Tweet to Pass the HEROES Act!
In the next two weeks, the benefits extended by the CARES act will expire—throwing unemployed people into poverty. And the PPP program that was supposed to help small businesses survive and retain their employees is once again running out of money—in part because so much of it has been diverted by corruption and blocked by racism. Nine weeks ago, House Democrats passed the HEROES Act which addressed these and many other crucial issues. But Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senators have blocked the bill and, so far, have failed to agree amongst themselves on any new measures.
All four of our members of Congress (MoC) are committed to passing HEROES. So we need to go beyond asking for their support.
We don’t call senators from other states (that’s astroturfing), but we can reach out to their donors. We've selected 12 corporations who are major donors to the Republican Party. We're asking you to use your social media presence, particularly Twitter, to ask those corporations to use their influence with the Republicans who they fund to pass the HEROES Act because economic collapse, poverty, and homelessness are bad for corporations themselves, bad for America, and bad for us.
The Republican Party is beholden to corporate interests. We want ISF members to speak up to those interests to use their influence on the Republican Party, not to attack them for supporting the GOP, but to ask them to use their influence because crashing the economy benefits neither them, nor their stockholders, nor us.
If you are a stockholder, the company will generally have a “shareholder relations” contact through which you can make inquiries. This is a good place for you to start.
Another thing that anyone (with a Twitter account) can do is to tweet at them. You could address a tweet to them such as:
@Corporation, economic collapse is bad for all of us. You donate to Republicans; tell them to pass #HeroesAct ASAP. We're a consumer-based economy. Unemployed, uninsured, homeless Americans can’t sustain it. Overwhelmed local governments & hospitals can’t fight #COVID19
Similarly, you could reply to a tweet from them that you find on one of the corporation's public Twitter pages. For example, in reply to a Bank of America tweet urging customers to “Open our Mobile Banking app, and follow these steps,” you could reply with:
@BankofAmerica Ours is a consumer-based economy. Unemployed, uninsured, unhoused Americans can’t sustain it. You’re important Republican donors. Please tell them to pass the #HeroesAct ASAP
The key elements to include in your tweets are to link @corporatename—Republicans—economic disaster—#HeroesAct. And to share it with your followers so that they may be encouraged to send their own tweets.
You may also want to include one of these images:
The image description (a.k.a. alt text) for these images should be:
With great corporate power, there must also come corporate responsibility! Republican senators listen to corporate donors. Those donors need to use the influence they’ve bought to pressure their senators to pass the HEROES Act. There is no economy without people; if we die, the economy dies with us.
The 12 corporations we want to target are listed below; please tweet to as many as you can and call them out on your other social media:
@aflac
@Altria
@AnheuserBusch
@ATT
@BankofAmerica
@Chevron
@Citibank
@exxonmobile
@generalelectric
@UPS
@Verizon
@Walmartinc
Background
In the next two weeks, the $600 extended-unemployment benefit that has sustained unemployed workers will expire—throwing them into poverty. Even with the extended benefits, in the past few months 6,000,000 new people have enrolled in the SNAP (food stamps) program, which has been overwhelmed by the crush. Unemployed people are also set to lose their extended health insurance. With the pandemic raging on, 10,000,000 more people will soon be without coverage. The moratorium on foreclosures/evictions from federally-related housing is also coming to an end—threatening a huge wave of people being forced out of their homes, onto the street. And the PPP program that was supposed to help small businesses survive and retain their employees is once again running out of money—in part because so much of it has been diverted by corruption and blocked by racism.
Nine weeks ago, House Democrats passed the HEROES Act which addressed these and many other crucial issues. Since then, McConnell has prevented the Senate from even debating HEROES, let along voting on it. But now, even Republicans are grudgingly admitting something more must be done. Their plan is clear:
Businesses, schools, sports, and public events must be forced to reopen so that Trump can be reelected (even though defeating the pandemic requires keeping things closed).
The threat of poverty & eviction must be used to force workers to risk their health and lives (even though defeating COVID requires all non-essential workers to stay home).
Businesses must be granted immunity from all sickness/death liability for their workers/customers (so that they can disregard health & safety without financial risk).
More bailouts, tax-cuts, and subsidies must be granted to billionaires and big business (so that the Republican donors keep the contributions flowing).
Testing must be sabotaged to conceal the true scope of the pandemic (so that Republicans can sing “Happy times are here again” as they run for reelection).
All four of our members of Congress (MoC) are committed to passing HEROES. So we need to go beyond asking for their support. We don’t call senators from other states other than ours (that’s astroturfing), and Republicans don't care that much for public opinions other than from their Fox News addicted base.
But they do care about their donors. So we want to try something new. We've selected 12 corporations who are major donors to the Republican Party. We're asking you to use your social media presence, particularly Twitter, to ask those corporations to use their influence with the Republicans who they fund to pass the HEROES Act because economic collapse, poverty, and homelessness are bad for corporations themselves, bad for America, and bad for us. We want ISF members to speak up to those with influence on the Republican Party, not to attack them for supporting the GOP, but to ask them to use their influence because crashing the economy benefits neither them, nor their stockholders, nor us.
Join us on an action to tweet to corporations linking their donations and their influence to the impending economic wreckage caused by Republican incompetence and refusal to govern.
Bonus action: Support Move to Amend
A big part of why we’re in this situation of beseeching corporations to ask the Republican senators they’ve bought off to please not kill us by inaction is that those senators have been bought off by corporations in the first place.
What should be the way of things should be that senators listen to their constituents. Then we could leave it to those constituents in other states to pressure senators the same way we pressure ours.
But ten years ago, the Citizens United v. FEC court decision held that corporations are people for the purposes of the First Amendment’s protections on political speech, and therefore corporations need to be able to make independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates without restriction.
The corrosive effect on our nation’s politics has been stronger among Republicans (who already were predisposed to ignore constituents for other reasons), but has been to some extent bipartisan; the whole point of the Indivisible movement is to speak up to our politicians, regardless of their party, because they will listen to corporate interests if we don’t.
We can fix this. We can get money out of politics.
Congress can amend the Constitution to make it clear that the First Amendment’s protections of people’s speech do not extend to corporations. Move to Amend has been fighting for such an Amendment, which they have drafted and posted online. You can read it and ask your Members of Congress to cosponsor it and get it passed.