Blog of Rights
12/13/2012
Racial Profiling

Wearing a Hoodie While Brown Does Not Mean You Are in a Gang

By Courtney Bowie, Racial Justice Program at 5:00pm

On December 16, 2010, West High School officials in Salt Lake City, Utah invited the Metro Gang Task Force into the school to conduct a gang sweep. Students identified, searched and interrogated by the police were mostly Latino/a or, in the case of Kaleb Winston, African-American.  He was targeted by his school and by the Task Force as a potential gang member, searched and accused of being a tagger. As an artist, Kaleb had a notebook full of drawings in a backpack manufactured to look like it had been spray-painted. But because graffiti is loosely defined, if at all, the police decided Kaleb was a “gang tagger” despite his denials. Kaleb was then forced to hold up a sign with the words “My name is Kaleb Winston and I am a gang tagger.” Law enforcement officers told him that this information was being placed into a database and that the information would be removed if he did not get into trouble for two years. Kaleb was emotionally devastated by the experience. He is not and has never been in a gang. Yet, his attendance at school that day, not bad behavior, made him the subject of intense police scrutiny and he now lives with the fear that the police view him as a suspect.

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12/13/2012
287(g)

Petitions, Sign-on Letter Sent to Administration Calling for End to Controversial Immigration Program

By Abdi Soltani, ACLU of Northern California & Joanne Lin, Washington Legislative Office at 12:03pm

Communities across the country are saying no to 287(g)...

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12/11/2012
Juvenile Detention

Groundbreaking Senate Hearing Shines a Light on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

By Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Kimberly Humphrey, Washington Legislative Office at 10:23am

Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights will hold a landmark hearing entitled, Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline. It is the first time a congressional panel will look at this disturbing national trend where children are pushed out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems because of an overreliance on punitive school discipline policies.

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12/06/2012
Immigration Detention

California Attorney General: Immigration Detainers are Voluntary

By Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU of Southern California & Julia Harumi Mass, ACLU of Northern California at 2:14pm

 

For the first time, California Attorney General Kamala Harris publicly weighed in on the hotly-contested federal immigration program, Secure Communities (S-Comm).

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12/01/2012
Racial Discrimination

Remembering the Legacy of Rosa Parks

By Karyn Rotker, Race, Poverty, and Civil Liberties Attorney & Stacy Harbaugh, ACLU of Wisconsin at 10:25am
December 1 is the anniversary of the day in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Back then, racism was visible in signs that marked Jim Crow policies of segregation. We know that it took courageous organizers – like Rosa Parks, and thousands of others - and a national movement to shift our laws and policies toward racial justice.

But today, people are still fighting for a seat on the bus.

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11/20/2012
Immigration Detention

The Reality of Life Inside Immigration Detention

By Azadeh N. Shahshahani, ACLU Foundation of Georgia at 5:18pm

In the last 15 years, we've witnessed a dramatic expansion in the jailing of immigrants, from about 70,000 people detained annually to about 400,000.  In the mid-1990’s, during the height of an anti-immigrant backlash, Congress passed a series of harsh measures that led to a vast increase in unnecessary detention. This trend has been exacerbated by the private prison industry and county jails looking to exploit immigrant detention for profit.

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11/14/2012
Predatory Lending

When a Dream House Becomes a Nightmare

By Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:30am

For years, Rita Winters envisioned spending her golden years of retirement at her dream house in Southern Maryland.  However, as a result of events outside of Rita’s control, her dream home placed her in a nightmare situation. Federal action is needed to stop the nightmare that Rita and millions others faced while attempting to achieve their dream of home ownership.

Rita Winters’ Story

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10/22/2012
Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 10:43am

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

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10/19/2012
Predatory Lending

Civil Rights Today: The Landmark Case of Adkins et. al. v. Morgan Stanley

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Morgan Stanley in what may become the most important civil rights case in a generation.  If successful, the implications of this suit are profound and the impact could be staggering, both in addressing the damages suffered by devastated communities as a result of predatory lending triggering the foreclosure crisis and the symbolic importance of framing these damages as civil rights violations.

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10/15/2012
Predatory Lending

Holding Wall Street Accountable: ACLU Sues Morgan Stanley for Discriminatory Practices

By Dennis Parker, Director, ACLU Racial Justice Program & Larry Schwartztol, ACLU Racial Justice Program at 11:18am

The economic crisis of 2008, which was devastating for the nation’s economy as a whole, was nothing short of disastrous for communities of color. Much of the decades of progress toward full inclusion in the American dream which was ushered in by the landmark civil rights laws of the 1960’s disappeared virtually overnight, stripping communities of color of their homes and their financial futures. These enormous setbacks were not the result of a natural disaster but were instead the easily foreseeable consequences of forces set in motion by banks eager to realize enormous profits without regard to the impact upon vulnerable communities.

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