In July, Chandra Bhatnagar joined the ACLU of Southern California as its new executive director, becoming the third leader of the affiliate in over half a century. Chandra’s appointment comes at a crucial time in the history of our affiliate, the region and the nation – when our most fundamental civil liberties and civil rights have been threatened by the federal government.
Within his first week, Chandra jumped right into action and stood with movement leaders like CHIRLA’s Executive Director Angelica Salas and CLUE’s Pastor Stephen “Cue” Jn-Marie at a rally celebrating the completion of the Summer of Resistance, a month-long, community activation in downtown Los Angeles in response to the Trump administration’s raids against immigrant families.
I sat down with Chandra to get to know him better and learn about his vision for the ACLU SoCal.
1. Home has an indelible effect on who we are and who we become. Where do you call home?
That’s a complex question! A hot slice of New York pepperoni pizza, a steaming cup of my late father’s chai, or an Ensenada-style fish or al pastor taco – all these things feel like home to me.
At the same time, I’ve found “home” in the members of my family, my chosen family, and my community.
My father immigrated from India to New York City in 1960, where he would later meet my mother. My father undertook great physical risk to even get to the United States and then when he arrived, he had $28 in his pocket and knew no one. He lived and worked at a YMCA and then sold trinkets in Central Park. Over time, he became a therapist and teacher and made a life for himself and for his family. My parents decided to travel to New Delhi for my birth so that I could be surrounded by our extended family in my first months of life. So I spent most of my childhood in New Jersey and New York City and up until high school, I spent my summers in New Delhi.
While I was an undergraduate at Vassar College, I had the opportunity to expand my “home” and meet two of the great mentors in my life, Professor Angela Davis and Professor Kimberle Crenshaw. Both Angela and Kim (who I am still in close touch with) have shaped my life and helped me to direct my energy toward a career in law, social change, and human rights.
Since moving here in 2017, though I still root for the Yankees, Los Angeles – with its rich history and cultural vibrancy – is very much home for me and my family.
2. In your studies and career thus far, you have worked on freedom struggles around the world. How is our work to defend and expand the rights of communities in Southern California connected to liberatory work across the globe?
I have always been a student of history. Understanding history and global history helps us to understand the signs and symptoms of creeping autocracy. It can also inform strategies of resistance to religious fundamentalism and the erosion of democracy.
I have been fortunate to have spent my first summer in law school living in India and working with a noted human rights activist, the late Swami Agnivesh, who was one of the most prominent global figures combating child labor and bonded labor and other contemporary forms of slavery. He served as the first chairperson of the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery and was the minister of education in the Indian government. In 1975, he spent 14 months in jail after Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, declared a national emergency and jailed political opponents and activists.
One of the lessons I learned from Swami Agnivesh and from other colleagues doing human rights work around the world is the interconnectedness of struggle. The struggle for civil and political rights, the struggle for economic, social, and cultural rights – these concepts are deeply connected. For that reason, we can learn from the threats to democracy that manifested in India in the 1970s and again over the past decade. We can learn from the ongoing erosion of civil rights in Hungary. We can see how democracies can descend into authoritarianism and apply those lessons here at home.
And in Southern California, we are feeling those impacts head-on. It is not hyperbolic to say that we are at the forefront of the attacks on civil rights and civil liberties in the U.S. in 2025 and are literally living in the “eye of the storm.” Perhaps, we have felt that most acutely when the ICE raids began devastating our communities in early June.
While we are rightful in our anger, frustration and anxiety over this moment, we should also ask ourselves, “Why us? Why is Southern California being targeted by the Trump administration?” In my view, we are being targeted because in many ways, L.A. and Southern California is “the world.” Wherever your ancestors are from, whatever language you speak, whatever your religion or cultural origin, there is a community here that feels like “home,” a place where you belong. At our best, L.A. is a city, where everyone can be their authentic self. A place where art, music, poetry, dance, sports and culture are revered. Where wonderful food and cutting-edge entertainment and natural beauty all weave together in a unique tapestry. That beauty and diversity is, unfortunately, what makes us the perfect target for those who are threatened by diversity and who want to turn the clock back.
But we don’t like to use the word “target” because it implies that we are sitting idly by. That is far from true. In fact, L.A. and Southern California are at the center of resistance to this administration’s unjust and unconstitutional policies. At great risk, time and time again, communities have resisted. Authoritarianism requires capitulation and our communities have consistently refused to “bend the knee.” Ordinary people have exerted extraordinary courage to document human rights abuses and to protest injustice. That is what gives me hope, the people give me hope!
3. Our work is done in community with many others. What are some of your proudest moments in community as a civil rights advocate?
I was fortunate to begin my career working with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. I did development and organizing work involving immigrants’ rights, racial justice, and police brutality. Partnering with community organizations all around New York City, I could see the power that came from collective action.
One of the first lessons that I learned as an organizer was that, at its heart, organizing begins by building local power. I was proud of the organizing that we undertook in the mid-90s in the most challenging moments of the Giuliani administration when police abuse was rampant. I brought that organizer’s spirit to my study of law and shortly after I graduated law school, I began a fellowship working with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, where I ran a legal services project for low-wage South Asian workers in New York City in the post-9/11 environment, when fear and exploitation was all too commonplace. Again, the community organizations, the local leadership rose to the occasion and helped us to achieve both legal and organizing victories for individuals and the community.
A few years after I joined the ACLU national office in 2004, I began working on another case where law and organizing intersected. That case involved 500 workers from India who were brought to shipyards in Mississippi and Texas in the post-Hurricane Katrina environment. Indian workers were subjected to forced labor and trafficking, as well as racial discrimination and other forms of exploitation. The workers organized themselves and after a years-long struggle, we prevailed in a precedent setting court victory, which at the time, was the largest civil judgement in a labor trafficking case in U.S. history.
The lesson that these campaigns have taught me is that people have power. We, as attorneys, can be important partners and can amplify legal claims, but the people have agency and must lead themselves and their communities.
I am proud to join the ACLU SoCal, where we try to be great partners to the many community organizations with whom we collaborate. It is deeply important to me that we continue this mutually respectful relationship.
4. Now, you’re here in L.A., leading the ACLU’s first affiliate. What are the current opportunities and challenges for ACLU SoCal and for our country?
We must be clear-eyed about the challenges our nation faces in overcoming a history of genocide, slavery, and legalized apartheid and building a genuine multiracial constitutional democracy. History also teaches us that there are peaks and valleys in the struggle for equality.
Even with those lessons, the actions of the Trump administration over the first eight months represent an unprecedented attack on civil rights and civil liberties. We have seen attempts to eliminate fundamental constitutional rights such as birthright citizenship, an effort to dismantle the architecture of civil rights enforcement birthed in the wake of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, imposition of harsh restrictions on LGBTQIA+ rights (including limitations on gender-affirming care), and the demonization and intimidation of immigrant communities through the unconstitutional and unjust actions of DHS and ICE all over our region as well as in other parts of the country.
I am very proud to say that the ACLU SoCal has been true to its century-long history and is very much “meeting the moment.”
While the challenge remains so vast, we can, and we will, continue to do more. As my incredibly dedicated and talented colleagues and I challenge the administration’s racist and unconstitutional policies in the courts and in the legislatures, I am also committed to engaging the public square more deeply. The Trump administration has an explicitly anti-Black and anti-civil rights agenda, and it needs to be publicly labeled as such.
The ICE raids, the attacks on "DEI," and the demonization of LGBTQIA+ people are a means to give license to treating people as second-class citizens because of who they are, what they look like or whom they love. These actions undermine what generations before us have fought to establish and what we continue to realize and expand: basic human rights for all people and a measure of opportunity for communities systemically cast to the margins.
The unrelenting fight for civil liberties, civil rights, and human rights has been at the core of my personal and professional priorities for my entire life. I have been involved in racial justice issues for nearly three decades, as an organizer, lawyer, public servant, and organizational leader. If there was one vital lesson I’ve learned over the course of my career, it is this, we cannot be silent in the face of injustice.
In Los Angeles, one of our great civil rights giants who refused to be silent in the face of injustice was the late Reverend James Lawson, who passed away last year. Reverend Lawson contributed to the ACLU SoCal for decades also serving on its Board of Directors. Reverend Lawson spoke eloquently about the deep connections between racism and economic exploitation, connecting the dots between ACLU SoCal’s founding values as articulated in the 1920s and the current landscape of struggle of racial and economic inequality today. If it weren’t for the legacy of activists in the Civil Rights Movement, like Reverend Lawson, who fought and died so that Black people and other people of color could have opportunities today, many of us would not have been afforded the opportunities that we have. This is our time to make "good trouble" and to fight for what our civil rights heroes fought for: freedom, justice and equality.
I am proud to lead the ACLU SoCal into its next chapter as we continue to advance human rights for all.
Carlos Amador is chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and president of the ACLU of Southern California.
