On Monday night, the LAPD displayed incredibly poor judgment in their response to the illegal behavior of a handful of attendees at the concert in the protest zone. When a few people began throwing debris over the fence and two individuals climbed the fence, protest leaders acted swiftly to try stop that illegal behavior. When it continued, they voluntarily decided to close the event and ask people to go home. But before they could do so, the police intervened with a heavy hand, shutting off the event's power and entering the protest zone on horses and in riot gear to disperse the crowd using batons and shooting rubber bullets and pepper spray.

Had the police cooperated with the rally organizers, the night could have ended calmly and smoothly. Instead, the police response on Monday created huge risks: when people see batons swinging, riot gear, and mounted police clearing an area, a tense situation becomes a volatile one.

Reports are streaming in to our offices detailing gross violations of individuals' civil rights.

We already know that numerous individuals were hurt in last night's actions by the police. We believe that Los Angeles is extremely fortunate in escaping the grave danger its police department created through its extreme use of force and its undifferentiated attacks on a crowd of people, most of whom were trying to leave the scene.

Our first priority now is to make sure that the protests this week proceed peaceably, and that the LAPD does not inflict any more injuries upon demonstrators, observers, or the media. What happened last night was nothing less than an orchestrated police riot. The ACLU has already obtained two court orders against the LAPD for violating free speech around the DNC. This is the LAPD's third strike.

LOS ANGELES Today civil rights groups filed in the Superior Court of the State of California to expand Williams v. State of California, the landmark education lawsuit to ensure that all public education students in the state be provided with the bare minimum tools necessary for educational success. Since the lawsuit was filed in May, on the 46th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education , the ACLU has fielded hundreds of calls from parents, teachers, and students interested in getting involved in the case. Plaintiffs representing 28 new schools spanning the state from Watsonville to Long Beach have joined the case, bringing the total number of schools represented by named plaintiffs to 46.

"This case has become the centerpiece in a movement committed to realizing the promise of public education for all," said Ramona Ripston, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California. "The students, teachers, and parents who have participated in advancing this case are committed to making public education work in every community, for every child. Creating a truly equitable and sound public education system is one of the fundamental civil rights challenges we face today."

Students, parents, and teachers from the newly added schools, almost all of which serve communities of color, economically struggling communities, or immigrant communities, reported a long list of substandard conditions at their schools, including a lack of textbooks and basic instructional materials in core courses; shortages of trained, permanently assigned teachers; overcrowding and shortages of classroom spaces; unsafe and unsanitary school conditions; buildings in poor repair, and a host of other conditions that impede learning.

"For the children attending the nearly 150 schools named in the lawsuit," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, "the three R's of education are too often rats, rot, and remiss."

"On the day the Democratic National Convention takes up the issue of education," said Rosenbaum, "the only response to the fierce realities disclosed in our suit from the California leaders who are charged with assuring that all children receive the bare essentials necessary to secure equal educational opportunity has been to dodge responsibility."

The suit is brought by the ACLU affiliates of California, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Public Advocates, Inc., Center for Law in the Public Interest, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, Morrison & Foerster LLP, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Professors Karl Manheim and Alan Ides, Peter Edelman of the Georgetown University Law Center, and Robert Myers of Newman. Aronson. Vanaman.

LOS ANGELES - The ACLU of Southern California won a temporary restraining order today to stop the Los Angeles Police Department from continuing its pattern of harassment and intimidation of protesters. Judge Dean Pregerson enjoined the LAPD from:

"1. Seizing from the Convergence Center or destroying any puppets or printed material; 2. entering the Convergence Center on the basis of purported administrative violations, including building and safety, zoning, and fire code violations, in the absence of a prior order issued by this court."

"The Court's order sends a clear message," said ACLU of Southern California staff attorney Dan Tokaji, "that the Constitution will not be suspended because the Democratic National Convention is in town."