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Why Britney Can't Get Out of Her Conservatorship Jul 08, 2021

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In honor of Disability Pride Month, we’re devoting a few episodes to disability rights, starting with a look at conservatorships. Conservatorships are a court-sanctioned way to strip people with disabilities of their civil liberties. The system of conservatorships has gained media attention through the case of Britney Spears. What many have learned through Britney’s story is that under conservatorships, you often can’t spend your own money; you can’t choose your own doctors; you can’t control your medical care. You can’t even choose where you live or whom you spend your time with. And while Britney’s case has catapulted conservatorship into public consciousness, Britney’s case is not the exception. Over one million other Americans with disabilities live under some form of conservatorship or guardianship. Zoe Brennan-Krohn, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project, joins us to discuss the implications of conservatorship, for Britney and for many others.

Trump's Supreme Court Appointees Frustrate Ultra Conservatives...Mostly Jul 02, 2021

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The end of the Supreme Court’s term is always a momentous time of year for our guest and At Liberty regular David Cole. David is the ACLU’s legal director and our resident Supreme Court expert. In this episode, he’ll help us answer how the court’s new conservative supermajority has impacted its decisions on the term’s civil rights and civil liberties cases. We’ll also take a peek at the upcoming term, which is set to be a nail-biter. The court could decide on the fates of reproductive rights, affirmative action, and gun rights.

This Minnesota Mayor Isn't Waiting for Another Police Shooting Jun 24, 2021

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Just two months ago, Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, was the backdrop of yet another incident of police brutality when 20-year-old Daunte Wright was fatally shot by an officer during a traffic stop. The incident happened just ten miles from the courthouse where Derek Chauvin was on trial for the death of George Floyd. Outraged community members gathered in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department for consecutive days demanding change. And this time, their calls were answered. One month after Daunte Wright was killed, the city council passed a resolution that created an alternative to police response for both mental health calls and some traffic stops. The resolution is called The Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Resolution, named after the two people killed by local police in the last two years. One of the driving forces behind the resolution was Brooklyn Center Mayor, Mike Elliott. Mayor Elliott came to the US at the age of 11, fleeing from civil war in Liberia. Before running for mayor, he had started a mentoring program, working with Brooklyn Center schools to serve low-income students. He joins us along with Taylor Pendergrass, the Deputy Director of Campaigns for the ACLU’s Smart Justice program, to talk about what other communities can learn from the example of Brooklyn Center.

Special Edition: Supreme Court Says No License to Discriminate Jun 18, 2021

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It’s that time of year again: Supreme Court decision season. Today, we are bringing you a breakdown of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case that touches on whether the city can enforce a nondiscrimination policy with its contractors. Here, Catholic Social Services, a contractor with the city, refused to sign an agreement that would have forced them to stop excluding same-sex couples and unmarried people from being foster parents. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that Philadelphia's refusal to contract with the foster care agency violated the Constitution's First Amendment Free Exercise Clause. James Esseks, the Director for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, joins to break down the decision.

Defending Speech We Hate Jun 17, 2021

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Over the years, the ACLU’s commitment to the First Amendment has come under attack – both for the cases we take on and for those we don’t. At the ACLU, we are committed to protecting free speech for all – not just those with whom we agree. And that commitment can come into tension with the other work we do defending civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, we are pulling the curtain back on our history of defending free speech, on the choices we make, and on the conversations that went into those choices. For this episode, we are handing the mic to At Liberty’s former host and current ACLU free speech attorney Emerson Sykes. He speaks with former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier, who led the organization during the controversial time in the 1970s when the ACLU defended the rights of Neo Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. They address how a multi-issue organization can balance defending the rights of free speech even as it defends the other rights and liberties guaranteed in the constitution.

Lives First, Profits Later: How To Close the Global Vaccine Gap Jun 08, 2021

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In the U.S., it’s easy to think we’re in the final chapter of this global pandemic. Baseball stadiums have replaced cardboard cutouts with screaming fans, and the aroma of fresh popcorn is wafting once again from movie theaters’ open doors. As of this recording, more than 60% of US adults have now received at least one dose of the vaccine, and unused doses are available to anyone over the age of 12. But the U.S. is, in many ways, an outlier. The entire continent of Africa accounts for 1% of the world’s vaccine administrations, and countries in Asia and South America still lack meaningful access to vaccines. Added to this, variants have made COVID-19 more contagious and, in some cases, more deadly. This is the global vaccine gap. The global vaccine gap is both a human rights and a racial justice issue. Many of the communities left vulnerable are communities of color. The scale of the problem has united activists and organizations from around the world, including at the ACLU, to identify solutions and fast. For many of the human rights activists and experts, the urgency is part of their lived experience on the ground. This episode, we’ll hear some of their stories and learn from one of the ACLU’s human rights experts what needs to be done. Special thanks to the International Network for Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) for helping make this podcast happen, especially Colin Gonsalves, Nersan Govender, Vivian Newman, and Lucila Santos. To support our INCLO partners featured in this episode, please see below. Human Rights Law Network in India: https://www.hrln.org/. Legal Resources Centre in South Africa: https://lrc.org.za/ Dejusticia in Colombia: https://www.dejusticia.org/ INCLO: https://www.inclo.net/

How the Police Lobby Impedes Public Safety Jun 03, 2021

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There were only 18 days last year that did not see a police officer kill a civilian in this country. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Walter Wallace Jr, Daniel Prude, and Rayshard Brooks, were among the 1,127 people killed by police last year. And we know that Black people are more than three times as likely to be killed during a police encounter as their white peers. A year after the murder of George Floyd, systemic, transformative change is still desperately needed at every level of government, but too often police unions and their lobbying efforts obstruct that change. Joining us today to talk about all this is Dr. William P. Jones, a history professor at the University of Minnesota and the president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association, whose work focuses on the relationship between race and class, as well as on the history of unions and organizing in the U.S.

The Tulsa Race Massacre and the Violence of Forgetting May 27, 2021

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In the early 1920s, Black Americans were under the siege of direct and indirect racial violence with widespread lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and race riots across the country. And yet, the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma was thriving. Its streets were lined with successful Black-owned businesses and Black professionals. The businesses were so successful the area was dubbed “Black Wall Street.” But one hundred years ago today, on May 31st, 1921, a white mob of several thousand murdered up to 300 Black residents, and destroyed almost every Black business, church, and home in the 35-square-block neighborhood. What followed the massacre was a national forgetting: no reckoning, no justice, and no accountability. Black property owners were never compensated, and neither the city nor the state committed money toward rebuilding Greenwood in the aftermath. In fact, up until recently, the massacre was hardly taught or discussed at all. Tulsa historian and prolific author and lawyer, Hannibal B. Johnson, joins us on At Liberty to mark the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre and break down its legacy.

Meet the Students Who Are Taking on Comcast May 20, 2021

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Here at the ACLU, we’ve been working remotely from home since the pandemic closed our offices in March 2020, which means this podcast is produced, recorded, and edited, using high-speed internet; even our guests’ participation depends on it! Covid-19 has underscored just how crucial an internet connection is to participate in society. But many people like you and me may take for granted having efficient and affordable broadband access, a privilege that tens of millions of Americans are without. This is the digital divide, and it disproportionately impacts people of color and people living in rural communities. Joining us on this episode are Baltimore high school students and organizers of SOMOS, Kimberly Vasquez and Yashira Valenzuela-Morillo, and data science and equity expert, Dr. Brandeis Marshall.

How to Save Lives in Jail During the Opioid Crisis May 13, 2021

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Three million Americans currently suffer from Opioid Use Disorder, or an addiction to opioids. Today, adults between the ages of 25 and 44 are more than twice as likely to die from opioid overdose than from COVID-19, yet this epidemic isn’t making the same headlines. When we zoom in on the prison population, the numbers are even more jarring. 85% of people in prison or jail have some kind of substance use disorder, compared with 9% of the general population, yet these Americans are less likely to get access to the care they need to treat their addiction. Most prisons and jails don’t let people take prescription medications like methadone to treat their disorder while serving time. This kind of treatment has been shown to reduce deaths from opioid overdose up to 50% by preventing withdrawal symptoms during recovery. In this episode, we’ll take a look at the devastating impact of denying these treatments in our prisons and jails. We're joined by Christine Finnegan, Louis Lamoureux, and Beth Schwartzapfel.

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