Happy Hump Day, Shit Givers.
One of our Basic Principles is that everyone deserves safety. Not as a privilege you earn or lottery you win, but as a baseline.
Safety is a broad term, so today we’re going to get a bit more specific: safety from violence, safety on the street whether you’re walking or biking, safety from what’s in your water and in your products, and safety from companies that decided your risk was an acceptable cost of doing business.
Let’s go.
— Willow
APL Positions covered this week:
🚥 Complete Streets — built for walking and biking
🚸 Vision Zero adopted in all major cities
🚭 Federal tobacco tax + $2/pack, indexed to inflation
🚰 Replace all lead pipes
🔫 Universal background checks
🔫 Extreme risk protection orders (red flag) in all states
🔫 Community violence intervention funding sustained
Not by accident
Like pretty much everything we cover here, gun violence isn’t an inevitability, but a policy choice. The data backs that up: states with stronger gun laws consistently have lower rates of gun deaths.
The orgs below have spent years building the infrastructure around gun safety, one law, one community, and one election at a time.
Here’s what you can do:
Tell Congress to ban assault weapons and prevent mass shootings with the Assault Weapons Ban of 2025 (go).
Join Everytown to help end gun violence with proven solutions (go).
Support March For Our Lives in the fight to end gun violence (go).
Join a network of parents working to end gun violence with Moms Demand Action (go).
Support Brady’s work to end gun violence through bold action (go).
Help Giffords fight gun violence and hold the gun lobby accountable (go).
Street smart
Most American streets were built for cars first and everyone else as an afterthought, and it shows: pedestrian deaths have risen sharply over the past decade even as overall traffic fatalities have leveled off elsewhere.
Again, none of this is inevitable! Cities that redesign their streets around people, not just speed, see real drops in deaths.
Here’s what you can do:
Tell lawmakers to pass the Complete Streets Act, requiring states to build safe infrastructure for walking, biking, transit, and driving alike (go).
Help fight for a world without traffic fatalities with the 🌏 Vision Zero Network (go).
Build better biking cities by supporting policies and projects near you with People For Bikes (go).
Push the Senate to finish the job on the Li-ion Battery Safety Standards Act, which would finally set a federal safety standard for e-bike and scooter batteries (go).
Find or build a walkable, transit-friendly neighborhood with Close (go).
Hidden in plain sight
Some of the biggest threats to health and safety aren’t rooted in tragic events that make headline news, but instead make their way into your home in places you might not think to check.
Lead service lines are still delivering water into millions of American homes, while cosmetics and personal care products sold legally in the US often contain ingredients banned elsewhere for known health risks — warning label not included.
Here’s what you can do:
Support the Safe Drinking Water for Disadvantaged Communities Act, a bipartisan bill directing existing federal funds toward lead service line replacement where it’s needed most (go).
Support global efforts to eliminate lead paint and protect kids with the 🌎 Lead Exposure Elimination Project (go).
Check the safety of your cosmetics and personal care products with EWG’s Skin Deep Database (go).
Think of the children
Some safety problems exist because a powerful industry decided kids were an acceptable target.
Big Tobacco has spent decades marketing flavored vapes to teens. Big Tech has intentionally designed their platforms to keep kids online, and since no law is going to fully keep misinformation and manipulation out of their feeds, giving them the tools to protect themselves is necessary.
And the broader fight for kids’ safety and dignity, at home and globally, still doesn’t get the funding or attention it deserves.
Here’s what you can do:
Close the tax loopholes that make flavored vapes and e-cigarettes cheaper for kids with the End Tobacco Loopholes Act (go).
Fight back against Big Tobacco’s kid-targeted vape marketing with Tobacco Free Kids (go).
Help kids build the skills to spot misinformation with Crash Course’s Media Literacy series (go).
Educate yourself and others about childhood injury prevention with Safe Kids Worldwide (go).
Support advocacy and direct programs for children with 🌏 Child Rights and You (go).
That’s it for this week. Stay safe out there.
Thank you — as always — for giving a shit.
— Willow
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