Blog of Rights
Suzanne
Ito
10/04/2010
Debtors Prisons

When Being Poor Is a Crime

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 3:47pm

Sean Matthews is a homeless construction worker who was convicted of marijuana possession in 2007, and was assessed $498 in legal fines and costs. He was arrested two years later after being unable to pay that $498, and spent five months in jail at a cost of more than $3,000 to the City of New Orleans.

Gregory White, also a homeless man, was arrested for stealing $39 worth of food from a local grocery store. He was assessed $339 in fines and fees. Because he could not pay the $339, the City of New Orleans imprisoned Mr. White for 198 days at a cost of over $3,500 to the city.

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03/25/2010
Using Religion to Discriminate

Human Trafficking Is Modern-Day Slavery

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 6:09pm

Today is the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement today:

The scourge of modern slavery, including human trafficking, continues to tear at our common humanity and to rip the social fabric of communities around the world.

The international community must redouble its efforts to combat modern slavery and human trafficking by fully implementing existing trafficking laws and prosecuting its perpetrators.

We couldn't agree more, which is why the ACLU is battling human trafficking in the United States on a few different fronts.

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01/25/2010
Guantánamo

ACLU's Anthony Romero on Obama's First Year

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 4:05pm

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero spoke with Glenn Greenwald for Salon Radio about the release of our report evaluating President Obama's first year in office. Speaking specifically about the president's failure to meet his own deadline to close Guantánamo, Anthony says:

Guantánamo is not just a physical location or a symbolic gesture. It's also about a set of rules and policies that have been attached at Guantánamo. The holding of individuals without charges or trial, the lack of access to counsel, the conditions of their confinement, the conditions of their transfer, have not been worked out in the Thompson proposal. And in the end, if we move individuals who are being held indefinitely without charges or trial from Guantánamo to Thompson, Illinois, and we still hold them indefinitely without charges or trial, we've not fixed the Guantánamo problem, we've just shifted it to Guantánamo North.

Listen to the entire interview here, or read the transcript here.

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09/02/2011

Censoring Military Personnel Is Un-American

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 10:27pm

Today, the ACLU filed a brief in a case on behalf of Col. Morris Davis, who was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for publicly criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Guantánamo detainees in federal courts and some in the military commissions system.

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06/07/2011
Enemy Combatants

"If the Law Does Not Protect Jose Padilla . . . It Protects No One"

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 6:27pm

In February, a federal district court in South Carolina dismissed our lawsuit on behalf of American citizen Jose Padilla against Donald Rumsfeld and other current and former officials, saying the former Secretary of Defense was entitled to "qualified immunity" for his role in the arbitrary detention and torture of Padilla. Today we appealed that dismissal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

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02/09/2011

Surveillance Cameras in Chicago: Extensive, Pervasive and Unregulated

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 2:14pm

Yesterday, the ACLU of Illinois released a new report detailing the threats to privacy Chicagoans face under the watchful eyes of that city's growing surveillance camera system. The report is the first large-scale, independent study of the city's integrated surveillance system — a system former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff deemed the most "extensive and integrated" in the nation.

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02/03/2011

Death Row Inmates Sue FDA Over Execution Drug from Overseas

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:38pm

Yesterday, six inmates from death rows in California, Arizona and Tennessee sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Health and Human Services for allowing those states to import non-FDA-approved sodium thiopental from foreign suppliers to carry out executions.

Sodium thiopental is a general anesthetic sometimes used by doctors for surgery patients. The drug is also part of the three-drug cocktail many death penalty states use to execute condemned inmates. The only FDA-approved manufacturer is Illinois-based Hospira, which announced last month that it will cease manufacturing the drug.

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08/18/2010

Support Ceara Sturgis: Yearbooks Must Include Everyone

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 2:43pm

It was just last month that we settled our case against the Itawamba County School District in Mississippi for discriminating against Constance McMillen. As you'll recall, the school cancelled prom rather than let Constance wear a tuxedo and take her girlfriend as her date.

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08/11/2008

Camerahead Is Watching

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:05pm
Photo by George Hickey

The ACLU of Washington is working with Seattle artist Paul Strong, who has come up with a clever way of driving home the problems of surveillance cameras in public spaces. His Camerahead Project consists of "agents" wearing giant surveillance camera props on their heads, deployed in locations where the city government has installed cameras to drive home just how pervasive and downright creepy surveillance can be.

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06/10/2011

President Obama: Address Police Brutality in Puerto Rico

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 4:02pm

Next Tuesday, President Obama will visit Puerto Rico.

We hope that during his time there, he'll address the ongoing First Amendment and human rights violations that the ACLU has been investigating and documenting since 2004. Over the last two years, since Gov. Luis Fortuño took office, police brutality and suppression of free speech and peaceful assembly have escalated to an alarming level.

On numerous occasions, police have beaten and molested students protesting at the University of Puerto Rico. Union leaders and other peaceful protesters outside the Capitol Building and other public spaces have been pepper sprayed, beaten and shot at with rubber bullets by riot squad officers. Journalists attempting to cover these events have been assaulted by police. This video shows just some of the most recent violence:

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