Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Laura Murphy, Director, Washington Legislative Office
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Posts by Laura Murphy, Director, Washington Legislative Office
Don’t Open the Door to Torture
02 months ago
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is pursuing a deeply misguided effort that threatens to reopen the door to torture.
At the most recent Republican presidential debates on national security, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has said President Obama had “outsourced” public policy on torture to the ACLU – a misrepresentation if ever there was one. To be sure, the ACLU is opposed to the use of torture – but so, too are CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and many other high level current and former military and national security officials. The ACLU strongly believes that our use of torture makes it more likely that our soldiers will be tortured when captured and that its use undermines core American values.
An amendment offered by Ayotte to the defense spending bill will likely come to a vote today. It seeks to roll back the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which prohibited the military from using interrogation techniques not allowed in the Army Field Manual. A Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly supported the prohibition by a vote of 90-9 in 2005. Ayotte’s effort should be rejected by at least the same margin.
Our military and intelligence agencies have made clear they do not want this issue revisited. In 2009 they unanimously reported they had all the authority they needed to effectively interrogate. Responding to calls to bring back “enhanced interrogation techniques,” when he was commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan last year, General Petraeus unequivocally stated “we should not go there.”
While Ayotte and several of the GOP presidential candidates seem unclear on whether waterboarding is actually torture, McCain, himself a victim of torture while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has been more forthright. “It’s torture. It’s in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of the international agreement on torture, treaty of torture signed during the Reagan administration,” he said. The practice was used by Japanese prison camp guards (who were later prosecuted for war crimes) and by the Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror.
The Ayotte amendment would also overturn an executive order that strengthened the DTA by requiring all U.S. interrogators, not just those in the military, to abide by the Army’s interrogation manual. By allowing some interrogators to evade established protocols and requiring the creation of a secret annex of approved techniques, Ayotte threatens to muddy the waters and hinder U.S. military operations. Even the Bush administration rejected the idea of an interrogation annex because of concerns that the resulting lack of clarity would obstruct training and ally collaboration.
Our intelligence professionals also see abusive techniques as likely to produce false or misleading information. “Most military and FBI people say that you can gain better results through other techniques because once you hurt someone badly enough, they’re going to tell you whatever they want you to hear in order to make it stop,” McCain said. ”We can gain better information through using different techniques, which are not in violation of any of the treaties or obligations, not to mention our image as a nation.”
McCain’s final point bears emphasis. Reconsideration of torture resurrects harmful images of Abu Ghraib and the serious damage that abusive practices have done to America’s standing in the past. Our position as a nation grounded in the rule of law has always been one of our greatest strengths. When we stray from those values, we diminish that standing and create additional obstacles for our troops trying to win hearts and minds in their missions abroad.
Ayotte’s amendment and the recent statements by Republican candidates on torture seek to reopen old wounds, flatly reject the best advice of military and intelligence professionals and offend America’s core values. Any one of those alone should be a sufficient reason to oppose the amendment and reject calls for a return to torture.
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The Three Faces of Racial Profiling: The ACLU Connects the Dots
03 months ago
In recent weeks, local police have been circulating predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods in Alabama, asking those standing on the street to go inside their homes or face arrest — all because the state passed a law requiring police to be immigration agents.
During the past decade, as international terrorism became a subject of intense concern, Arab Americans and South Asian Americans have been spied upon, stopped, questioned and subjected to intensified inspection based on their racial characteristics rather than any evidence of wrongdoing.
And for more than a century, black men and women traveling through predominantly white neighborhoods have been questioned for no reason — simply because police officers felt they didn’t belong there.
Before there was even a name for it, racial profiling has been engrained in our country’s law enforcement practices. But racial profiling not only goes against our Constitution and our country’s value for equality — it also hinders law enforcement officials from doing an effective job.
For years, many of our political leaders have vowed to put an end to racial profiling. Attorney General Eric Holder has made it clear that ending the practice of racial profiling is a "priority" for the Obama administration. And certain members of Congress have echoed that sentiment, by introducing S. 1670, the End Racial Profiling Act of 2011 (ERPA), in the U.S. Senate on Oct. 6. The law also will be reintroduced in the House, and should receive bipartisan support.
The law would take concrete steps toward eliminating the practice of making a group of people subject to heightened scrutiny based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. ERPA is a laudable starting point, not a complete remedy, because the operational lines between legitimate practices and illegal profiling have become dangerously blurred at our borders, in our airports, and on our streets and freeways. It will take sustained vigilance to make these boundaries meaningful and to ensure that anyone violating them faces consequences.
Now is the time for us to come together and end this unlawful practice. Racial profiling is ineffective, erodes public trust in law enforcement and violates the Constitution. It has no place in American life.
In the coming days, through a blog series on “The Three Faces of Racial Profiling,” it will become evident the damage that racial profiling has done to many Americans. At the core, racial profiling is about discrimination, not about keeping our communities or our country safe.
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The Courage to Be Safe and Free
04 months ago
Once the shock subsided, we set out to determine what new powers the government would seek in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The smoke billowing from the Pentagon was visible over Washington as I met with several ACLU colleagues from around the country in a Dupont Circle hotel. We watched the tragedy unfold on television, looking out on streams of frightened pedestrians uncertain the attacks were over.
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"Ten years later, as we remember and mourn those who died on Sepetember 11th, our nation still faces the challenge of remaining both safe and free." |
We listed those new powers, realizing our government would react quickly to determine who committed these monstrous acts and to prevent future attacks. Based on our country’s reactions to previous acts of terrorism, such as the Antiterrorism Act passed in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, we worried government might sweep too broadly, targeting the innocent along with the guilty based upon their race, religion, immigration status, and political views. We knew the ACLU would serve a crucial role protecting constitutional rights and American values over the following months. None of us imagined we’d be waging that battle 10 years later, or that policy priorities moving forward then, such as immigration reform and a ban on racial profiling, would be thwarted because some lawmakers would use fear of terrorism to manipulate public policy.
The list we created barely scratched the surface. The unprecedented powers granted to the government created an insatiable security machine blurring the lines between national security, policing, and intelligence work at home and abroad. In the process, a dramatic transformation of privacy, surveillance, our concept of war, and government took place. This monstrous security apparatus uses fear to justify its ever-expanding, and largely secret, budget.
While the threat was new, racial and religious discrimination and political oppression are not. The Red Scare of the 20th century saw a wave of terrorist violence leading to thousands of warrantless raids, arrests, and the improper deportation of innocent immigrants based on national origin, speech, associations and political views. Japanese internment in the 1940’s and McCarthy-era investigations in the 1950’s all demonstrated what government is capable of when turned against its citizens. In the 1970s, abuses of intelligence and law enforcement powers saw the government routinely spying on anti-war and civil rights organizations.
Each era of civil liberties abuses was followed by courageous Americans reclaiming their rights, establishing legal precedents that protected political speech and non-violent political organizing. We passed civil rights laws ensuring equal access to voting and equal protection under the law. We even made great strides in exposing the injustice of racial profiling, proving it is as ineffective as it is illegal and immoral. Before 9/11 we were frustratingly close to obtaining a nationwide ban. Even President George W. Bush had declared, racial profiling “is wrong and we will end it in America.”
Unfortunately, after 9/11 our government opted to violate the constitutional and legal limits designed to protect the rights of the innocent. The guidance the Justice Department produced in response to President Bush’s call to ban racial profiling contained loopholes for national security and border integrity investigations. The loopholes made the rule ineffective, as tactics originally justified as necessary and temporary infringements on liberty to ensure security from foreign terrorists are now, predictably, used to address ordinary crime. Law enforcement agencies now identify behaviors as innocuous as public photography and note-taking as precursors of terrorism and crime, and have developed formal programs to collect reports of this behavior, leading to improper police stops and detentions.
Once again, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are using race and ethnicity as primary factors in deciding whom to investigate. The FBI has a racial and ethnic mapping program directing investigations on an array of criminal activity and potential national security threats to communities identified by race, ethnicity and national origin. This is racial profiling on steroids. The FBI is not alone: the Los Angeles Police Department started a “Muslim mapping” program, but shut it down as a result of public outrage, and recent reports indicate the NYPD has teamed with the CIA, potentially in violation of its legal prohibition against domestic spying, to engage in broad surveillance targeting the Muslim community.
Americans know racial discrimination is wrong. We must summon our courage and push back on fear and the erosion of civil liberties, turning our attention again to the promise of America by ending racial profiling, reforming disastrous immigration policies, and ensuring Americans are treated equally under the law. America can be both safe and free.
On Thursday, September 15 at 4 p.m. EDT, we’ll be hosting a live chat on Facebook. We hope you’ll join us; send your questions to @ACLU with #ACLUchat and #911 hashtags, or leave them in the comments section below.
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Contraceptive Coverage Should Be the Rule, Not the Exception
05 months ago
Far too often, government policies tend to be at odds with reality when it comes to women’s reproductive health by ignoring the services that women need most. Which is why guidelines recently issued by the Department of Human Services requiring insurance coverage for contraception and other preventive services were so welcome. After all, virtually every woman of childbearing age practices some sort of contraception at some point.
Requiring coverage of FDA-approved contraceptives like birth control pills, implants and IUDs and other necessary preventive services would seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, when it comes to health care in America today, nothing is ever that simple.
Following the HHS announcement, some groups have objected to the contraception requirement on religious grounds. They want a wide range of employers to get a special exception so they can deny their employees birth control coverage. The HHS guidelines already propose to exempt churches, synagogues and other exclusively sectarian institutions. But critics of the policy say that’s not enough.
These groups want special exceptions to allow any religiously affiliated institution, including hospitals that employ people of all faiths, to deny its employees insurance for birth control. If the critics had their way, the HHS guidelines would be meaningless for hundreds of thousands of women, who would lose the ability to determine which health services are best for them and their families and instead could be beholden to the religious beliefs of their employers.
Consider that Catholic hospitals alone employ over half a million people. The effects of broadening the exception would be sweeping.
While everyone is free to make personal decisions regarding whether and when to use birth control, it is wrong for employers to force this decision on their employees by denying them access to essential health services.
This isn’t the first time that religious groups have tried to impose their views on health policy. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops tried to have contraception excluded from the guidelines altogether, denying these benefits to all women. Currently, the bishops are pushing an even more extreme measure that could allow employers to refuse to provide coverage for any service they oppose, leaving health care coverage for thousands of people of all belief systems to the influence of one particular faith.
This is completely contrary to our values of both personal and religious freedom.
Women need, demand and utilize contraceptive services. This is the reality of women’s health, and has been acknowledged and affirmed by the medical community and now by HHS. Those who oppose family planning cannot be permitted to allow their ideology to dictate others’ health care. To do otherwise would mark a dismaying retreat from rationality in women’s health policy.
(Originally posted on McClatchy.com.)
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Justice Is Served
07 months ago
June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world’s largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.
Today is an exciting day for the ACLU and criminal justice advocates around the country. Following much thought and careful deliberation, the United States Sentencing Commission took another step toward creating fairness in federal sentencing by retroactively applying the new Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. This decision will help ensure that over 12,000 people — 85 percent of whom are African-Americans — will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.
This decision is particularly important to me because, as director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, I have advocated for Congress and the sentencing commission to reform federal crack cocaine laws for almost 20 years. In 1993, the ACLU lead the coalition that convened the first national symposium highlighting the crack cocaine disparity entitled "The 100 to 1 Ratio: Racial Bias in Cocaine Laws." Now, 25 years after the first crack cocaine law was enacted in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the sentencing commission has taken another step toward ending the racial and sentencing disparities that continue to exist in our criminal justice system.
By voting in favor of retroactivity, I am pleased that the commission chose justice over demagoguery and concluded that retroactivity was necessary to ensuring that the goals of the FSA were fully realized. It is important to remember that even with today’s commission vote not every crack cocaine offender will have his her sentence reduced. Judges are still required to determine whether a person qualifies for a retroactive reduction so, contrary to what some have said, this is not a "get out of jail free card."
While we celebrate the sentencing commission’s decision, we must not lose sight of our ultimate goals — removing all disparities between crack and powder cocaine sentencing and ending the misguided, ineffective and harmful war on drugs that continues essentially unabated. The FSA and its retroactive application are extremely important steps in a national ACLU campaign to combat mass incarceration in this country. We hope this is just one of many victories to come in our crusade to break the addiction to incarceration in this country.
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Loving in Black and White
07 months ago
This month, a civil rights milestone — the 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in the ACLU case, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state bans on interracial marriage — will be heralded in a new documentary that will have an exclusive congressional screening. The Loving Story superbly chronicles the story of Mildred and Richard Lovings’ courageous fight and the Supreme Court decision that bears their name.
While for most Americans, Loving v. Virginia is just another distant civil rights event in America’s long civil and human rights journey, for me, the opposite is true. This case was one that not only changed the landscape of American culture; it has also touched me personally. As a black woman married to a white man and in my work at the ACLU, I am an advocate for the imperfect institution of marriage for everyone, including gay and lesbian couples.
To put this all in context, imagine that you are sitting next to me on the floor of the Murphy family living room in 1963, watching Leave it to Beaver on a black and white television set in a middle-class black home in a segregated neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. I had a school-girl crush on Wally, the oldest son in the TV series. Unlike my three older brothers, Wally was patient, reasonable and rational. He was also white.
I was taught that my crush was wrong on at least two counts. First, after confessing my crush to my mother, I was told that I was too young to like boys. Second, my parents said that I could go to jail if I married a white man. (That just made my heart sink, as, clearly, I did not want to go to jail.) I can now see that my parents were not being mean; they were just being accurate. In fact, at the time of the Loving decision, 16 states still had bans against interracial marriage.
Unbeknownst to the grade-school me, some couples — like Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple behind the Supreme Court’s landmark decision and real-life heroes of The Loving Story — were rebelling against what they felt was an unjust law.
Mildred was black and Richard was white, and after they were legally married in the District of Columbia, the state of Virginia prosecuted them under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. They were told to either accept a one-year jail sentence leave the state of Virginia for 25 years. Then-attorney general Robert F. Kennedy referred the couple to the ACLU and with the ACLU’s representation, the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court, and in 1967, the Court’s unanimous decision struck down all remaining state bans on interracial marriage. It took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to officially amend their states’ constitutions to remove language prohibiting miscegenation.
Fast forward from 1963 to 2003, 40 years after I was first told that interracial love was wrong, I found myself engaged to Bill, a wonderful guy who also happens to be white and who was able to merge seamlessly into my African-American family. Real-life experience convinced me that separating people based on the unscientific notion of race is indefensible and that love has no boundaries. In 2003, shortly after my father had passed away, the only thing I feared was that my mother would object. Instead, she said, “If you don’t marry Bill, I will!” A true revolution in my lifetime.
My story ends well; but sadly, many still struggle to marry the person they love. The changes brought about by the Loving v. Virginia decision still have not been fully realized and the protections and benefits of marriage are privileges given only to some.
To celebrate the anniversary of the Loving decision and to recognize the steps we have yet to take, the Loving documentary will have an exclusive screening on Capitol Hill on June 13. Quite fittingly, it will be co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The film uses rare archival footage, home movies, photographs, interviews with family, friends and other witnesses and poetic visual and narrative sequences to build a complex portrait of the couple at the heart of marriage equality in the United States. The film is currently screening at festivals across the nation and will have its national television premiere in early 2012 on HBO.
June 12 should be civil rights holiday, a great day for Americans, a great day for love, and a valentine to the Lovings. But the work to root out discrimination is not finished, we must make sure that every couple, regardless of sexualientation, has the freedom to publicly declare its commitment to one another through marriage — and that every marriage is recognized and respected by the federal government. It’s up to us now.
(Originally posted in CongressBlog.)
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Will Peter King’s Hearing Carry Stigma Like Joseph McCarthy’s?
011 months ago
(Originally posted on Politico.com)
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) is due to hold a hearing Thursday about the “radicalization” of U.S. Muslims and whether they are sufficiently cooperative with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.
This may be the first of a series on this subject. But holding a hearing based on a flawed radicalization theory that conflates religious practices with preparation for terrorism and focuses exclusively on Muslim-Americans is misguided, discriminatory and counterproductive.
King’s hearings in essence question the Muslim community’s loyalty to the United States. This calls to mind the McCarthy hearings — an unfortunate, and widely condemned, exercise in guilt by association.
The message behind the King hearings also undermines basic First Amendment freedoms. It is unlikely to keep us safe and may well be regretted as a dark moment in our nation’s history.
These hearings stand for the proposition that all Muslims are a threat because of the actions of a few. That is wrong. When a tax protester flies a plane into an Internal Revenue Service building, our government does not then cast an investigatory blanket over all who oppose taxes. When a few religious anti-abortion advocates bomb a women’s health clinic, the FBI does not, and should not, hold hearings about why churches are not more cooperative with law enforcement.
Such actions would rightly be considered ludicrous and discriminatory. Similarly, government must not put the spotlight on the entire U.S. Muslim community.
It is a core American value that we treat our citizens as individuals and do not target them by religion, race or beliefs. Considering an entire community as suspect because of the bad acts of a few is not only unfair; it can lead to greater misunderstanding and discrimination — as history has poignantly shown.
In addition, it can serve to further divide our communities, turning neighbor against neighbor.
King suggests that Muslims’ cooperation in national security efforts must be measured by their willingness to provide information to law enforcement. Americans may share a civic and social commitment to warn law enforcement of a threat, but it is wrong to compel a religious community to prove its loyalty by spying on its members’ views.
Time and again, law enforcement has been successful in preventing terrorist plots over the past few years by using facts and evidence. It does not aid counterterrorism efforts to stigmatize an entire community as “suspect.” It may only undermine the crucial bonds between communities and the government.
Law enforcement officials across the spectrum — including Attorney General Eric Holder and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who will be testifying at the hearing — have lauded the American Muslim community for its role in helping to prevent anti-government and terrorism plots. Many meet regularly with law enforcement and homeland security officials, formally and informally. Muslims in the U.S., and around the world, have clearly and repeatedly denounced extremist violence of all kinds.
Terrorism itself is does not stem from one religion, one ethnicity or one set of beliefs. Recent tragic incidents, including the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) by a gunman in Arizona, show that threats of violence can come from many sources.
Focusing on violent acts and those that conspire to commit them rather than on beliefs shared by thousands of people, who never engage in any illegal or violent activities, would be a more sensible approach in maintaining American values.
Treating all Muslims like suspects is also a waste of law enforcement resources. The most effective means for the government to address security threats is by focusing on real threats of violence or on violent behavior — rather than an ideology.
Congress can and should study terrorism and the threat it poses to our country. Our elected officials have the right to express their views. But official investigations must not trample on Americans’ constitutional rights.
King should be using a fact-based analysis to provide a clearer perspective of the threats facing our country, not belief systems, the expression of dissent or unsubstantiated theories of radicalization.
Thoughts on Speech After the Arizona Tragedy
01 year ago
The events of last weekend are tragic in so many ways, on so many different levels. The ACLU grieves deeply with the rest of the nation for all who were killed or injured in this senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others, and we wish a full recovery for all the wounded who are still struggling. There is no place for such violence in our democracy.
As Director of the Washington Legislative Office, I am struck by this tragedy in some very particular ways. As a lobbyist who loves working with Congress, I feel a personal connection to the helpless, angry and fearful feelings many members and their staffs are now experiencing. They work very hard to get heard by their constituents and sometimes tolerate a great deal of vulnerability and anxiety to engage in the passionate debates that are essential to our vibrant democracy.
At the same time, the ACLU has another concern — that in the midst of an emotional response to this horrific event, Congress, reasonably concerned about the heated and sometimes violent rhetoric in recent politics, might instinctively react by seeking to enact legislation, as some have proposed, that chips away at our fundamental speech rights. Doing so would only compound the tragedy already besetting the nation.
Unfortunately, some of the legislation reportedly being considered for introduction seeks to criminalize types of expression that are protected by the First Amendment. While these efforts are likely well-intentioned, they could in fact be unconstitutional and have the effect of chilling lawful political speech that is so critical to our free society. Congress should not take that path. Our government already has more than enough authority to investigate and prosecute threats of violence or incitements to criminal behavior.
As a former Capitol Hill staffer and legislative assistant to late Rep. Parren Mitchell and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, I helped organize “meet and greets,” town hall meetings and open houses in some of the roughest sections of Baltimore, Maryland, and Brooklyn, New York, and I know the drill. You worry about whether the event is well-planned, whether the member of Congress will arrive on time, and whether he or she has been fully briefed on all the relevant issues. You wonder how many people will show up, and if the venue is too small or too big. And sometimes, especially in heated political environments, you think about whether the crowd will be rancorous and whether things might get out of control.
I was doing this work in the late 70’s, in the aftermath of major civil rights riots and upheavals. Americans were angry and scared about the direction of the nation for all different reasons, and emerging women’s and civil rights legislation was at the forefront. It was not uncommon for public officials to get hate mail and death threats. Today, too, people are angry and scared for a whole host of reasons — the economy, immigration, war, terrorism and health care, to name just a handful. Just last spring during the health care debates, members of Congress were jeered and spat upon on their way to cast votes on health care reform legislation. At that time, the ACLU met with Capitol Hill police about the importance of safeguarding free speech while prosecuting illegal actions. Given the very real security issues, leaders like Rep. Giffords and her staff demonstrate a lot of courage when they routinely plunge into the fray in the fine tradition of maintaining direct contact with constituents.
The motive for the Arizona shooting is still not known and might never be known. But regardless of the cause, many opinion leaders, activists, elected officials and everyday citizens are now engaging in a serious conversation about the repercussions of speech that calls for violence or uses violent metaphors. That conversation must include — as it fortunately has — the need to defend constitutionally protected speech. Mild speech is easy to ignore, but it is in the hard cases that our adherence to the First Amendment is most important.
With all this in mind, it is important to remember that while the First Amendment carefully guards our liberty to speak freely except in the most circumscribed situations, it is not a barrier to effective law enforcement against those reasonably believed to be involved in unlawful activity. The ACLU has engaged with Congress in the past to advise its members on ways they can protect the First Amendment while protecting themselves. We have done so again today by sending a memo on the topic to Congress.
In times like these, it is natural to look for ways to quell our horror and fear. But it is when people feel most vulnerable that our liberties are most at risk. Unraveling the principles that form the core of our democracy is not the answer.
On The Cusp of History
01 year ago
(Originally published on the Huffington Post.)
Anyone who works on reforming the criminal justice system can attest to the fact that such efforts often take years of commitment and dedication before bearing fruit. We are currently at just such a moment, as Congress is one final step away from passing major, if less than perfect, reform of one of the most deeply flawed aspects of a broken and dysfunctional criminal justice system – the 100 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine.
Anyone who works on reforming the criminal justice system can attest to the fact that such efforts often take years of commitment and dedication before bearing fruit. We are currently at just such a moment, as Congress is one final step away from passing major, if less than perfect, reform of one of the most deeply flawed aspects of a broken and dysfunctional criminal justice system – the 100 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine.More than 23 years ago, at the height of public hysteria over the effects of crack cocaine and based on myths that have since been entirely debunked, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed into law, legislation that established the infamous 100 to 1 disparity. Possessing or dealing five grams of crack cocaine – the weight of two pennies – currently results in the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine. Seventeen years ago, Nkechi Taifa and I, through the ACLU Washington Office, convened the first national conference on the crack/powder disparity bringing together scientists, defense attorneys, affected families, criminologists, members of Congress and civil rights groups. It was at that conference we were finally able to persuade key leaders that this issue was not just a criminal justice reform issue, but it was also civil rights, civil liberties and human rights crisis that greatly contributed to record setting rates of incarceration in the United States.
In the two decades that followed, the disparity has resulted in gross racial inequality in the African-American community and contributed to disproportionately severe sentences and prison overcrowding because low-level, often first time, nonviolent drug users were getting hard time instead of drug treatment. This diversion of government resources could have been used for far more effective prevention and treatment programs that would not have destroyed families in the process.
In March, the US Senate passed, by unanimous consent no less (meaning not one senator objected), long-overdue legislation to help reform the infamous crack sentencing disparity. The Fair Sentencing Act (S. 1789) would vastly reduce the disparity to a ratio of 18 to 1, as well as eliminate the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack. Just think about that for a second – five years for the weight of two pennies worth of crack. Is it any wonder the US has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading incarcerator?
It is important to point out that maintaining an 18 to 1 disparity is not at all based on science showing differences between crack and powder cocaine (they are literally different forms of the exact same drug), but was instead a compromise reached to secure broad-based support from members of both political parties. This painful compromise helped to ensure that senators would not have to cast a politically difficult vote in a highly contentious election year.
The ACLU has remained steadfast in our commitment to eliminating the disparity completely. It has always been the single truly just remedy. However, now that the Senate has acted to pass a reform bill that falls short of our ideal, we must confront the reality that it will nonetheless make important improvements in the lives of many people who would have otherwise been locked away for years, or decades, on end.
The Fair Sentencing Act is currently awaiting a final vote on the House floor before being sent to President Obama for his signature. Never before have advocates for crack cocaine sentencing reform been so close to the finish line – a struggle I have been engaged in since 1993.
Thankfully, it has not been a struggle the ACLU has been engaged in alone. Among the broad and ideologically diverse coalition of organizations currently pressing for reform of the sentencing disparity includes the NAACP; Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; American Bar Association; the National District Attorneys Association; Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association; National Association of Evangelicals; Prison Fellowship; the International Union of Police Associations; and dozens of former federal prosecutors and judges.
The House could vote any day now on the Fair Sentencing Act. I am very hopeful that it will successfully pass this final legislative hurdle before bringing some much needed justice to an aspect of our criminal justice system that has been sorely lacking in just that for far too long now.
We are indeed on the cusp of history. Please join with the ACLU in urging the House of Representatives to pass this much needed reform of our sentencing laws. It’s time to hold the final vote on the Fair Sentencing Act (S. 1789)!
The New Jim Crow
01 year ago
(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)
By now, most everyone has heard about Arizona’s new law requiring police to demand to see documentation from anyone they stop whom they suspect is in the country illegally. What this really means is that people in Arizona will be forced to "show their papers" simply for looking or sounding "foreign." These draconian police tactics are more than just offensive and discriminatory — they’re unconstitutional. The law will result in harassment based on race, appearance, and language, carrying an echo of the Jim Crow South. America has fought too hard against racially divisive policies to allow this law to go forward.
The American Civil Liberties Union plans to challenge the constitutionality of the law in court, believing it is state-sanctioned racial profiling. The law will only make the rampant racial profiling of Latinos in Arizona worse than ever.
We are hardly the only group to raise concerns about the situation in Arizona — nor will we be the last. But in all the controversy and outrage over the political implications of this law, it’s important to remember the human toll that it will have on real people every day who will be its victims.
The racial profiling sure to result from the Arizona law will mean that people — citizens and noncitizens alike — will be harassed and discriminated against as they simply try to live their lives and take care of their families. People will be wrongfully detained and deported. And as we have seen with other local law enforcement of immigration laws, once someone is caught up in the web of law enforcement, it’s hard to find one’s way out — even if someone is in the country legally. Families sometimes never find out what has become of their loved ones, and those who are detained often are quickly forced or pressured to leave the U.S. Whether they are 85 or 13, they can be jailed for days, weeks, months, sometimes years, put on a prison bus and dropped off across the border. This is not how we should treat human beings.
The Arizona law will also alienate law enforcement from the communities they serve, eroding the trust necessary for police to keep neighborhoods safe. It will discourage people from turning to the police when they need to, even to report crimes. It will undermine public safety by diverting scarce security resources away from legitimate law enforcement and focus them on false threats from people who look or sound "suspicious." It will lead to mass incarceration, racial profiling and deportations. The ACLU has heard too many stories of brown-skinned U.S. citizens and legal residents who have been locked up for months or illegally deported for no valid reason.
Once we get past all the political controversy, what we are looking at is a human tragedy. This is not what America’s about, and we must do better.