Sunday, 31 March 2019

ACLU: Rights for All Will Put Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Front and Center in the 2020 Presidential Race

Rights for All Will Put Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Front and Center in the 2020 Presidential Race
The ACLU will press the candidates for president to adopt bold policies that advance civil liberties in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Jose Ivan Parga is a member of a multi-status, Mexican-immigrant family in Minnesota. Even though he is a citizen, every day he witnesses the fear and uncertainty that his extended family has because of their immigration status. For decades they have worked, worshiped, and raised families in the state. Yet at any moment, immigration agents could — and have — detained a member of his family without warning or cause, despite their deep roots in the community. With no clear path to citizenship, Jose Ivan’s family is forced to live in the shadows of a broken immigration system.

Jamie Miller is a survivor of sexual assault. As a teen, she was assaulted at a party by a boy from another school who didn’t even know her name. Jamie became pregnant and decided to have an abortion. Since that time, she has fought for women in her home state of West Virginia to have that same option. She wants to make sure they have access to abortion and reproductive care, regardless of where they live or how much money they make.
 
These are the people we fight hard for every day. And it’s these voices that we want to elevate in the 2020 presidential race. Today we’re launching our Rights for All campaign to ensure people like Jose and Jaime — and all the rest of us — have a say in what our next president prioritizes.
 
The next president of the United States must be committed to protecting and advancing the civil rights guaranteed to all of us in the Constitution. It’s up to us to ensure those who are running make their positions clear and hold them accountable. The best way to do this is to make sure candidates are hearing from voters who care about these issues.
 
We won’t be endorsing or supporting individual candidates, but we will be asking them pressing questions about civil liberties and civil rights — the questions that our supporters and activists want each candidate to be able to answer. We’re empowering volunteers, especially in the states with early primaries and caucuses like New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada, to meet the candidates on the trail and record their answers on what they will do about criminal justice reform, access to voting, reproductive freedom, and immigrant justice. We’ll then share candidates’ answers on the newly launched Rights for All website and social media for everyone to hear.
 
Volunteers who don’t have a chance to meet with candidates face-to-face will engage with them online by asking impactful questions on their social media feeds. We’ve also asked all our supporters to take the Rights For All pledge, promising to vote for a president that will uphold these rights.  
 
Already, ACLU volunteers in New Hampshire have asked Elizabeth Warren and Bill Weld about the mass incarceration crisis in communities of color, Pete Buttigieg about reproductive healthcare access, and Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris about voting rights. To continue and expand this work, we’ve hired 10 organizers across the early states to support our volunteers.   
 
Keeping with our nonpartisan principles, we’ll question presidential candidates on both — and neither — side of the aisle, including, if given the opportunity, President Trump.
 
It’s not enough for us to ask them about these issues. We want candidates to adopt bold policies that advance civil liberties. So we’ve drafted our own policy platform on these key issues. When we cast our ballots, we want to know that they have embraced specific policies that advance Rights for All.
 
We are asking candidates to commit, at minimum, to:

  • Reproductive Freedom: Ensure that all people, regardless of where they live or how much they make, can access abortion care, including by lifting bans on insurance coverage of abortion
  • Voting Rights: Ensure every American of age can vote, including those currently incarcerated
  • Criminal Justice Reform: Cut incarceration by 50 percent in federal prisons, and everywhere in the country
  • Immigrant Justice: Overhaul our immigration system by creating new paths to citizenship and dismantling the inhumane and unfair immigration and border enforcement regime

 In addition to pushing the candidates to embrace these policies, we will be following up with questionnaires and developing a comparison tool that will allow voters to compare and contrast candidates on these issues. We also plan to host a national candidate forum further putting civil liberties issues in the spotlight.
 
As primaries and caucuses approach, we will stay true to our nonpartisan values by mobilizing all voters, regardless of party, to cast a ballot, and we will continue this work through the general election.
 
Between now and November 2020, the ACLU will spend $28-30 million engaging candidates and voters in our Rights for All effort, as well other down-ballot candidate races and ballot initiatives where civil liberties and civil rights are on the line.
 
All this work will hopefully mean fewer stories like those of Jose and Jaime. Our goal is to move candidates to take stronger positions on these issues and ensure the next president supports rights for all of us – but we need the help of everyone to make sure they hear from voters across the country. Join us at www.rightsforall.us.



Published March 31, 2019 at 03:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2FLOwLk

ACLU: Rights for All Will Put Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Front and Center in the 2020 Presidential Race

Rights for All Will Put Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Front and Center in the 2020 Presidential Race
The ACLU will press the candidates for president to adopt bold policies that advance civil liberties in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Jose Ivan Parga is a member of a multi-status, Mexican-immigrant family in Minnesota. Even though he is a citizen, every day he witnesses the fear and uncertainty that his extended family has because of their immigration status. For decades they have worked, worshiped, and raised families in the state. Yet at any moment, immigration agents could — and have — detained a member of his family without warning or cause, despite their deep roots in the community. With no clear path to citizenship, Jose Ivan’s family is forced to live in the shadows of a broken immigration system.

Jamie Miller is a survivor of sexual assault. As a teen, she was assaulted at a party by a boy from another school who didn’t even know her name. Jamie became pregnant and decided to have an abortion. Since that time, she has fought for women in her home state of West Virginia to have that same option. She wants to make sure they have access to abortion and reproductive care, regardless of where they live or how much money they make.
 
These are the people we fight hard for every day. And it’s these voices that we want to elevate in the 2020 presidential race. Today we’re launching our Rights for All campaign to ensure people like Jose and Jaime — and all the rest of us — have a say in what our next president prioritizes.
 
The next president of the United States must be committed to protecting and advancing the civil rights guaranteed to all of us in the Constitution. It’s up to us to ensure those who are running make their positions clear and hold them accountable. The best way to do this is to make sure candidates are hearing from voters who care about these issues.
 
We won’t be endorsing or supporting individual candidates, but we will be asking them pressing questions about civil liberties and civil rights — the questions that our supporters and activists want each candidate to be able to answer. We’re empowering volunteers, especially in the states with early primaries and caucuses like New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada, to meet the candidates on the trail and record their answers on what they will do about criminal justice reform, access to voting, reproductive freedom, and immigrant justice. We’ll then share candidates’ answers on the newly launched Rights for All website and social media for everyone to hear.
 
Volunteers who don’t have a chance to meet with candidates face-to-face will engage with them online by asking impactful questions on their social media feeds. We’ve also asked all our supporters to take the Rights For All pledge, promising to vote for a president that will uphold these rights.  
 
Already, ACLU volunteers in New Hampshire have asked Elizabeth Warren and Bill Weld about the mass incarceration crisis in communities of color, Pete Buttigieg about reproductive healthcare access, and Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris about voting rights. To continue and expand this work, we’ve hired 10 organizers across the early states to support our volunteers.   
 
Keeping with our nonpartisan principles, we’ll question presidential candidates on both — and neither — side of the aisle, including, if given the opportunity, President Trump.
 
It’s not enough for us to ask them about these issues. We want candidates to adopt bold policies that advance civil liberties. So we’ve drafted our own policy platform on these key issues. When we cast our ballots, we want to know that they have embraced specific policies that advance Rights for All.
 
We are asking candidates to commit, at minimum, to:

  • Reproductive Freedom: Ensure that all people, regardless of where they live or how much they make, can access abortion care, including by lifting bans on insurance coverage of abortion
  • Voting Rights: Ensure every American of age can vote, including those currently incarcerated
  • Criminal Justice Reform: Cut incarceration by 50 percent in federal prisons, and everywhere in the country
  • Immigrant Justice: Overhaul our immigration system by creating new paths to citizenship and dismantling the inhumane and unfair immigration and border enforcement regime

 In addition to pushing the candidates to embrace these policies, we will be following up with questionnaires and developing a comparison tool that will allow voters to compare and contrast candidates on these issues. We also plan to host a national candidate forum further putting civil liberties issues in the spotlight.
 
As primaries and caucuses approach, we will stay true to our nonpartisan values by mobilizing all voters, regardless of party, to cast a ballot, and we will continue this work through the general election.
 
Between now and November 2020, the ACLU will spend $28-30 million engaging candidates and voters in our Rights for All effort, as well other down-ballot candidate races and ballot initiatives where civil liberties and civil rights are on the line.
 
All this work will hopefully mean fewer stories like those of Jose and Jaime. Our goal is to move candidates to take stronger positions on these issues and ensure the next president supports rights for all of us – but we need the help of everyone to make sure they hear from voters across the country. Join us at www.rightsforall.us.



Published March 31, 2019 at 07:45PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2FLOwLk

Friday, 29 March 2019

The Manhandling of Rock ‘N’ Roll History

Evelyn McDonnell | Longreads | March 2019 | 11 minutes (2,166 words)

 

When Janelle Monae inducts Janet Jackson into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 29, it will be a beautiful moment: a young, gifted, and black woman acknowledging the formative influence — on herself and millions of others — of a woman who seized Control of her own career 33 years ago. It will also be an anomaly.

Jackson is one of only two women being inducted into the hall this year, out of 37 inductees, including the members of the five all-male bands being inducted. The other woman is Stevie Nicks. During the 34 years since the hall was founded by Jann Wenner and Ahmet Ertegun, 888 people have been inducted; 69 have been women. That’s 7.7 percent. The problem is spreading.

A November Rolling Stone article announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, was collaborating with the Rock Hall on a new exhibit of “iconic instruments of rock ‘n’ roll” called Play It Loud. Scheduled to open on April 8, the list of acts whose instruments would be on display included only one woman. My social media feeds exploded with rage and quips, as we wondered whether St. Vincent made the cut because the curators assumed from her name that she was male. Since then, the Met has added several women (and men) to the exhibit list, including Patti Smith, Wanda Jackson, and Joan Jett. It isn’t clear whether the Met added these women as a result of the internet outrage or if they were part of the show all along. After all, all three institutions — the hall, the museum, and the magazine — have, as Jett might say, a bad reputation for excluding women from their reindeer games.

People and institutions have to stop defining rock and rock ‘n’ roll as music played by men, especially white men, with guitars.

The Rock Hall is the most obvious offender in what I’ll call the manhandling of musical history. Manhandling is akin to, and often — as with the Rock Hall — intersects with, whitewashing. Manhandling pushes women out of the frame just as whitewashing covers up black bodies. People of color account for 32 percent of Rock Hall inductees, a far better figure than for women, but still not representative of the enormous role African Americans and Latinx people have played in American popular music. Manhandling is standard practice on country radio; there were no women in the Top 20 of Billboard’s country airplay chart for two weeks in December. Manhandling is standard practice on classic rock radio, where women are relegated to token spots on playlists, and are never played back-to-back. It’s standard in histories of music; there are no women featured in Greil Marcus’s seminal book Mystery Train: Images of Rock ‘n’ Roll in America. And of course, it’s standard practice at IM Pei’s partial glass pyramid in Cleveland. One year of affirmative action at the Grammys cannot wipe away decades of manhandling.

The problem is pervasive, and it is ideological. It is a way of seeing and presenting the world that is based on projections of power and control, not on reality. People and institutions have to stop defining rock and rock ‘n’ roll as music played by men, especially white men, with guitars. We have to change this image, this historiography, this institutionalization, this lie. In short, you do not need a cock to rock.


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Exhibit A: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In the 1930s, the blues and gospel singer began picking her guitar in a way that we now recognize as the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll playing — she laid the foundation upon which Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly built. There’s footage of her with a Gibson that’s been viewed 2.7 million times on YouTube. If you’re not one of those viewers, become one now. Tharpe was finally inducted into the Rock Hall in 2018.

Holly and Berry were both among the first 16 acts inducted in the Rock Hall, in 1986. All their fellow inductees were male. Built on such grotesquely imbalanced footing, the institution may never get itself right. After all, its main instigator was Ahmet Ertegun, an admittedly legendary records man who treated women abominably, according to Dorothy Carvello’s 2018 memoir Anything for a Hit. Carvello is a music executive who began her career working for Ertegun at Atlantic. Ertegun subjected her to crude sexual harassment and once fractured her arm in anger. The Rock Hall named its main exhibition hall after Ertegun. How can this ever be a place where women feel welcome, let alone safe? Just as universities have removed from buildings and fellowships the names of film executives who gave them money, such as USC renaming their Bryan Singer Division of Critical Studies, the Rock Hall should remove Ertegun’s name from the building and from the annual industry executive award that bears his name. It’s an award that has never been given to a woman.

I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do.

I pick on the Rock Hall because I care. I love rock ‘n’ roll, to borrow a phrase. I attended the building’s inaugural event, and despite my ever-growing disenchantment, I always pay attention to who is nominated and who wins. I even get to vote — finally. Aware of the way it was increasingly being seen as a sort of hospice for aging white men, the hall has been trying to diversify its voting body, or risk obsolescence. After two decades as a professional rock writer, I was finally asked to vote a few years ago, and to recruit friends. The problem is, every inductee also gets a vote. So every year, more and more men get the franchise and vote in their friends and heroes, who tend to be men. The hall rigged its own system with its testosterocking inaugural class, and despite efforts to add gender and color balance, the numbers are getting worse.

It’s tempting to just say so what. I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do. They are essentially shrines to white men created by white men, so of course, they honor white men. But they pretend to serve the public — and in the Met’s case, it is in part a publicly funded institution. The Hall of Fame and its associated museum have enormous cultural power, writing in stone the historical importance of individuals in a way that no other institution or publication or organization does. They also create real economic benefits for culture workers. Being inducted into the Rock Hall doesn’t just look good on your resume, it helps sell records and tickets. Most importantly, these institutions provide inspiration — role models — for future generations. And if the only women you’re going to see receiving awards on that stage at the Barclays Center are Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, would you, if you were a little girl, go pick up a guitar?

Time’s up for the Rock Hall and the music industry. The Grammys got called on its #GrammysSoMale gender gap in 2018. After women complained that they were largely shut out of the telecast winners, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow responded that female artists needed to “step up” and they would be welcome. Needless to say, that patronizing, clueless comment went over like a lead zeppelin; there were calls for Portnow’s head, including an online petition for him to resign. So this February, the telecast featured an impressive roster of contemporary and historic talent, from Lady Gaga and Brandi Carlile to Dolly Parton and Diana Ross. But then Portnow stepped on stage and publicly patted himself on the back for the show’s sudden gender balance, like he was our white savior, our knight in shining armor coming to our emotional rescue with this feel-good moment.

Moments are not enough. Thankfully, Portnow is stepping down from his position in July. And yes, I’m sure a woman would be happy to take his place. This is part of the change that must happen in the businesses and nonprofits that support music. Women must be hired and promoted across all facets of the industry: as the editor in chief of Rolling Stone, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the CEO of Universal Music Group. After all, a recent study from the University of Southern California shows that women are outnumbered in most aspects of the business, accounting for only 2 percent of producers and 12.3 percent of songwriters, for instance.

Some of this imbalance is a result of outright exclusion or unwelcoming environments. (Just ask any woman who has worked at a music magazine or a recording studio what it’s like to be, as former Rolling Stone writer Robin Green titled her 2018 memoir, “the only girl.”) Some is a result of sexual harassment or assault, which leaves women so traumatized that their careers stall or even stop. Ever wonder why a favorite artist, songwriter, or DJ ghosted for years? Increasing revelations about the predatory behavior of musicians, publicists, producers, managers, and executives show that, as a whole, the music industry can be a frightening place to be female, whether you’re a young intern working for R. Kelly or a talented country singer married to Ryan Adams. Mandy Moore married Adams in 2009, and hasn’t released an album since. They divorced in 2016. A New York Times investigation of Adams’s alleged predatory behavior toward younger women described him as “psychologically abusive” to Moore.

Guys like Ertegun, who died in 2006, reportedly manhandled in the workplace, in addition to creating the Cleveland shrine to gender inequity. Carvello’s book documents in scandalous detail how he and other executives created a boys’ club environment where women had to either pretend to be one of the boys, betraying their sisters, or trade sex for promotion. In Ertegun’s world, women were not allowed to step up; they were stepped on. Having systematically excluded and oppressed women from the business of making music, Ertegun and his cronies at the Rock Hall then carved that exclusion into stone by essentially writing them out of history, year after year after year. When women do get let into the Rock Hall boys’ club, it is on the arms of men: Carole King is there for her songwriting with Gerry Goffin, not as the woman who recorded numerous hit songs herself, including those on the record-smashing album Tapestry. Tina Turner was inducted alongside her abusive ex-spouse Ike. Indeed, the hall seems to define rock in a way that is disturbingly masculinist, as opposed to expansive and risk-taking — the qualities I like to think of as defining popular music. How about a Hall of Fame that includes Selena, TLC, Patsy Cline, and Grace Jones?

There’s nothing so scary to certain men as a bunch of women banding together. That’s another tool of the patriarchy: divide and conquer.

I’m delighted that two deserving female artists, Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, will be inducted this year. It’s particularly noteworthy that Nicks is getting the nod as a solo artist, after she was already inducted as part of Fleetwood Mac; she’s the first woman to be inducted twice, joining 22 men in the so-called Clyde McPhatter Club. Next year, the Hall must do the same for Tina and Carole. After being nominated so many times, Chaka Khan must finally be inducted as well.

That still won’t be enough to counteract the sheer numerical voting power of all the male musicians who get in as members of bands, especially if the men of Rufus, Khan’s collaborators with whom she has thrice been nominated, are inducted alongside Khan. There are three things the Hall of Fame can do to rectify that imbalance: 1. Flood the nominating committee and voting membership with more women. Six out of 29 members of last year’s nominating committee were women; the notoriously tight-lipped hall has not revealed this year’s committee members. 2. Reduce the voting power of members inducted as players in bands (so, say, the five dudes in Def Leppard each get one fifth of a vote). 3. Nominate a shit ton of all-female bands next year.

Female musicians and groups are particularly absent from the Rock Hall, as from the industry. There’s nothing so scary to certain men as a bunch of women banding together. That’s another tool of the patriarchy: divide and conquer. It’s why Lady Gaga is basically the only woman in A Star Is Born, a film ostensibly celebrating female artistry. She has no mother, no sister; even her girlfriends are male, and they’re drag queens. By focusing on individual artists, not a collective, the entertainment-industrial complex elevates the star, not the gender. The lioness is separated from her pack.

That’s why some women involved in music have formed an activist group, named Turn It Up! As our mission statement says, we “advocate for equal airplay, media coverage and industry employment of groups who are historically and structurally excluded from the business and the institutions of music-making.” And yes, we’re coming for you, sons of Ertegun.

Here’s who I’d like to see inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next year:

Tina Turner

Chaka Khan

Carole King

Diana Ross

Dolly Parton

The Go-Go’s

L7

The Runaways

Bikini Kill

The Crystals

Labelle

Salt N Pepa

That would add more than 30 women to the voting rolls. It’s not enough to correct the historical record, but it’s a step up.

***

Evelyn McDonnell is associate professor of journalism at Loyola Marymount University. She has been writing about popular culture and society for more than 20 years. She is the author of four books: Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the RunawaysMamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork, and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She coedited the anthologies Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyonce. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap, and Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth and edit the Music Matters series from University of Texas Press. She lives in Los Angeles.

Flor Amezquita, Marika Price and Adele Bertei assisted with research for this article. Figures are based off the official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction page, which was then cross-referenced with multiple lists and sources.

Editor: Aaron Gilbreath; Fact-checker: Matt Giles

ACLU: How a Federal Judge Missed the Mark in Explaining Paul Manafort’s Sentence

How a Federal Judge Missed the Mark in Explaining Paul Manafort’s Sentence
In the face of our mass incarceration crisis, it shouldn’t take an “otherwise blameless life” to receive a fair sentence after conviction.

On March 7, Paul Manafort was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis on eight counts of tax evasion and bank fraud. Manafort was sentenced to 47 months in federal prison though under statute, he could have received up to a 10-year sentence and guidelines recommended that much time or more. 

In a highly ridiculed and patently bizarre attempt to justify what many viewed as a surprisingly short prison sentence, Judge Ellis claimed that Manafort had lived “an otherwise blameless life.” Less than a week later, on the other side of the globe, while sentencing Australian Cardinal George Pell on two counts of sexual molestation, Judge Peter Kidd made precisely the same statement

It is both disturbing and absurd to hear a sentencing judge remark on the quantum of blame or virtue amassed over the lifetime of any human being. And it is particularly stunning to hear the phrase “otherwise blameless” used in the cases of two men convicted of incredible abuses of significant privilege and power.   

Though federal sentencing guidelines authorize an inquiry into a person’s history and characteristics, “otherwise blameless” is a precariously subjective evaluation for a judge to express.  This concerning statement is rendered all the more alarming since judges harbor the same racial biases as the general population. The result, all too often, is Black and brown people are viewed as blameworthy while white people receive leniency.  

But here’s the kicker: Judge Ellis was spot on about something just as important, and it isn’t making headlines. Speaking to the theoretical listener who might not think a 47-month sentence is sufficiently punitive, Judge Ellis noted, “Go spend a day in the jail or penitentiary of the federal government. Spend a week there.”

Our country has a mass incarceration crisis, fueled by fear-mongering, racism, deficient procedural protections, aggressive and lopsided policing and prosecuting, underfunded public defense systems, pretrial incarceration, and exorbitant sentences. 

Sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums — once thought of as a way to diminish race and class disparities — have needlessly glutted our already crowded prisons. Typically the system actors bringing criminal charges and sentencing people to jail or prison have not themselves ever been incarcerated. And as of 2015, 95 percent of elected prosecutors in the nation were white. Given this foundational truth, Judge Ellis was right to admonish those who think four years of incarceration could be a cake walk — for Manafort, for anybody. 

Prior to joining the ACLU, I worked for a federal judge who was widely condemned for his “lenient” 22-year sentence of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be Millennium Bomber.  Three times Ressam’s sentence was overturned for not being harsh enough. Judge Coughenour faced tremendous personal and professional criticism for his decision and, in the face of numerous reversals, ultimately increased Ressam’s sentence to 37 years. 

Though Judge Coughenour ultimately gave Ressam a very long sentence, he knew — from visiting people in prison and witnessing the extreme physical scars Ressam bore from years in solitary confinement — that no amount of time incarcerated, particularly in solitary, should be taken lightly. He has thus used his platform as a federal judge to speak candidly about the moral difficulties raised by the act of depriving a human being of liberty and to unequivocally emphasize the horrors of incarceration. He remains today an outspoken critic of guidelines that encourage higher sentences and discourage individualized determinations. 

Every day, judges render harsh, punitive, and unnecessary criminal justice decisions that can fundamentally shift — or even end — the lives of the people who come before them in their courtrooms. Elected judges are particularly susceptible to misplaced political pressures steeped in “law and order” attitudes — which affect how they set bail, sentence, and consider alternatives to incarceration.

But Judge Ellis is a federal judge, with lifetime tenure, ostensibly removed from the political pressures of election and public opinions rooted in “law and order” sentiment.  At Manafort’s sentencing hearing, he set into motion a dangerous trend of attaching shorter sentences to the “otherwise blameless life” of prominent people who break the law.  

That was a mistake. 

It would have sent a far more powerful message if Judge Ellis had instead emphasized the horrors of incarceration as a basis for departing downward from the sentencing guidelines. Hopefully Judge Ellis — and similarly powerful judicial actors — does so regularly for far less powerful and privileged individuals who come before him.  



Published March 29, 2019 at 06:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2OvqYhM

ACLU: How a Federal Judge Missed the Mark in Explaining Paul Manafort’s Sentence

How a Federal Judge Missed the Mark in Explaining Paul Manafort’s Sentence
In the face of our mass incarceration crisis, it shouldn’t take an “otherwise blameless life” to receive a fair sentence after conviction.

On March 7, Paul Manafort was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis on eight counts of tax evasion and bank fraud. Manafort was sentenced to 47 months in federal prison though under statute, he could have received up to a 10-year sentence and guidelines recommended that much time or more. 

In a highly ridiculed and patently bizarre attempt to justify what many viewed as a surprisingly short prison sentence, Judge Ellis claimed that Manafort had lived “an otherwise blameless life.” Less than a week later, on the other side of the globe, while sentencing Australian Cardinal George Pell on two counts of sexual molestation, Judge Peter Kidd made precisely the same statement

It is both disturbing and absurd to hear a sentencing judge remark on the quantum of blame or virtue amassed over the lifetime of any human being. And it is particularly stunning to hear the phrase “otherwise blameless” used in the cases of two men convicted of incredible abuses of significant privilege and power.   

Though federal sentencing guidelines authorize an inquiry into a person’s history and characteristics, “otherwise blameless” is a precariously subjective evaluation for a judge to express.  This concerning statement is rendered all the more alarming since judges harbor the same racial biases as the general population. The result, all too often, is Black and brown people are viewed as blameworthy while white people receive leniency.  

But here’s the kicker: Judge Ellis was spot on about something just as important, and it isn’t making headlines. Speaking to the theoretical listener who might not think a 47-month sentence is sufficiently punitive, Judge Ellis noted, “Go spend a day in the jail or penitentiary of the federal government. Spend a week there.”

Our country has a mass incarceration crisis, fueled by fear-mongering, racism, deficient procedural protections, aggressive and lopsided policing and prosecuting, underfunded public defense systems, pretrial incarceration, and exorbitant sentences. 

Sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums — once thought of as a way to diminish race and class disparities — have needlessly glutted our already crowded prisons. Typically the system actors bringing criminal charges and sentencing people to jail or prison have not themselves ever been incarcerated. And as of 2015, 95 percent of elected prosecutors in the nation were white. Given this foundational truth, Judge Ellis was right to admonish those who think four years of incarceration could be a cake walk — for Manafort, for anybody. 

Prior to joining the ACLU, I worked for a federal judge who was widely condemned for his “lenient” 22-year sentence of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be Millennium Bomber.  Three times Ressam’s sentence was overturned for not being harsh enough. Judge Coughenour faced tremendous personal and professional criticism for his decision and, in the face of numerous reversals, ultimately increased Ressam’s sentence to 37 years. 

Though Judge Coughenour ultimately gave Ressam a very long sentence, he knew — from visiting people in prison and witnessing the extreme physical scars Ressam bore from years in solitary confinement — that no amount of time incarcerated, particularly in solitary, should be taken lightly. He has thus used his platform as a federal judge to speak candidly about the moral difficulties raised by the act of depriving a human being of liberty and to unequivocally emphasize the horrors of incarceration. He remains today an outspoken critic of guidelines that encourage higher sentences and discourage individualized determinations. 

Every day, judges render harsh, punitive, and unnecessary criminal justice decisions that can fundamentally shift — or even end — the lives of the people who come before them in their courtrooms. Elected judges are particularly susceptible to misplaced political pressures steeped in “law and order” attitudes — which affect how they set bail, sentence, and consider alternatives to incarceration.

But Judge Ellis is a federal judge, with lifetime tenure, ostensibly removed from the political pressures of election and public opinions rooted in “law and order” sentiment.  At Manafort’s sentencing hearing, he set into motion a dangerous trend of attaching shorter sentences to the “otherwise blameless life” of prominent people who break the law.  

That was a mistake. 

It would have sent a far more powerful message if Judge Ellis had instead emphasized the horrors of incarceration as a basis for departing downward from the sentencing guidelines. Hopefully Judge Ellis — and similarly powerful judicial actors — does so regularly for far less powerful and privileged individuals who come before him.  



Published March 29, 2019 at 11:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2OvqYhM

Thursday, 28 March 2019

ACLU: A Mentally Ill Man in Solitary Cut Off a Body Part at the Broward County Jail

A Mentally Ill Man in Solitary Cut Off a Body Part at the Broward County Jail
Broward County Jail has a sordid history of damage and death due to its dangerously substandard mental health system and unsafe conditions.

Around midnight on Sept. 5, 2018, guards responded to prisoners banging on their cell doors inside a lockdown unit at Broward County Jail’s main facility in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. They went to the solitary cell of J.I.* and made a gruesome discovery.  

“I have a real medical emergency,” J.I. told an officer. “I just cut my penis off and flushed it down the toilet. I have no need for it anymore.” J.I. had used a razor blade to cut himself. This grisly act of self-mutilation is just the latest chapter in a series of tragic incidents involving seriously mentally ill prisoners at the jail.    

J.I. has a documented history of mental health treatment dating back to 2007. He was booked into the jail in late October 2017. Two months later, he was placed on suicide watch after he told staff he suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and wanted to harm himself. J.I. was prescribed various mental health medications during his jail stay, which he repeatedly refused in the months leading up to his self-mutilation.  These included antipsychotics and an antidepressant that could have helped to prevent J.I.’s condition from worsening.  

Prior to his placement in solitary confinement, J.I. had begun showing telltale signs of a mental health crisis. J.I. had public masturbatory episodes, and along with his medication refusals, he also refused food.

These signs should have been a red flag to the doctors supposedly overseeing J.I.’s care.  Yet his medical record contains few notes or observations from the jail’s mental health staff. As he deteriorated, his treatment plan was not updated, a glaring omission.  

J.I. was initially placed in solitary confinement for yelling at staff members. He had been in solitary for over 112 consecutive days at the time of his mutilation.

Prisoners in solitary confinement are isolated, unable to interact with others or participate in daily activities. Instead, men and women in solitary spend their days alone in a cell that is roughly the size of a parking space. It is well recognized that prisoners experiencing these harsh conditions need to be assessed by a mental health professional prior to and during their placement in solitary, as isolation can exacerbate or even cause mental health problems.

None of these safeguards were followed for J.I. 

No psychiatrist assessed him prior to his placement in segregation to determine if this placement could be harmful. He was not adequately monitored while in solitary for the four months leading up to his mutilation. The risks to those like J.I. who already have serious mental illness are acute. There is a consensus that those suffering from serious mental illness should be excluded from long-term solitary confinement altogether.

J.I.’s self-mutilation was just the latest in a series of tragic incidents involving seriously mentally ill prisoners at the Broward County Jail.   

In 2012, William Herring, a prisoner diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, starved himself to death under the watch of Broward County Jail officials. A few months before Herring’s death, Raleigh Priester also starved to death at the jail. 

Priester, too, suffered from schizophrenia, but he was still placed in solitary confinement where his condition deteriorated. Priester began starving himself and the 6-foot-2-inch man’s weight dropped from 240 pounds when he was first arrested to 139 pounds before any emergency medical intervention was undertaken. He was briefly hospitalized, gaining 11.6 pounds in one week. After his return to the jail, Priester died of starvation in his cell weighing 120 pounds. He was in jail for 155 days.

We have an ongoing civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the men, women, and children confined at the Broward County Jail. Just a week before J.I. mutilated himself, a court-appointed psychiatric expert in our case issued a scathing report finding numerous life-threatening deficiencies in mental health services at the jail. These included a failure to exclude seriously mentally ill patients from solitary confinement, to timely treat patients who refused their medications, and to hospitalize those patients who could not be adequately treated at the jail. 

The expert concluded that the mistreatment and neglect of those with mental illness at the jail were “absolutely inhumane.”

Following the expert’s report, the parties crafted a comprehensive decree that will remedy the flaws and failures of the jail’s mental health care system. That agreement awaits approval from the presiding federal judge. Under the agreement, seriously mentally ill patients will be excluded from solitary confinement, and individual treatment plans will be developed and implemented for all mental health patients. The most acutely ill patients will be diverted to psychiatric hospitals rather than being warehoused at the jail.

These remedies came too late to prevent the tragedies that befell J.I., Priester, Herring, and too many others. They must be implemented now to prevent future tragedies at the Broward County Jail.

* “J.I.” is the man’s initials. For his privacy, we have used just his initials throughout this piece.



Published March 29, 2019 at 02:30AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2Ou02yU

ACLU: A Mentally Ill Man in Solitary Cut Off a Body Part at the Broward County Jail

A Mentally Ill Man in Solitary Cut Off a Body Part at the Broward County Jail
Broward County Jail has a sordid history of damage and death due to its dangerously substandard mental health system and unsafe conditions.

Around midnight on Sept. 5, 2018, guards responded to prisoners banging on their cell doors inside a lockdown unit at Broward County Jail’s main facility in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. They went to the solitary cell of J.I.* and made a gruesome discovery.  

“I have a real medical emergency,” J.I. told an officer. “I just cut my penis off and flushed it down the toilet. I have no need for it anymore.” J.I. had used a razor blade to cut himself. This grisly act of self-mutilation is just the latest chapter in a series of tragic incidents involving seriously mentally ill prisoners at the jail.    

J.I. has a documented history of mental health treatment dating back to 2007. He was booked into the jail in late October 2017. Two months later, he was placed on suicide watch after he told staff he suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and wanted to harm himself. J.I. was prescribed various mental health medications during his jail stay, which he repeatedly refused in the months leading up to his self-mutilation.  These included antipsychotics and an antidepressant that could have helped to prevent J.I.’s condition from worsening.  

Prior to his placement in solitary confinement, J.I. had begun showing telltale signs of a mental health crisis. J.I. had public masturbatory episodes, and along with his medication refusals, he also refused food.

These signs should have been a red flag to the doctors supposedly overseeing J.I.’s care.  Yet his medical record contains few notes or observations from the jail’s mental health staff. As he deteriorated, his treatment plan was not updated, a glaring omission.  

J.I. was initially placed in solitary confinement for yelling at staff members. He had been in solitary for over 112 consecutive days at the time of his mutilation.

Prisoners in solitary confinement are isolated, unable to interact with others or participate in daily activities. Instead, men and women in solitary spend their days alone in a cell that is roughly the size of a parking space. It is well recognized that prisoners experiencing these harsh conditions need to be assessed by a mental health professional prior to and during their placement in solitary, as isolation can exacerbate or even cause mental health problems.

None of these safeguards were followed for J.I. 

No psychiatrist assessed him prior to his placement in segregation to determine if this placement could be harmful. He was not adequately monitored while in solitary for the four months leading up to his mutilation. The risks to those like J.I. who already have serious mental illness are acute. There is a consensus that those suffering from serious mental illness should be excluded from long-term solitary confinement altogether.

J.I.’s self-mutilation was just the latest in a series of tragic incidents involving seriously mentally ill prisoners at the Broward County Jail.   

In 2012, William Herring, a prisoner diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, starved himself to death under the watch of Broward County Jail officials. A few months before Herring’s death, Raleigh Priester also starved to death at the jail. 

Priester, too, suffered from schizophrenia, but he was still placed in solitary confinement where his condition deteriorated. Priester began starving himself and the 6-foot-2-inch man’s weight dropped from 240 pounds when he was first arrested to 139 pounds before any emergency medical intervention was undertaken. He was briefly hospitalized, gaining 11.6 pounds in one week. After his return to the jail, Priester died of starvation in his cell weighing 120 pounds. He was in jail for 155 days.

We have an ongoing civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the men, women, and children confined at the Broward County Jail. Just a week before J.I. mutilated himself, a court-appointed psychiatric expert in our case issued a scathing report finding numerous life-threatening deficiencies in mental health services at the jail. These included a failure to exclude seriously mentally ill patients from solitary confinement, to timely treat patients who refused their medications, and to hospitalize those patients who could not be adequately treated at the jail. 

The expert concluded that the mistreatment and neglect of those with mental illness at the jail were “absolutely inhumane.”

Following the expert’s report, the parties crafted a comprehensive decree that will remedy the flaws and failures of the jail’s mental health care system. That agreement awaits approval from the presiding federal judge. Under the agreement, seriously mentally ill patients will be excluded from solitary confinement, and individual treatment plans will be developed and implemented for all mental health patients. The most acutely ill patients will be diverted to psychiatric hospitals rather than being warehoused at the jail.

These remedies came too late to prevent the tragedies that befell J.I., Priester, Herring, and too many others. They must be implemented now to prevent future tragedies at the Broward County Jail.

* “J.I.” is the man’s initials. For his privacy, we have used just his initials throughout this piece.



Published March 28, 2019 at 09:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2Ou02yU

ACLU: When Taking a Walk At Night Was an Act of Civil Disobedience

When Taking a Walk At Night Was an Act of Civil Disobedience
Oregon remembers Minoru Yasui, a civil rights icon who broke the law to protest the curfews put on Japanese Americans at the start of World War II.

Seventy-six years ago, Minoru “Min” Yasui sat in a cell at the Multnomah County Jail in Oregon when he read a newspaper article detailing how Walter Pierce, the state’s former governor and U.S. congressman, called for Japanese immigrants in the United States to be sent to Japan. Ever the racist and xenophobe, Pierce wasn’t done. He even suggested revoking birthright citizenship for Americans of Japanese descent.

“The United States has done much for the Japanese but in turn they have abused privileges granted them and have tricked us,” Pierce was quoted as saying. He then claimed that Japanese Americans couldn’t be “Americanized” or “Christianized” and warned that “a contest looms to see whether the Pacific Coast will remain white or turn yellow.”

Min, a young University of Oregon-educated lawyer from Hood River, understood intimately what the hateful words of a powerful man like Pierce could sow. Min was being unjustly held in solitary confinement for a simple but powerful act of civil disobedience in reaction to government repression of Japanese Americans and immigrants in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. On March 28, 1942, he purposefully broke the curfew law that had been placed on all people of Japanese ancestry under Executive Order 9066 by walking up and down the streets of downtown Portland after 8 p.m.   

Min rightly believed Executive Order 9066 — which was eventually used to authorize the forced relocation and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans — was unconstitutional, so he launched a legal challenge. Before he was sentenced for the curfew violation, he was removed from his home at gunpoint under the order. He was sent to the Portland Assembly Center, which usually held livestock, and then to the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho before and after his nine-month sentence at the Multnomah County Jail.

From his tiny jail cell, he wrote a letter to respond to Pierce’s hateful words, which was published in the Minidoka Irrigator, a newspaper published at the incarceration camp that Min would soon return to after serving his sentence in Oregon.

“Here again is the insinuation that among human races, there are inherent inferiorities and superior qualities of races, not individuals. (Pierce’s) concluding statement marks him for a race-hater, and as an un-American demagogue. The issue ought not to be whether the Pacific Coast should remain ‘white’ or even ‘yellow.’ The issue ought to be whether the Pacific Coast will remain American or degenerate into a land of ‘superior whites.’ I believe Pierce would be willing to destroy Americanism for sake of ‘white man’s superiority.”

The letter was signed: “MIN YASUI, Multnomah County Jail, Portland, Oregon.”

This is just a brief glimpse of Min Yasui’s unwavering lifelong commitment to equal rights and justice in the face of shameful treatment inflicted upon him and more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent by the very individuals who swore to protect the Constitution.

Min took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the justices shamefully upheld his conviction. He went on to lead an illustrious career as an attorney and civil rights leader, and his conviction was later vacated. In 2015, Yasui was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, becoming the only Oregonian to receive the nation's highest civilian honor.

In his 1981 testimony to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Min wrote that,

“It seemed to me then, as it does to me now, that to allow our government to act on the basis of one’s ancestry to go unchallenged was to betray all that America and the United States had stood for and proclaimed to all the world, in 1776 and today, that ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ I could not permit myself to stand idly by and allow this to be amended by adding ‘except in time of war, and if you are of Japanese ancestry.’”

The civil rights icon passed away in 1986, but his strength and determination must not be forgotten. We worked to help pass the law that created Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon, and we proudly retrace his bold and defiant steps through downtown Portland each year on March 28.

As we face a resurgence of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals, it is inspiring to remember that, through acts of resistance both small and large, we can fight to create the country we wish to see. With “conviction of the righteousness of our stand,” as Min said in his 1981 testimony, we must defend the rights of all people.



Published March 28, 2019 at 04:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2uxwZ4o

ACLU: When Taking a Walk At Night Was an Act of Civil Disobedience

When Taking a Walk At Night Was an Act of Civil Disobedience
Oregon remembers Minoru Yasui, a civil rights icon who broke the law to protest the curfews put on Japanese Americans at the start of World War II.

Seventy-six years ago, Minoru “Min” Yasui sat in a cell at the Multnomah County Jail in Oregon when he read a newspaper article detailing how Walter Pierce, the state’s former governor and U.S. congressman, called for Japanese immigrants in the United States to be sent to Japan. Ever the racist and xenophobe, Pierce wasn’t done. He even suggested revoking birthright citizenship for Americans of Japanese descent.

“The United States has done much for the Japanese but in turn they have abused privileges granted them and have tricked us,” Pierce was quoted as saying. He then claimed that Japanese Americans couldn’t be “Americanized” or “Christianized” and warned that “a contest looms to see whether the Pacific Coast will remain white or turn yellow.”

Min, a young University of Oregon-educated lawyer from Hood River, understood intimately what the hateful words of a powerful man like Pierce could sow. Min was being unjustly held in solitary confinement for a simple but powerful act of civil disobedience in reaction to government repression of Japanese Americans and immigrants in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. On March 28, 1942, he purposefully broke the curfew law that had been placed on all people of Japanese ancestry under Executive Order 9066 by walking up and down the streets of downtown Portland after 8 p.m.   

Min rightly believed Executive Order 9066 — which was eventually used to authorize the forced relocation and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans — was unconstitutional, so he launched a legal challenge. Before he was sentenced for the curfew violation, he was removed from his home at gunpoint under the order. He was sent to the Portland Assembly Center, which usually held livestock, and then to the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho before and after his nine-month sentence at the Multnomah County Jail.

From his tiny jail cell, he wrote a letter to respond to Pierce’s hateful words, which was published in the Minidoka Irrigator, a newspaper published at the incarceration camp that Min would soon return to after serving his sentence in Oregon.

“Here again is the insinuation that among human races, there are inherent inferiorities and superior qualities of races, not individuals. (Pierce’s) concluding statement marks him for a race-hater, and as an un-American demagogue. The issue ought not to be whether the Pacific Coast should remain ‘white’ or even ‘yellow.’ The issue ought to be whether the Pacific Coast will remain American or degenerate into a land of ‘superior whites.’ I believe Pierce would be willing to destroy Americanism for sake of ‘white man’s superiority.”

The letter was signed: “MIN YASUI, Multnomah County Jail, Portland, Oregon.”

This is just a brief glimpse of Min Yasui’s unwavering lifelong commitment to equal rights and justice in the face of shameful treatment inflicted upon him and more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent by the very individuals who swore to protect the Constitution.

Min took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the justices shamefully upheld his conviction. He went on to lead an illustrious career as an attorney and civil rights leader, and his conviction was later vacated. In 2015, Yasui was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, becoming the only Oregonian to receive the nation's highest civilian honor.

In his 1981 testimony to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Min wrote that,

“It seemed to me then, as it does to me now, that to allow our government to act on the basis of one’s ancestry to go unchallenged was to betray all that America and the United States had stood for and proclaimed to all the world, in 1776 and today, that ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ I could not permit myself to stand idly by and allow this to be amended by adding ‘except in time of war, and if you are of Japanese ancestry.’”

The civil rights icon passed away in 1986, but his strength and determination must not be forgotten. We worked to help pass the law that created Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon, and we proudly retrace his bold and defiant steps through downtown Portland each year on March 28.

As we face a resurgence of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals, it is inspiring to remember that, through acts of resistance both small and large, we can fight to create the country we wish to see. With “conviction of the righteousness of our stand,” as Min said in his 1981 testimony, we must defend the rights of all people.



Published March 28, 2019 at 09:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2uxwZ4o

Wednesday, 27 March 2019

ACLU: The Department of Homeland Security's Attack on Asylum Seekers at the Border Continues

The Department of Homeland Security's Attack on Asylum Seekers at the Border Continues
The U.S. is systematically violating the rights of asylum seekers and turning them back into Mexico where they are often abused.

In a desperate attempt to escape immediate threats to their life, the Castro* family fled their home country of El Salvador, hoping to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek refuge. What they found instead at the port of entry in Eagle Pass, Texas, were cruel U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and no protection to be found.

After being physically pushed back into Mexico by CBP officers, the Castro family was told that they must get on a list in Mexico and wait. In the months that followed, terrified and with no resources or community support, a nightmare transpired for the five of them, including three young children. The family was kidnapped, extorted by Mexican officials, separated in immigration detention, and threatened in Mexico by their past persecutors. To make an already terrible situation bleaker, the medical conditions of one of their children worsened due to lack of health care.

The Castro’s family’s ordeal is the result of CBP’s policy of turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry, known as “metering.” In its current iteration, the policy includes CBP officers stationed on the international boundary at ports, where they reject arriving asylum seekers and instruct them to seek Mexican immigration officials to be put on waiting lists, just to begin their asylum process. The policy illegally denies access to the asylum system and forces migrants to wait in untenable conditions, vulnerable to abuse like the Castro family, even before beginning any asylum procedure in U.S. courts.   

The resulting horrors foreshadow the dangers faced by those subjected to DHS’s new policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” technically called the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP). Under the MPP policy, which has already begun across California and is being expanded to El Paso, asylum seekers are sent back to Mexico after starting their asylum process and forced to wait there for the completion of their immigration court proceedings in the U.S., effectively denying them access to U.S. humanitarian protection and placing them back in danger.

That’s why on Wednesday, we filed a complaint on behalf of the Castro family with the DHS Office of Inspector General, the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility, demanding immediate investigation into CBP’s unlawful turn-back of the family at both the Eagle Pass and the Paso del Norte ports of entry, which resulted in the family’s kidnapping and ongoing persecution in Mexico for six months. The thousands of families experiencing similar rejections at ports across the border, facing similar dangers, further necessitates investigation into CBP’s illegal turn back policy.

In response to CBP’s systemic abuses, the ACLU Border Rights Center, along with community partners and volunteers, have conducted over 200 interviews of asylum seekers denied their right to seek asylum at ports of entry in Texas. Migrants from Central America, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Cameroon, and Russia were fleeing extreme violence and political persecution and were unlawfully rejected by CBP officers at Texas ports. 

Indeed, DHS’s attacks on asylum seekers at the border have only gotten more sinister, resulting in inhumane conditions for those looking for protection. And similar tragic consequences are the fate that thousands more could face if these anti-immigrant policies are allowed to continue and be expanded.

Asylum seekers have a right under both U.S. and international law to seek asylum in this country, regardless of how they enter. President Trump and CBP, however, have methodically expanded their racist approach to keeping migrants of color from entering the U.S., quickly chipping away at the fundamental rights of asylum seekers over the past two years.

In conjunction with the “zero tolerance” prosecution policy and devastating family separations, CBP doubled down on its policy of turning away asylum seekers at ports across the southern border, forcing more migrants to cross between ports so that they could be criminalized and families separated. Nevertheless, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen again recently called on migrants to present themselves at ports of entry.

The administration also continues to further militarize ports of entry to push a false narrative of a pending border invasion. CBP agents and military troops unnecessarily fortified ports with razor wire to underscore how unwelcome asylum-seekers are and conducted “crowd control” exercises that shut ports down and inculcated fear in border communities. Port militarization is contrary to the humanitarian response needed to process asylum seekers, many of whom are families like the Castro’s, peacefully arriving to seek protection.  

Absent robust accountability for CBP’s actions at ports of entry, and immediate rejection by Congress and the courts of CBP’s MPP policy, asylum seekers will continue to be denied their legal right to seek asylum at the border and face the range of human rights violations awaiting them when stuck in Mexico.

“I just want freedom,” one Cuban asylum seeker told us after CBP had turned her away.

At its best, this country has lived up to our values of compassion by providing freedom and safety for those fleeing persecution. We are far from our best right now.

* The Castro family is a pseudonym to protect the asylum seekers from reprisals.



Published March 28, 2019 at 03:00AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2uucq93

ACLU: The Department of Homeland Security's Attack on Asylum Seekers at the Border Continues

The Department of Homeland Security's Attack on Asylum Seekers at the Border Continues
The U.S. is systematically violating the rights of asylum seekers and turning them back into Mexico where they are often abused.

In a desperate attempt to escape immediate threats to their life, the Castro* family fled their home country of El Salvador, hoping to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek refuge. What they found instead at the port of entry in Eagle Pass, Texas, were cruel U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and no protection to be found.

After being physically pushed back into Mexico by CBP officers, the Castro family was told that they must get on a list in Mexico and wait. In the months that followed, terrified and with no resources or community support, a nightmare transpired for the five of them, including three young children. The family was kidnapped, extorted by Mexican officials, separated in immigration detention, and threatened in Mexico by their past persecutors. To make an already terrible situation bleaker, the medical conditions of one of their children worsened due to lack of health care.

The Castro’s family’s ordeal is the result of CBP’s policy of turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry, known as “metering.” In its current iteration, the policy includes CBP officers stationed on the international boundary at ports, where they reject arriving asylum seekers and instruct them to seek Mexican immigration officials to be put on waiting lists, just to begin their asylum process. The policy illegally denies access to the asylum system and forces migrants to wait in untenable conditions, vulnerable to abuse like the Castro family, even before beginning any asylum procedure in U.S. courts.   

The resulting horrors foreshadow the dangers faced by those subjected to DHS’s new policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” technically called the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP). Under the MPP policy, which has already begun across California and is being expanded to El Paso, asylum seekers are sent back to Mexico after starting their asylum process and forced to wait there for the completion of their immigration court proceedings in the U.S., effectively denying them access to U.S. humanitarian protection and placing them back in danger.

That’s why on Wednesday, we filed a complaint on behalf of the Castro family with the DHS Office of Inspector General, the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility, demanding immediate investigation into CBP’s unlawful turn-back of the family at both the Eagle Pass and the Paso del Norte ports of entry, which resulted in the family’s kidnapping and ongoing persecution in Mexico for six months. The thousands of families experiencing similar rejections at ports across the border, facing similar dangers, further necessitates investigation into CBP’s illegal turn back policy.

In response to CBP’s systemic abuses, the ACLU Border Rights Center, along with community partners and volunteers, have conducted over 200 interviews of asylum seekers denied their right to seek asylum at ports of entry in Texas. Migrants from Central America, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Cameroon, and Russia were fleeing extreme violence and political persecution and were unlawfully rejected by CBP officers at Texas ports. 

Indeed, DHS’s attacks on asylum seekers at the border have only gotten more sinister, resulting in inhumane conditions for those looking for protection. And similar tragic consequences are the fate that thousands more could face if these anti-immigrant policies are allowed to continue and be expanded.

Asylum seekers have a right under both U.S. and international law to seek asylum in this country, regardless of how they enter. President Trump and CBP, however, have methodically expanded their racist approach to keeping migrants of color from entering the U.S., quickly chipping away at the fundamental rights of asylum seekers over the past two years.

In conjunction with the “zero tolerance” prosecution policy and devastating family separations, CBP doubled down on its policy of turning away asylum seekers at ports across the southern border, forcing more migrants to cross between ports so that they could be criminalized and families separated. Nevertheless, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen again recently called on migrants to present themselves at ports of entry.

The administration also continues to further militarize ports of entry to push a false narrative of a pending border invasion. CBP agents and military troops unnecessarily fortified ports with razor wire to underscore how unwelcome asylum-seekers are and conducted “crowd control” exercises that shut ports down and inculcated fear in border communities. Port militarization is contrary to the humanitarian response needed to process asylum seekers, many of whom are families like the Castro’s, peacefully arriving to seek protection.  

Absent robust accountability for CBP’s actions at ports of entry, and immediate rejection by Congress and the courts of CBP’s MPP policy, asylum seekers will continue to be denied their legal right to seek asylum at the border and face the range of human rights violations awaiting them when stuck in Mexico.

“I just want freedom,” one Cuban asylum seeker told us after CBP had turned her away.

At its best, this country has lived up to our values of compassion by providing freedom and safety for those fleeing persecution. We are far from our best right now.

* The Castro family is a pseudonym to protect the asylum seekers from reprisals.



Published March 27, 2019 at 09:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2uucq93

Tuesday, 26 March 2019

ACLU: Top 5 Reasons Why the House Should Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act

Top 5 Reasons Why the House Should Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act
The law would give working women the legal tools they need to challenge discrimination and close the gender pay gap.

More than 55 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed, women working fulltime and year-round, on average, are paid only 80 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. The disparity for women of color is even more severe. This wage gap has remained stagnant for years and continues to squeeze women’s pocketbooks, erode their earning potential, and deprive them of the means to improve their own lives and support their families.

It’s long past time to update the Equal Pay Act to give working women the legal tools they need to challenge discrimination and to encourage employers to comply with the law. That’s exactly what the House of Representatives is poised to do when it takes up the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 7) this week.

Here are the top 5 reasons why we need the Paycheck Fairness Act:

  1.  Employees must be free to discuss their salaries.

About 60 percent of workers in the private sector are either contractually forbidden or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with colleagues. Additionally, employees are dissuaded from obtaining information that would prove pay discrimination.

These kinds of punitive pay secrecy policies enable wage discrimination not only to persist, but to become institutionalized. Although there are currently a few measures that bar some employers from punishing employees who discuss their salaries with colleagues, the Paycheck Fairness Act would broadly prohibit retaliation for wage disclosures and for seeking legal recourse. No one should fear being fired simply because they made a complaint, started an investigation, asked questions about their employer’s wage practices, or disclosed their own salary. 

  1. Reliance on prior salary perpetuates the gender wage gap.

Numerous studies have shown that the gender wage gap begins early in a woman’s career or work life, widens over time, follows her from job to job, and robs her of hundreds of thousands of dollars over decades. Employers who inquire about and rely on prior salary when setting the salary of new hires (or promotions) contribute to this problem and perpetuate the gender wage gap. By relying on a woman’s previous salary — which was likely lower because of historical bias and discrimination — the employer entrenches the pay discrepancy and continues to underpay her.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would end this practice by prohibiting employers from using salary history as a way to set salaries for job candidates. It would also ban them from requesting salary history from applicants or previous employers (though it would allow job applicants to provide their salary as part of the negotiation process after a job offer has been made).

  1. Data collection is essential to eliminating pay disparities.

Because pay is often cloaked in secrecy, pay discrimination remains very difficult to detect. Consequently, government enforcement and employer self-evaluation are critical to combat compensation discrimination.

To that end, the Paycheck Fairness Act requires the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect compensation data from employers — by sex, race, and national origin — in order to better identify discriminatory practices or patterns. It also authorizes the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct research, implement a survey of federal contractors’ compensation data, and use investigatory tools that can help root out wage discrimination.

  1. Employers need support — and stronger penalties.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide businesses with support and encouragement as they strive to eliminate wage discrimination. The bill requires the Department of Labor to provide information to employers and to recognize and promote the achievements of employers, including bestowing a National Award for Pay Equity in the Workplace on an employer that has made substantial efforts to eliminate pay disparities between men and women.

Equally important, the act would strengthen the penalties that could be imposed against an employer when pay discrimination is proven. Currently, an employee who proves an Equal Pay Act violation can only recover back pay and an equal amount in liquidated damages.  These limited remedies do not sufficiently deter discriminatory pay practices. Under the Paycheck Fairness Act, employees would be able to recover compensatory damages (money to compensate for injury or loss) and punitive damages (money to punish and deter) — the same kinds of remedies available for other civil rights violations.

  1. The pay gap takes a huge toll on women throughout their lives.

In 2017, the median annual earnings for women working full time all year was $41,977 while the median income for men under the same circumstances was $52,146. While the average pay gap for white women is 80 cents on the dollar, it is 62 cents for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women, 60.3 cents for African-American women, and 53 cents for Latina women. A college educated woman will lose almost $800,000 in income by the time she turns 59, and the wage gap will cost women and their families nearly $900 billion a year.

Millions of women are the primary breadwinners in their households and these wage losses affect their families’ health, welfare, and economic security. By understanding and acknowledging these cold hard numbers, the Paycheck Fairness Act sets forth a path toward eliminating wage discrimination and achieving pay equity.

For all these reasons, and many more, after the House passes the Paycheck Fairness Act this week, we must push for the Senate to do the same. The time for change and equal pay has come.



Published March 27, 2019 at 02:30AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2TZDBI3

ACLU: Top 5 Reasons Why the House Should Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act

Top 5 Reasons Why the House Should Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act
The law would give working women the legal tools they need to challenge discrimination and close the gender pay gap.

More than 55 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed, women working fulltime and year-round, on average, are paid only 80 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. The disparity for women of color is even more severe. This wage gap has remained stagnant for years and continues to squeeze women’s pocketbooks, erode their earning potential, and deprive them of the means to improve their own lives and support their families.

It’s long past time to update the Equal Pay Act to give working women the legal tools they need to challenge discrimination and to encourage employers to comply with the law. That’s exactly what the House of Representatives is poised to do when it takes up the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 7) this week.

Here are the top 5 reasons why we need the Paycheck Fairness Act:

  1.  Employees must be free to discuss their salaries.

About 60 percent of workers in the private sector are either contractually forbidden or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with colleagues. Additionally, employees are dissuaded from obtaining information that would prove pay discrimination.

These kinds of punitive pay secrecy policies enable wage discrimination not only to persist, but to become institutionalized. Although there are currently a few measures that bar some employers from punishing employees who discuss their salaries with colleagues, the Paycheck Fairness Act would broadly prohibit retaliation for wage disclosures and for seeking legal recourse. No one should fear being fired simply because they made a complaint, started an investigation, asked questions about their employer’s wage practices, or disclosed their own salary. 

  1. Reliance on prior salary perpetuates the gender wage gap.

Numerous studies have shown that the gender wage gap begins early in a woman’s career or work life, widens over time, follows her from job to job, and robs her of hundreds of thousands of dollars over decades. Employers who inquire about and rely on prior salary when setting the salary of new hires (or promotions) contribute to this problem and perpetuate the gender wage gap. By relying on a woman’s previous salary — which was likely lower because of historical bias and discrimination — the employer entrenches the pay discrepancy and continues to underpay her.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would end this practice by prohibiting employers from using salary history as a way to set salaries for job candidates. It would also ban them from requesting salary history from applicants or previous employers (though it would allow job applicants to provide their salary as part of the negotiation process after a job offer has been made).

  1. Data collection is essential to eliminating pay disparities.

Because pay is often cloaked in secrecy, pay discrimination remains very difficult to detect. Consequently, government enforcement and employer self-evaluation are critical to combat compensation discrimination.

To that end, the Paycheck Fairness Act requires the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect compensation data from employers — by sex, race, and national origin — in order to better identify discriminatory practices or patterns. It also authorizes the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct research, implement a survey of federal contractors’ compensation data, and use investigatory tools that can help root out wage discrimination.

  1. Employers need support — and stronger penalties.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide businesses with support and encouragement as they strive to eliminate wage discrimination. The bill requires the Department of Labor to provide information to employers and to recognize and promote the achievements of employers, including bestowing a National Award for Pay Equity in the Workplace on an employer that has made substantial efforts to eliminate pay disparities between men and women.

Equally important, the act would strengthen the penalties that could be imposed against an employer when pay discrimination is proven. Currently, an employee who proves an Equal Pay Act violation can only recover back pay and an equal amount in liquidated damages.  These limited remedies do not sufficiently deter discriminatory pay practices. Under the Paycheck Fairness Act, employees would be able to recover compensatory damages (money to compensate for injury or loss) and punitive damages (money to punish and deter) — the same kinds of remedies available for other civil rights violations.

  1. The pay gap takes a huge toll on women throughout their lives.

In 2017, the median annual earnings for women working full time all year was $41,977 while the median income for men under the same circumstances was $52,146. While the average pay gap for white women is 80 cents on the dollar, it is 62 cents for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women, 60.3 cents for African-American women, and 53 cents for Latina women. A college educated woman will lose almost $800,000 in income by the time she turns 59, and the wage gap will cost women and their families nearly $900 billion a year.

Millions of women are the primary breadwinners in their households and these wage losses affect their families’ health, welfare, and economic security. By understanding and acknowledging these cold hard numbers, the Paycheck Fairness Act sets forth a path toward eliminating wage discrimination and achieving pay equity.

For all these reasons, and many more, after the House passes the Paycheck Fairness Act this week, we must push for the Senate to do the same. The time for change and equal pay has come.



Published March 26, 2019 at 09:00PM
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Monday, 25 March 2019

ACLU: Pennsylvania Is Jailing Mentally Ill People Who Belong in Treatment

Pennsylvania Is Jailing Mentally Ill People Who Belong in Treatment
The people in jail have disabilities so severe they cannot be prosecuted under the Constitution.

For the third time in less than four years, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and co-counsel from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer asked a federal judge this week to order Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services to reduce the time that people with severe psychiatric disabilities spend waiting in jail for treatment beds. These people’s mental disabilities are so significant that under the Constitution they can be neither prosecuted nor punished, which means they cannot be kept in a prison or jail. 

How disabled are our clients?

Most are floridly psychotic. This means that they see people who are not in the room, hear people who are not talking, and feel things — like armies of spiders crawling on them — that are not there. Jail conditions only exacerbate these symptoms and make them deteriorate further. They spread feces on themselves and eat it. Some become violent. 

These people are also very alone. Many of our clients’ families have abandoned them — not because they are bad people necessarily, but because the societal and medical supports to help both their loved one and themselves are not there. And the clients’ illness prevents them from advocating for themselves. These people are helpless, often without anyone even trying to help them. 

Our clients also share in common criminal charges for a range of transgressions, from stealing peppermint candies from a convenience store — I kid you not; check out our lead plaintiff's story — to murder. But because they are too sick to understand the charges or assist in defending against them, the Constitution prohibits them from being prosecuted or imprisoned. 

If the criminal court determines that mental health treatment will likely make them competent within a reasonable time period, however, the court can order them into “competency restoration treatment.” This treatment need not involve expensive hospital beds; for some people, the treatment can be provided in the community. 

In October 2015, we sued DHS over what appeared to be the longest wait times for incompetent criminal defendants in the country. Two federal courts had ruled that the Constitution requires states to transfer incompetent patients ordered to treatment within seven days. In Pennsylvania, one of the two DHS hospitals accepting such patients was so full that people were waiting in county jails for over a year, and in some cases more than two years.

These lengthy waits in jail are not only plainly unconstitutional: They are inhumane. People with severe psychiatric disabilities, who legally cannot be punished, are held in cages — that’s what a prison cell is, folks — usually with little or no mental health services. Studies reveal that individuals with major mental illnesses, as a group, face a substantial likelihood of getting seriously injured in prison. Confining severely mentally ill patients in close quarters with, and without adequate protection from, large numbers of antisocial persons with excess time and few productive activities results in bullying and predation.

Moreover, their mental illness causes them to act in ways prisons don’t condone, often leading to their placement in solitary confinement. Not only does the patient remain untreated, but the isolation causes the patient to decompensate much faster, exacerbating the mental health condition. These experiences — the trauma of physical and sexual victimization and conditions of solitary confinement, either alone or in combination — often aggravate inmates’ psychiatric symptoms and even create new mental disorders. 

Our first injunction in the case resulted in a January 2016 settlement requiring DHS to study the problem to identify a solution as well as to add treatment beds. We suggested that many of the patients could be treated in community settings, which would be better for them and much cheaper for DHS. When those changes did not reduce wait times, we filed for a second injunction in summer 2017. The second settlement eventually reduced wait times to about 4-5 months, but that was still far too long, legally and medically.

Our third injunction request this week is straightforward: We ask the court to order DHS to meet the seven-day transfer period for all patients by Sept. 1. The agency will need to figure out how to do so. Our clients cannot continue to pay the heavy price of DHS’s failure to fix this problem.

If a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, Pennsylvania is not doing very well. 



Published March 25, 2019 at 05:30PM
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ACLU: Pennsylvania Is Jailing Mentally Ill People Who Belong in Treatment

Pennsylvania Is Jailing Mentally Ill People Who Belong in Treatment
The people in jail have disabilities so severe they cannot be prosecuted under the Constitution.

For the third time in less than four years, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and co-counsel from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer asked a federal judge this week to order Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services to reduce the time that people with severe psychiatric disabilities spend waiting in jail for treatment beds. These people’s mental disabilities are so significant that under the Constitution they can be neither prosecuted nor punished, which means they cannot be kept in a prison or jail. 

How disabled are our clients?

Most are floridly psychotic. This means that they see people who are not in the room, hear people who are not talking, and feel things — like armies of spiders crawling on them — that are not there. Jail conditions only exacerbate these symptoms and make them deteriorate further. They spread feces on themselves and eat it. Some become violent. 

These people are also very alone. Many of our clients’ families have abandoned them — not because they are bad people necessarily, but because the societal and medical supports to help both their loved one and themselves are not there. And the clients’ illness prevents them from advocating for themselves. These people are helpless, often without anyone even trying to help them. 

Our clients also share in common criminal charges for a range of transgressions, from stealing peppermint candies from a convenience store — I kid you not; check out our lead plaintiff's story — to murder. But because they are too sick to understand the charges or assist in defending against them, the Constitution prohibits them from being prosecuted or imprisoned. 

If the criminal court determines that mental health treatment will likely make them competent within a reasonable time period, however, the court can order them into “competency restoration treatment.” This treatment need not involve expensive hospital beds; for some people, the treatment can be provided in the community. 

In October 2015, we sued DHS over what appeared to be the longest wait times for incompetent criminal defendants in the country. Two federal courts had ruled that the Constitution requires states to transfer incompetent patients ordered to treatment within seven days. In Pennsylvania, one of the two DHS hospitals accepting such patients was so full that people were waiting in county jails for over a year, and in some cases more than two years.

These lengthy waits in jail are not only plainly unconstitutional: They are inhumane. People with severe psychiatric disabilities, who legally cannot be punished, are held in cages — that’s what a prison cell is, folks — usually with little or no mental health services. Studies reveal that individuals with major mental illnesses, as a group, face a substantial likelihood of getting seriously injured in prison. Confining severely mentally ill patients in close quarters with, and without adequate protection from, large numbers of antisocial persons with excess time and few productive activities results in bullying and predation.

Moreover, their mental illness causes them to act in ways prisons don’t condone, often leading to their placement in solitary confinement. Not only does the patient remain untreated, but the isolation causes the patient to decompensate much faster, exacerbating the mental health condition. These experiences — the trauma of physical and sexual victimization and conditions of solitary confinement, either alone or in combination — often aggravate inmates’ psychiatric symptoms and even create new mental disorders. 

Our first injunction in the case resulted in a January 2016 settlement requiring DHS to study the problem to identify a solution as well as to add treatment beds. We suggested that many of the patients could be treated in community settings, which would be better for them and much cheaper for DHS. When those changes did not reduce wait times, we filed for a second injunction in summer 2017. The second settlement eventually reduced wait times to about 4-5 months, but that was still far too long, legally and medically.

Our third injunction request this week is straightforward: We ask the court to order DHS to meet the seven-day transfer period for all patients by Sept. 1. The agency will need to figure out how to do so. Our clients cannot continue to pay the heavy price of DHS’s failure to fix this problem.

If a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, Pennsylvania is not doing very well. 



Published March 25, 2019 at 11:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2UeWhTg