Good news for people who want to do good: Day 284

Women are ready to run — a lot of women

We’ve been keeping an eye on the massive numbers of women who have contacted EMILY’s List since the election, looking for advice or information about running for office.

And the numbers just keep growing: As Refinery29 put it, “There are now 20,000 more cracks (and counting) in the glass ceiling.”

Emily’s List announced at the Women’s Convention in Detroit on Saturday that more than 20,000 women across the country have thrown their hat into the ring to run for public office. “It was this convention that pushed us over,” Emily’s List president Stephanie Schriock tells Refinery29. “We were at 19,000 last week and basically the past few days we shot up.”

For a little context, over the entire 2016 election cycle, the organization heard from 920 women.

According to Schriock, about half of the women who have contacted them recently are under 45, and they come from all 50 states. So while the current numbers for women in political office are far from parity with their male colleagues, that looks pretty likely to start changing really soon — as the over 150 women who attended an EMILY’s List candidate training in New York City would surely agree.

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Rep. Maxine Waters speaks out for Rep. Frederica Wilson, and for African-American women everywhere

California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters is a force to be reckoned with, and she wants all African-American women to recognize the power within themselves, as well — and to put it into action.

Speaking up in defense of her friend and colleague, Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, Waters noted the importance of women, and especially African American women, “to step up to the plate and provide leadership.”

No matter the name-calling or attempts at intimidation that will surely come, “We cannot afford to back down.”

And on the subject of the callous treatment Wilson has received from the White House, Waters was clear: “We are going to keep asking for that apology, and we’re going to keep defending ourselves.”

ACTION ALERT: Open Enrollment starts Nov. 1!

The Trump administration, in cahoots with the GOP, have done everything they can to destroy Obamacare. But they’ve failed — the law is alive and your health care coverage is still yours to control.

And if you’re not covered, now is the time: open enrollment for the Obamacare marketplaces starts Wednesday, Nov. 1, and runs through Dec. 15. Check out your options now and get yourself signed up.

And if you want to get your activism on while you’re doing it, Indivisible has a terrific Open Enrollment Organizing Kit for you, with all the information, facts, and instruction you need to spread the word about Obamacare and get others signed up for the health care coverage that is their basic human right.

Houston Texans players who chose to #TakeAKnee made a brave and bold move

The movement of athletes kneeling during the national anthem to draw attention to systemic racial injustice has not slowed down, despite the crass efforts to dismiss and delegitimize them.

And Sunday, some Houston Texans players showed that they are still dedicated to this crucial cause, even when the attacks on it are coming from somewhere much closer to home than Washington, D.C.

A few days ago, Texans owner Bob McNair offered a crude assessment of the movement, one with an unmistakable racial connotation. During a meeting of owners and executives discussing how to handle the protests, McNair stated that “We can’t have the inmates running the prison.”

McNair later apologized, but many of his players clearly still had something to say about it — not in words, but in action.

Most of the Houston Texans kneeled during the national anthem today pic.twitter.com/6KZt7oPcFQ

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) October 29, 2017

ACTION ALERT: #FreeRosa!

10-year old Rosa Maria, who has cerebral palsy, was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents who followed her ambulance and waited outside the hospital where she was having emergency surgery. She now faces deportation.

As the Washington Post editorial board noted, this stunningly heartless move by Trump’s immigration officials “calls into question the judgment — not to mention humanity — of federal agents.”

The facts are heartbreaking:

The girl, brought across the Mexican border to Laredo, Tex., when she was 3 months old, was being transferred from a medical center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi at 2 a.m. Tuesday when the ambulance was stopped at a Border Patrol interior checkpoint. Agents allowed the girl and the adult cousin who accompanied her to proceed to the hospital for the child’s gallbladder surgery. But several armed Border Patrol agents, according to the girl’s family, were posted outside the operating room and then her hospital room until she was transferred to a federal facility for migrant children. Keep in mind that this is a frightened child who has never been away from her family, that her doctor recommended discharge to a family member familiar with her condition, and that her cousin and grandfather, both legal residents, offered to take care of her.

If you’re outraged, you’re not alone — and you can speak up about it. The ACLU has a tool to help: enter your phone number, and they will route your call to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, where you can demand that they release this young girl immediately. The more calls they get, the harder it will be for them to ignore us.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid provides a masterclass in debunking conservative spin

If your Fox-watching relatives or Facebook friends keep yelling “Uranium One!!” at you, and you’re wondering how you can get them to understand the truth (or even what the heck it is), and not the right-wing “alternative” truth of the story — the one where, big surprise, Hillary Clinton is the worst person on Earth — allow MSNBC’s Joy Reid to help.

When a conservative journalist tried to spread that fallacious spin, Reid was having none of it. And she gave a thorough, detailed, and actual-fact-based debunking of the whole darn thing.

Watch, listen, and tell your right-wing uncle:

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