News & Commentary

The Department of Justice (DOJ) today withdrew a proposed regulation that would allow government agencies to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests with false statements that the documents sought do not exist, when, in fact, they do. Providing such false denials has apparently been a practice at DOJ for decades, which was most recently revealed in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC) on behalf of a number of Southern California Muslim individuals and organizations.

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.

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.

Los Angelenos may be the most auto-obsessed people on the planet (see Carmaggedon), but most of the time we turn a blind eye toward the people who actually clean our cars—and their routinely terrible working conditions.

“I wish sometimes that I had died in Iraq. So that my life would have meant something.” Robert Rissman is a 22-year old Iraq combat veteran who returned from Iraq with undiagnosed PTSD. As Robert struggled to cope with his disability, he became one of 8,000 homeless veterans living on the streets of Los Angeles.

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Yesterday the Los Angeles School Police Department unveiled protocols intended to reduce the number of daytime curfew tickets written to students. The revised procedures are a result of collaboration and discussions between Public Counsel, the Community Rights Campaign, the ACLU of Southern California, Children’s Defense Fund, CADRE, and Youth Justice Coalition — groups that work to keep students in school — and Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) leaders.

In 1994, Lisa Simpson -- daughter of Homer, sister of Bart -- posed the question that continues to plague law enforcement: "If you're the police, who will police the police?" Homer answered, "I dunno; Coast Guard?" Amidst allegations of deputy-on-inmate abuse at LA County jails, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca's answer was inexplicably worse than Homer's: "We police ourselves."