News & Commentary

Community Rights Campaign, Public Counsel, and the ACLU of Southern California applaud today’s decision by the Los Angeles County Education Coordinating Council to endorse the findings and recommendations from the multi-agency Student Attendance Task Force (SATF). The recommendations, which were unanimously endorsed by the SATF’s members, are a step forward for Los Angeles County, because they emphasize connecting students to resources to address the causes of attendance issues – rather than punitive approaches proven ineffective as the primary response to truancy or poor attendance. They call for significant reforms to every county agency that interacts with youth who struggle with attendance, including courts, police, and schools.

"What are we talkin' bout? Practice? We talkin' bout practice, man. We not even talking about the game," said former NBA superstar Allen Iverson almost ten years ago. His now memorable words came to mind when I read that Los Angeles officials are negotiating with Occupy protesters to break down the camp at City Hall Park and relocate it.

Complaint Alleges High-Level Staff Knew Gangs of Deputies Beat Inmates and Condoned Cover-Ups

By Hector Villagra, Executive Director It’s a hard video to stomach, I know. Seeing it always reminds me of what Dostoevsky wrote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be measured by entering its prisons." I think the point is this: if you want to judge the soul of a society, you see how it treats the weak, the vulnerable, and, yes, even the scorned. That's the true test of how good and just a society is.

This post originally appeared in The Tennessean. This week’s news of another suicide by a young student—brought about after years of anti-gay bullying at his school—reminds me of my own experiences attending schools in Tennessee twenty years ago. Unfortunately, it seems little has changed.