6 great Instagram accounts every progressive should follow

Social media is a great place to connect with friends, family and the causes we care about.

But our social feeds can get rather stale — even become an echo chamber — if we’re not on the lookout for new perspectives.

We’re here to help give your feeds a fresh and quick makeover! Here are 6 great Instagram accounts every progressive should add to their lists if you care about climate justice, civil rights, equality and great visual storytelling.

@devthepineapple

https://www.instagram.com/devthepineapple/

Devon Blow is a Los Angeles-based artist and graphic designer who uses social themes and pop-art style illustrations “to inspire and empower vulnerable, marginalized, neglected and disenfranchised communities; and to celebrate cultural expression in all forms.”

 

@yearsofliving

https://www.instagram.com/yearsofliving

The YEARS Project is dedicated to fighting climate change deniers and making climate justice the most important political, economic and social issue on the world’s agenda. The organization was a 2020 CREDO grantee and used the funding to help tell the story of climate change and the effects it is having on frontline communities, our economy, our health and our society.

 

@theslacktivists

https://www.instagram.com/theslacktivists

Featured in Forbes, USA Today and Axios, the slacktivists use social media to explain complex news and sociopolitical issues in easy-to-understand images and infographics. If you have pressing questions about the climate crisis, the filibuster, or the pandemic, they probably have an answer.

 

@heathercmcghee

https://www.instagram.com/heathercmcghee/

Heather C. McGhee is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” Her Instagram feed is filled with poignant quotes and observations covering racial and economic justice, democracy and current events.

@Whatmabeldid

https://www.instagram.com/whatmabeldid/ 

Mabel is a sustainably-focused Illustrator and designer whose Instagram feed is filled with beautiful body-positive, queer-friendly artwork that will brighten your day as you scroll through the app. If you find a piece you particularly like, she might have it for sale on her website.

 

@whereloveisillegal

https://www.instagram.com/whereloveisillegal/

Where Love Is Illegal is a project by Witness Change, a nonprofit that uses visual storytelling to support excluded people as they reclaim their narratives and improve their lives. With each photo, @whereloveisillegal documents and shares incredible LGBTQI+ stories of survival from around the world.

Vote for Innocence Project, Sunrise Movement and Women for Women International this February

Every month, CREDO members vote to distribute our monthly donation to three incredible progressive causes – and every vote makes a difference. This February, you can support civil rights, climate justice and women’s rights by voting to fund Innocence Project, Sunrise Movement and Women for Women International. 

 Innocence Project

The Innocence Project exonerates, frees, and supports the staggering number of innocent people wrongfully incarcerated. The organization envisions a criminal legal system beyond wrongful conviction and works to transform the unjust, unreliable, and racially biased systems responsible.

Funding from the CREDO community will power its work to restore lives by freeing the innocent and supporting their reconnection to community, transform the systems responsible through policy reform, and advance the collective power of this innocence movement.

Sunrise Movement

Sunrise Movement is building an army of young people from the plains to the mountains to the coasts to win the Green New Deal and center racial and economic justice in the fight against the climate crisis.

Funding from the generous support of CREDO members will power the group’s youth mobilization program as it works to bring the Green New Deal to communities across the country in 2022.

Women for Women International

WfWI’s global community invests in women and provides the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to create sustainable change for women, their families, and their communities.

The funding from CREDO directly supports marginalized women in conflict as they earn and save money, improve their health and well-being, influence decisions in their home and community, and connect to networks for support.

Your vote this month will determine how we divide our monthly donation among these three progressive groups. Be sure to cast your vote to support one, two or all three by February 28.

CREDO members who use our products and services everyday are the reason we are able to make these donations each month. Learn more about CREDO Mobile and join our movement.

How to disinfect your phone the right way and keep it germ-free

Our phones are germ magnets. We touch contaminated surfaces like elevator buttons and door handles then transfer those nasty bugs to our smartphones, where viruses can live for days or weeks at a time.

In fact, our phones can carry 17,000 bacteria per square inch — 10 times more than a toilet seat! — and we touch our phones more than 2,500 times a day with every tap, type and swipe.

That’s why we recommend you disinfect your phone on a regular basis to stay healthy and keep your devices clean. In this week’s tip, we’ll show you the right way to clean your phone to keep it germ free.

Prevention: Wash your hands & avoid touching your face

The CDC considers phones “high touch surfaces” that require frequent cleaning, but how can we prevent our phones from getting too dirty in the first place? Washing our hands and avoiding touching our face.

The CDC reminds us that viruses, like the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, may remain viable for hours and up to days on some surfaces, so taking precautions to wash your hands with soap and water and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth will help keep your phone clean. Here are some tips on how to properly wash your hands.

Disinfect your devices the right way

To rid your phones of germs and grime, you won’t need to use astringent chemicals (which may harm your phone) or fancy devices to keep your smartphone clean. Everything you’ll need you probably already have around your home. Here are some steps that we recommend you take to clean your phone and other devices:

  1. Unplug and power down your device.
  2. Remove your phone case, if you have one. If your case is waterproof, wash it thoroughly with soap and water, and let it dry completely.
  3. Use a good, lint-free microfiber or lens cleaning cloth to remove oil and fingerprints.
  4. Don’t spray any disinfecting liquids directly on your device, as they may damage your device or its coating.
  5. Gently use a Clorox Disinfecting Wipe or 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe to disinfect your phone. You can also spray a 70% alcohol solution on your cloth, but not directly on your device. Do not use bleach and don’t submerge your phone in liquids. (Read more from Apple.)
  6. Samsung recommends using a “hypochlorous acid-based solution (containing 50-80ppm) or an alcohol-based solution (containing more than 70% ethanol or isopropyl alcohol)” gently applied to your device using a microfiber cloth.
  7. Allow your device to air dry for five minutes.
  8. If you want, you can purchase a UV-C sterilization device which works by shining a type of ultraviolet light that can destroy the genetic material of viruses and bacteria.

How CREDO is working to protect the future of our planet

At CREDO, being green isn’t just a fad. It’s who we are and who we’ve always been. We’ve been fighting the green fight—with our dollars, our deeds and our voices—for over 35 years. 

Since we were founded, we’ve donated more than $20 million to climate justice and environmental organizations working to protect our planet. Groups like 350.org, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, Inside Climate News, Center for Biological Diversity, Rainforest Action Network and so many more.

To reduce waste, we started printing our bills on 100% post-consumer recycled paper all the way back in 1992 — a rarity then — and now we encourage everyone to go paperless! And to date, we have planted close to 4 million trees worldwide through donations to tree-planting organizations.

This work to fight for our planet is powered by our customers who use our products and services every day — and all our members who vote to help distribute our donations to our monthly grantees. 

This month, you can vote to help fund the incredible youth-powered climate justice organization Action for the Climate Emergency, who works to educate millions of teens about the climate emergency through original media, helps 750,000 youth members to participate fully in our democracy, and trains hundreds of youth climate organizers to end the era of fossil fuels.

You can cast your vote for Action for the Climate Emergency, along with People’s Action and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, this month by visiting CREDODonations.com.

How to use your smartphone as a tool for good

Your smartphone is great for staying connected with your friends and family, playing games, browsing social media and watching funny cat videos. But it can also be a tool to make positive social progress in our world.

Whether you’re looking to make change in your community, hold your lawmakers accountable, or help those less fortunate, your smartphone can be an important tool for good. Here are some quick tips to help you get the most out of your phone to make a positive difference.

Register to Vote

One of the best ways to make your voice heard and create change is by exercising your right to vote — and that starts by ensuring you are able to access the ballot box in your community by registering to vote. Our grantees at Vote.org have a number of simple tools you can access right from your smartphone or computer to check your voter registration status, locate polling places and dropboxes, access your ballot information for upcoming elections, and, of course, tools to help you register to vote.

The first 2022 primary elections are only a couple months away, so it’s never too early to check your voter registration status and register to vote. Visit Vote.org to learn more.

Donate surplus food to people experiencing hunger

Here’s a stunning statistic: Food waste accounts for roughly 30-40% of America’s food supply. And another stunner: more 38 million people, including 12 million children, are considered food insecure in our country.

What if we could ensure some of that perfectly good but potentially wasted food can be donated to people experiencing hunger instead? Thankfully, we can, and your smartphone can help.

If you’re a business owner with surplus food, or know someone who is, our allies at Feeding America have an app, MealConnect (iOS and Android), that will connect businesses with extra food with local food banks in their area. It’s easy to sign up, connect to a local food bank, take photos of your food, and wait for a volunteer to pick up the food.

Not a business owner? Use this tool from Feeding America to find a food bank near you who is currently accepting food donations, and find out which foods they will accept (self-stable and non-perishable) and not accept. 

Support people facing online harassment

Research shows that four in ten Americans have experienced online harassment, with women and BIPOC communities more likely to face severe online abuse. Our grantees at Hollaback! are working to end harassment in all its forms by transforming the culture that perpetuates hate and harassment. One of the main pillars of their work is bystander intervention by training people to respond to, intervene in, and heal from harassment.

HeartMob is Hollaback!’s digital platform designed to provide immediate support to people experiencing online threats, doxxing, impersonation, DDoS attacks, swatting, and, more recently, zoom-bombing. 

The HeartMob platform provides peer support, resources, and documentation for individuals experiencing online harassment. Bystanders are given tools to take concrete actions that reduce individual trauma and help build safer online spaces. User’s experiences are validated, their mental health supported, and their accounts remain secure, online, and generating content without disruption. To date, the platform has provided tools for internet users who have provided over 9,370 bystander interventions against harassment and abuse. HeartMob won Netroots Nation’s “best new product” award in 2016 and received an endorsement from the New York Times editorial board. With HeartMob, everyone has a role in providing support. For more information, or to take action against online harassment today, see iheartmob.org

Start a Petition

Maybe you want your city council to protect a local watershed, you’re fired up about combating climate change, or you want Congress to protect your community from gun violence — and you want to take action now. 

Luckily, you can start a petition to get your neighbors — or activists across the country — to join you and get the attention of important decision makers. Our friends at MoveOn.org have an easy-to-use, people-powered tool that allows anyone to build a petition on the issues you care about to let you start gathering signatures right away.

To learn more and get started creating your own petition, visit https://sign.moveon.org/.

Record an interaction with law enforcement

In 2020, a bystander’s cell phone video turned the tide after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in bringing his killers to justice — and ignited a national reckoning for police reform and racial justice.

Today, everyone who owns a smartphone holds the power in their hand to ensure accountability and their own safety by recording interactions or misconduct with law enforcement. Our grantees at the Electronic Frontier Foundation believe you have a First Amendment right to record your interaction with the police, as long as you are not interfering with their official duties. 

Our allies at the American Civil Liberties Union offer a mobile app that helps you easily record, witness and report law enforcement interactions and misconduct right from your phone. The app also lets you add additional information, share your location and include contact information for follow up from your local ACLU affiliate. The free app is available for iOS and Android on the ACLU’s website.

Here are some additional resources if you are interested in learning more.

Brady United is reducing gun violence in our communities, thanks to CREDO members

For more than 40 years, our partners at Brady: United Against Gun Violence have been uniting gun owners and non-gun owners alike in the fight against gun violence. With programs that tackle the root causes of America’s gun violence epidemic, Brady works to ensure that every community is safer.

In May 2021, CREDO members voted to distribute $57,360 to help bolster Brady’s on-the-ground programs in areas most impacted by gun violence, help the organization take the gun industry to court, promote safe gun storage, and more — with a goal of reducing gun violence 25% by 2025. 

Here are some recent victories and highlights of Brady’s work, thanks to funding from CREDO members:

Combating Crime Guns Initiative (CCGI):

Brady’s Combating Crime Guns Initiative works to shift the burden of gun violence from the shooters to the suppliers of crime guns, including irresponsible gun industry actors who prioritize profit over public safety. One way the group accomplishes this goal is through enhancing gun dealer inspections.

Enhancing Local and State Gun Dealer Inspections

Not content with simply revealing gaps in enforcement, over the past year Brady has also looked for ways to directly improve gun industry oversight. Knowing that states and localities with appropriate authority can conduct their own gun dealer inspections, the group developed a predictive algorithm to help state and local police departments prioritize inspections. Developed by analyzing thousands of pages of inspection reports for gun dealer characteristics and violations, this tool can predict ‘high-risk’ gun dealers 4.5 times more accurately than random selection.

Over the past year, Brady’s Crime Guns team trained police in one state on how to implement this ‘inspection optimization algorithm’ into their existing gun dealer oversight practices. In just its first two weeks of use, this predictive tool identified one gun dealer that was repeatedly violating state law by not recording ammunition sales. Despite having been in operation for years and never having followed this specific state law, state police had no plans to inspect this dealer until the shop was identified by our algorithm. This was an extremely promising start to Brady’s long-term work improving gun dealer inspections across the state. Brady will soon be bringing this tool to a state where a law was recently passed requiring local law enforcement to conduct gun dealer inspections.

End Family Fire (EFF)

End Family Fire is a national public service advertising campaign from Brady and the Ad Council that debuted in August 2018. EFF recognizes that gun owners are an essential part of the gun violence prevention movement—and can prevent tragedies through safe gun storage. Grounded in extensive market research on the gun-owning population and their gun storage behaviors, EFF engages in a direct dialogue with gun owners, inviting them into the conversation about protecting their families and keeping our communities safe through responsible gun ownership.

Suicide Prevention Campaign

End Family Fire initially focused on preventing unintentional shootings. In late 2020, Brady expanded the End Family Fire campaign to focus on another type of gun violence that is often not talked about: gun suicide. In the U.S., we lose 63 people a day to gun suicide—more than those who are lost to firearm murders and unintentional shootings combined. In fact, over half of all gun deaths in America (61%) are suicides.

The new phase of the EFF campaign highlights these realities, using both behavior-changing tactics and empathy-provoking methods, to motivate gun owners to store their guns locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition, thereby giving their loved ones a second chance at life. Our September launch was the product of years of research and message testing, and we could not be more proud of the resulting unique and life-saving campaign.

Brady Legal

Brady Legal has secured landmark precedents that hold gun companies and dealers accountable for the deaths and injuries they enable. To date, the program has won over $60 million in settlements and verdicts for gun violence victims and successfully pushed many gun dealers and manufacturers to adopt more responsible, safer business practices. They have argued and won cases before numerous state supreme courts, trial courts, and federal appeals courts, and litigated in over 40 states.

Recent Legal Win

Galliher v. Cabelas: Family of slain Ohio man settles lawsuit with Cabela’s for selling a gun to prohibited purchaser Brady, on behalf of the family of Bryan Galliher, a 21-year-old man murdered in 2016, has settled a lawsuit against outdoor retailer Cabela’s and its parent company, Bass Pro Group LLC, for selling the gun used to kill him. Brady alleged that the retailer violated Ohio law by selling a black powder gun—a replica of an antique Army revolver—to an Orrville man prohibited from possessing firearms due to a felony conviction of violence. As a result of the settlement, Cabela’s has instituted sweeping reforms to its marketing and sales practices to keep black powder guns out of the hands of individuals with a violent history and others prohibited by law from possessing a gun.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved with Brady’s incredible, life-saving work, please visit Brady’s website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

People’s Action: The time has come for an organizing revival

The time has come for an organizing revival. Where we celebrate the evolution of the craft, and reground in organizing fundamentals that transcend form and context.

We have shifted an organizing field that was largely designed to win the best thing possible in the existing political and ideological landscape, to one dead-set on changing that landscape. Contesting to win the battle of ideas — advancing ours about race, class, gender, immigration, markets, and the role of government; a seismic shift toward contesting for governing power; using technology to be in relationship with more people; and a shift in who is leading our organizations and movements. You’d be hard pressed to find a decade where the organizing field has changed in such powerful ways.

If, in the pace of it all, something got lost, it was a culture that supported organizing fundamentals like starting where people are and the art of deep leadership development. Fundamentals that cut across organizing lineage for a reason — they work. Absent a revival, I believe they may be endangered.

To deliver on the promise of this moment, and to beat back the threats, what got us here will not get us there. Not alone. The social movements of the last decade have powered large-scale change, especially at a cultural level, that would have seemed dreamy ten years ago. Now we’ve gotta turn that awakening into sustained power to win tangible change in people’s lives.

That will require reaching into the cracks, organizing people untouched by our organizations and movements. People we will not reach with a better message or targeted facebook ad, but only through coming to them, asking about their greatest hopes, most pressing pain, and how they are making meaning of it all.

Forty million Americans live in poverty. We are in relationship with a small percentage. As many or more are defined as working class, many of whom are downwardly mobile. Most don’t even know we exist.

We need an organizing revival that helps us get to the next wave of people, and from there, the next. That is going to require lots of very good organizers.

WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 21: Asia Betancourt with VOCAL-NY speaks during a People’s Action rally against Big Pharma on September 21, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Larry French/Getty Images for People’s Action)

There are many fundamentals we need to revive. Here are just a few that feel essential.

Start Where People Are At. It sounds so simple, but this is the first organizing super-power. We humans do not easily start where people are at. We tend to start where we are at — what we need, what we believe, what we want. Something profound opens up if we start where the other person is, truly work to be in their shoes, to understand their experience.

Our biggest campaign should not be one of mobilizing, but one of listening. This is how we build. We’ve been mobilizing non-stop for ten years. Now, let’s go and listen to millions of people.

How we do it matters — we should listen to learn, not to confirm. Be curious. Seek to understand. All people need to be seen and heard. Let’s go meet that human need, and from there great organizing can happen.

Agitate People to Greatness. We live in a constant haze that blinds us from truths about society and ourselves. Even when we do see through it, sensing that little can be done, we get comfortable being uncomfortable. This is no accident, but of design.

We are taught through experience that we are not powerful, that change is not possible, that we need to stay in our place. Breaking through this repressive worldview requires that people be stirred up.

Agitation, done right, is an act of love. We move people toward a more accurate and powerful sense of self and possibility. Done wrong, agitation is aggressive and sloppy. As an act of love, it can alter someone’s path in immeasurable ways, and unleash new power into the world. It is one of the most essential ways we develop leaders.

Winning Matters. We are clearer than ever on our north star demands. We need to be equally clear on the structural stepping stones that build toward those larger transformations. Organizing works because we create evidence that coming together and putting in the time is worth it.

We joke about when organizers used to work on stop-sign issues, and yet there is a reason we did. It provided evidence that coming together was worth the time. We don’t need to go back to stop-signs but we do need to develop a field that is clear on the structural stepping stones toward our north stars, and has a theory on how to deliver. A “political revolution or bust” stance may work for people of means and a diehard few, but it is not sustainable for most people. We have to be winning. To relieve people’s pain, to grow confidence in organizing.

There are other fundamentals: don’t do for others what they can do for themselves; it’s not where people start, but where they end up; all organizing is re-organizing; and many more. All worthy of remembering and reviving.

We can revive the fundamentals through training, culture, stories and our history.

Training. Organizing, really good organizing, is complicated. For a tiny handful this craft is intuitive on all fronts. For most, there are parts that come easy, and parts that come hard. Let’s train in how to organize the unorganized and truly develop leaders. To run great meetings, strategic actions, develop winning campaigns, to be curious about power. Training that helps us understand what is blocking our own growth, so we can help others realize theirs.

Culture. Training will only take us so far if that training is at odds with the culture of our organizations. Good organizing should be the air we breathe. If the culture of organizing is strong in our organizations, so will be the craft. If the culture rewards starting where people are at, truly developing other people, and building organizations that belong to members, people will do good organizing because they landed in the right context.

If the culture of our organizations celebrates the gamesmanship of the non-profit sector, we will grow people good at playing that game. If our culture rewards organizing the already converted, we’ll get more of that. The choice of what culture we set moving forward is ours.

Clear the Decks. There is too much on the plate of today’s organizer that is not organizing. When I was on the street, the job was organizing and a few other things would compete for that time. Today, I sense it can be the opposite, with people fighting to make time for organizing. Let’s take a clear-eyed look at our calendars and ask — how is this shit helping us organize and reach more people? Is this really building power for our members? If not, cut it loose.

Storytelling. The fundamentals come alive through stories. Stories of risky actions, leaders developing, winning campaigns. Let’s reignite a culture of storytelling — sharing the story from last night’s meeting, or of a campaign forty years ago. Organizers, the really good ones, are storytellers — inspiring us with stories from the past, and ones that spark our imagination about what comes next.

Honor our history. There’s no better source of stories than the folks who did this before us. Let’s bring our elders back into the fold. There is valuable, hard-earned wisdom on the sidelines. People who chartered these waters, suffered wounds so we would not have to, people who put language to the fundamentals. Let’s soak up that wisdom, and celebrate those who built the foundation we walk on.

There’s a sense among organizers that something is not right. That the craft is not right. It’s a strange thing to feel when we’ve made so much progress. Yet it becomes clearer by the day that what got us to this point, will not get us to the next one. That we have to organize another circle out, and after that another. This requires organizing that builds on recent evolutions in our craft, and swings back to pick up some things lost along the way. I feel confident we can do both.

With funding from CREDO members, Trust for Public Land is connecting everyone to the outdoors

Access to nature is a fundamental human right. Yet, 1 in 3 Americans don’t have a park close to home—including 28 million kids. Trust for Public Land is changing that by collaborating with communities to create parks, playgrounds, trails, and protect natural spaces.

In June 2021, CREDO members voted to distribute $49,095 to Trust for Public Land to help the organization continue leading a movement to put a park within a 10-minute walk of every American. With CREDO support, Trust for Public Land is partnering with historically marginalized communities to protect and develop new outdoor spaces so that all people have access to the health benefits and climate solutions that nature provides.Thanks in part to funding by CREDO members, over the past six months, the Trust for Public Land has opened many new community parks and protected vital public lands. Some examples include:

Cook Park in Atlanta, GA: The Trust for Public Landworked with the community to transform 16 acres of flood prone land into a vibrant new city park, engineered to alleviate the risk of future catastrophic flooding and provide multiple benefits to the neighborhood. Cook Park features a playground, splashpad, climbing boulders, outdoor fitness equipment, multi-use sports courts, public performance space, and a variety of places for visitors to relax and enjoy the outdoors.

South Oak Cliff Renaissance Park in Dallas, TX: Hand-in-hand with the neighbors of South Oak Cliff, Trust for Public Landcreated a 1.8 acre park with all-weather fitness equipment, a rock climbing boulder wall, an outdoor classroom, and barbecue and gathering spaces. This is the first park in the new Five Mile Creek Greenbelt, which will become a network of parks and dozens of miles of trails in Dallas.

5+ Community Schoolyards in NYC and beyond: Transforming barren lots at schools into vibrant green spaces open to the entire community, with playgrounds, athletic fields, outdoor classrooms, gardens, and relaxation areas.

Meadowood, Connecticut: Protecting a historically significant 285-acre property, a former tobacco farm where Martin Luther King, Jr. worked during two summers as a teenager.

Cross F Ranch, Arizona: In conserving a total of 3,154 acres, Trust for Public Landprotected the Cross F Ranch, a spectacular 22,000-acre ranch that connects the Galiuro Mountains and Aravaipa Canyon on its west side with the Santa Teresa Mountains and Forest Service Wilderness to the east. The project has created guaranteed permanent public access to 40,000 acres of existing public lands and protected a substantial portion of the watershed for nearby Aravaipa Creek.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved with Trust for Public Land, please visit their website, and follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Mobilizing a Generation of Young People to Solve the Climate Crisis

The climate emergency is here. The world as we know it is running out of time and the window for small, incremental action has closed. Instead, we need urgent pro-climate policy that meets the scale of the challenge—and leaders with the courage and mandate to take bold action. Our critical window of opportunity to sound the alarm is ever-narrowing and the time to act is NOW.ACE was founded in 2008 with the visionary (and at the time fringe) belief that to halt a global crisis, the climate movement needed the engagement of young people. Back then, we were told again and again that young people were not a priority because they couldn’t or wouldn’t vote, and couldn’t be organized. How times have changed. With the failure of our leaders to act and an explosion of youth activism and visibility within the movement, our outlying belief in the power of youth is now common knowledge—and to many, our best source of hope.

ACE reaches tens of millions of young people with our programs each year, training a new generation of leaders, amplifying youth voices to shift the narrative, and increasing diverse youth participation in our democracy.

With support from CREDO members, like you, we will be able to sound the alarm on the climate emergency at a new level of scale and impact, and to exponentially increase the most effective and targeted aspects of our work to tip the scales toward climate justice. Visit CREDO’s Donations page to vote for ACE today.

ACE has a critical role to play in growing the power of the movement by amplifying the voices and values of young people. When young people call for climate justice, they do so with the moral authority of a generation that will have to live with the choices our leaders make today. Youth voices are not the only ones needed in the global climate movement, but without the power of youth, we simply cannot win.Consider voting to support ACE’s work to educate, inspire and support young people to lead the fight for their future. To learn more about ACE, please visit: acespace.org.

The Ongoing Battle to Get Politicians Out of My Exam Room

This article was written by Kimberly Mohabir on September 16, 2021. Find original posting on: https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/blog/the-ongoing-battle-to-get-politicians-out-of-my-exam-room

“I am disgusted by the deliberate interference that many state governments are imposing between doctors and their patients,” a doctor writes in this first-person account.

I am a board-certified family medicine physician who has been working with Planned Parenthood Federation of America as part of a fellowship focused on sexual and reproductive health policy. Patients come to me with certain expectations — importantly truth, empathy, and help.

“The relationship between a patient and a physicians based on trust, which gives rise to physicians’ ethical responsibility to place patients’ welfare above the physician’s own self-interest,”1 according to the American Medical Association (AMA),

Trust is under greater strain than ever as states continue to pass the harshest abortion bans and restrictions since Roe v. Wade. Health care conversations are no longer one-on-one between a patient and a trusted provider. The government has become an intrusive third party interfering in the relationship — intentionally eroding patient trust and our responsibility as providers to inform and deliver the highest standard of care.

I am unnerved by the relentless efforts of state lawmakers to pass harmful legislation to control our patients’ reproductive health decisions. Once and for all, it is incumbent upon providers, policymakers and advocates to affirm every individual’s right to full reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy and fight vigorously against any and all attempts by the government to restrict the ability of our patients to decide when and if they are ready to grow their families.

Abortion is a human right.  It’s time our government upholds, protects and defends that right — and our ability as providers to honor our oaths to truth, empathy and help.

Truth

It takes four years of undergraduate school, followed by four years of medical school and up to seven years of residency to become a medical doctor. This education is necessary to ensure patients get the most accurate and effective medical care from a provider they can trust. . While abortion is among one of the safest medical procedures, in some states some providers are forced to counsel patients on disproven falsehoods, such as risks of breast cancer and mental illness, fetal pain, and infertility. Telling patients the truth in all circumstances, even when it contradicts with one’s own personal beliefs, is essential and foundational to building and maintaining trust in relationships with patients. No patient should ever have to piece together which information is correct, and no doctor should be forced to violate oaths and knowingly misguide patients with dishonest information.

Empathy

Patients come from all walks of life and from various backgrounds: 75% of patients in need of abortion have low incomes; many are already parents and worry that another child could threaten their family’s financial security. Some are survivors of sexual assault, and seek an abortion for a pregnancy that would force them to re-live an event they are working to overcome. Others seek an abortion simply because they have decided it’s just not the right time for them to grow their families. All of these reasons are valid, and no one has the right to intrude on this deeply personal decision. When someone considering abortion comes to me, my job is to listen without judgment and deliver care. Forcing providers to communicate to our patients that they will have to continue with their pregnancies or take unnecessary steps to get an abortion based on a politician’s moral beliefs is deeply unethical and violates the pledge to practice empathy for all patients regardless of circumstance. Further, the Turnaway Study — a research project that examined the short and longterm physical and emotional impact of individuals being denied access to abortion care — found that being denied an abortion can have a significant health toll on the individual and their families. Indeed, individuals denied access to abortion and forced to continue with their pregnancies are more likely to experience depression, severe pregnancy complications, and are more likely to stay with abusive partners. Studies show children are also affected by their parent’s inability to access an abortion, and are more likely to live in financially insecure households and have delayed childhood development. Practicing empathy as a provider, put simply, means doing no harm. When providers are forced to harm patients by denying them abortions, it can affect mothers, families, and the communities we serve.

Help

When I am asked why I went into medicine, my reflex response is “I wanted to help people.” But there’s more to it. I believe patients are more than their diagnoses. The goal of a physician is to help the patient get to their individual medical goals.

Let’s look at a real-life example. A young woman wants to know what is causing her painful and heavy periods. After careful and thorough examination and tests, I discover she has uterine fibroids. I discuss with her that there are medications to help with her symptoms, but she is not interested in starting these medications; her goal was simply to find out what was happening in her body and we have accomplished that.

Coercing patients into a treatment option they are not interested in pursuing is not only unhelpful; it’s unethical. Aside from severe extenuating circumstances, patients have the right to opt in or opt out of medical care. This same patient ultimately decided to have her fibroids surgically removed. Accordingly, I referred her to a surgical gynecologist who was licensed and skilled to remove her fibroids.

It is our duty as providers to center the patients’ health care needs and decisions and communicate all of their treatment options with medically accurate information. We are not to coerce and deter patients from seeking the care they decide best meets their needs — but many of us are being forced to do exactly that by lawmakers who oppose abortion.


As I go through residency at George Washington University, I remember the oath I made when I first decided to go to medical school. An oath to do no harm, to give only true and accurate information, to center the patient, and always have empathy. In medical school, we are taught that the doctor-patient relationship is a sacred bond and that above all else, must be protected in medicine.

In order to protect trust in the medical system, irrational restrictions that have no basis in evidence must be fought. Doctors must not be forced by anti-reproductive health legislators to manipulate patients. I am disgusted by the deliberate interference that many state governments are imposing between doctors and their patients. The only people that can decide the best course of medical action are the patient and the medical provider. To fight this interference and protect the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, I urge you to contact your member of Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would protect, defend, and expand abortion rights for all people regardless of the state they live in — and protect the rights of providers to give the most accurate information to patients and deliver only the highest standards of care. It’s time the government gets out of our exam rooms once and for all.