ACLU: Democracy Persists

Democracy Persists

Today we turn a page from one of the darkest moments in civil liberties and civil rights. Over the last four years, we weathered an all-out attack on immigrants; withstood racist dog whistles as loud as bull-horns; and witnessed presidential back-slapping of white supremacists. For his anti-civil rights and civil liberties agenda, Donald Trump was democratically and ceremoniously removed from the Oval Office by his employer: the American people. 

Our nation’s electoral systems have withstood record turnout, an avalanche of mail-in ballots in a pandemic, and the attacks of a president who would rather tear down democratic norms and institutions than admit he is a loser in a national election. It may have been slow — at times excruciating — but our democracy worked as it should have: Every vote will be counted. And the people will choose their leader — rather than leaders choosing the voters.

Throughout our history as a nation, some presidents have tested this country’s dedication to democratic values more than others. Against Trump’s administration, we’ve filed over 400 legal actions and brought thousands of people to airports, courthouses, and mass mobilizations. Together, we won victories to stop LGBTQ employment discrimination, protected and expanded voting rights, blocked state-level abortion bans, and battled Trump’s Muslim ban in court three times.

With his policies and rhetoric, this president tried to make us a nation of us versus them. He pitted citizens against immigrants. He encouraged white supremacists while Black people are being murdered by police. And he waged war against our free press. Yet in spite of that, our staff and supporters poured their hearts and souls into fighting to ensure that the promise of America withstands Trump’s assaults on our values — as we have repeatedly done throughout our history. 

After 100 years, we know that the ACLU will fight to advance freedoms where we can and defend them where we must regardless of whomever resides in the White House. As we did with President Trump, we are determined to hold President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris accountable to the promise of our Constitution. And thanks to our supporters and members, we now have the strongest ACLU our nation has ever known. 

And while Trump’s relentless attacks on our civil liberties will soon be over, there is work to do to create a more perfect union. And we at ACLU are here to do it. Right now, we are looking for the families of 545 children who were separated at the border. We are representing LGBTQ rights and defending the census at the Supreme Court. There are more battles just around the corner to preserve the rights many have fought and won. 

We will forge a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented and stateless people living in the United States — without caveats or compromise. 

We will join the chorus calling for this nation’s long overdue racial reckoning. 

“We the people” won’t rest until we live in an America where equality and justice are a lived reality for all of us.

Now is not the moment to sit back. We are still fighting and we are more resolute than ever to ensure that in our United States of America, the Constitution’s promise to “we the people” means all of us. We will continue that fight, no matter who occupies the White House, and we will prevail.

Published November 7, 2020 at 10:02PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2IfoDbE

ACLU: Democracy Persists

Democracy Persists

Today we turn a page from one of the darkest moments in civil liberties and civil rights. Over the last four years, we weathered an all-out attack on immigrants; withstood racist dog whistles as loud as bull-horns; and witnessed presidential back-slapping of white supremacists. For his anti-civil rights and civil liberties agenda, Donald Trump was democratically and ceremoniously removed from the Oval Office by his employer: the American people. 

Our nation’s electoral systems have withstood record turnout, an avalanche of mail-in ballots in a pandemic, and the attacks of a president who would rather tear down democratic norms and institutions than admit he is a loser in a national election. It may have been slow — at times excruciating — but our democracy worked as it should have: Every vote will be counted. And the people will choose their leader — rather than leaders choosing the voters.

Throughout our history as a nation, some presidents have tested this country’s dedication to democratic values more than others. Against Trump’s administration, we’ve filed over 400 legal actions and brought thousands of people to airports, courthouses, and mass mobilizations. Together, we won victories to stop LGBTQ employment discrimination, protected and expanded voting rights, blocked state-level abortion bans, and battled Trump’s Muslim ban in court three times.

With his policies and rhetoric, this president tried to make us a nation of us versus them. He pitted citizens against immigrants. He encouraged white supremacists while Black people are being murdered by police. And he waged war against our free press. Yet in spite of that, our staff and supporters poured their hearts and souls into fighting to ensure that the promise of America withstands Trump’s assaults on our values — as we have repeatedly done throughout our history. 

After 100 years, we know that the ACLU will fight to advance freedoms where we can and defend them where we must regardless of whomever resides in the White House. As we did with President Trump, we are determined to hold President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris accountable to the promise of our Constitution. And thanks to our supporters and members, we now have the strongest ACLU our nation has ever known. 

And while Trump’s relentless attacks on our civil liberties will soon be over, there is work to do to create a more perfect union. And we at ACLU are here to do it. Right now, we are looking for the families of 545 children who were separated at the border. We are representing LGBTQ rights and defending the census at the Supreme Court. There are more battles just around the corner to preserve the rights many have fought and won. 

We will forge a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented and stateless people living in the United States — without caveats or compromise. 

We will join the chorus calling for this nation’s long overdue racial reckoning. 

“We the people” won’t rest until we live in an America where equality and justice are a lived reality for all of us.

Now is not the moment to sit back. We are still fighting and we are more resolute than ever to ensure that in our United States of America, the Constitution’s promise to “we the people” means all of us. We will continue that fight, no matter who occupies the White House, and we will prevail.

Published November 7, 2020 at 04:32PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2IfoDbE

ACLU: Racial Justice Demands That Every Vote Is Counted

Racial Justice Demands That Every Vote Is Counted

As President Trump’s path to reelection narrows, his campaign has pursued legal challenges in battleground states. These challenges involve attempts to stop or challenge the vote counting process. Because of the record number of mail-in ballots cast during the pandemic, the votes affected by these last-ditch inquests are disproportionately those of mail-in ballots.

91.6 million Americans requested a mail-in ballot this year. Any attempt to discount them would not only cast a blow to our democracy, it would disenfranchise communities of color, as our analytics team recently discovered through polling research and analysis. Joining us on At Liberty to discuss are Lucia Tian, the ACLU’s Chief Analytics Officer, and Andrea Young, the ACLU of Georgia’s Executive Director.

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/924167770

Published November 6, 2020 at 08:53PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2U0Rfbl

ACLU: Racial Justice Demands That Every Vote Is Counted

Racial Justice Demands That Every Vote Is Counted

As President Trump’s path to reelection narrows, his campaign has pursued legal challenges in battleground states. These challenges involve attempts to stop or challenge the vote counting process. Because of the record number of mail-in ballots cast during the pandemic, the votes affected by these last-ditch inquests are disproportionately those of mail-in ballots.

91.6 million Americans requested a mail-in ballot this year. Any attempt to discount them would not only cast a blow to our democracy, it would disenfranchise communities of color, as our analytics team recently discovered through polling research and analysis. Joining us on At Liberty to discuss are Lucia Tian, the ACLU’s Chief Analytics Officer, and Andrea Young, the ACLU of Georgia’s Executive Director.

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/924167770

Published November 7, 2020 at 02:23AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2U0Rfbl

ACLU: Criminal Justice Reform Takes Another Big, Messy Step Forward in 2020 Elections

Criminal Justice Reform Takes Another Big, Messy Step Forward in 2020 Elections

Criminal justice reform was a key issue in Tuesday night’s elections, from the presidential race all the way down to municipal ballot initiatives.
 
One exciting indication of just how far the movement to end mass incarceration has come? On Election Day it used to be possible to round up all reform-related electoral results in a few bullet points, but this week, there were so many criminal justice victories that it is impossible to summarize them all in a few paragraphs.
 
Below are some of the highlights we were tracked most closely on election night. These results show a vibrant movement growing in strength and pushing into unchartered and difficult territory.

• A new playing field for presidential politics: The presidential race showed just how much the goalposts have shifted on criminal justice reform at the federal level. The presidential primaries this year saw the farthest-reaching commitments to criminal justice reform in the nation’s history. Many candidates, including Biden, took an unprecedented step by pledging to the ACLU to cut incarceration by 50 percent. Even under the hood, policy pledges went beyond superficial fixes and included addressing prosecutorial power, sentencing policy, and overhauling pretrial justice. Once the race narrowed to Trump and Biden, it cannot be denied that two presidential candidates sparring over their pro-reform bona fidesmarks another remarkable step forward from where we were even one cycle ago.
  
  
• A tipping point for the war on drugs: Marijuana legalization victories over the last few cycles, essential as they are, have often obscured the cold hard truth that the war on drugs rages on. But this week’s results do suggest something new and different. For the first time in history, a U.S. state — Oregon — has decriminalized all simple drug possession, a victory that will open up a new frontier for similar efforts across the country and at the federal level. At the same time, some of the marijuana legalization victories on Tuesday were more than just continued momentum. After near universal failures in the U.S. to implement legalization policies that center racial equity and repair harm to communities of color ravaged by the war on drugs, Arizona and Montana took a step forward by including expungement (tossing out old marijuana convictions) in their initiatives. And if you’re not batting an eye at marijuana legalization in places like Mississippi and South Dakota — a state that went 65 percent for Trump — it is worth pausing to reflect that it is only because we’ve become accustomed to progress that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.
  
  
• Confronting hidden support for incarceration: Mass incarceration has always been a bipartisan affair, and there’s no path to ending it that does not also tackle deep-seated moderate and liberal support for policing, punishment, and retribution. Nowhere was that reality more present on election night than in Oklahoma, where a left-right coalition including the ACLU suffered a stinging defeat on a bold sentencing reform ballot initiative. Among the reasons for the loss was the no-holds-barred opposition of the largely moderate domestic violence advocacy community in Oklahoma. That community vehemently opposed any reduction in lengthy prison sentences for a few offenses related to domestic violence, despite overwhelming evidence that these extremely long prison sentences do not reduce violence. As painful as the loss was, the ballot initiative launched an unprecedented wave of support from crime survivors who bravely stepped forward to explain why their lived experiences have led them to believe we cannot incarcerate our way out of violence. While it was heartbreaking to see Oklahoma’s liberals work to sink direly needed reform, the initiative made progress in pulling back the curtain on a schism that will have to be addressed head on before ending mass incarceration is possible.
  
  
• Wins for reform prosecutors in unexpected places: Election night saw huge wins for pro-reform, pro-decarceration prosecutors in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Orlando. Just as notable, if not more so, were the contests in less visible places such as Oakland County, Michigan, where Jessica McDonald sailed to victory in Michigan’s second most populous county. Some of the country’s highest imprisonment rates and the worst racial disparities can be found in sprawling suburbs that are often overshadowed by the big cities that have been the primary targets of the prosecutorial reform movement. Seeing real change move into the suburbs is an encouraging and essential step. Encouraging indications of support for reform-orientated candidates in traditional tough-on-crime strongholds were also seen in Phoenix and New Orleans, formerly home to two of the most punitive and infamous elected prosecutors in the country. In Phoenix, DA candidate Julie Gunningle is in an extremely tight race while running on an unprecedented commitment to cut incarceration by 25 percent. In New Orleans, longtime reform supporter Jason Williams advanced to a run-off where he might have a chance to undo former DA Leon Cannizzarro’s profoundly punitive and unethical practices.

Other noteworthy criminal justice successes were found on the West Coast: San Francisco voters cleared the way for meaningful reinvestment from policing, Washington sent a formerly incarcerated person to the legislature, Los Angeles voters approved alternatives to jail construction, and California soundly defeated an anti-reform rollback.
 
While Americans across the country remain divided on exactly what Election Day means for the future of our country, it’s clear that it was a good night for criminal justice reform and a harbinger of the deeper and tougher fights to come.

Published November 6, 2020 at 10:45PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3k5sDZR

ACLU: Criminal Justice Reform Takes Another Big, Messy Step Forward in 2020 Elections

Criminal Justice Reform Takes Another Big, Messy Step Forward in 2020 Elections

Criminal justice reform was a key issue in Tuesday night’s elections, from the presidential race all the way down to municipal ballot initiatives.
 
One exciting indication of just how far the movement to end mass incarceration has come? On Election Day it used to be possible to round up all reform-related electoral results in a few bullet points, but this week, there were so many criminal justice victories that it is impossible to summarize them all in a few paragraphs.
 
Below are some of the highlights we were tracked most closely on election night. These results show a vibrant movement growing in strength and pushing into unchartered and difficult territory.

• A new playing field for presidential politics: The presidential race showed just how much the goalposts have shifted on criminal justice reform at the federal level. The presidential primaries this year saw the farthest-reaching commitments to criminal justice reform in the nation’s history. Many candidates, including Biden, took an unprecedented step by pledging to the ACLU to cut incarceration by 50 percent. Even under the hood, policy pledges went beyond superficial fixes and included addressing prosecutorial power, sentencing policy, and overhauling pretrial justice. Once the race narrowed to Trump and Biden, it cannot be denied that two presidential candidates sparring over their pro-reform bona fidesmarks another remarkable step forward from where we were even one cycle ago.
  
  
• A tipping point for the war on drugs: Marijuana legalization victories over the last few cycles, essential as they are, have often obscured the cold hard truth that the war on drugs rages on. But this week’s results do suggest something new and different. For the first time in history, a U.S. state — Oregon — has decriminalized all simple drug possession, a victory that will open up a new frontier for similar efforts across the country and at the federal level. At the same time, some of the marijuana legalization victories on Tuesday were more than just continued momentum. After near universal failures in the U.S. to implement legalization policies that center racial equity and repair harm to communities of color ravaged by the war on drugs, Arizona and Montana took a step forward by including expungement (tossing out old marijuana convictions) in their initiatives. And if you’re not batting an eye at marijuana legalization in places like Mississippi and South Dakota — a state that went 65 percent for Trump — it is worth pausing to reflect that it is only because we’ve become accustomed to progress that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.
  
  
• Confronting hidden support for incarceration: Mass incarceration has always been a bipartisan affair, and there’s no path to ending it that does not also tackle deep-seated moderate and liberal support for policing, punishment, and retribution. Nowhere was that reality more present on election night than in Oklahoma, where a left-right coalition including the ACLU suffered a stinging defeat on a bold sentencing reform ballot initiative. Among the reasons for the loss was the no-holds-barred opposition of the largely moderate domestic violence advocacy community in Oklahoma. That community vehemently opposed any reduction in lengthy prison sentences for a few offenses related to domestic violence, despite overwhelming evidence that these extremely long prison sentences do not reduce violence. As painful as the loss was, the ballot initiative launched an unprecedented wave of support from crime survivors who bravely stepped forward to explain why their lived experiences have led them to believe we cannot incarcerate our way out of violence. While it was heartbreaking to see Oklahoma’s liberals work to sink direly needed reform, the initiative made progress in pulling back the curtain on a schism that will have to be addressed head on before ending mass incarceration is possible.
  
  
• Wins for reform prosecutors in unexpected places: Election night saw huge wins for pro-reform, pro-decarceration prosecutors in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Orlando. Just as notable, if not more so, were the contests in less visible places such as Oakland County, Michigan, where Jessica McDonald sailed to victory in Michigan’s second most populous county. Some of the country’s highest imprisonment rates and the worst racial disparities can be found in sprawling suburbs that are often overshadowed by the big cities that have been the primary targets of the prosecutorial reform movement. Seeing real change move into the suburbs is an encouraging and essential step. Encouraging indications of support for reform-orientated candidates in traditional tough-on-crime strongholds were also seen in Phoenix and New Orleans, formerly home to two of the most punitive and infamous elected prosecutors in the country. In Phoenix, DA candidate Julie Gunningle is in an extremely tight race while running on an unprecedented commitment to cut incarceration by 25 percent. In New Orleans, longtime reform supporter Jason Williams advanced to a run-off where he might have a chance to undo former DA Leon Cannizzarro’s profoundly punitive and unethical practices.

Other noteworthy criminal justice successes were found on the West Coast: San Francisco voters cleared the way for meaningful reinvestment from policing, Washington sent a formerly incarcerated person to the legislature, Los Angeles voters approved alternatives to jail construction, and California soundly defeated an anti-reform rollback.
 
While Americans across the country remain divided on exactly what Election Day means for the future of our country, it’s clear that it was a good night for criminal justice reform and a harbinger of the deeper and tougher fights to come.

Published November 6, 2020 at 05:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3k5sDZR

Mexico : 2020 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; and Staff Report

Mexico : 2020 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; and Staff Report
Published November 04, 2020 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org