SANTA ANA, Calif. – A Superior Court judge today rejected an attempt by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office to subject a 22-year-old Orange resident and three others to the provisions of an overreaching, preliminary gang injunction that criminalizes ordinary daily activities.

All four were represented by the ACLU of Southern California. The judge also found that the district attorney failed to prove that 11 other individuals in court today were gang members, and likewise excluded them from the injunction.

The judge’s decision clearly demonstrated that the District Attorney’s Office cast far too wide a net in its injunction against an alleged gang known as the Orange Varrio Cypress. Using faulty logic and guilt by association, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas tried to justify naming nongang members such as Ericka Aranda to the injunction simply because they were related or friends with an alleged member.

“The ease with which the District Attorney’s Office embraced this sweeping approach is troubling, and should make the public very nervous,” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, a staff attorney for the Orange County office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “This haphazard, catch-all approach to cracking down on gangs ensnares innocent victims and threatens to take away their most basic freedoms — associating with family and friends.”

It’s rare for those targeted in gang injunctions to escape the harsh sanctions imposed. But the ACLU/SC has increasingly contested injunctions because they unfairly target communities of color, criminalize everyday activities and are often brought against individuals who often have no representation in court.

In the case of Aranda, Rackauckas’s office attempted to link her to the gang even though she has never claimed gang membership, participated in the gang or been convicted of a crime. The district attorney based proof of membership on three minor incidents, none of which demonstrated that she was or has ever been a gang membership.

In one of those incidents, officers claimed Aranda was a gang participant simply because she was at a street fair with a group of childhood friends. In another incident, she received a trespassing ticket, which was later dropped, for walking through an abandoned building in a short cut to a school in her neighborhood. In yet another disturbing incident, an officer claimed Aranda was a gang participant for no other apparent reason than that she was present at her own home when police served a search warrant on her uncle, an alleged gang member with a criminal history, who intermittently lives with her and her family.

“Law enforcement can’t throw out someone’s most basic civil liberties, simply based on an officer’s hunch that the person is a gang member,” said ACLU/SC Staff Attorney Peter Bibring. “Letting officers decide who is or isn’t subject to the injunction invites abuse and racial profiling.”

The overly broad and unconstitutional gang injunction affects a 3.78-square mile, mostly Latino neighborhood that covers nearly 16 percent of the city of Orange. It imposes probation-like conditions such as curfews, and severely limits individuals’ right to associate with family and friends, move freely within their own neighborhood and even attend political or religious activities.

Touted by law enforcement as a tough and necessary crime-fighting tool, aggressive gang injunctions have been used largely in poor communities of color with little proven effect. In pursuing the injunctions, law enforcement has eroded community trust, separated childhood friends and endangered the basic rights of nongang members to move freely and associate with whomever they like.

Hello, my name is Ramona Ripston and I am the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. I am here to lend the support of 40,000 ACLU members to passing the Employee Free Choice Act. Our roots are in the labor movement. The ACLU of Southern California was founded by Upton Sinclair after he was arrested for participating in a longshoremen's rally.

In the 80 years since, we've always remembered those roots. We've urged other ACLU offices to support workers rights. We've insisted that ACLU events were in union hotels. We've stood up for carwash workers, janitors and sweatshop workers. And we stand with you today.

We support the Employee Free Choice Act because history shows that strong unions mean fair wages. Strong unions mean safe working conditions. Strong unions mean secure families. Strong unions mean a healthy economy.

There is a strong connection between constitutional rights and economic rights. President Franklin Roosevelt reminded us that '''true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.' Ours is supposed to be a society of '''liberty and justice for all,' but there is no '''justice' when good schools, safe housing, health care, decent employment and access to legal counsel are simply not there for millions. There is no justice when poverty robs too many Americans of the economic power, the psychic security and the practical ability to enjoy their rights and participate fully in their society.

Every day we see the damage caused by a lopsided playing field, where those with wealth and power made the rules to benefit themselves and where working class and middle class people were left to suffer. We see the results of rising income inequality and concentration of wealth. We see health care, housing and education slipping farther out of reach of too many of us. We must change that. We need unions to protect the well being of those who don't get bailouts and bonuses, who don't get corporate jets and golden parachutes.

Here's a secret our opponents don't want you to know: Unions have been good for America. That's right. All of us, whether we are in a union or not, have benefitted from health and safety regulations. All of us have benefitted from child labor laws. All of us have benefitted from the five day work week. All of us have benefitted from the economic security created by hard working people in good paying jobs. Today we see these protections as common sense and fundamental to the economy. But they were all resisted by corporations, just as the Employee Free Choice Act is being resisted now. We won those battles and America was better off as labor unions helped create a middle class that contributed to our national prosperity. We will win this battle and America will be better off again! It is time for us all'''Senator Feinstein included'''to get on the right side of history.

Too often employers make threats, hire union-busting consultants, fire workers, intimidate and punish workers for organizing unions. When they step on the rights of workers they step on the rights of everyone who wants a better life. The Employee Free Choice Act will stop that. This legislation means a fair chance at a square deal, new hope for a good living. Those are basic principles that we should all be proud to stand up for and the ACLU of Southern California proudly stands with you. Thank you.

Iranian American Refugees Will Continue Fight Over Contributions to Opposition Group

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Seven Iranian American refugees have conditionally pled guilty to providing material support to an Iranian opposition group known as the the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), in an agreement that enables them to appeal the ruling on the grounds that their prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution — an argument that the trial judge indicated should be decided by a higher court. Their challenge focuses on the fact that the MEK does not threaten U.S. national security, in large part because the U.S. government has itself provided material support to the same group, as court documents obtained in the case revealed.

The April 29, 2009 pleas by the six men and one woman were made reluctantly after an eight-year legal battle, and only on condition that the government drop over 100 other charges to which they had pleaded not guilty and allow them to pursue their argument that they should not be prosecuted for contributing to the MEK. That organization — the main Iranian opposition group — supports a free, non-nuclear Iran, has provided valuable information to the U.S. and has even worked to make the U.S. government’s “surge” in Iraq a success.

“It boggles the mind that that these seven refugees would be charged with providing material support for a so-called terrorist organization, when the U.S. government has supported the same organization for years,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, Director of Immigrants’ Rights and National Security of the ACLU of Southern California, which represents one of the seven defendants. “In the interests of justice, the federal government should drop its prosecution of this case, which is based on a law that denies due process to those accused of supporting designated terrorist organizations.”

The U.S. government officially designated the MEK as a terrorist organization in 1997 — thereby criminalizing almost all assistance rendered to the group — and has maintained that designation despite the objections of more than 228 members of Congress. Senior Clinton administration officials acknowledged at the time that the designation of the MEK was a political, "goodwill gesture" to the so-called moderate Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. The European Union and the United Kingdom initially followed the United States and made the same designation, but recently withdrew their designation after considering overwhelming evidence that the MEK does not threaten their national security. Under the U.S.’s anti-terrorism law, however, the seven defendants were not permitted to argue at a trial that the MEK was not a threat to American national security. Currently, the United States and Iran are among the few government entities to continue to officially classify the MEK as a terrorist group.

The seven refugees, some of whom were personally subjected to incarceration, persecution and torture before fleeing Iran, raised money at the Los Angeles Airport and within Los Angeles's Iranian community, and sent some of it to the MEK. The funds were used for a variety of humanitarian items, such as the purchase of shoes and other aid to Iranian refugees in Iraq, as well as the promotion of speech such as television time for ads about Iran and the publication of the group’s newspaper.

In 2002, the seven refugees successfully challenged the legitimacy of the government's prosecution, but the charges were later reinstated by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Evidence released in court recently showed, among other things, that the U.S. government supported a camp in Iraq where the MEK leadership currently resides, and provided consular services to the residents there.

“The American people are well aware that the U.S. government supports those who oppose the tyrannical Iranian regime,” said Nasser Shareef, President of the California Society for Democracy in Iran. “Under these circumstances, it is indeed ironic that the U.S. government has prosecuted these seven individuals for bravely supporting resistance against the Iranian regime, whose hands are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of Iranians at home as well as hundreds of innocent people outside Iran, including many Americans in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

A sentencing hearing is presently scheduled for August at which the issues of the proper designation of the MEK, the oppression and torture that some of the defendants endured in Iran, and the current working relationship between the MEK and the U.S. government (despite the continued designation) will be presented to the court.