GSAs (Gay Straight Alliances) help create a positive school environment, which is the objective of the ACLU/SC's student rights project. Excerpted from the ACLU Blog of Rights:
GSAs are school clubs that aim to create safe and supportive environments for students to learn about homophobia, transphobia, and other types of oppression and prejudice. They are places to have important discussions, to make friends, and to get support from peers. They can help educate the school community — even people who aren’t in the club — about issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity. And they can help fight the discrimination, harassment, and violence that plague so many students.
Research has shown that students at schools with GSAs experience less harassment and are more likely to feel safe — which makes every day a whole lot easier. That’s why we at the ACLU are such big fans. And that’s why we’ve put together this step-by-step video on how to start a GSA! It guides you through five steps for starting a GSA, from explaining why you want a club to things to do when you start meeting.

The Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), has registered over 4,000 GSAs across the country and in every state in the U.S., so chances are everything will go smoothly! But if you’re worried that your school administration won’t be supportive, it’s particularly important to make sure you follow the steps laid out here. These tips will make it easier for the ACLU to support you if you need our help.  And we have lots of additional resources on our website that may be helpful too.  We’re here to support you through every step of starting a GSA - before you start, when you’re putting up posters, if you run into opposition, and during your meetings.
No one should be bullied. Starting a GSA helps ensure that everyone feels safe at school. It might sound like a big project, but it’s a hugely important one — and if you have any questions or just want to get some general advice about starting a GSA at your school, please contact us. You don’t have to do it alone!

Amidst all the talk of immigration reform and the need to secure our borders, it's easy to forget that our government already imprisons thousands of immigrants for months, often years, in several hundred immigration detention centers scattered across the United States.
Take, for example, the Reverend Raymond Soeoth, a Christian minister who fled Muslim majority Indonesia with his wife after the couple faced persecution for practicing their faith. When his asylum application was denied in 2004, the U.S. government incarcerated Reverend Soeoth at an immigration detention center in Los Angeles. Even though he posed no danger or flight risk and had never been convicted of any crime, he spent over two and a half years in detention while the courts decided whether to reconsider his asylum claim.

Sadly, despite the Department of Homeland Security's claims that such prolonged detention is reserved for the worst of the worst, all too often thousands of immigrants like Reverend Soeoth wind up in immigration detention. Nearly half of those detained have never been convicted of any crime, while many others were convicted of minor offenses long ago, and are detained years later by immigration authorities trying to deport them based on those old offenses.
Remarkably, during those two and a half years, immigration authorities never afforded Reverend Soeoth the most basic element of due process — a hearing before a judge to determine whether his detention was necessary. He was separated from his wife, who was forced to shutter the corner store they ran together, and his congregation, all because our government would not give him a 15 minute bond hearing before a judge. In February 2007, after the ACLU filed suit, a federal court ordered such a hearing for Reverend Soeoth. The judge decided that he presented no danger or risk of flight and ordered him released on bond. Since that time he has reunited with his wife and congregation, rebuilt his life and will likely be granted asylum soon.
The human tragedy created by the detention of Reverend Soeoth and thousands of others like him is made even worse by its exorbitant cost. As taxpayers, we spend $45,000 per detainee per year — a total of $1.9 billion in the past fiscal year — with $100 million more than that requested for the fiscal year 2012 budget, needlessly imprisoning many people who present no threat to our society. As the public debates the merits of shrinking the size of government and bringing the scope of federal power in line with constitutional constraints, we should seriously consider proposals that ensure due process for immigrants by placing reasonable limits on their prolonged detention. Our most basic values as a free country demand an end to the needless of detention of Reverend Soeoth and the thousands of others who deserve better from this great nation.
The ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project receives hundreds of letters each month from individuals inside immigration detention who have been locked up for years, fighting their cases to remain in the United States. Many of them are refugees, lawful permanent residents with US citizen family members, and others who pose no threat to the community.
You can read some of their letters here.

By John Rogers, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/28/aclu-sues-lasd-for-harass_n_106...

LOS ANGELES -- The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Thursday, claiming the law enforcement agency is harassing news photographers and other people who take pictures in public places.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, charges that sheriff's deputies have harassed several photographers over the past two years. It states deputies have stopped people, frisked them and in some cases threatened to arrest them for taking photos near subways, courthouses and other public places.
It names as defendants Los Angeles County, the Sheriff's Department and several individual sheriff's deputies.
The action was brought on behalf of three photographers, one of them a reporter for the Long Beach Post news site who said authorities indicated they became suspicious when they saw him taking photos near a courthouse.
Another of the plaintiffs said sheriff's deputies asked whether he planned to sell his photos to the terrorist group al-Qaida.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said public safety requires that deputies question people who might be engaging in suspicious activity, but that it's important they do it respectfully.
"Obviously we have to ask questions. There are security issues that are always at large," Whitmore said. He added that doesn't mean his department believes the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, has merit.
"Lawsuits only tell one side of the story," he said. "We look forward to telling the whole story."
The Long Beach Post photographer, Greggory Moore, said he was on a public sidewalk taking photos of passing cars for a story on Distracted Driving Awareness Month when eight deputies surrounded him. He said he was frisked and asked what he was doing.
Moore said authorities told him later that his taking photos across the street from a courthouse signaled a possible terrorist threat, which was why he was stopped and searched.
Photographer Shawn Nee said he was on his way home when he exited a subway station in Hollywood and decided to stop to photograph the new turnstiles there. He said a sheriff's deputy asked him if he was "in cahoots with al-Qaida" before searching him. He said the deputy also threatened to arrest him when he wouldn't identify himself or say what the photos were for.
Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, said such instances of photographers being stopped, questioned and searched is becoming more common, not only in Los Angeles but across the country. He added that security shouldn't be routinely used as a "pretext" to stifle free expression rights.
"Photography is not a crime. It's protected First Amendment expression," said Peter Bibring, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. "Sheriff's deputies violate the Constitution's core protections when they detain and search people who are doing nothing wrong. To single them out for such treatment while they're pursuing a constitutionally protected activity is doubly wrong."
The lawsuit asks that the court declare the actions of the Sheriff's Department unconstitutional. It also seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.