News & Commentary

“Take to the streets.” These words have always held a special significance when it comes to exercising our right to protest. Throughout our history, generation after generation of activists, people, and communities have taken to our nation’s public streets to make their voices heard and to protest for their rights. B

For incarcerated people, it can be impossible to prevent contracting COVID-19. Crowded quarters, limited access to hygiene, and inadequate medical care have made jails and prisons the sites of some of the worst outbreaks in the country. To date, more than 350,000 people have tested positive while incarcerated and 2,305 have died, in addition to 145 corrections staff. Some state and local governments have responded by authorizing the release of people who are elderly or immunocompromised. But there are still far too many people languishing in unsafe and inhumane facilities, sometimes not even able to communicate with loved ones. 

When a person is sent to jail, prison, or detention, their departure triggers a ripple effect. One person’s incarceration touches family members, friends, lovers — their absence can have community-wide repercussions. What happens in the space they leave behind is a central line of inquiry in filmmaker Garrett Bradley’s latest work, “Time.” The film follows Sibil “Fox” Richardson as she raises her six children, maintains her career, and simply moves through her daily life — all while relentlessly fighting for her husband Rob’s release from prison.  

The murder of George Floyd last year was another wake-up call for many Americans about racism in policing. It was also a reminder that past efforts to address racist police practices have failed repeatedly. At the time of Floyd’s death, the police department of Minneapolis, Minnesota was attempting to reconcile and rebuild trust with the Black community, using some of its enormous $193 million budget to fund trainings on implicit bias, and other tools and tactics to reduce police violence against people of color. Yet none of this stopped Minneapolis police officers — including one of the very officers responsible for training new recruits — from murdering Floyd. 

In just six months, the federal government conducted an unprecedented, unjust, and unlawful execution spree, taking the lives of 13 people. The record of injustice in those cases — the compelling claims for mercy and legal relief by those executed and the denial without fair consideration by the executive branch or by the Supreme Court — underscores the urgency for President Biden to grant row-wide clemency to the 49 people on the federal death row. A

Nearly three weeks ago, former President Donald Trump was banned from nearly every social media platform because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Just before Congress was set to certify Joe Biden as the next president of the United States, Trump instructed his supporters to, “fight much harder” against “bad people” and “show strength” at the Capitol.

Yesterday, I joined the ACLU in filing a lawsuit to restore abortion access to Guam. More than two years ago, the last known abortion provider in Guam retired, and thanks to outdated and medically unnecessary restrictions, island residents cannot use telemedicine — which over a decade of evidence and experience has shown to be a safe and effective means of providing medication abortion — to access legal abortion. In effect, these laws are operating as an abortion ban. U

Last week, we marked Roe Day, the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States. We celebrate this milestone while at the same time recognizing that legality alone has never been enough to secure real access to abortion. Indeed, we don’t need to wait for the Supreme Court to act to see a post-Roe world here in the United States. Guamanians are already living it. Y

My driver’s license is just like yours. It has my photo, date of birth, and other standard descriptors. Under gender, however, you’ll find not M or F, but X.   In 2017, I became the first person in the country to obtain an official nonbinary, gender-neutral X-marker on my driver’s license. I live in Washington D.C., which was among the first jurisdictions in the U.S. to officially offer an X marker to recognize nonbinary people as well as those who simply want a gender-neutral form of ID. At the same time, D.C. also removed requirements for a medical or third-party certification of gender to correct a gender marker. I’m proud to have joined LGBTQ+ activists in D.C. in making these policies happen.