Archive

After a parole board granted Richard Mireles his freedom earlier this year, he was shocked to learn that he still couldn’t cast a vote in California, the state he had lived in since he was born. Just three months shy of his 21st birthday, a court gave Richard a life sentence on his first felony case. In the two decades of his incarceration, Richard worked hard to change his life. He got sober, wor... Read More

SACRAMENTO — After putting facial recognition technology to the test using photos of all 120 members of the State Legislature, the American Civil Liberties Union of California released results that further support the need for AB 1215 by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), which bans facial recognition in police body cameras. Read More

Erica Smith was making a fresh start. After being forced out of her home by domestic violence, she had spent the last three years cycling between homelessness and jail for petty offenses. But with the help of reentry organization Starting Over Inc., she finally secured stable housing and a job helping women who had experienced challenges like hers. She found community support in the Riverside chap... Read More

SACRAMENTO — Today, the California Senate passed landmark legislation to strengthen the law on police use of force and reduce the number of deadly police shootings in the state. Assembly Bill 392: The California Act to Save Lives, introduced by Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), will establish a “necessary” use of force standard, paving the way for other states to follow suit. Police o... Read More

This Pride weekend, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, let’s march, let’s celebrate, let’s party. But first let us remember today and always that the lives of Black trans people, and specifically the lives of Black trans women, matter. Let’s recognize and memorialize the great social, political, and civil rights gains achieved over the past 50 years by Black and Latin... Read More

Two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Black people in Galveston, Texas were told that they were free. Juneteenth is widely celebrated as “Freedom Day.” Yet is commemorating this date when Black folks belatedly got the news that they could legally no longer be enslaved really the best way to mark their freedom? I often struggle with what it means to be f... Read More

For nearly three decades, my former colleague Rep. John Conyers of Michigan would introduce H.R. 40, legislation seeking to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals. Though many thought it a lost cause, he believed that a day would come when our nation would need to account for the brutal mistreatment of African Americans during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and th... Read More

We are two months away from the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved people arriving in what would become the United States of America. It is time to renew the public discussion about reparations to descendants of Africans who were enslaved as our country was forming and growing rich.  First as colonies and then as a nation, America has existed longer with slavery (1619-1865: 246 years) than... Read More

FRESNO — The ACLU Foundation of Northern California today filed a lawsuit against Fresno County's chief elections official for her illegal removal of a polling place at Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno – for the sole reason that the church refused to cover up Black Lives Matter banners on the property. The suit argues that Brandi Orth, Fresno County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, violate... Read More

On February 27, 2018, at 4:54 p.m., a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent typed a query into a database of driver locations collected by automated license plate readers across the United States. The license plate database returned nine results. As an explanation for why ICE was searching the database, the agent gave the following reason: "ADMINISTRATIVE SPOUSE OF TARGET" This was ... Read More