Pamela Powers

Long-time blogger and political activist, Pamela Powers holds a masters’ degree in public health from the University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from the Ohio State University. She has worked for many years in communications and public relations. Powers stepped down from her position as the managing editor of the American Journal of Medicine to serve Legislative District 9 in the Arizona House. Powers won her seat in November 2016 and won her re-election bid in 2018. She continues to work part-time social media editor for the journal. In addition to Blog for Arizona, she writes her own blog, The The Tucson Progressive and has contributed political stories to the Huffington Post. Powers Hannley is co-director of Arizonans for a New Economy, Arizona’s public banking initiative. Political website: PowersForThePeople.net Facebook Page: Pamela Powers Hannley for House Tucson Progressive on Facebook: Tucson Progressive Twitter handle: @p2hannley Instagram: p2hannley

Join PDA’s Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule

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Stop Citizen's United. Get money out of politics.
Stop Citizen’s United. Get money out of politics.

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and allies have been working to overturn Citizens United, the dubious Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to let special interest money dominate and corrupt our elections.

Senate Joint Resolution 19 (SJ Res 19) seeks to overturn Citizens United by initiating the Constitutional Amendment process. The proposed amendment would restore the ability to regulate money in our elections.

Thursday, July 10, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on whether or not to send SJ Res 19 onward for a vote before the full Senate. This promises to be an historic breakthrough!

There are four things you can do starting today to help this national coalition effort succeed. 

1. Call both of your Senators today at 866-937-7983 and ask them to cosponsor SJ Res 19, if they haven’t already (full details below).

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ACLU Files Suit on Behalf of Refugee Children

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ACLU refugee children The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed suit on behalf of the 1000s of refugee children being held in detention centers in the southwest.

The ACLU suit claims that the children should have legal representation when they go through their deportation proceedings.

I have witnessed several immigration hearings for people with and without lawyers. Setting aside anxiety and potential Spanish/English/indigenous language barriers, judges and lawyers have their own lingo and their own rules. Even adult non-lawyers can get tripped up by the legal system. These deportation hearings are literally a life or death matter for the refugee children. There is a fine line between being label a refugee who is fleeing violence and persecution in her homeland (OK, you can stay) or a migrant who broke US law and crossed the border (Hasta luego).

Providing them with lawyers is the humanitarian thing to do to. I also believe that the government should make every effort to hook up these minors with relatives who are in the US. (I have this to say to the people who claim the US can’t afford to care for these children and treat them humanely: TAX THE RICH.)

From the ACLU..

Eleven-year-old Luisa was too young to apply on her own for a visa to come from Guatemala to the United States where she hoped to be reunited with her mother. But since federal immigration authorities detained her last year in Texas, Luisa has learned that she is apparently not too young to act as her own lawyer as federal immigration officials move to deport her back to her native Guatemala.

During a recent hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Luisa and more than two dozen other children crowded into a small room where the U.S. government has begun deportation hearings against them. Some sat quietly, feet dangling from benches. Others, who spoke indigenous languages and understood little Spanish, looked nervously around struggling to understand the proceedings.

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A Truly ‘Christian’ Nation Would NOT Deport Refugees (video)

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Honduras violence
Screen capture from a video by Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman. Full video below.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…
— US Declaration of Independence

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
— Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty

… One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
— US Pledge of Allegiance

It sucks when our national public relations story doesn’t match our actions.

On Monday– just a few days after the US celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence– our government released a statement saying that thousands of the unaccompanied child refugees who crossed the US-Mexico border fleeing violence and seeking safety and family members will likely be deported.

This is unconscionable. If we send these children back home to die, we must scratch Emma Lazarus’ poem off the Statue of Liberty and take “God” out of our political speech.

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Cathi Herrod, Goldwater Institute, & AZ Taxpayer PAC Spread Medicaid Lies on Twitter

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While following the ongoing #HobbyLobby Twitter storm today, I bumped into several Tweets by the Arizona Taxpayer Action Committee. (I have no idea how things like this get into my Twitter feed.) What caught my eye was that Goldwater Institute and Center for Arizona Policy documents were linked to the Tweets and former Arizona Legislator and Medicaid-expansion denier Frank Antenori (@FrankAntenori), @SonoranAlliance (Blog for Arizona’s evil right-wing twin), and @GodCountryFam reTweeted all of these.

AZTaxpayerAct2:54pm via Twitter Web Client

If you’re an Arizona legislator & voted for Medicaid expansion in 2013, you voted to allow tax $’s for abortion: blog.azpolicy.org/life/medicaid-…

Retweeted by FrankAntenori and 1 others

AZTaxpayerAct3:04pm via Twitter Web Client

If you voted for Obamacare Medicaid Expansion you voted for corporate cronyism for the healthcare industrial complex goldwaterinstitute.org/blog/medicaid-…

Retweeted by FrankAntenori and 1 others

AZTaxpayerAct3:11pm via Twitter Web Client

AZ legislators were warned against voting for Obamacare Medicaid but chose to listen to big money from the healthcare industrial complex.

Retweeted by FrankAntenori and 1 others

AZTaxpayerAct3:09pm via Twitter Web Client

AZ legislators who voted for Obamacare Medicaid Expansion voted for tax hike as high as $739 Million over 2014-2019: goldwaterinstitute.org/10-reasons-to-…

Retweeted by FrankAntenori and 1 others

Alright, they made me look…

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hanger

Restricting Access to Care Will Kill American Women, Children

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DIY abortions will increase as women's rights decrease.
DIY abortions will increase as women’s rights decrease.

Today, five men on the US Supreme Court ruled that closely held, for-profit businesses can deny birth control coverage to women employees on the grounds that the corporate person’s religious freedom has been somehow diminished.

The SCOTUS decision on two cases– Burwell vs Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialities vs Burwell– is just the most recent assault on women’s rights and reproductive freedom.

In recent years, hundreds of bills passed by red state legislatures have chipped away at women’s rights to the extent that lives will be lost as more women are denied access to affordable contraception, women’s health services, and legal abortions. Although the south has been particularly hard hit, many states (including Arizona) have been working diligently to restrict access by burdening clinics with unnecessary regulations. Republicans in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are shutting down nearly all of their clinics.  Ohio Republicans want to stop women from using IUDs— one of the most effective forms of birth control.

In many states, women now are forced to drive hundreds of miles to have legal abortions or  drive to Mexico for a dangerous backroom deal or buy do-it-yourself drugs at flea markets or have children they cannot physically, financially or emotionally care for. Several states that have curtailed women’s health services– like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Louisana–  have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. These Republican strategies will result in pre-mature death– especially for poor women and their children.

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