Actions for the Week of 8/23/26

Written By Darbie Maccubbin

How to contact your elected officials

Use this link to find contact information for ALL of your elected officials – Federal, State, City, and County – just by entering your address: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

Other useful links:

Action 1: New York State Residents: Tell Uniland to End the Lease with ICE

From Evict ICE from 250 Delaware

Uniland Development, owned by the Montante family, leases the 7th floor of 250 Delaware Avenue to ICE, making it the agency’s regional field office and headquarters for every part of New York State outside New York City. If you have witnessed ICE in your community across NYS, the orders came from 250 Delaware Ave.

This office isn’t only in charge of strategizing street operations which have increased in WNY in 2026 by 72% compared to the previous year. As the regional field office, they also oversee the Batavia detention center including the recent expansion by 100 beds.

As taxpayers, we’re helping subsidize this operation. The building was constructed with $9.6 million in public tax breaks from the ECIDA (Erie County Industrial Development Agency) and continues to receive an annual tax abatement worth nearly $525,000, while the Montante family collects an estimated $2 million of federal tax dollars annually in rent from ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

Follow this link to sign a petition urging Uniland Development and the Montante family to refuse to renew ICE's lease at 250 Delaware Avenue when it expires March 31, 2027.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/evict-ice-250-delaware?source=website

Action 2: Kids Deserve a Real Head Start

From Rogan's List 8/18/26

In 2024, more than 790,000 kids got early learning, meals, development screenings and health care thanks to Head Start – and more than a million parents rely on the program to look after their kids so they can go to work. It offers relief for areas with few child care options and saves working families almost $12,000 a year. Naturally, eliminating it was a plank of Project 2025, and the Trump regime is trying to quietly strangle the program.

Right now, they’re pushing an “overhaul” putting more than 1400 regulatory provisions of this incredibly successful program on the chopping block. Their new proposed rule would eliminate staff-child ratio and child size requirements, remove limits on suspensions and expulsions, weaken the standards for health and mental health services, lower the qualification standards for teachers, weaken background checks, remove guidelines around supporting children with disabilities, and replace support for bilingual learning with an English instruction requirement for most programs.

Here are 3 quick and easy ways to push back. Do one or all three!

Submit a public comment to the Department of Health and Human Services using this tool created by the Coalition for Human Needs: Take Action!

Call your members of Congress using this call tool from Moms Rising: Tell Congress to Stop RFK’s Attack on Head Start!

Email your members of Congress using this email tool from the National Campaign for Justice: Demand Congress Save Head Start from Trump’s Plan to Dismantle It

Action 3: Jeffries Rescinds Support for Medicare for All

From Rogan's List 8/19/26

The Democratic base is increasingly calling for big changes to take on the oligarchs and give working folks a fair shot at the good life, including nominating candidate after candidate committed to Medicare for All. Polling from Data for Progress suggests 63% of voters would support Medicare for All even after being told it would eliminate private insurance and raise taxes, with CBS reporting 90% of Democrats are on board, and a new study out of Yale indicates shifting to this system could save 114,000 lives and more than $1 trillion a year.

In this context, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries’s stepping back from his pre-leadership support of Medicare For All has been met with frustration. The groundwork for what we can accomplish on health care in the next Democratic trifecta is being laid right now, and we need to make it clear to our leaders that we want them to be bold instead of compromising in advance. National Nurses United is urging folks to reach out to Rep. Jeffries to make it clear how many Democrats want to see this as party policy.

Follow this link to sign a petition urging Rep. Jeffries to support Medicare for All: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/

OR use language from the petition to call his office: Offices – Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. 

Choose your own outrage with 5 Calls

5 Calls has been around since the first Trump term and offers a quick and easy way to make calls to your elected representatives. Enter your zip code or address and pick a topic. Then choose the representative you want to call, make the call, and read the script provided. Calling your congressperson is the most effective way to influence policy. Please check it out here: https://5calls.org

Phonebanking Opportunities






Darbie Maccubbin
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Actions for the Week of 8/16/26