This is one of the examples why I love hanging out around the Capitol (the House of Justice, as I like to call it).
We abolished child labor in the United States about a century ago, but it lives on in many poor parts of the world. One small way to stop it is not to buy anything make with child labor. There's an effort to ensure that the State of Illinois doesn't buy anything made from child labor: HB 6617 (check it out here) introduced by Mike Boland from Moline passed the House unanimously. As of Wednesday night, it's getting caught up in the Senate, and faces a Friday deadline to get passed.
Senator Kim Lightford has picked it up in the Senate, and she could use some help getting this thing moving again. Call up your Senator and ask him/her to co-sponsor HB 6617 so we can ensure that it gets assigned out of the Rules Committee, moved to a substantive committee and voted on the Senate floor by Friday.
The reason why I like hanging around is because I only know about this because Representative Boland asked me to run over to Senator Lightford's office to see what happened with the bill. She had thought someone else was going to be the sponsor in the Senate, so didn't know that she had the bill under her name, and has been working to move the bill ever since. That go-between communication is fun lobbying. And now you can join in with some lobbying -- call your state senator and get him/her on board. (Find our your state senator by going to www.vote-smart.org with your ZIP+4 code.) This is a bill that should pass unanimously, but could get lost in the shuffle. Let's make sure it doesn't get overlooked this week.
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