Solutions for Children In Reach

Dear Gabriel,

The resources that could save nearly 11 million children’s lives are not high-cost, not high-tech, and not uncommon. So what are they? Tragically out of reach.

Tell Congress to invest in the world’s children.

Saving lives is as simple as a vaccine, a mosquito net, or an antibiotic. Saving lives is as simple as a standard doctor’s appointment and access to run-of-the-mill medicine. Saving lives is as simple as Congress continuing to support global development programs that keep young children alive.

The truth is, we have the power to end preventable child deaths within a generation–but we need to start now. When 21 children under the age of five die each minute, every second matters.

As the U.S. government’s next fiscal year approaches, so will a new budget. Congress has a wonderful history of supporting global child survival programs. Let’s keep it that way. Don’t let Congress call it quits on the world’s children.

Tell Congress that you BELIEVE in ending preventable child deaths!

Thank you for taking action,

Kara F.
Care2 and ThePetitionSite Team

Easter Island’s Baby

Easter Island’s Baby

This is a piece I just finished from a block of Mongolian black marble. It was the most difficult of anything I’ve done so far, in reference to sanding and getting all the nicks and scratches out of it. I’ve dubbed it Easter Island’s Baby.

Originally, I was going to have it coming out of the ground, like the sculptures on Easter Island, but it worked better and was more secure, springing forth from the pieces of white alabaster. I love the dark black contrasted with the white stone and the dark green pot.

The next carving is with some Italian white ice alabaster.

Hope these photos do this justice. I’m getting a little better with each stone.

Cirque du Soleil & One Drop

From our friend Laura.

Cirque Du Soleil Celebrating World Water Day

Just wanted to share with you one of my very favorite things – Cirque du Soleil. If you have seen them perform you are probably a fan as well.

The founder of Cirque du Soleil has started a non-profit organization called One Drop to ensure that water is accessible to all, today and forever. On March 22nd, 2013, World Water Day, 237 Cirque artists, and other guest performers (Jackie Evancho and David Garibaldi from America’s Got Talent; Victoria’s Secret model Oluchi Orland; and Sonya Tayeh from SYTYCD) presented an original, one day only performance. This 90 minute celebration of water was filmed by 12 cameras and is close as you can get to front row seats.

For a $5 donation to One Drop you can watch this video. This is a bargain when tickets to a Cirque show cost $100. But you have to hurry – this video is only available until March 31st.

http://onenight.onedrop.org/en/?utm_source=SMPI&utm_medium=SocialMedia&utm_campaign=ONENIGHT2013

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Power To Wind Power

Dear Gabriel,

Replace dirty oil with clean offshore wind.

Clean offshore wind energy is safer for the oceans and the planet than offshore oil rigs. Tell your Representative to extend the Investment Tax Credit on offshore wind.

It’s been nearly three years since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, flooding the Gulf of Mexico with toxic oil. This tragic accident should have been a wake-up call, but today dolphins, sea turtles, and more are still at risk from another spill, and fossil fuel emissions are threatening our entire planet.

It’s time to go in a new direction. With offshore wind, we can create energy without polluting our oceans and our air. Offshore wind can harness a clean and infinite source of energy, while eliminating deadly drilling disasters and helping to create many more sustainable jobs than traditional fuel industries.

Let’s clean up our act. Tell your Representative to support clean and safe offshore wind energy TODAY»

The biggest barrier to wind is financing. As with other emerging technologies, offshore wind needs a boost to get started. H.R.924, the Incentivizing Offshore Wind Power Act, will help with some of that cost by extending the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for the first 3,000 MW of offshore wind installed.

But we’ll need your help to get it passed. Contact your Representative today and tell them to cosponsor the Incentivizing Offshore Wind Power Act»

It’s time to make a change. Support clean offshore wind energy today!

For the oceans,
Emily Fisher
Oceana

Women Standing For Love

Women Standing For Love Special Gathering April 8th

WOMEN STANDING FOR LOVE SPECIAL GATHERING MONDAY APRIL 8TH 7:15-9:30

Please join us for our 3rd Gathering for Women Standing For Love. The time has come where we as Women gather together: We share… We listen… We support… We inspire each other so we may bring forth the Vision in our Hearts to restore balance and harmony on Earth.

Only by gathering together as One in support and collaboration for the same Cause, can we finally create the world we all know is possible – A world where we all live in harmony within ourselves, with each other and with our beautiful planet Earth. By each of us bringing our ‘Peace’ of the puzzle, we can make it happen and create ‘The MasterPeace.’

As long as we stay isolated and overwhelmed, compare and compete, we perpetuate the old paradigm that does not work.

If you want to make a difference in the world, and realize that we all need each other to make it happen, here is an opportunity to connect with other Women Standing For Love. You are not alone anymore. Together we can do it.

At this Gathering I will share the 2nd Pillar of Women Standing For Love: We must actively create a Circle of our Heart’s Vision or actively join an existing Circle in resonance with our Heart’s Vision to build a solid foundation before we bring our Vision to the world. Then we will start putting it to practice by connecting in smaller groups with similar Resonance and Vision so we can get to know each other and start the Creation process.

You are warmly welcome! We all need you. We all need each other.

Where: Pacific Cultural Center, 1307 Seabright Ave, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Cost: $10 (Lack of funds? Contact me)
For more information: http://www.womenstandingforlove.com and
http://www.facebook.com/WomenStandingForLove
Contact: listentoyourheart@lillarose.com
Please share this with other Women. Thank you.
Pernilla Lillarose

Hunger In America

Dear Gabriel,

Growing up, I was incredibly lucky that my family could count on having enough food on the table for my sister and me. Even if we had hit hard times, we could count on our community to help bridge the gap while we got back on our feet.

That kind of community support is a simple thing, but for hungry families it isn’t always there.

Today, for 1 in 6 Americans, hunger is a reality.

We all know how scary it can be to face a financial crisis. Losing your job, facing an unexpected health issues or finding your rent has unexpectedly gone up can leave many families struggling to pay the bills and keep food on the table.

Without a strong safety net to help in times of financial trouble, too many families could face an empty dinner table and hungry nights.

Hunger in America can seem staggering, but the truth is by working together, we can find real solutions to the problem, before any more of our friends or relatives have to go to bed hungry.

Together we can end hunger in America. Please, sign on today to help raise awareness about those in need and give a voice to families struggling with hunger.

Thank you for taking action,

Ellen B.
Care2 and ThePetitionSite Team

Elephant Families In Mourning

Dear Gabriel,

I’ve just learned that 86 elephants — 33 of them pregnant females — have been gunned down by poachers in the Central African country of Chad.

The image above is from a similar slaughter last year. The ivory tusks have been hacked out and stolen. The ivory will be sold on the black market, and then eventually carved into products nobody needs.

Entire elephant families – even the pregnant mothers – brutally killed…to make ivory trinkets?

It’s heartbreaking and senseless…and it HAS TO STOP.

You can help protect elephants and all animals by making an emergency anti-cruelty donation today.

I know you believe as I do – that an elephant’s life is worth more than a silly trinket.

Elephants are incredibly social – they gather in extended families, the moms and aunts and cousins all live together. And they’re so much like us in other ways. They’re known to play and cry and even mourn their own dead.

They don’t deserve to die for the sake of an ivory ornament. Please help us stop this cruelty today.

The poaching of elephants for ivory is a global problem. And with offices, partner organizations, and supporters in so many countries, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is working around the world to save elephants.

Here’s how you can help too:

IFAW has trained hundreds of rangers and more than 1,600 wildlife law enforcement officials around the world to protect elephants and all animals. You can provide the rangers with anti-poaching training as well as essential equipment like radios, backpacks, boots and uniforms.

Significant quantities of smuggled ivory tusks have been intercepted by borders and customs officials trained by IFAW. The ivory trade is a chain of cruelty leading from a dead elephant all the way to a shelf in a gift shop. You can help us stop ivory smugglers and break that chain of cruelty.

China is the eventual destination for much of the poached ivory. Many consumers don’t realize that the vast majority of ivory products come from murdered elephants. You can help educate consumers in China and other countries and help shut down the markets for ivory.

The cruel ivory trade threatens to wipe out many populations of elephants – and this massacre of pregnant mothers shows that poachers will stop at nothing to get their hands on ivory.

Although today is a terribly sad day for elephants, I hope you’ll join me in using this day’s tragic news as motivation to fight even harder to protect elephants.

We CAN win this fight. But we need you.

Please make an emergency anti-cruelty donation today to help IFAW protect elephants and all animals.

Thanks for your help,

Jason Bell
IFAW Programme Director, Elephants

P.S. Some regions of Africa face total annihilation of their elephants. If we don’t stop the poachers, who will? Please make an emergency anti-cruelty donation today.

Syrias’ Living Hell

Dear Gabriel,

For millions of women, children and families in Syria, home has become hell.

Last week Amnesty investigators briefed me on the latest developments in that violence-wracked nation.

To say things are dire is an understatement.

Please make an urgent donation to Amnesty so we can continue to shine a light on human rights violations in Syria and around the world.

Our research team reports that:

Government forces have bombed entire neighborhoods, indiscriminately blowing up civilians. Recent attacks with long-range surface-to-surface missiles have targeted residential areas, killing entire families. Investigators in one case found only the severed arm of a child in the rubble — all that remained of one family.

In Aleppo, a seemingly endless procession of murdered men and boys — bound and shot in the head — is pulled from the river nearly every day.

While government forces continue to be overwhelmingly responsible for the death and suffering of civilians, armed opposition groups have escalated their abuses. Researchers in Damascus have identified a mass grave, filled with the bodies of children and others accused of helping the government. Local residents call it “the hole of death.”

More than 2 million Syrians have been displaced inside their own country. They face the threat of a second round of bombing in the new places where they have taken shelter.

Amnesty’s team is working on the ground, at enormous personal risk, to document and report these abuses. We cannot allow the world to avert its eyes from this human catastrophe.

At the global level, we are pressing countries in the European Union to make good on promises to provide emergency refugee assistance, and reminding Syria’s neighbors of their obligations to help refugees under international law. We continue to pressure governments and the United Nations Security Council to hold those responsible for slaughtering civilians accountable.

With every passing hour of indecision by the international community, the death toll in Syria rises. You have to ask, how many more civilians must die before the world takes action?

Please help today.

Sincerely,

Sunjeev Bery
Advocacy Director, Middle East North Africa
Amnesty International USA

Birth Control Access

Dear Gabriel,

The Obama Administration made every reasonable effort to compromise with religiously-affiliated employers when implementing rules on women’s access to birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

An update to the birth control benefit in the health care reform gives religious employers the ability to hand the responsibility to provide birth control coverage to a third party insurance company. But right-wing opponents led by the Conference of Catholic bishops are still balking at the plan.

President Obama did the right thing for women when he rejected the demands of rightwing activists and gave all women access to no-cost birth control through their insurance coverage. But before these new guidelines go into effect, his administration is holding a public comment period on the new rules. We know that anti-woman activists will flood President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services with comments urging the administration to overturn its historic decision.

President Obama needs to hear that the vast majority of Americans support his decision to ensure access to no-cost birth control for all women. Click here to submit a public comment in support of access to birth control.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the medical community agree that providing no-cost birth control is an essential part of preventive health care for women. And Kathleen Sebelius, the director of HHS, said that providing birth control at no cost to women should be like “covering flu shots.”4

However, before activists from CREDO and Planned Parenthood began petitioning President Obama, the New York Times reported that the president was dangerously close to caving to the demands of the anti-woman lobby by adding a giant loophole that would keep a large number of women from being able to access no-cost birth control.5

CREDO members sent over 160,000 petitions and made over 3,000 calls to the White House asking President Obama not to cave. In the end, President Obama listened to our call to protect women’s health. But that doesn’t mean our work is done.

Some right-wing organizations are already balking at the plan even though it allows religious employers to avoid providing birth control directly to their employees. These anti-woman extremists will surely use the public comment process to file reams of objections to the plan. So let’s make sure the president hears from those of us who want him to stand strong and protect access to contraception.

Make sure that President Obama hears that the vast majority of Americans support his decision to ensure access to no-cost birth control for all women. Click below to submit a comment in support of access to contraception:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=14177296&p=birthcontrol_hhs_aca&id=56364-266627-5bh0wMx&t=4

Thank you for standing up for women’s access to birth control.

Jordan Krueger, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

A Bright Human Comet

A Bright Human Comet

Gianna Altano was and is, a brilliant comet on this earth and her family (Danny, Sydney and Marissa) are shining stars. Gianna died this week, at the age of 23, after a life-time of living with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Her life and even her death, was a precious gift to all she touched.
 

Though many of her friends with CF died at the expected life-span for someone presently living with the disease, Gianna kept on going like a marathon runner who kept running the race one short sprint after another. She did things that many of us without CF cannot or would not do. She did everything a teen and young twenty-year-old would do, including martial arts and surfing. To say she was fearless would be an understatement.

Everyone fell in love with Gianna – family, old friends, new friends, classmates, colleagues, students, nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, the staff at Stanford, acquaintances, and friends of friends.

A few days ago Gianna’s Mom Sydney said, “We as a family got to receive the reality of both sides of organ transplantation. We also were able to give in a way we were hoping to get. The full circle of life and anticipation in every from.”

Gianna was on the donor list waiting for a lung transplant that never arrived. Yet, with her death (and her deepest intentions to donate her own organs) others now live and/or have regained function of vital body parts.

Gianna Altano’s life and death have been one gift of love after another… whether you were touched by her physical presence when she was alive or received part of her body after her death. To know her now or have known her before, is to be in the presence of gratitude incarnate and a being who lived every moment up to her last breath.

A celebration of Gianna Altano’s life is being held this Saturday, March 30th at the Seaside Resort.