testify in person, email Michael Valleau Mike.Valleau@house.mn (mailto: Mike.Valleau@house.mn ) and copy the DFL Minority Lead Debra Hilstrom rep.debra.hilstrom@house.mn ( http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/sendmail/mailt...