At Liberty

Public opinion and the law of the land aligned this week to affirm trans equality in America: Thousands of people took to the streets of New York City over the weekend to remind their community and the nation: Black trans lives matter. Then on Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision establishing that under federal law, it's unlawful to fire someone just because they’re part of the LGBTQ community. Still, there's so much more to be done to protect and uplift trans people nationwide. LaLa Zannell, the ACLU's Trans Justice Campaign Manager, joins the podcast this week to talk about the state of the movement for Black trans lives, and why decriminalizing sex work is a meaningful and concrete next step as we continue to fight for true equality.

It’s been over 50 years since Black and Brown trans women led the revolutionary Stonewall Riots, fighting back against police brutality and discrimination and launching a movement for equality. Today, we celebrate another incredible landmark in the fight for LGBTQ rights. In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that it is illegal for employers to fire or otherwise discriminate against someone simply because they are LGBTQ. This will go a long way towards affirming legal protections in education, housing, credit, and health care — areas where too many LGBTQ people, particularly Black and Brown LGBTQ people, still face discrimination. Chase Strangio, the Deputy Director for Trans Justice for the ACLU’s LBGT and HIV Project, joins the podcast to help breakdown this historic decision. If you want to donate to our continued fight for LGBTQ rights, please visit aclu.org/liberty!

Journalists covering protests against police brutality across the country are facing an influx of violence, suppression efforts, and arrests by police. According to The U.S. Press Freedom tracker, there have been over 300 claims of violations to press freedoms since the protests began. These violations include being assaulted with pepper spray and rubber bullets, dealing with damaged equipment, and even facing arrest. Joining us today on the podcast is Jared Goyette, a freelance reporter who was covering a local Minneapolis protest when he was hit in the eye with a police projectile. He is now the named plaintiff in a lawsuit the ACLU of Minnesota filed last week against the City of Minneapolis, seeking justice for the violence he and other journalists experienced covering the protests. Content Warning: This podcast episode contains sounds of violence including rubber bullet gunshots, tear gas, and protesters calling for help.

Police are supposed to “protect and serve” the community, but that’s a far cry from what modern-day policing often looks like in our country. The recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and others highlight the need for drastic systemic change, yet again. ACLU Policing Policy Advisor Paige Fernandez walks us through the history of our problematic policing systems and explains both why it's so hard to hold police accountable and how the ACLU is addressing this moving forward.

Anthony Romero has been the Executive Director of the ACLU for nearly 20 years. He’s seen the organization through periods of massive growth and numerous national crises. Romero started the job just seven days before September 11, 2001. The subsequent so-called War on Terror presented new and widespread restrictions to our civil rights and civil liberties. Now, he faces a new challenge, leading the ACLU during the COVID-19 pandemic. He joined us to discuss how the ACLU is navigating the current moment and responding to the crisis.

Over the last two years, we've talked with civil rights leaders, organizers, journalists, artists, ACLU lawyers and people whose lives have been affected by the civil rights and liberties issues of our day. We've covered family separation at the border, talked to founders of the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. And we even spoke via video link with Edward Snowden. To mark our 100th episode, current Host, Emerson Sykes, and former Host, Lee Rowland, look back at some of our most memorable At Liberty moments. They discuss how much has changed in the world since 2018 and how many of these conversations still resonate with the questions we’re wrestling with today. What's your favorite episode of At Liberty? Who do you want to see as a guest during our next 100 episodes? Tweet us tagging @ACLU and using the #AtLiberty! We'd love to hear from you.

Over the last few weeks, various protests have erupted across the country in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are related to the virus: protestors in Ohio and Michigan took to the state capitols to call for an end to their governors' stay-at-home orders. Others are calling out an ongoing injustice: the killing, often at the hands of the state, of Black Americans. The rights of participants in protests across the spectrum could be at stake unless the Supreme Court weighs in on an important decision. In this episode, we speak with DeRay McKesson, an activist at the center of an important ACLU case that threatens our right to protest. In 2014, DeRay protested the killing of Mike Brown by police in Ferguson, and he’s been fighting on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement ever since. In 2016, he was arrested after another protester (we don’t know who) threw something (we don’t know what), injuring a police officer (whose name we don’t know). If this case is allowed to move forward, it could mean the end of taking to the streets to stand up for our rights. We’ve asked the Supreme Court to stop this dangerous lawsuit in its tracks.

Our guest today is Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet, memoirist, and legal scholar. Loyal listeners will remember our conversation from March of 2019. The episode was called “A Poet Gives a 360 Degree View of The Criminal Legal System,” and we talked about Dwayne’s journey from a teenage defendant sentenced to 9 years in prison to a Yale Law School graduate and published poet. A lot has happened since we last spoke. Dwayne published a new book of poetry called Felon and had an exhibit at P.S. 1 MoMA with painter Titus Kaphar called Redaction. If that wasn't enough, Dwayne also completed a clerkship with a federal judge and is pursuing a PhD in law at Yale. And of course, this episode is being recorded months into a global pandemic, that poses particular risks for people in detention. Today we’ll discuss the impact COVID-19 is having on incarcerated people, what we should do to support the thousands of people who are getting out of detention as a result of the efforts by the ACLU and others, and how art can help us get through these uncertain times. Listen to our first episode with Reginald Dwayne Betts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-poet-gives-a-360-degree-view-of-the-criminal-justice-system/id1396174920?i=1000432665627.

Over the next month, states will start to loosen their COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions. Some of us will return to work, gather in small groups, and maybe even dine at a neighborhood restaurant. But what will it take to keep us safe and prevent new spikes in infections? Many experts say we will not be out of the woods until there's a vaccine, but how would a national vaccination plan even work? At the same time, technological solutions are being proposed, especially related to contact tracing, the process by which public health officials can map and anticipate the spread of a virus, but technological solutions raise a whole host of questions on their own regarding privacy and civil liberties. Today we're joined by professor Michele Goodwin, the founding director of the center for biotechnology and global health policy at the University of California Irvine school of law, and ACLU staff attorney Jennifer Granick who leads our work on surveillance and cybersecurity. For more on this topic, check out Michele Goodwin's interview on Slate's Amicus podcast: https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2020/03/law-of-pandemics-coronavirus. And, read Jennifer's article on Apple and Google's Coronavirus tracking proposal: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/apple-and-google-announced-a-coronavirus-tracking-system-how-worried-should-we-be/.

Public opinion on marijuana legalization has shifted in recent years—roughly two-thirds of all Americans are now in favor of national legalization, according to a recent Pew Research Study. However, a new ACLU report called "A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” shows that despite legalization and decriminalization efforts, many of them successful, marijuana arrests continue. Black people are 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person. According to the FBI, in 2018, police made more marijuana arrests than for all violent crimes combined. Today's episode features two people who’ve been focused on marijuana legalization and racial equity: Dominique Coronel, a young activist from Illinois whose life has been deeply impacted by marijuana arrests, and Zeke Edwards, the Director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, and a lead author of the report. They are both working to ensure that when legalization or decriminalization measures pass, the Black and brown communities that are hardest hit by prohibition are not left out of the legal cannabis industry. View the new report here: aclu.org/marijuana.

The Coronavirus has spread quickly through communities around the world, prompting physical distancing measures to keep people safe and “flatten the curve.” But people in custody are especially at risk because they are often held in close quarters and lack decent medical care. Currently, nearly 36,000 people are being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, and they are all in grave danger. Almost immediately after the virus broke out, the ACLU and other advocates began arguing for the release of especially high-risk detainees, including people who are elderly or have serious medical conditions. To date, the ACLU and our affiliates have filed more than a dozen lawsuits across the country and more than 50 detainees have been released due to our efforts. ICE has now committed to releasing an additional 600 medically vulnerable detainees. In this episode, we hear from two people who were recently released from detention after our litigation, Alfredo Esparza and Mario Rodas Sr, and some of their family. Then we speak with Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, who has been leading this litigation effort.

As many Americans stare down the end of their first month of social distancing, it’s clear that the toll of “stay at home” orders during the COVID-19 pandemic is much more than economic. The anxiety and fear that wash over us each day that we spend alone, away from friends, coworkers, and family, inflict their own kind of emotional damage. The cost of social isolation is a worthy cost in this case — staying home can quite literally save lives. But for some people, the advent of social isolation came long before the coronavirus. At the ACLU, we work with many communities that deal with the long term impacts of social isolation. People living with disabilities who often experience accessibility issues, people held in detention, and people imprisoned in solitary confinement, just to name a few. Joining us today is Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University who understands the impacts of isolation and how we can mitigate them for both ourselves and others. We also spoke with a few people -- Anna Landre, TreShaun Pate, Jason Hernandez and Claire Goldberg -- who know a thing or two about social distancing. Their circumstances have made them familiar with isolation long before COVID-19. Further episode reading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/24/i-survived-solitary-confinement-you-can-survive-self-isolating/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-isolation-social-recession-physical-mental-health

As the coronavirus continues to spread across the country, the nation’s jails and prisons have become ripe breeding grounds for COVID-19. Millions of people who interact with our criminal justice system are at risk. Last weekend marked the first COVID-related death of an inmate and new reports show that the rate of infection in prisons is far higher than their surrounding areas, evidence of the urgent need for states and cities to jump into action. Some are responding to the crisis by beginning to release people in jails and prisons who the Center for Disease Control (the CDC) deem "high risk" for contracting the virus. Others, however, are refusing to budge, leaving advocates, former judges, and district attorneys to call for change. A new poll shows 63% of registered voters would like to see people released during the unfolding pandemic. In this episode, you’ll hear from Lewis Conway, a National Campaign Strategist for the ACLU who has experienced incarceration, and also Udi Ofer, the ACLU’s Deputy National Political Director, on what prisons should be doing to prevent the spread of the virus. To sign our petition to call for the release of prisoners during the COVID-19 crisis visit: https://action.aclu.org/petition/stop-spread-covid-19-free-elderly-and-sick-prisons-and-jails

With the recent spread of COVID-19 in the United States, we now face a public health emergency unlike any we’ve seen in our work at the ACLU. Across the country, schools are closed, employees are adapting to new work from home policies, and some state and local officials have even implemented “shelter in place” orders. At the ACLU, we work with a variety of vulnerable populations. COVID-19 brings new concerns to our daily fight to protect civil rights and liberties. For this episode, we spoke with three of our colleagues Dale Ho, Michael Tan, and Maria Morris who work on voting rights, immigration, and prison reform, respectively, to learn about how COVID-19 is affecting their work. For more information on the ACLU's COVID-19 response visit: https://www.aclu.org/news/topic/covid-19-pandemic-response and follow us on Twitter: @aclu.

Megan Rapinoe is a superstar soccer player who has become a global icon for her breathtaking play, her purple/pink hair, and her bold activism. She’s a World Cup champion, Olympic gold medalist, and co-captain of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. She has also kneeled during the national anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and others to protest police brutality and she’s spoken out in favor of many progressive causes. Now she and her national teammates are demanding equal pay with their male counterparts and they’ve taken the issue to court. She joined us remotely to discuss the latest with this important pay equity lawsuit, the roots of her activism, and what it’s like to score a game-winning goal in the World Cup final.