You stood up. Here's what happens next.

When you signed The Last Watch, you made a promise — to the merchant mariners on the water, the shipyard workers on the floor, and every American whose security depends on an industrial base that, once gone, will never come back.

We want you to know: your signature was seen. And it matters.

But here's where petitions succeed or fail — not at the moment of signing, but in the days after.

Right now, a blanket Jones Act waiver covering 659 categories of cargo — crude oil, natural gas, coal, fertilizers, and industrial materials far beyond anything a Strait of Hormuz disruption could justify — is still in effect. It has already been extended once. Nothing is stopping another extension. And another. And another.

The White House has offered no public, category-by-category accounting of why each of those 659 products requires a waiver. The House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee — chaired by Rep. Mike Ezell, who himself called the Jones Act "quite literally the bedrock and foundation of our nation's shipbuilding industrial base" — has not yet held public hearings. And the Open America's Waters Act is still on the table.

They are counting on your attention to drift. Don't let it.

 
Three things we're asking you to do right now:

 
① Text or email this petition to three people — specific people you know.

Not a mass blast. Three names. A fellow mariner. A veteran. A coworker. A family member in a port city or coastal town.

Personal asks are the most powerful tool in grassroots organizing — they convert at five to ten times the rate of a social share because they carry your credibility with them.

Use this message:

Hey — I signed this petition fighting a Jones Act waiver that's putting American maritime jobs and national security at risk. Less than a minute to sign. Would mean a lot: https://change.org/SaveJonesAct
 
② Share to any social media you use — Facebook, X, Nextdoor, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Post it. Tag someone who works in a shipyard, sails American waters, served in the Merchant Marine or Navy, or lives in a port community. Every share puts this petition in front of eyes that don't yet know this fight is happening.

#SaveTheJonesAct | #TheLastWatch | #AmericanMaritime | #JonesAct

 
③ Leave a comment on the petition page — text or a short video.

This is the single most powerful thing you can do after signing.

New visitors decide in seconds whether this cause is real. What moves them isn't statistics. It's people — real Americans with real stakes telling their own story.

If you're a merchant mariner: Tell us what sailing under the American flag means. What a career built watch-by-watch actually represents.

If you work in a shipyard or have family who does: Tell us what those jobs mean to your community — and what it looks like when a shipyard closes and doesn't reopen.

If you're a veteran: Tell us why sealift capacity isn't a trade debate. It's a warfighting requirement. U.S. Transportation Command and Military Sealift Command have already said it: without a domestic maritime industry, America cannot meet 90 to 95 percent of its military sealift requirements in wartime. Say that in your own words.

If you live in a coastal community: Tell us what happens to your town when American maritime industry quietly disappears — not to foreign competition in a fair fight, but to waivers issued without public justification.

You don't need to be eloquent. You need to be honest. One sentence is enough. One true thing from your own life.

The people making these decisions are watching how much noise this makes. Let's make noise.

The math they don't want you to think about.

Three to ten cents off a gallon of gas.

That is the stated benefit of the current waiver. Less than a dime.

In exchange, we are opening American domestic shipping routes to foreign-flagged vessels, signaling to foreign shipping companies that these routes are available, making it less likely a single new American ship gets built — and setting up the permanent loss of shipyards, skilled trades, and maritime expertise that took decades to build and cannot be reconstructed in a crisis.

When an American shipyard closes, it doesn't reopen. The equipment is scrapped. The master craftsmen retire or move on. The institutional knowledge evaporates. You cannot Google your way back to a functional shipyard in a war.

Less than a dime. For that risk.

Sign. Share. Speak.

 
Thank you for being part of The Last Watch.

American ships. American crews. American security.