News & Commentary

Governor Newsom should fund student mental health.

“A counselor on a domestic violence hotline told me my life was more important than things and that I should get away quickly,” Deborah Kraft recalled. Leaving everything behind, Deborah drove west until she reached Orange County, where she entered the homeless shelter system. 

With many of us doom-scrolling about democracy and the smooth transition of power, it’s easy to miss the local and state progress voters willed to life in California. With about 96% of votes now tallied, here are our five takeaways from this historic eleciton and how the results stacked up with our ballot guide:

Today, we turn a page from one of the darkest moments in civil liberties and civil rights. Over the last four years, we weathered an all-out attack on immigrants, withstood racist dog whistles as loud as bull-horns, and witnessed presidential back-slapping of white supremacists. For his anti-civil rights and civil liberties agenda, Donald Trump was democratically and ceremoniously removed from the Oval Office by his employer: the American people. 

Let’s get one thing clear: property taxes are a race issue.

An ICU nurse needs your help to stop her husband from being deported by ICE.

Proposition 24 won’t strengthen privacy rights for Californians. Instead, it will undermine protections in current law and increase the burden on people to protect themselves—in ways that will disproportionately harm poor people and people of color. Please vote NO on Prop 24.

Every year, we look forward to the Bill of Rights Awards, where we honor celebrities, activists, and leaders for their courage and commitment to social justice. But this year, in lieu of the awards and the red carpet, we went virtual and invited past honorees and long-time friends to mark the critical moment we're in and celebrate the tremendous work of the ACLU of Southern California.

I was told by the Greenfield Unified School District that I could not wear a t-shirt with the words “Phenomenally Black” because they said it was the same thing as wearing a “Make America Great Again” shirt. A Black colleague then later told me the administration asked if I was trying to push a Black agenda on campus. And yet when I wore a “Phenomenally Woman” shirt, there was no issue.