🚨🦠Police are not a pandemic solution

Dire warnings about lack of future pandemic relief funds juxtaposed with reports the Biden admin is urging localities to use what's left of past covid money on buffing up police instead of mitigation

May 13, 2022

(Sample letter & tips below, Social media toolkit at bottom.)

NBC News: Biden to urge cities to spend Covid relief money on police, crime prevention (Found on twitter.)
“President Joe Biden will urge states and cities to use unspent money from last year’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package to fund crime prevention programs and hire police officers.”

We are facing a crisis where pandemic response is not being funded going forward, and the idea that localities should be spending leftover past covid money on police instead of dire needs for pandemic mitigation and relief makes no sense whatsoever.

Write the White House:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Find your other representatives to call or write to them:

https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/

I’m writing all of my reps, from the Mayor and the School Board, right up to the President.

Below is a sample letter, which you can copy & paste, but I also encourage everyone to edit as they see fit to suit your own interests and tone. Adding a personal stake or how you believe this might impact you is also helpful.

(See below the sample letter for general tips on rep contact effectiveness.)

SAMPLE STATEMENT TO WHITE HOUSE REPS MAYORS ETC

Written by Eric Stein (@toba on twitter) I have added the last paragraph. -Chloe

I'd like to provide feedback about this news story “NBC News Biden to urge cities to spend Covid relief money on police, crime prevention” (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-urge-cities-spend-covid-relief-money-police-crime-prevention-rcna28656?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma) that says that the President has urged cities to spend COVID relief money on law enforcement. This is completely wrongheaded. The pandemic is ongoing.

If we must live with COVID we need to work to fix buildings - the EPA Clean Air In Buildings challenge lays out why and how. Local government offices and facilities open to the public must be fixed first, and second local businesses should be supported with grants to make their facilities COVID safe. Even the CDC has warned and acknowledged that many people will get Long Covid which can be debilitating (documented by CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7036a1.htm). Vaccines, at best, reduce the incidence of Long Covid once infected by 50% and some studies show no effect. It is urgent that we avoid disabling millions of Americans and saddling millions more with long term cardiovascular and other organ damage. We are already a nation struggling with healthcare. We cannot make this worse by wrongly deprioritizing making our indoor environments clean and safe. Police staff spending is the wrong way to fix COVID dangers. This amounts to misappropriation of the funds that are essential to making our communities safer and healthier. Please change course.

We have already been warned that federal pandemic funding has run out and there is no more for covering the uninsured who get hospitalized with COVID, no more money for more boosters or even vaccinations for the yet unvaccinated, including children under 5, and that there will not be funding for treatments, or further improvements to air quality in schools to prevent transmission. To take money that was already intended for pandemic relief & prevention and shift it to the police is unacceptable.

Social Media

ALT includes the following for screen readers: “This page has the sample letter included in this graphic go to tiny U R L dot com slash Fund Pandemic Relief” ALT is also included in both the Instagram link and Twitter post linked.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cdg1Y8ZuZPU/

teamshumanfox

A post shared by Chloe (@teamshumanfox)

This page has the sample letter included in this graphic go to tiny U R L dot com slash Fund Pandemic Relief

Contacting Reps General Tips for Effectiveness:

I have heard staffers will also only pick ONE topic from each letter to count it as. So if you write about two ore more different issues in the letter, only one of those issues will be counted. So always keep letters to one particular issue per letter or call.

When you send a contact form through something like Action Network, it still does get counted. So there’s no reason not to do it. But it’s far more effective to do a personal letter.

The reason postcards are better is because I’ve heard they get through the mail screening process faster than letters in envelopes, especially in DC. Also it’s harder to put them through an automated process where no human has to read them, like a contact form letter or even a type written printed 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. (Note that the White House asks you specifically if you’re going to send a letter to “please consider typing it on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper”.)

Postcard through mail > Letter through the mail > Phone Call > Web site Contact Form > Automated form letter

We can change things together

Chloe

🍉🐻🌈🌻🐦✨🔭🍭

On the side of the Humans.

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