News & Commentary

Learning about dynamics of race and gender is an integral part of any student’s education and necessary to understand U.S. history. But instead of fostering an open and honest dialogue, a handful of states — including Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, and Oklahoma, among others — are passing censorship bills that ban conversations about race and gender in public schools. These bills chill students’ and educators’ First Amendment right to learn and talk about the issues that impact their everyday lives. They further marginalize communities, create an unsafe learning environment, and shortchange students of their right to receive an inclusive education, free from censorship or discrimination.An

Friday, May 21, 11 am CT – 1 pm CT A dangerous bill that will ban Tennessee students from learning about America's complex and painful history of racism and oppression is on its way t

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We marched with millions around the world. On January 21st, millions of people around the world took to the streets in the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. In Washington D.C. alone, the crowd was estimated at 500,000. Eight marches and rallies for women’s equality including thousands of people were held in Tennessee alone. We became a legislative force, urging state lawmakers to vote in favor of civil liberties over 125,000 times. While it has been a divisive few months at the Tennessee legislature, ACLU-TN’s supporters’ engagement has helped secure some major victories at the Capitol. This session, we asked our supporters to contact lawmakers on bills ranging from abortion access to fair treatment of immigrants to the school-to-prison-pipeline and you answered in force, sending thousands of letters to state legislators. Details can be found at our Legislative Action Center. We helped bring a refugee family home to Tennessee. After the Trump Administration’s first Muslim ban barred him from starting a new life in the U.S., despite his having worked for the U.S. government in Iraq, Fuad Sharef Suleman and his family were finally cleared to travel with the help of ACLU-TN, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, and others. The family arrived in Nashville in February. We swiftly and decisively stopped the discriminatory anti-Muslim travel bans. When Trump issued a shocking executive