Stories from the ACLU of Washington

After 9-11, Angela Langer became increasingly worried about assaults on civil liberties and the Constitution, and noticed the ACLU fighting back. Now, as a busy Seattle University law student she has joined this ongoing battle with us as a Policy Advocacy Group intern.

Secular Americans and many liberal people of faith have been horrified by the Right’s most recent ploy: “religious freedom” claims that would give conservative business owners license to discriminate. Until Arizona made the national spotlight, the need for lunch counter sit-ins had seemed like a thing of the past. But in reality, advocates for religious privilege have been circling toward this point for some time.

The ACLU has long been concerned about the use of facial recognition systems and the broad fishing expeditions for which they can be used.  That’s why the ACLU of Washington worked hard to change the Seattle Police Department’s proposed policy for the Booking Photo Comparison Software (BPCS).

Ben Wizner is director of the ACLU’s national Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, and is a legal advisor to Edward Snowden.  He has visited Snowden in Moscow and communicates with him over encrypted channels.  Wizner was in Seattle recently and spoke to KUOW host David Hyde on “The Record” about privacy in the digital age.

Kathleen Taylor has been executive director of the ACLU of Washington since 1980. Under her leadership, the organization has grown tremendously to become one of the nation’s largest branches of the ACLU, with more than 20,000 members and a staff of 32, plus hundreds of volunteers.

Students of color, disabled students, and low-income students are all disciplined more often and more harshly than their classmates, despite evidence that they don’t misbehave more often or engage in more troubling behavior.

A group of enthusiastic ACLU-WA activists met at the State Capitol on Tuesday to encourage legislators to support  House Bill 1771 and Senate Bill 6172 calling for reasonable, common sense limits to drone use by state and local government agencies.

On Monday, I did something that I have never done before. Instead of just signing an online petition, I left my laptop at home and participated in the Reproductive Health and Rights Lobby Day in Olympia. I was joined by my dear friend Mary and a few hundred pro-choice activists from across the state of Washington.  It was announced that all but  four legislative districts were represented.

A few years after graduating from the University of Texas Law School in 1991, Dena Fredrickson took and passed the bar in Washington state.

We’ve all heard the saying: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Unfortunately, this approach has guided discipline policies in most Washington schools for decades. Misbehaving students routinely are suspended or expelled – despite overwhelming evidence that such practices don’t work.