Blog of Rights
Michael
Cummings
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10/03/2012
Solitary Confinement

Life in a Box: Inhumane and Unsafe Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 12:54pm

In New York’s prisons, people caught with too many postage stamps in their cells can land a stint in extreme isolation – the harshest possible punishment in the state prison system.

Extreme isolation – locking one or two people in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day under conditions commonly understood as solitary confinement – should never be a disciplinary tool of first resort. In fact, the cruel and ineffective practice should be eliminated all together.

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06/06/2012
Stop-And-Frisk

Stop and Frisk Watch: Keep Tabs on the NYPD with Your Smart Phone

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 11:13am

The New York Civil Liberties Union is giving smart phones a social conscience. This week, we unveiled Stop and Frisk Watch – a new smart phone app that will empower New Yorkers to hold the NYPD accountable for unlawful, abusive street stops and other misconduct.

Stop and Frisk Watch – available in English and Spanish for Android phones – allows bystanders to document stop-and-frisk encounters and alert community members when a street stop is in progress. Easy to use, it has three main functions:

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07/07/2011
Defense of Marriage Act

Wedding Planning: New York-Style

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 1:06pm

With New York State's new law giving lesbian and gay couples the freedom to marry set to take effect on July 24, thousands of same-sex couples are facing complex and serious questions regarding their rights — questions most wedding planners can't answer.

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06/02/2011

New York Governor Suspends Harmful Deportation Program

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 4:38pm

In a huge victory for civil liberties, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday, June 1, 2011, suspended his state's participation in a federal deportation program that tore apart families, encouraged racial profiling and harmed public safety by creating mistrust between police and immigrant communities.

Under the program known as Secure Communities (S-Comm), local police hand over the biometric data of every person arrested and fingerprinted — innocent or guilty — to federal immigration authorities who check it against their databases. If there is a match — whether correct or not — an individual could be sent to detention centers hundreds of miles from home and even deported.

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04/11/2011

Live from New York, It's Project Liberty!

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 12:44pm

Project Liberty, the New York Civil Liberties Union's (NYCLU) very own TV show, makes its broadcast debut this week in New York City on a public access channel. While we don't expect to win Emmy awards, Project Liberty provides New Yorkers a sleek and compelling way to stay informed about our work.

The premier episode blends the voices of New Yorkers with NYCLU staff to explore civil rights and civil liberties issues that affect everyone. It examines a new anti-bullying law to protect New York's public school students, the need to fix the nation's broken immigration system, and concerns about the NYPD's unconstitutional and racially biased stop-and-frisk practices.

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01/28/2011

NYCLU Reveals Suspension Spike in NYC Schools

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 4:45pm

"Elijah," an eighth grader, enjoyed school and got good grades. A black student at a mostly white school in Queens, he got caught with some friends one day playing with a miniature baseball bat — the kind sold at the Yankee Stadium gift shop.

The school's principal determined that the toy was a weapon and suspended Elijah, even though another student had brought the novelty bat to school. None of Elijah's friends, all of whom were white or Asian, were suspended.

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01/27/2011

You Have Every Right to Snap That Picture

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 5:50pm

Snapping a picture of a federal building from public property is every photographer’s right. Unfortunately, in recent years, pointing a camera at federal building seems to magnetically attract suspicion from federal security officers.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has encountered several cases of people who were unjustly harassed, detained and arrested by federal agents while photographing or videotaping federal buildings from public plazas and sidewalks.

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08/04/2010

Mayor Bloomberg Stands Up for Religious Freedom

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 5:11pm

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg should get a standing ovation for his teary-eyed speech yesterday in defense of pluralism and religious freedom with regard to the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero.

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07/13/2010

Brooklyn Women Knew Their Rights — and You Should Too!

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 11:55am

Thanks to the ACLU, Taneisha Chapman and Markeena Williams knew their rights when New York Police Department (NYPD) officers stopped them last summer outside a housing project in New York City. After the officers demanded their identification, the women produced a flyer issued by a local state legislator containing the ACLU’s advice on what to do when stopped by police. The flyer included the fact that in New York, "You can't be arrested for merely refusing to identify yourself on the street.”

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05/13/2010

In New York, Be Black (or Latino), Be Stopped, Be Frisked

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 5:10pm

The New York Times ran an article today showing the alarming racial disparities in the New York Police Department's (NYPD) stop-and-frisk practices.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has spent years exposing the NYPD's unlawful and racially biased stop-and-frisk practices. (Check out this chart we published in the Times in 2007.)

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