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 An Outpouring of Support for the ACLU Airline Security Must Protect Rights As Well As Safety Putting Politics Aside: Protect Access to Abortion Care in Health Care Reform Patriot Act: Extended But Not Forgotten What Do These Three Stories Have in Common? 300,000 Disfranchised Voters is Unacceptable 17…and in Solitary Right now in Virginia, approximately 300,000 people with past felony convictions who have finished their sentences -- meaning they are not in prison and are not on probation or parole -- are barred from voting for life because they have past felony convictions. Only one other state (Kentucky) has such a punitive disfranchisement policy; all other states have realized that barring so many people from voting is just plain un-American. Among these 300,000 disfranchised Virginians are people like Frank Anderson, whose story was reported recently in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Anderson volunteered for Gov. Kaine's gubernatorial campaign, but when he applied for the restoration of his voting rights, his application was denied because he had several speeding tickets. In order to get your voting rights back in Virginia, you have to submit an individual application to the governor and can have "no convictions for violations of the law." Apparently, "this includes moving violations, such as speeding." Virginia's disfranchisement law is a holdover from the Jim Crow era. At the 1901-02 Virginia Constitutional Convention (where felony disfranchisement laws were debated), one delegate explained: "This plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county…will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government." The remnants of this racially-biased policy are still clear today. While 6.8 percent of Virginia's voting age population as a whole is disfranchised, 19.8 percent of the state's African-American voting age population -- approximately 200,000 individuals -- is barred from voting. During his last weeks in office, the ACLU of Virginia and other organizations are calling upon Gov. Kaine to end the state’s excessively harsh voter disfranchisement policy. With the stroke of a pen, he can restore voting rights to all Virginians who have finished their sentences and can put in place a process for automatically restoring rights to others who complete their sentences in the future. >>Learn more about the ACLU Voting Rights Project. back to top 17…and in Solitary As a young child, “Robert Doe” suffered at the hands of an abusive father who beat him with belts and clothes hangers and encouraged his siblings to beat him with baseball bats. Robert was often locked in a room for days or weeks on end -- alone. As a direct consequence of his abusive upbringing, Robert, now 17, suffers from mental illness. The state that should be helping him has chosen to torture him instead. Robert’s childhood was marked by instability. He was placed with various relatives, foster care and institutional facilities while growing up before being placed in Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility. While there, an altercation with two correctional officers led to Robert being convicted of assault. Rather than treat the root causes of his actions, the state simply gave up on him, and threw him into Montana State Prison, an adult facility. Deprived of his medication, he acted out and was kept in solitary confinement where he has remained for the past eight months -- reliving the confinement of his earlier childhood. As well as being forced to endure prolonged solitary confinement, Robert has been pepper-sprayed, tasered and stripped naked in full view of other inmates. As punishment for acting out in solitary, Robert was put into the prison’s “behavior modification plans” where he has been denied clothing, given only bread and water and has had just a hole in the floor to use for a toilet. In complete despair, Robert has twice tried to kill himself by biting his wrist to puncture a vein. Other inmates were so concerned that they contacted us to get help for Robert, not themselves. The ACLU is suing to get Robert out of adult prison and into appropriate mental health treatment. The lawsuit charges that Robert’s treatment violates not only the Montana constitution and other state laws, but is also in violation of Robert’s universally-recognized human rights. As the New York Times recently highlighted, Robert’s case is not isolated; rather, it is a stark example of an all-too-common practice in the United States of treating child prisoners as adults. No one, especially a child, should be subjected to the kind of abuse Robert has been. Montana law and international human rights law require a fundamentally different approach, one where the state authorities act in Robert’s best interests to treat his illness, and not punish him for it. >>Learn more about the ACLU’s National Prison Project. back to top  Do you know somebody who would be interested in getting news about the ACLU and what we're doing to protect civil liberties? Help us spread the word about ACLU Online —forward this newsletter to a friend. | January 7, 2010 In a remarkable showing of support, 119,952 people came together to support the ACLU last month in order to carry forward our vitally important work. Now that 2010 is under way, I want to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of our supporters and members for your commitment and dedication to the ACLU. It was extremely heartening to see the response, as tens of thousands of people from all across the country stood up for our organization and our essential work. As you may know, the ACLU learned last fall that our most generous individual donor would not be able to lend his financial support to the ACLU in 2010. The unexpected news meant that our entire organization’s budget would drop by nearly 25% in 2010, which is why we launched the Acting Together: 100,000 Gifts Campaign. The incredible response to the Acting Together campaign gives us the kind of momentum we need to carry on our critical work. But there’s still a lot of that work ahead and the battles aren’t going to be easy. After seeing how the ACLU community rallied together at the end of 2009, I’m confident that we’ll be able to take on any challenge we may face in 2010. You can still add your energy to the ACLU’s important efforts -- send a gift to the ACLU today and start the New Year by taking a stand for personal freedom. Sincerely,   Anthony D. Romero Executive Director back to top
In the wake of an attempted terrorist attack on a plane headed for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, much talk has centered on increasing security measures at airports, including subjecting the citizens of 14 nations who are flying to the United States to intensified screening at airports. Expanded use of body scanners and adding individuals to the terror watch list are also being strongly pushed. In the face of fear and panic, the first reaction is all-too-often to surrender our liberties for a false sense of security. We must not repeat this error. History shows us that surrendering our liberties out of fear and panic ends up restricting our freedoms, fundamental privacy and due process rights -- without making us any safer. The government should enact procedures that pose the least threat to our civil liberties and are also proven to be effective -- but racial profiling, routine full body scanning and the overly expansive terror watch lists do not fit that criteria. "Singling out travelers from a few specified countries for enhanced screening is essentially a pretext for racial profiling, which is ineffective, unconstitutional and violates American values,” said Michael German, national security policy counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent. “Empirical studies of terrorists show there is no terrorist profile, and using a profile that doesn't reflect this reality will only divert resources by having government agents target innocent people." Full body scanners present serious threats to personal privacy and are of unclear effectiveness. According to security experts, the explosive device used in the attempted attack on a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day may well not have been detected by the body scanners. The current terrorist watch lists are bloated, keep innocent travelers from flying, and are broken. Their enormous size not only harms innocent travelers but also wastes the time of screeners and obscures true threats, as the recent attempted attack demonstrates. To be effective, no-fly lists must be narrow and focused on the very few true terrorists who pose a genuine threat to flight safety. "We welcome President Obama's emphasis on better information and intelligence sharing between government agencies,” said Anthony Romero, Executive Director, ACLU. “Our limited security resources should be invested where they will do the most good and have the best chance of thwarting attacks, and that means developing competent intelligence and law enforcement agencies that will stop terrorists before they get to the airport. >>Take action now: Demand sanity when it comes to security. back to top Putting Politics Aside: Protect Access to Abortion Care in Health Care Reform By Louise Melling, Director, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project We can all agree: health care reform should improve people’s lives. That’s simple enough. That’s how we got into this overhaul process in the first place. At minimum, health care reform should make health care more affordable and more accessible. But things in Congress don’t seem to be shaping up that way, at least not when it comes to women and reproductive health care. First, the House of Representatives included an abortion coverage ban in its health care reform package and then the Senate followed suit with its own restrictions. While not as extreme as the House coverage ban, the Senate’s bill requires anyone purchasing an insurance plan that covers abortion to write two separate checks -- one to pay for the cost of the abortion services and another to pay for the rest of the covered care. This is an arbitrary and burdensome requirement that stigmatizes abortion and creates hurdles for both the insurer that wants to include abortion care in its health plan and the insured who wants the coverage. It’s just common sense. No woman plans for an unplanned pregnancy. No woman expects to hear that the baby she’s been looking forward to holding will likely not survive the pregnancy. No woman wants to hear that carrying her pregnancy to term will seriously threaten her own health. Everyone’s circumstances and health care needs are different. Each of these women should be able to decide what is best for her health and her family. Health care reform should ensure that basic health care is covered, and that we all have something to fall back on when we need it most. Given disincentives in both the House and Senate reform bills, private insurance companies may well decide not to offer any plan in the exchange that covers abortion. These restrictions effectively jeopardize the abortion coverage millions of women currently have. In the coming weeks, members of the House and Senate will work to reconcile their two bills. The final legislation must not diminish women’s access to abortion care. Let’s make sure that the president gets to sign a measure that recognizes the importance of respecting everyone’s right to make personal private health care decisions without government interference, and that our health care coverage will truly meet our health care needs. That’s the kind of health care we can all get behind. >>Take action: Tell Congress to Get It Right! Protect Women’s Access to Abortion in Health Care Reform. back to top In late December, Congress voted on a 60-day extension for the expiring Patriot Act provisions. The extension came as part of the Defense Department Appropriations Act, which the Senate is expected to pass in the coming weeks and extended the provisions through February 28, 2010. The expiring provisions -- the John Doe roving wiretap provision, Section 215 or the “library records” provision and the never before used “lone wolf” provision -- all lack proper privacy safeguards. They were up for renewal last year and would have expired on December 31 if Congress did not take action. Given that Congress could have taken the easy way out by simply renewing the expiring provisions, this small extension is a huge opportunity. Now both chambers will be able to give these provisions and various proposed changes to the Patriot Act the time and debate they deserve. The two bills most likely to move forward in the coming weeks are the House’s USA Patriot Amendments Act and the Senate’s USA Patriot Extension Act. The Senate bill has been endorsed by the administration, but the ACLU has several reservations about that legislation and is still hopeful the House bill which provides much better civil liberties protections will be the bill that passes both chambers. >>Learn more about the USA Patriot Amendments Act and the USA Patriot Extension Act. back to top
When 12-year-old Richard, an African-American honor student in Mississippi, read a text message from his father during class, school officials confiscated his phone, searched it, and found photos of Richard dancing in the bathroom of his home. The school then turned the phone over to the police, who claimed the pictures constituted “gang-related activity” and “indecent pictures.” Richard was suspended for three days and ultimately expelled. Sam, a Native American 6th grader in South Dakota, hit a Caucasian classmate who taunted him by calling him “prairie nigger” and shoving him. Upon learning of the altercation, the school principal referred 12-year-old Sam -- but not the white student who had initiated the fight -- to the police. Sam was escorted out of the school in handcuffs and adjudicated delinquent. When D.J., a 15-year-old African-American student from Blakely, Georgia, moved to Atlanta with his family, various bureaucratic delays prevented him from enrolling in the local public school. He missed over a month of classes and, as a result, was sent to a privately-run disciplinary alternative school. There he received little instruction and no homework, and was required to submit to intrusive searches upon entering school each day. Conditions were so bad that D.J. was physically assaulted by a school security guard and his academic performance deteriorated. These incidents, all the subject of ACLU lawsuits, crystallize the disturbing yet growing national trend known as the school-to-prison-pipeline, wherein children -- particularly youth of color -- are pushed out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Annual suspension rates have exceeded 3 million, triple the rate in 1974, and almost 70% of students report the presence of security guards and/or assigned police officers at their schools. Far from making our schools safer, these practices that prioritize incarceration over education create detrimental school climates and further limit access to opportunities for far too many young people across the nation. >>Learn more about the School-to-Prison Pipeline. back to top Join us on...
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