ACLU: How I Finally Met John Lewis

How I Finally Met John Lewis

The first time I didn’t meet John Lewis was at a 2010 gala dinner celebrating the 90th anniversary of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

As President of the ACLU, I had been invited to present a civil liberties award to Lewis, who had agreed to accept the award and give the keynote address. On the train to Boston for the dinner, I received an email from the affiliate’s executive director, Carol Rose, telling me that Lewis would not be able to attend the dinner after all and asking if I would deliver the keynote speech instead.

It was easy enough for me to choose a subject: John Lewis, whose reason for not attending the dinner was that he needed to stay at his post in the House of Representatives to vote for the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law. Lewis recorded a video apologizing for his absence. The audience not only forgave him, but honored his decision to act rather than speak as a reflection of his abiding commitment to the fight for equality. Like the ACLU, Lewis connected the dots between racial equality and LGBTQ equality: No one should suffer discrimination on the basis of who they are. Just as he had in the 1960s, he devoted himself daily to doing everything he could to make that aspiration a reality.

The second time I didn’t meet John Lewis was in the Capitol Building, in February 2013. After attending a meeting on behalf of the ACLU, I observed the crowd gathered for the installation of a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. I learned later from colleagues that Lewis was not present for that occasion as, again, he had more urgent business. He was across the street at the Supreme Court, watching the oral argument in the case of Shelby County v. Holder.

Rather than celebrating a symbol of how far the country had come in the fight against racism, he chose to witness the latest chapter in Alabama’s campaign for retrogression. Alabama was attacking a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the essential civil rights law he and his colleagues had forged through their persistence and courage — even through their brutal treatment on the now-infamous bridge in Selma, Alabama. As Lewis must have feared, the court chose states’ rights over voting rights and eviscerated that hard-won landmark law. Lewis’s response was to stay at his post in the House and keep fighting.

I finally met Lewis quite by accident in a parking lot at the Atlanta airport. I was heading for a flight home after chairing a national ACLU board meeting when a colleague noticed Lewis exiting the building we were about to enter, heading for a car at the curb. Lewis was more than gracious in delaying the final leg of his trip home in order to chat with our group of civil libertarians from around the country, and kindly posed for numerous photos and selfies. On learning about our ACLU connection, he expressed his admiration of our work for civil liberties as we expressed our awe of his own.

Lewis never strayed far from the nexus of the fight against injustice — whether in the streets, the courts, or Congress. His absence in one room, I found, guaranteed his presence in another, where a more consequential fight for equality was usually taking place.

John Lewis was and will continue to be a force in all of our lives, reminding us that the arc of justice does not bend easily — and doesn’t always stay bent. As ACLU founder Roger Baldwin memorably said, no civil liberties battle ever remains won. We honor John Lewis best not by our words, but by recognizing that awards, obituaries, and commemoration ceremonies can fuel but must not distract from our ongoing actions to preserve and promote equality for all.

Published July 29, 2020 at 12:45AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3hIp2A0

ACLU: How I Finally Met John Lewis

How I Finally Met John Lewis

The first time I didn’t meet John Lewis was at a 2010 gala dinner celebrating the 90th anniversary of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

As President of the ACLU, I had been invited to present a civil liberties award to Lewis, who had agreed to accept the award and give the keynote address. On the train to Boston for the dinner, I received an email from the affiliate’s executive director, Carol Rose, telling me that Lewis would not be able to attend the dinner after all and asking if I would deliver the keynote speech instead.

It was easy enough for me to choose a subject: John Lewis, whose reason for not attending the dinner was that he needed to stay at his post in the House of Representatives to vote for the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law. Lewis recorded a video apologizing for his absence. The audience not only forgave him, but honored his decision to act rather than speak as a reflection of his abiding commitment to the fight for equality. Like the ACLU, Lewis connected the dots between racial equality and LGBTQ equality: No one should suffer discrimination on the basis of who they are. Just as he had in the 1960s, he devoted himself daily to doing everything he could to make that aspiration a reality.

The second time I didn’t meet John Lewis was in the Capitol Building, in February 2013. After attending a meeting on behalf of the ACLU, I observed the crowd gathered for the installation of a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. I learned later from colleagues that Lewis was not present for that occasion as, again, he had more urgent business. He was across the street at the Supreme Court, watching the oral argument in the case of Shelby County v. Holder.

Rather than celebrating a symbol of how far the country had come in the fight against racism, he chose to witness the latest chapter in Alabama’s campaign for retrogression. Alabama was attacking a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the essential civil rights law he and his colleagues had forged through their persistence and courage — even through their brutal treatment on the now-infamous bridge in Selma, Alabama. As Lewis must have feared, the court chose states’ rights over voting rights and eviscerated that hard-won landmark law. Lewis’s response was to stay at his post in the House and keep fighting.

I finally met Lewis quite by accident in a parking lot at the Atlanta airport. I was heading for a flight home after chairing a national ACLU board meeting when a colleague noticed Lewis exiting the building we were about to enter, heading for a car at the curb. Lewis was more than gracious in delaying the final leg of his trip home in order to chat with our group of civil libertarians from around the country, and kindly posed for numerous photos and selfies. On learning about our ACLU connection, he expressed his admiration of our work for civil liberties as we expressed our awe of his own.

Lewis never strayed far from the nexus of the fight against injustice — whether in the streets, the courts, or Congress. His absence in one room, I found, guaranteed his presence in another, where a more consequential fight for equality was usually taking place.

John Lewis was and will continue to be a force in all of our lives, reminding us that the arc of justice does not bend easily — and doesn’t always stay bent. As ACLU founder Roger Baldwin memorably said, no civil liberties battle ever remains won. We honor John Lewis best not by our words, but by recognizing that awards, obituaries, and commemoration ceremonies can fuel but must not distract from our ongoing actions to preserve and promote equality for all.

Published July 28, 2020 at 08:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3hIp2A0

South Africa : Request for Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for South Africa

South Africa : Request for Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for South Africa
Published July 28, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Burundi : Request for Debt Relief Under the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Burundi

Burundi : Request for Debt Relief Under the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Burundi
Published July 27, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: D.C. Statehood is a Racial Justice Issue

D.C. Statehood is a Racial Justice Issue

As the movement for D.C. statehood gains undeniable momentum, anxious cries from its detractors are reaching a fever pitch. Following the House of Representatives’ recent approval of the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, H.R. 51, which would finally grant statehood and full voting representation in Congress to over 700,000 people living in our nation’s capital, critics emerged in the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and elsewhere to wring their hands over the alleged “partisan advantage” that statehood would bring. Further, they argued, D.C. statehood can only spring from a constitutional amendment.

This focus on the potential partisan leaning of the new state’s federal delegation misses the point: D.C. statehood would correct an overt act of racial voter suppression with roots in the Reconstruction era. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson vetoed a bill granting adult citizens of the District — including Black men — the right to vote. Congress overrode the veto, granting significant political influence to Black Washingtonians. But just as Black voters started to exercise their power, Congress replaced D.C.’s territorial government with three presidentially appointed commissioners.

The goal of that move was obvious: disenfranchising an increasingly politically active Black community. As Sen. John Tyler Morgan of Alabama explained in 1890, after “the negroes came into this district,” it became necessary to “deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being.” As he put it more simply, and shamefully: It was necessary to “burn down the barn to get rid of the rats.” 

In one cautionary opinion piece, attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey raise some policy concerns against the House bill. But their stated arguments are not constitutional barriers. Relying on Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 memo opposing D.C. statehood, the authors conclude that “abolishing the permanent seat of the federal government would be a profound change — the sort that can be accomplished only with a national consensus implemented through a constitutional amendment.” But H.R. 51 does not abolish the national capital — it only shrinks it, making a new state out of most of the resized District’s surrounding areas.

Congress can do this, because the Framers knew how to say what they meant. They gave Congress authority to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over the District, stating only that it could not be larger than ten square miles. That sweeping authority includes the power to shrink the District to less than its current size. As Viet Dinh, Assistant Attorney General under President Bush, explained to Congress in 2014, Kennedy’s policy concern “is just that: a policy concern,” and would not override a constitutional act of Congress.

There’s no better proof that the Framers meant to give Congress the power to shrink the District’s boundaries than the fact that it immediately did so after the District was first established. Congress gave back most of Arlington and Alexandria to Virginia in 1846. But the first Congress also changed the District’s configuration in 1791, less than four years after the Constitutional Convention. This bolsters the constitutionality of the House bill, because, as the Supreme Court said in Marsh v. Chambers (1983), acts of the first Congress offer “contemporaneous and weighty evidence” of the Framers’ intent. And when the court addressed the 1846 retrocession in Phillips v. Payne (1875), it strongly hinted that Congress had vast authority over the District’s boundaries, saying the case involved “action of the political departments” that “bound” the courts.

Nor does the House bill violate the Twenty-Third Amendment, which gives the District of Columbia three votes in the Electoral College. That amendment would lead to a curious result: It would give the few residents of the smaller, reshaped national capital outsized influence in presidential elections. But there’s no constitutional conflict between the House bill and the Twenty-Third Amendment. As Viet Dinh explained, “the Constitution is not violated anytime the factual assumptions underlying a provision change.” Indeed, the Amendment gives the current District three — and only three — Electoral College votes even if its population somehow quadrupled tomorrow, and the bill provides an expedited process for removing those three electors. And importantly, as noted by Rivkin and Casey, the House-passed bill establishes expedited procedures for the House and Senate to repeal the Twenty-Third Amendment.

Critics continue to ignore the essential argument in favor of statehood: ending the continued disenfranchisement of a non-minority Black jurisdiction that has left hundreds of thousands of Americans without representation in Congress. They also overlook the fact that in 2016, almost 80 percent of D.C. voters supported statehood in a referendum.

Admitting a new state will always have political implications. That’s why the Framers fully left the matter to Congress’s discretion. Rivkin and Casey are right that D.C. statehood would be a “profound change,” —  a profound, constitutionally viable change — that would bring our country one step forward to an inclusive democracy.

Published July 27, 2020 at 10:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2OWRIJ8

ACLU: D.C. Statehood is a Racial Justice Issue

D.C. Statehood is a Racial Justice Issue

As the movement for D.C. statehood gains undeniable momentum, anxious cries from its detractors are reaching a fever pitch. Following the House of Representatives’ recent approval of the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, H.R. 51, which would finally grant statehood and full voting representation in Congress to over 700,000 people living in our nation’s capital, critics emerged in the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and elsewhere to wring their hands over the alleged “partisan advantage” that statehood would bring. Further, they argued, D.C. statehood can only spring from a constitutional amendment.

This focus on the potential partisan leaning of the new state’s federal delegation misses the point: D.C. statehood would correct an overt act of racial voter suppression with roots in the Reconstruction era. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson vetoed a bill granting adult citizens of the District — including Black men — the right to vote. Congress overrode the veto, granting significant political influence to Black Washingtonians. But just as Black voters started to exercise their power, Congress replaced D.C.’s territorial government with three presidentially appointed commissioners.

The goal of that move was obvious: disenfranchising an increasingly politically active Black community. As Sen. John Tyler Morgan of Alabama explained in 1890, after “the negroes came into this district,” it became necessary to “deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being.” As he put it more simply, and shamefully: It was necessary to “burn down the barn to get rid of the rats.” 

In one cautionary opinion piece, attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey raise some policy concerns against the House bill. But their stated arguments are not constitutional barriers. Relying on Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 memo opposing D.C. statehood, the authors conclude that “abolishing the permanent seat of the federal government would be a profound change — the sort that can be accomplished only with a national consensus implemented through a constitutional amendment.” But H.R. 51 does not abolish the national capital — it only shrinks it, making a new state out of most of the resized District’s surrounding areas.

Congress can do this, because the Framers knew how to say what they meant. They gave Congress authority to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over the District, stating only that it could not be larger than ten square miles. That sweeping authority includes the power to shrink the District to less than its current size. As Viet Dinh, Assistant Attorney General under President Bush, explained to Congress in 2014, Kennedy’s policy concern “is just that: a policy concern,” and would not override a constitutional act of Congress.

There’s no better proof that the Framers meant to give Congress the power to shrink the District’s boundaries than the fact that it immediately did so after the District was first established. Congress gave back most of Arlington and Alexandria to Virginia in 1846. But the first Congress also changed the District’s configuration in 1791, less than four years after the Constitutional Convention. This bolsters the constitutionality of the House bill, because, as the Supreme Court said in Marsh v. Chambers (1983), acts of the first Congress offer “contemporaneous and weighty evidence” of the Framers’ intent. And when the court addressed the 1846 retrocession in Phillips v. Payne (1875), it strongly hinted that Congress had vast authority over the District’s boundaries, saying the case involved “action of the political departments” that “bound” the courts.

Nor does the House bill violate the Twenty-Third Amendment, which gives the District of Columbia three votes in the Electoral College. That amendment would lead to a curious result: It would give the few residents of the smaller, reshaped national capital outsized influence in presidential elections. But there’s no constitutional conflict between the House bill and the Twenty-Third Amendment. As Viet Dinh explained, “the Constitution is not violated anytime the factual assumptions underlying a provision change.” Indeed, the Amendment gives the current District three — and only three — Electoral College votes even if its population somehow quadrupled tomorrow, and the bill provides an expedited process for removing those three electors. And importantly, as noted by Rivkin and Casey, the House-passed bill establishes expedited procedures for the House and Senate to repeal the Twenty-Third Amendment.

Critics continue to ignore the essential argument in favor of statehood: ending the continued disenfranchisement of a non-minority Black jurisdiction that has left hundreds of thousands of Americans without representation in Congress. They also overlook the fact that in 2016, almost 80 percent of D.C. voters supported statehood in a referendum.

Admitting a new state will always have political implications. That’s why the Framers fully left the matter to Congress’s discretion. Rivkin and Casey are right that D.C. statehood would be a “profound change,” —  a profound, constitutionally viable change — that would bring our country one step forward to an inclusive democracy.

Published July 27, 2020 at 06:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2OWRIJ8

ACLU: Incarcerated People are Still Dying of COVID-19, and We’re Still Fighting to Save Them

Incarcerated People are Still Dying of COVID-19, and We’re Still Fighting to Save Them

The recent spikes in COVID-19 cases across the country are a stark reminder that the pandemic is still very much with us. As John Oliver recently noted, nowhere is that more true than in jails and prisons. The top five clusters of cases in America, and eight of the top 10, are in corrections facilities. The reason is simple: Most law enforcement officials, judges, and lawmakers have been unwilling to use their capital to protect these apparently expendable human beings — even though doing so will protect all of us and help eradicate the virus faster. In other words, politics and fear have trumped public health and the Constitution, and now we’re all worse off.
 
In response to the pandemic, the ACLU has embarked on one of the largest legal and advocacy mobilizations in our history. Alongside our affiliates and partners, we have filed over 30 lawsuits and pressed advocacy in every state to release vulnerable detainees and force officials to implement social distancing, augment hygienic practices, and expand testing. By many accounts, we are winning. In response to these suits, officials have improved conditions inside and done so faster than they would have otherwise. This has unquestionably saved lives and slowed the spread of the virus.
 
For example, we sued Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution in Louisiana — where five men died in the two weeks before filing — and forced the Bureau of Prisons to accelerate its review of medically vulnerable prisoners for home confinement. When that effort failed and cases continued to spike, the warden was fired. Across the federal prison system, we have exposed Attorney General Bill Barr and his BOP’s sluggish, cruel response to the pandemic, extracting improved conditions, teeing up compassionate release petitions, and spurring a Congressional investigation.
 
We also sued the Dallas County Jail for failing to protect incarcerated people from a rapidly-spreading COVID-19 outbreak. Immediately after we filed, people living and working at the jail described a “scurry of activity,” once jail officials realized their actions would come under scrutiny. Masks were distributed for the first time, sanitation measures adopted, and soap and hand sanitizer provided. We elicited testimony revealing that county officials were refusing to release sick people even after they had paid their bail, and successfully pressed for their release upon uncovering this practice.  
 
In Memphis, Tennessee, we sued the Shelby County Jail a day after jail officials forced dozens of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 back into general housing, and pepper sprayed those who protested the move out of what they felt was a moral obligation not to infect others. While the case is ongoing, the jail has been ordered to undergo an independent inspection and produce a list of the many medically-vulnerable people it is incarcerating in the midst of this deadly pandemic.
 
Despite these victories, not all judges have risen to the occasion. For example, the federal prison at Butner, North Carolina houses some of the sickest and most COVID-vulnerable people in the federal system. By mid-June, 21 people were dead and more than 600 had tested positive. The judge called these numbers “tragic,” and yet held that they were somehow not proof that the prison had acted unconstitutionally — even though one of the leading Supreme Court cases in this arena requires wardens to prevent the spread of communicable disease. There are now 26 dead at Butner, including one staff member. In another case, a federal court of appeals even ruled that it was too harmful to the jail to require officials to provide soap and disinfecting supplies to incarcerated people, because the county may feel it is better to divert those supplies elsewhere. And in the Oakdale case mentioned above, a federal judge ultimately ruled against the prisoners in part because he was afraid of becoming a “superwarden” of the facility.
 
These and other judges have defied public health consensus and denied the limited remedy of temporary release. Some of those who even considered release down the road have been promptly reversed or stayed, including by the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
These disappointing decisions on the question of detainee release highlight two fundamental problems. First, lawmakers have deliberately stripped incarcerated people of the ability to have their day in court through procedural barriers such as the Prison Litigation Reform Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Both laws make it much more difficult for incarcerated people to seek release from unlawful imprisonment. Second, judges have placed unjustified faith in the machinery of incarceration and deferred to officials who, for far too long, have subjected our clients to inhumane conditions out of plain sight.
 
Together, these factors allow judges tasked with the difficult work of evaluating these cases to adopt a hands-off approach to enforcing the law, and to avoid facing the tragic reality of mass incarceration during a pandemic. The truth is that our clients are being subjected to unconscionable conditions and are unable to keep themselves safe. They and their loved ones are terrified, and the Constitution requires judges to protect them.
 
This reticence to do what is right — this state-sanctioned relegation of human bodies, especially Black bodies, to death and disease — is not specific to COVID-19 and cannot be assessed in a vacuum. Unfortunately, we have long had a legal system fueled by structural racism that devalues “violent convicts” (never mind that many are neither violent nor convicted). At every turn, our system is animated by the dehumanization and criminalization of people, particularly people of color. This gives cover to judges when they fail to grant meritorious COVID-19 emergency requests. This enables prosecutors to bring aggressive and unnecessary charges against people to coerce them into pleading guilty instead of exercising their right to trial.
 
Most recently, this racism and subverting of humanity led to a Minneapolis police officer to crush George Floyd’s windpipe and kill him. It allowed an Attorney General to kneecap the federal consent decrees that attempt to prevent such killings. It allowed white vigilantes to hunt down Ahmaud Arbury on a jog. This same racism and inhumanity allowed a future president to call for the death penalty for five innocent Black boys in Central Park. And it allowed our jails and prisons to fill up with 2.2 million people in the first place, making them so crowded and filthy that COVID-19 will always be a problem — unless judges, jailers, police, prosecutors, and politicians are forced to confront this systemic human devaluation head on. 
 
This fight to prevent people from dying of COVID-19 in jails and prisons is just one urgent component of the broader movement to end mass incarceration, over-policing, and state-sanctioned anti-Black violence. This work in and out of the courts — including in Congress, in statehouses nationwide, and at the ballot box — must continue until no human life is treated as expendable by our governments.

Published July 27, 2020 at 08:33PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2WVcf5l