Dick Price: “You can take it all the way back to Columbine. We have had 31 mass murders since Columbine. We get upset for six or eight months and then we go back to sleep again.
Safer Foods, Saner Prison Sentencing, No Death Penalty Vie for Voter Attention
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Dick Price: At the American Civil Liberties Union’s Pasadena/Foothills Chapter forum this past Tuesday, September 11th, advocates made their case for three particularly contentious initiatives on California’s November ballot:
Voter Suppression: The Unraveling of American Democracy
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Ruth Rosen: The election looms closer and people who cannot meet the new requirements get fed up, feel helpless, and are less likely to go to the polling place on Election Day.
Do US Prisons Violate European Human Rights Law?
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Angola 3 News: In this interview, Ahsan and Stahl discuss the extreme importance of the upcoming Grand Chamber ruling on a personal level for the six appellants fighting their extradition.
Forum: Getting Money Out of Politics – Tuesday, July 10th
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ACLU-SC Pasadena/Foothiils Chapter forum on Getting Money Out of Politics, with Mary Beth Fiedler of Move to Amend LA and Stephen Rohde, ACLU Southern California board member — Tuesday, July 10, 7 p.m., Pasadena
Foreclosure Crisis Discussion Marries Activists Old and New
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t’s an old saw that the Vietnam War was ended not by protests on college campuses, as dramatic as they were, nor when the political elites in the nation’s capital stopped playing with dominoes. Rather, it was only when the war’s relentless horror and pointlessness became the main topic of conversation at Rudy and June’s [...]
ACLU Asks, More Jails or Better Sentencing?
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Dick Price & Sharon Kyle: California’s 58 counties must deal with a sudden influx of state prison inmates, straining their jails and requiring innovative sentencing and supervisory programs.
Ending California’s Death Penalty in 2012
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At the ACLU Public Forum in Pasadena on January 10th, James Clark of the SAFE California Campaign and Brent Tonik of CCV will discuss the history of California’s death penalty and lay out the case for its abolition.
Learn the Facts on Secure Communities: Tuesday, 8 November
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A Law Enforcement Threat to Immigrant Communities. WHAT: ACLU Pasadena-Foothills Chapter Public Forum WHEN: Tuesday, November 8th, 7 p.m. WHERE: Neighborhood Church, 301 No. Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena.
Conversation with Stephen Rohde on Peace and Justice 10 Years After 9/11
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Robert Link: ICUJP doesn’t have the luxury of pursuing a single issue which can realistically be brought to an end in the short term. Economic, political, sociological, and religious forces in the U.S. are addicted to war.
Soul of a Nation, Audacity of Nope
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The Progressive Caucus and Veterans Caucus present a joint presentation at the California Democratic Party’s E-Board meeting on July 30th.
FBI Probe of VA Crime Should Expand
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Jeff Norman: Now that the FBI is investigating a homicide committed on VA property, federal authorities may also investigate shady land use deals the VA made.
ACLU Lawsuit Over Homeless Veterans Exposes VA Scandal
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Jeff Norman: There has to be some reason – and probably not a good one – that the VA has been making secret land use deals with private enterprises.
The Assault on Labor: Protecting Worker Rights
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Workers and voters concerned with the increasing attacks on labor should participate in the panel discussion “Assault on Labor” on Tuesday, July 12th, 7 p.m. at Neighborhood Church in Pasadena.
States with Arizona-style Immigration Laws Face Costly Legal Battles
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Seth Hoy: Despite repeated warnings from business groups, tourism and industry boards and advocates about the hefty price tag attached to Arizona-style legislation, state lawmakers continued to push “get tough” copycat proposals.
More Black Men Are in Prison Today Than Enslaved in 1850
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Dick Price: “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday
ACLU Pasadena-Foothills: Bullying and Our Children
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ACLU-SC Pasadena-Foothill Chapter Presents: Bullying and Our Children, a discussion with James Gilliam Deputy Executive Director of the ACLU-SC March 8, 7 p.m;
All LAUSD Students Deserve Equality of Education
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Yolie Flores: If we truly are committed to an equal education for all children, we must leave behind old and entrenched political agendas and policies and embrace the truths that every child deserves a great teacher and that great teachers must be cultivated, supported, fairly but properly evaluated, and more justly compensated.
Internment and Detainment for National Security?
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The politics of fear led to the post-Pearl Harbor internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans yet, not a single one of the interned was ever found to have any connection to the bombing. For them, simply being born Japanese-American was reason enough to be treated like criminals.
Missouri Supreme Court Deciding Undocumented Immigrants’ Child Custody Rights
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Andrea Nill: Ultimately, the only thing more messed up than changing the Constitution to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship is deporting their parents, snagging the U.S. citizen kids, and giving them to an American couple.
Florida Legislators Oppose Proposed Anti-Immigration Legislation
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Seth Hoy: Bipartisan opposition to Florida’s proposed anti-immigrant legislation is a rare example of those who actually prioritize policy over politics.
ACLU Challenges Arizona Immigration Law
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Andrea Christina Nill: The suit, which represents labor, domestic violence, day labor, human services and social justice organizations, along with ten individuals who would allegedly be subject to harassment or arrest, claims that not only is SB-1070 “un-American,” it’s also unconstitutional.
On SB 1070, Arizona Governor Says She Will Do The ‘Right Thing So That Everyone Is Treated Fairly’
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Andrea Christina Nill: Since the Arizona legislature passed the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” a bill which will probably end up establishing the harshest set of state immigration laws in the country, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s phone has been reportedly ringing off the hook with residents encouraging her to either sign or veto Senate Bill 1070. Though Brewer has refused to comment on which action she plans on taking, she did assure attendees of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Black and White Ball this Saturday that she will do what is fair.
First Solve Prison Crisis, Then Fix California’s Budget
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Dick Price: To get a handle on the damage California’s current approach to incarceration is having on its citizens, consider this: In a recent 23-year period, California erected 23 prisons—one a year, each costing roughly $100 million dollars annually to operate, with both Democratic and Republican governors occupying the statehouse—at the same time that it added just one campus to its vaunted university system, UC Merced.
ICE Claims It’s Not Legally Responsible For Immigration Detention Death
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Andrea Nill: This week, a judge will decide on whether the federal government bears culpability for another immigration detention slip up: the August 2008 death of Chinese immigrant, Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng. ICE is also arguing that this case should be dismissed on grounds that staffers at the jail at which Ng died are contractors — not government employees.
Reporter Discloses List Of 186 Secret Immigrant Detention Facilities
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Andrea Christina Nill: According to a report published by Jacqueline Stevens in this week’s The Nation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is confining an unknown number of people in 186 secret, unmarked, and unlisted subfield offices. Since the subfield offices are designed to hold detainees in transit, they are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. As a result, Stevens claims ICE has essentially been able to hold individuals charged with a civil infraction in “conditions approaching those no longer authorized for accused terrorists.”
JPL Employee Privacy Fight Comes to a Head
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For the past two years, a small band of senior scientists and engineers at Pasadena, California’s Jet Propulsion Lab have pursued a lawsuit against their employers at Caltech and NASA to protect themselves—and by extension, all federal employees—against the unreasonable invasions of their privacy under a presidential order signed by former President George W. Bush.
Plugging Pasadena’s School-to-Prison Pipeline
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As Governor Arnold Swartzenegger and the Democratic-controlled state legislature strip education funding wholesale to meet California’s budget collapse, Pasadena’s public school district offers a microcosm of the woes besetting school districts that are already in crisis across the state. Recent months have seen a drumbeat of distressing reports of alarmingly high dropout rates in Pasadena’s [...]
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Long-time LA Timesman Decries Media Concentration
Justin Chapman: The coming concentration of the media is probably a bigger threat to your civil liberties than anything the government’s doing right now, according to Tim Rutten