News & Commentary

When Steve Crawshaw wrote his book about creative protests in totalitarian regimes, “Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief,” he never thought it would be all that relevant to the United States. Crawshaw has been researching protests since 1989 when he covered the East European Revolutions f

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was back in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, this week, for some meetings, where she made herself available for questions from local students and the press. During a visit to Grand Rapids Community College on Tuesday, DeVos

When you fill a prescription at your local drug store, you would surely bristle at someone behind you peeking over your shoulder — but in a decision issued last week, a federal court in Utah said that you have no Fourth Amendment right to object when the peeker is the United States government. You read that correctly: In a

On the morning of August 5, 2012, Sikh community members in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, gathered at their local gurdwara for regular Sunday services. As worshippers arrived, a gunman — later discovered to have white supremacist ties — opened fire in the Sikh temple.Paramjit Kaur, Suveg Singh Khattra, Satwant Singh Kaleka, Prakash Singh, Ranjit Singh, and Sita Singh were murdered that day. Three other people were seriously injured, one of whom, Baba Punjab Singh, remains in long-term care at an inpatient rehabilitation center due to the seriousness of his injuries.The horror of the shooting shook Sikh communities around the country and faith-based communities and advocacy organizations planned vigils in solidarity, proclaiming “We are all Sikhs.” The refrain recognized that when one faith community is targeted for violence or harassment, it is an attack on religious freedom for all. Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of the

On the shoulders of my grandfather Dilmus Agnew, my mother watched Martin Luther King, Jr. give his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech in our nation’s capital in 1963. “We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote,” exclaimed Dr. King, as my mother watched on. “No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Because of the work of Dr. King and other civil rights advocates, two years

There is plenty of disturbing news these days about the attempts to roll back the right to abortion. There is no question about it — we are living in a country where politicians are as determined as ever to obstruct access to basic reproductive rights. But there have been recent bright spots. I can’t live up to the hilarity of my colleague’s “Anyone Can Legally Say ‘Eat Shit, Bob’” blog, but I can promise good news.For starters, federal district court judges in Alabama and Arkansas blocked outrageous restrictions on abortion access. The Alabama law was extreme: It amended the state’s law related to parental consent for an abortion. If a teen is unable to obtain parental consent — or fears doing so — she may seek a court order allowing her to proceed with an abortion without her parents’ consent. This is already a daunting obstacle to abortion access. But Alabama decided to add insult to injury by forcing the teen to stand trial, including allowing the court to appoint a lawyer for the fetus. The law was so absurd that Jessica Williams was all over it on The Daily Show. The

Almost 10 years ago, Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres filed a lawsuit in Arizona after being illegally detained by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Mr. Ortega Melendres was one of many people who dreamed of holding then-Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio accountable for his reign of terror over Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and surrounding areas.A decade later, his dream is a reality.Arpaio, who held the sheriff’s office for 24 years, stands convicted of criminal contempt of court. The man who declared himself “America’s toughest sheriff” — who racially profiled Latinos and detained people unconstitutionally and in defiance of a federal court order, who tried to hold himself above the Constitution and the rule of law — has ended his career in disgrace, voted out of office and now a convicted criminal. The story of how Joe Arpaio ended up a convict is the story of how a community rose up to assert people’s right

*The plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit is remaining anonymous for security reasons. November 8, 2016, was one of the most important days of my life. It was the day my family and I had an interview that

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was created 60 years ago “to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society.” Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department is now signaling its intent to use civil rights laws as a cudgel against racial minorities. The news that