Archive

When I was in high school, I had to choose three books to read as part of my summer reading prerequisites for one of my Advanced Placement classes. I chose The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, and Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. Read More

My parents are classical musicians. As a young girl, my parents demanded I practice my violin for hours, perfecting the work by the masters, gaining an understanding of the nuances that defined their artistic choices.They told me that in order to be an innovator, one must study and know the history of the art form. There are only seven notes in an octave.Throughout the history of classical music, ... Read More

This week is the 32nd annual Banned Books Week, the celebration of the freedom to read. All week, ACLU-NC staff members will be blogging about the impact that banned books have had on their lives.To kick off the week, here’s an overview of the dangers of censorship and some of the books that have been banned in this country. Think censorship is a thing of the past? Read on.The following blog post,... Read More

Californians have an historic opportunity to bring about needed and long-overdue criminal justice reform by voting Yes on Proposition 47. This measure would improve public safety, reduce prison spending, and increase our investment in K-12 schools, victims’ services and mental health and drug treatment. Read More

Today, the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced that the design for drivers' licenses for undocumented residents under California's AB 60 has been finalized. The front of the license will state "Federal limits may apply" on the top-right corner; the additional sentence on the back will remain as previously proposed. In response to this development, the Drive California coalition issue... Read More

New documents obtained by the ACLU of Northern California appear to show the Florida-based Harris Corporation misleading the Federal Communications Commission while seeking authorization to sell its line of Stingray cell phone surveillance gear to state and local police. The documents raise the possibility that federal regulatory approval of the technology was based on bad information. The ACLU to... Read More

Last week, two men who had been sentenced to death 30 years ago were proven innocent by DNA testing. Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were teenagers when they were wrongly accused of the brutal rape and murder of a child in North Carolina. One of the most shocking parts of the story is that prosecutors hid evidence that linked a convicted rapist to the murder, a man who went on to kill another ch... Read More

As the former District Attorney of Los Angeles County, a county that sends more people to death row than the entire state of Texas, I know that the death penalty is deeply emotional, highly divisive, and very political. However, both sides of the death penalty debate can agree on one thing: California’s death penalty system is broken beyond repair. Read More

“BART Watch" is a new app designed to encourage users to report suspicious activities. But we’re calling out this app for its own suspicious activities - having no privacy policy that explains the sensitive information it collects and may be sharing with others, and for encouraging people to file potentially spurious complaints about innocent residents. Read More

The ACLU filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide details about the its relationship with the financial industry and its efforts to block municipalities from using eminent domain to prevent foreclosures. Read More