Take Action: Join Beyond Plastics Virtual Act-Athon; Get NY Congress to Support the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act!

Posted on June 23, 2020

If you’re the parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or friend of a young environmentalist between 7-13 years old, we hope you’ll ask them to join Beyond Plastic’s first-ever Plastic Pollution Virtual Act-Athon for kids next Thursday, June 25th at 2 PM ET via Zoom. There is no cost to participate.

You can register a child for the Act-Athon here and please share this opportunity to help us reach more kids who might be interested in participating. Read on for a quick overview of how it works and the four projects kids can choose from.

The Act-Athon grew out of our popular introduction to plastic pollution webinar for kids in May. The goal is to give young people a way to use their creativity and passion to send a message to the biggest producers of plastic pollution that they need to fix the plastic pollution mess they’ve made.

Participants will choose from four projects – Clear Oceans, Nestle Bottle Ban, Design an Eco-Hero, and Coca-Cola Clean Up – that are each led by teams of experienced and passionate youth mentors (see bios for all our mentors) to work on in small groups during the Zoom Act-Athon.

Click here to view a short description of the four projects kids can choose from.

Get NY Congress to Support the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act!

As you know, I have been a big supported of divesting from all fossil fuel infrastructure and fossil fuel companies. The NY Common Retirement Fund still holds a $12 billion position in the fossil fuel industry. This is both immoral and financially foolish. New York’s future is dependent on going green, and supporting renewable energy. The NY Common Retirement Fund has lost $25 BILLION since 2008, due to fossil fuels.

The Fossil Fuel Divestment Act would require the Retirement Fund to Divest, protecting both the planet and pensioners. It now has 32 Senate sponsors (a majority) and 65 Assembly sponsors (10 short of a majority).

We need your help to secure the final 10 Assembly sponsors!

Can you please take a few minutes to call, email, and/or tweet the following Assembly members who we think are likely candidates to become sponsors. The message is simple: “Hi, my name is _________ and I am calling to urge the Assemblyman/woman to become a co-sponsor of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act (A1536a).” You can add whatever you want to personalize it, or just leave it at that. If you are a constituent, calls are better, and be sure to add where you live. If you are not a constituent, emails and texts are better. But feel free to do whatever works best for you.

Once you have done your outreach, we ask that you do two more simple things: (1) send an email to jordan93016@icloud.com letting us know you have made your contacts, and (2) see how many other people you can get to also take action (the best is if you know an organization that would send this out).

The more contacts we can generate, the sooner we will reach a majority in the Assembly. Thank you for doing your part!!!!

Contact Info for Target Assemblymembers (note that three have first names that could be either gender—marked w (F) for female):

County	First Name	Legislator	Phone	Email	Twitter
Nassau	Taylor (F)	Darling	516-489-6610	raynort@nyassembly.gov	@IamTaylorRaynor
Queens	Brian	Barnwell	718-651-3185	BarnwellB@nyassembly.gov	@Barnwell30
Kings	Tremaine (F)	Wright	718-399-7630	wrightt@nyassembly.gov	@Wright56AD
Kings	Jaime (F)	Williams	718-252-2124	williamsja@nyassembly.gov	n/a
Richmond	Charles	Fall	718-442-9932	fallc@nyassembly.gov	@Charlesdfall
Niagara, Erie	Karen	McMahon	716-634-1895	mcmahonk@nyassembly.gov	@McMahonforNYS
Bronx	Latoya	Joyner	718-538-2000	joynerl@nyassembly.gov	@JoinJoyner
Bronx	Michael	Benedetto	718-892-2235	benedettom@nyassembly.gov	@mikebenedetto82