News & Commentary

If you’ve been to a restaurant lately and scanned a QR code rather than order from a physical menu, you likely paid for that meal with not just your money, but your privacy and security too. Businesses are taking advantage of the rise of touchless services during the pandemic to harvest massive amounts of sensitive information about who we are, where we go, and what we do, including our eating and drinking habits — when all we want to do is just eat a meal. I

This legislative session, Arkansas lawmakers passed 20 abortion-related restrictions — tying Louisiana’s 1978 record for the most restrictions passed in a single year. These attacks reached their peak with the passage of Act 309 in March, which bans nearly all abortions in the state. In May, the ACLU and its allies filed a lawsuit challenging that law, which is blatantly unconstitutional under nearly five decades of Supreme Court precedent. Following a federal court’s decision last week blocking the ban from taking effect while the case continues, we sat down with a few members of the Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ), a grassroots organization based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, to talk about their work fighting for reproductive justice in the state.

On any given day across the country, millions of Americans have had their drivers’ license suspended — not because of unsafe driving or other safety concerns but because of a government imposed debt they can’t afford to pay. I

Over the past several years, we have witnessed a heightened demand for marginalized communities to be better represented in the media, in boardrooms, and every sector of society. While some progress has been made, representation of people with disabilities often takes a backseat in the conversation. I

Face recognition technology may sound futuristic, or perhaps too abstract to seem harmful. But we are already living in a reality in which face recognition and other forms of biometric surveillance pervade our daily lives. These technologies threaten our privacy and free speech rights and, when used by police and immigration enforcement, serve as yet another dangerous system to abuse Black and Brown people on a massive scale. Big Tech companies are profiting off these abuses because they are the ones developing and selling face recognition to government agencies. And it’s our communities — particularly communities of color — that face the harmful consequences. T

All young people should have equal access to an education that includes learning the complete history of this country, including the experiences and viewpoints of marginalized communities. Unfortunately, in the United States, too many public schools fail to teach about diverse communities in their curriculum. For Native Americans, this disparity is even more stark. According to the National Congress of American Indians, 27 states make no mention of Native Americans in their K-12 curriculum, and 87 percent of state history standards do not mention Native American history after 1900. Access to learning about Native American heritage and culture in our educational institutions is a racial justice issue, and it’s one we’re fighting to preserve. A

In the days after his nomination, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signaled his willingness to make a decisive break from Donald Trump’s racist and anti-immigrant policies. Mayorkas is the first Latino and the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security, the government agency that is most responsible for delivering the “fair and humane” immigration system President Joe Biden promised as a candidate. A

I stumbled upon the ACLU’s National Advocacy Institute by total coincidence. A friend mentioned that she attended the institute in a previous year, and I happened to see a post about it on my Instagram feed. I took a chance and decided to apply, but never thought I would get in, let alone that it would spark in me a passion for organizing and advocating for my community in Austin, Texas. But now, two years after I attended the institute, I can see just how important this program is to building the next generation of civil rights leaders, advocates, and organizers. T

More than one year after the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, it is clear that international accountability is critical to complement and bolster domestic efforts to dismantle systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States. L