Blog

As of this week, Twitter has made sure that federally funded fusion centers can no longer use a powerful social media monitoring tool to spy on users. After the ACLU of California discovered the domestic spy centers had access to these tools, provided by Dataminr (a company partly owned by Twitter), Dataminr was forced to comply with Twitter’s clear rule prohibiting use of data for surveillance.&n... Read More

Sometimes the trucks arrive early. Sometimes they come with no notice at all. Sometimes, while workers from the California Department of Transportation make their way down the row of tents—seizing property and cherished belongings—people have mere minutes or seconds to grab everything they can carry before their bedding, clothes, tools, bikes, medicine, food, shelter, and other property are thrown... Read More

Read More

A coalition of community groups recently announced a groundbreaking partnership with Facebook and the cities of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park to address affordable housing, displacement, and economic opportunity in the region. Read More

Almost 30 years ago, a study showed that people of color were more likely to live near incinerators.  Since then, the dangerous conditions and exposure to environmental dangers have  gotten worse. In California, CalEnviroScreen data recently demonstrated that race and environmental harms are directly correlated. Considering this, it’s alarming to think that a California agency that has t... Read More

At a time when the internment of Japanese-American citizens has been cited as precedent for creating a Muslim-American registry, flag burning is mentioned casually as something that might strip Americans of citizenship, and the Constitution feels under attack, want to know more about the history of the ACLU? Read More

When she was 17 years old, Rosa* fled her home country and came to the U.S. seeking a better life. As she made her way across the border, she was raped. After she arrived in the U.S. alone, she was taken into federal custody and then placed with a Catholic organization that receives taxpayer money to provide services to young women like Rosa. Read More

Each year, thousands of Californians are kept in jail awaiting trial simply because they can't afford to post bail. Read More

President-elect Donald J. Trump tweeted that anyone who burns a flag should be jailed or even stripped of their U.S. citizenship. The idea that the government could use citizenship as a punishment for political speech is not simply unconstitutional, but fundamentally un-American. Read More

On opening day of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C., I crossed the threshold with a memory deeply embedded in my psyche. Read More

On January 20, President Obama will hand Donald Trump the keys to the surveillance state. What can you do to protect against government spying? Read More

My mother was seven years old when she and her family were evacuated from the West Coast and forced to live in an Army barrack behind barbed wire in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Born in Los Angeles, she had been taught in school to be a proud and loyal American citizen, so the wholesale exclusion and relocation of her community was both terrifying and confusing. On the journey to... Read More