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The Movement to Erase Black History and Culture Feb 03, 2022

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February marks Black History Month, a time to recognize the significant achievements and culture of Black Americans–from bell hooks to Beyonce–and also to honor an accurate history about them, a history that we know is rife with discrimination and abuse -- think: slavery, Jim Crow, and the structural racism we’re still infected with today. Sadly, more and more, this history is being challenged and even erased in our culture and, right now, in our schools, through tactics like curriculum restrictions and book bans. Truths we once considered hard but self-evident are now being erased before our eyes. Over 30 state legislatures across the country have introduced bills to limit the discussion of racial history in a wave prompted by the emergence of critical race theory as a subject of political fear-mongering. But that’s just the beginning:, over 300 books by predominantly Black authors discussing race, gender, and sexuality, were also banned in the last year alone. Yes, you heard me right. We’re banning books again. When your history is banned, how do you learn about your ancestors? How do we learn from what’s happened in the past and how it affects our present? When your culture is banned, how do you see yourself? How do you belong? How do you celebrate the stories, music, food, and family that made you? At the ACLU, we believe that the first amendment is so fundamental because it should stop this kind of erasure in its tracks. That’s why we’re meeting this surge of censorship with new litigation and fierce advocacy. Joining us today to share more is Emerson Sykes, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and longtime listeners will remember Emerson as one of At Liberty’s former hosts.

Why Is America so Keen on Separating Families? Jan 27, 2022

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This week we’re going to talk about families, and a uniquely American hypocrisy surrounding them. On the one hand, politicians are always talking about supporting strong, nuclear families, and in some ways, we do. We give tax breaks to people who get married and have children. Kids eat free at Denny’s on Tuesdays. Yet, also in America, government officials at the federal, state, and local levels are tearing families apart by the thousands under the cover of our laws. For example, in the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security forcibly separated more than 5,000 migrant parents from their children – some as young as 4 months old – under Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy. To this day, a thousand children and maybe more are yet to be reunited with their families. They remain stranded and alone. Candidate Joe Biden had called the policy “criminal. But in December the Justice Department walked away from settlement talks with lawyers representing those families. And immigration enforcement isn’t the only way we destroy families. The criminal justice system and the child welfare system do it too, in astonishing numbers, and usually to the most vulnerable among us. To discuss this double-standard–propping up some families while destroying others–the and the continued trauma and ongoing battle of separated families is Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who has steered the border separation litigation from the beginning. Joining him is Shanta Trivedi, assistant professor at the University of Baltimore Law School and faculty director of the Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children, and the Courts – a foremost expert on the law around family trauma.

Will This Be Roe’s Last Anniversary? Jan 20, 2022

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Content warning: This conversation mentions sexual abuse. January 22nd, marks the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case granting the right to an abortion "without excessive government restriction.” Year after year, Roe has weathered legal attacks, but this year, due to the conservative majority on the bench, the threat to Roe v. Wade is at an all-time high. A case heard by the Supreme Court on December 1st addressing a Mississippi abortion law posed a direct challenge to the precedent set by Roe. The decision will come out in June, but scholars who listened to the arguments are deeply concerned that this could be Roe’s last anniversary. Back in 1973, Roe was an important step towards granting reproductive autonomy to people who could get pregnant. However, Roe itself, was never enough to address the long history of government surveillance over the bodies of the most marginalized. In her book, Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, law scholar, Michele Goodwin, examines “the reproductive health and rights debate and explores how legislators increasingly turn to criminalizing women”, predominantly black women, for both proceeding with a pregnancy or for ending one. Today, Michele Goodwin, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, the founding director of the U.C.I. Law Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and its Reproductive Justice Initiative, and one of the ACLU’s very own Executive Committee Members joins us to discuss the lived experience of reproductive control and Roe v. Wade’s impact.

How to Win an Election From Jail Jan 13, 2022

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Joel Castón was incarcerated when he was 18 years old. He’s now 45 and in November of last year, just two months ago, Joel was released after serving over 26 years. While incarcerated, he received a degree through the Georgetown Prison Scholars Program and started a mentorship initiative called Young Men Emerging. And, because D.C. changed the law to allow incarcerated people to vote, he ran for office, and he won: he is now an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Washington D.C. representing the 7th Ward including the jail that he just walked out of. He’s the first incarcerated person in D.C. history to win elected office. Joel joins us today to talk about his experience, what he’s focusing on as a newly elected commissioner in D.C., and how he’s changing the public narrative about incarcerated people.

LaTosha Brown is Fighting for Voting Rights Ahead of the Midterms Jan 06, 2022

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Today, we’re checking in with LaTosha Brown, Co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and the Black Voters Capacity Building Institute. We first spoke to LaTosha a year ago after her work in expanding voting access in Georgia proved so successful. But that was then, and this is now. Challenges abound this year, likely as a direct reaction to her work. New restrictions making it harder to vote, so-called election reforms, and redistricting will have a direct impact on the 2022 midterms. It’s why we are so focused at the ACLU on expanding and protecting access to the ballot and stopping restrictions in their tracks. LaTosha Brown joins us to discuss.

ACLU Staffers Share Their Favorite Holiday Recipes Dec 23, 2021

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For our 2021 holiday special, we are taking you through the holiday food traditions of ACLU staffers and their families. Food is often the glue holding families and cultural identity together. We wanted to celebrate that and share it with you. Listener note: you may find yourself unusually hungry during this episode. We recommend you have something tasty on hand. We are joined by ACLU staffers Blanca Gamez, our Deputy Organizing Director, Zara Haq, a Senior Campaign Strategist, and Rotimi Adeoye, one of our Communications Strategists.

An Update on Our Biggest Stories of 2021 Dec 16, 2021

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On the podcast, we’ve chronicled some of the year’s biggest stories: the insurrection, the rescinding of the Muslim ban, devastating police brutality, state after state attacks on the rights of trans kids, the abusive system of conservatorships, and the rollback of abortion access, just to name a few. Today we’re going to follow up with guests on some of this year’s most popular episodes to see what progress there’s been since we last spoke, and where there is still work to be done. Zoe Brennan-Krohn of the ACLU's Disability Rights Program, Haya Bitar of the podcast team, and Somil Trivedi of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project join us.

The Case for Optimism: 2021 Legal Wins at the ACLU Dec 09, 2021

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As we near the end of the year, we are bringing you an episode of reflection. A lot has happened in the world, in our country, and in our work at the ACLU. We all felt the high stakes of last week's oral arguments at the Supreme Court on abortion. And while that has left us with concern, there is still so much to celebrate this year from our work across the organization. We’ve made meaningful strides fighting for better COVID policy, criminal legal reform, immigration reform, free speech, disability rights, and voting rights. So today we are regrouping with the ACLU’s National Legal Director, David Cole, to talk through where we can find hope this year and also where we can continue to press forward.

Supreme Court Hears Mississippi Abortion Case That Could Overturn Roe Dec 02, 2021

Show notes

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that challenges a nearly 49-year-old precedent protecting a pregnant person's right to an abortion established in the landmark case Roe v. Wade. The law in question is a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, violating the 1992 precedent set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the ruling said that a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability. This law, in this case, is the latest in a long line of repeated attacks on reproductive freedom we've seen this fall. Jennifer Delvin, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, joins us to discuss what we heard in the oral arguments and what we can do moving forward.

Glennon Doyle on Having Hard Holiday Conversations Nov 23, 2021

Show notes

This week, we are stepping back in time and re-visiting our conversation with author and activist, Glennon Doyle. In this conversation, Glennon talks about how to bring our loved ones into understanding of equity and justice through the use of storytelling, imagination, and conversation. On this podcast, we learn a lot about history, about civil rights issues, and about how we can use the law to move the needle. Today, we are going to spend time talking about how we can best share that knowledge with others. It’s an episode fit for such a time as this and we hope you enjoy.

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