In 2017, the ACLU of Southern California – backed by a record number of donors, thousands of volunteers and the pro bono support of law firms large and small – scored ground-breaking civil liberty victories.
Perhaps at no time in the 95-year history of the ACLU SoCal has the organization been so intensely active as agents of change and protectors of our constitutional rights. Court actions taken in the last year ranged from those in local venues on up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court. Our advocacy work took us from hosting grassroots phone banks to lobbying in city halls and Congress.
We could have never done it alone. Our mission is tremendously enriched by working with committed, cause-driven community organizations as coalition partners.
As proud as we are of our work, there’s no way to disguise the fact that we live at a difficult time when justice, whether political or economic, is endangered. We face it with an ever-fervent commitment to our mission – to free speech, immigrants’ rights, racial justice, reproductive justice, gender equity, LGBTQ rights, criminal justice, jails reform, education equity, fair treatment of people who are homeless, police practices reform and health care as a right.
All of us, together, keep the world spinning forward.
Read the 2016-2017 ACLU SoCal Annual Report.
Date
Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - 7:30pm
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Dissent is patriotic.
We here at the American Civil Liberties Union take that statement as an axiom. Indeed, the ACLU adopted it as a slogan years ago, and you’ll be seeing and hearing it more often as we navigate the currents of fear and hate roiling our nation.
Dissent is patriotic. Three simple words that go to the very heart of American values. It is a concept so crucial to our democracy that it is enshrined in the First Amendment. Dissent is patriotic is a bulwark against the totalitarian conceit that dissent is treason.
This bedrock principle — "the right to protest for right," as Martin Luther King, Jr. described it in his final speech 49 years ago — is the basis for the ACLU’s mission to protect and defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It underlies everything you'll read about in this annual report, and so much more.
Throughout our nation's history, the way forward has always begun with the powerful words, "I disagree" — uttered defiantly in the face of injustice to our neighbors, our media, our lawmakers, and, yes, even our president.
Today, those words inform our work to reform police practices, and to stand up for the dignity of the LGBTQ community. They give voice to the immigrants struggling to stand up to a growing wave of resentment. They stand firm against those who prefer privilege for a few over the rights of all.
With your continued support, the ACLU of Southern California will build on the efforts of the past year and prepare for the dangerous and uncharted waters ahead. As Edward Snowden said at our 2016 Bill of Rights Dinner, "Don't be afraid of what comes next — be ready."
Read the 2015-2016 ACLU SoCal Annual report
Date
Sunday, January 1, 2017 - 10:45am
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Mindful of the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty, which reads in part, "I lift my lamp beside the golden door," we seek to open the door of opportunity ever wider by linking civil liberties to social justice. Whether it be challenging the state's failure to adequately warn mothers receiving welfare benefits about the new "family cap" rule, going to court to prevent police from harassing activists providing free food to the homeless in downtown Los Angeles, ensuring adequate access to public transportation for disabled riders or organizing to defeat the anti-youth Proposition 21, the ACLU-SC is everywhere fighting for the rights of the historically disenfranchised.
Each year our annual report provides an opportunity to highlight some of the work the ACLU-SC has been able to accomplish with your help. With over seventy-five cases on our legal docket, dose to two hundred civil rights and civil liberties bills before the legislature, and several public education campaigns underway at any given moment, there is no way to capture the full scope of our endeavor. The following pages focus on some major battles we mounted this year - battles over free speech, educational opportunity and police practices - snapshots, as it were, from the front lines.
Thank you for your commitment to the great promise that lies at the heart of our organization's mission and our nation's Constitution - liberty and justice for all. The tremendous challenge of fulfilling this promise cannot be fully realized without the courage and generosity of the ACLU's community of supporters.
Date
Monday, November 1, 1999 - 1:00pm
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