Letter Campaign Week 83

Hi Everyone--

It's that time of the week again! Below please find the link to this week's petition.

This week I sent emails to several Queer student groups at a few random universities, found through google searches, and plan to continue to send out asks for help to colleges and universities across the country. I want to enlist help to increase the numbers on these petitions from whatever corners we can find it, and hope that student groups will post and share about the need for UAFA passage, as well as sign our petitions.

I am very pleased that the petition posted two weeks ago has over 400 signatures, but I want to consistently see us exceed our petition goal of 500. And we have to! Please post about this week's petition as often as you feel comfortable, however you connect with people online. For me, I post it to my Facebook page 5-7 times through the week, and send out the link to an email group I created. We have to start saying no to the unfairness in the law, and one way to do that is to have more members of Congress hear from more citizens through channels like this letter campaign. To the best of your ability, please recommit on this Sunday to not only getting someone to sign, but also someone to share it!

So there's your sermon. Remember, we have love on our side. Ultimately we will see justice, but we need to be proactive in making that happen sooner, not later. Help me say no to the lie that our families don't belong here.

Have a great week, everyone.

Chris

At the bottom of this post, for your convenience, are links to Weeks 79-82 in case you have let a week or two go without signing. Here's the link only, followed by the text from this week's Change.org petition page:

http://tinyurl.com/27mhbow


Out4Immigration is an all-volunteer grassroots organization. Currently, Americans in same-gender relationships with foreign partners have no right to sponsor those partners for legal residency in the US. In this letter campaign we write representatives in Congress and the Senate to ask them to support equal immigration rights for same-sex binational couples, to become a cosponsor of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), and to support Comprehensive Immigration Reform which is inclusive of LGBT families.

This is the 83rd petition of Out4Immigration’s letter writing campaign. As with last week’s petition, we are reaching out to all 161 of our supporters from this Congress. We intend to promote the below petition throughout the duration of the lame duck session, targeting the maximum number of different legislators this site allows on a petition, 20— comprised of 3 Senators and 17 Representatives each week. This petition serves not only as a thank you to the members of Congress who have supported the UAFA and are leaving Congress due to the results of the election, or because of retirement; it is also to encourage those returning supporters of the 111th Congress to continue demonstrating leadership on this issue in the impending 112th.

It is remarkable that in the 111th Congress we were able to encourage over a quarter of our national elected representatives in Washington to cosponsor the UAFA. Many of these members have been real champions for equality, and we want to applaud their leadership. It is also worth noting that of the Democratic losses in Congress in this recent election, relatively few UAFA supporters were among them. In the coming weeks, we will be reminding returning members of Congress, as well as new ones, that many Americans yearn to see equality for all, that supporting our families not only makes good political sense but is the right thing to do, and to ask them to cosponsor this bill.

We encourage you to take part in this campaign by using one of four options:

(1) The easiest one. By clicking through and adding your name to this page, you will send letters to all of the lawmakers being targeted in this petition. You can also provide the link to your friends and family to take action too!;

http://tinyurl.com/27mhbow

(2) Contact any or all of the elected representatives here with your own letter, your own story; or

(3) Creating a booklet telling your story. See http://tinyurl.com/o4i-toolkit1 for more info on this option.

(4) Check out other actions on our action page and sign the other week's action too to urge the other members of Congress to sponsor and support the passage of Uniting American Families Act, or visit Out4immigration's website, O4I's Facebook page or the O4I blog. If you use Twitter, you can also follow O4I that way.

Additionally, don’t hesitate to call our recent cosponsors and thank them for their support. Let’s hit our target of 500 signers with this petition. Can each of you who sign get a few of your friends to do so as well? Please share this widely, and thank you for taking action!!!


Week 78: http://tinyurl.com/29ct3o2
Week 79: http://tinyurl.com/2dkdo9o
Week 80: http://tinyurl.com/2dm57qu
Week 81: http://tinyurl.com/283pbcx
Week 82: http://tinyurl.com/26v9p7j