As people take to the streets to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and too many other Black people who have been killed by police in recent years, journalists have joined them to bear witness. While covering these …
Around the country, people are bursting back onto the streets to protest police brutality and demand racial justice in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Their message is vital, and it is correct: Police violence is one of the …
Pride has never been just about the parties. To the LGBTQ community, Pride is about staking our place in the world and speaking truth to power. It’s about making clear that we’re here, we belong, and we are resilient — resilient together. As our Trans …
The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, people across the country have taken to the streets to demand …
Anthony Romero started his job as executive director of the ACLU just seven days before September 11, 2001, and he’s been with us ever since. The subsequent “war on terror” presented new and widespread threats to civil rights and civil liberties. Now, he …
Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at bullying social media companies and online platforms into changing how they moderate content online. The order came the day after President Trump tweeted that Republicans feel that social media …
Without many of us even realizing it, our use of the Internet reveals deeply private information about us, ranging from the contents of our communications to details about our finances, health, and exact location. This information — especially when …
While there are many policies drafted and bills legislated, really the only components that comprise successful reentry to the community are skills, support, and shelter. Thinking about what I needed when I came home from prison looks much different now …
For several years, a little-known start-up based in New York has been amassing a database of billions of our faceprints — unique biometric identifiers akin to a fingerprint or DNA profile — drawn from personal photos on our social media accounts and …
The COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe and upended normal life. In the four months since the first U.S. case was reported, more than 1.5 million people have been infected and 100,000 people have died in the United States. To mitigate risk, public health …
For years, immigration enforcement agencies have been using invasive cell phone surveillance technology known as Stingrays in near-total secrecy. To find out more, the ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information …
During a lull one afternoon when I was a high school student selling Black Panther Party newspapers on the streets of downtown Washington, D.C., in 1971, I sat down on the curb and opened the tabloid to the 10-point program, “What We Want; What We Believe …
Betty Riddle made sure she was first in line to vote in the Florida primary this year. At age 62, it was her first time voting. “It was one of the greatest moments of my life,” she told the ACLU. Her family made her a T-shirt just for the occasion, which …
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention system was marked by its lack of transparency, accountability, and oversight. In recent months, things have grown worse, as COVID-19 has spread rampantly throughout …
With one glaring exception, all persons born in the United States or its territories are U.S. citizens. The exception are persons born in American Samoa — a U.S. territory since 1900 — who hold an obscure and discriminatory status as “non-citizen nationals …
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 …
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 …
This spring, something extraordinary and worthy of imitation occurred on Georgetown University’s campus in Washington, D.C. On April 11, two-thirds of the undergraduate student body who took part in a referendum voted “yes” to create a reparations fund for …
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a long track record of mistreating travelers — citizens and noncitizens alike — in the name of national security. It has subjected U.S. citizens to dehumanizing searches and detentions for no good reason, harassed and …
As someone of Chinese descent who lives in the multicultural mixing pot that is Hawai‘i, I find myself thinking about the fact that May is Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month, and how the opportunity to reflect on API heritage in the United …
