ACLU THIS MONTH IN CIVIL LIBERTIES: The Movement to End Police Violence One Year After George Floyd's Murder, We're Suing Arkansas Over its Ban on Health Care for Trans Youth, To Address Systemic Racism, We Must Dismantle Housing Discrimination and Segregation, Podcast: How to Save Lives in Jail During the Opioid Crisis, When We Fight, We Win: Victories in the Fight Against Face Surveillance Keep Piling Up, Abortion Access is at Stake, But We Will Do Everything We Can to Keep Our Clinic's Doors Open, It's Past Time to End the Federal Militarization of Police, Meet Kimberly and Yashira, Two High School Students Leading the Fight for Broadband Access 29MAI21

 MONTH after month, year after year I continue my monthly donations to the ACLU because I know they defend the civil rights and civil liberties of all in America and without them this would be a very frightening and dangerous country.

The Movement to End Police Violence One Year After George Floyd's Murder One year ago this week, George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparking the largest protests in U.S. history. On this grim anniversary, we reflect on what has changed, what has not, and where the movement to end police violence is heading. Black organizers and activists have shown us transformational change is possible, and there is real promise of what this year and the years to come will bring. Read more

We're Suing Arkansas Over its Ban on Health Care for Trans Youth In a year that has seen many horrific attacks on transgender people, among the cruelest and most dangerous is Arkansas' new law that bans gender-affirming care for trans youth. If it goes into effect in July, this law will cause catastrophic harm to transgender youth. To prevent further harm, four families with transgender children, along with two doctors who provide this care, filed suit this week challenging the constitutionality of this new Arkansas law. Read more

To Address Systemic Racism, We Must Dismantle Housing Discrimination and Segregation Equal access to housing is a civil right, but systemic racism within our housing institutions has long kept communities of color from accessing fair housing opportunities. We're calling on the Biden administration to reinstate a critical 2015 provision of the Fair Housing Act, to restore important housing protections to ensure all people have equal access to fair housing. Read more

Podcast: How to Save Lives in Jail During the Opioid Crisis Eighty-five percent of people in prison or jail have some kind of substance use disorder, compared with 9 percent of the general population. Yet this population is less likely to get access to the care they need to treat their addiction. Most prisons and jails don’t let people take prescription medications like methadone or buprenorphine to treat their disorder while serving time. In this episode of At Liberty, we take a look at the devastating impact of denying these treatments in our prisons and jails. Listen now  |  More episodes

When We Fight, We Win: Victories in the Fight Against Face Surveillance Keep Piling Up After years of advocacy, grassroots organizing, and on the cusp of the one-year anniversary of when hundreds of thousands of people joined in solidarity with Black organizers by marching to support Black lives and to divest from racist policing, we've reached a major milestone: Amazon has announced it will stop selling face recognition technology to police – indefinitely. Read more

Abortion Access is at Stake, But We Will Do Everything We Can to Keep Our Clinic's Doors Open As clinical director of Little Rock Family Planning Services, Lori Williams is used to government attacks on the abortion care she and her staff provide. But this legislative session, Arkansas lawmakers pushed through 20 abortion-related restrictions – a record high. That's why this week, we sued to make sure the abortion care Williams' clinic provides remains accessible to anyone in Arkansas who needs it. Read more

It's Past Time to End the Federal Militarization of Police No federal program is more emblematic of America's police militarization problem than 1033, named for a section of law that allows the U.S. military to directly distribute weapons of war to police and sheriff's departments. New data and analysis from ACLU researchers show that Obama-era reforms did little to reduce the transfer of this dangerous gear, leading us to recommend the full repeal of the program. Read more

Meet Kimberly and Yashira, Two High School Students Leading the Fight for Broadband Access When school went virtual last year, two Baltimore high school students realized they had a serious problem. Participating in class required connectivity to high-speed, broadband internet, and the low-cost plans their families could afford did not cut it. Together, they lead the student-led advocacy group Students Organizing a Multicultural and Open Society, and have organized to pressure Comcast to raise the minimum speeds on its low-cost plan. Read more

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