Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.

We spend the hour with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, talking about the biggest leak in US history: the release of more than 91,000 classified military records on the war in Afghanistan. As the Pentagon announces it is launching a criminal probe into who leaked the documents, Assange asks what about investigating the "war crimes" revealed in the leaked military records? He also talks about the media, why he isn’t coming to the US anytime soon, and what gives him hope. "What keeps us going is our sources. These are the people, presumably, who are inside these organizations, who want change," Assange says. "They are both heroic figures taking much greater risks than I ever do, and they are pushing and showing that they want change in, in fact, an extremely effective way." [includes rush transcript]

Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.

• House Votes to Fund Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Audit: Pentagon Can’t Account for 95% of $9B of Iraq Reconstruction Funds
• BP Seeks $10 Billion Tax Break to Cover Spill Expenses
• 800,000 Gallons of Oil Spill in Michigan
• Major Protests Planned in Arizona over Anti-Immigrant Bill
• Nebraska City Suspends Anti-Immigrant Housing Bill
• NYC to Pay $7M Settlement in Sean Bell Shooting Case
• British PM: Gaza Is a “Prison Camp”
• US Backs More AU Troops in Somalia
• Hans Blix: US Refused to Accept Findings of UN Inspectors in Iraq
• Colombia Journalist to Be Allowed Entry into US
• Four Mexican Journalists Kidnapped
• Republicans Block Campaign Finance Law
• Massachusetts Legislature OKs Plan to Bypass Electoral College
• Groups: FBI Surveillance Program Invites Racial Profiling

Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.

• House Votes to Fund Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Audit: Pentagon Can’t Account for 95% of $9B of Iraq Reconstruction Funds
• BP Seeks $10 Billion Tax Break to Cover Spill Expenses
• 800,000 Gallons of Oil Spill in Michigan
• Major Protests Planned in Arizona over Anti-Immigrant Bill
• Nebraska City Suspends Anti-Immigrant Housing Bill
• NYC to Pay $7M Settlement in Sean Bell Shooting Case
• British PM: Gaza Is a “Prison Camp”
• US Backs More AU Troops in Somalia
• Hans Blix: US Refused to Accept Findings of UN Inspectors in Iraq
• Colombia Journalist to Be Allowed Entry into US
• Four Mexican Journalists Kidnapped
• Republicans Block Campaign Finance Law
• Massachusetts Legislature OKs Plan to Bypass Electoral College
• Groups: FBI Surveillance Program Invites Racial Profiling

The ACLU’s three California affiliates last week all officially endorsed Proposition 19, an initiative on the state’s November ballot that would allow adults age 21 and over to possess and grow small amounts of their own marijuana for personal use, and would allow cities and counties to regulate and tax commercial sales. Unless individual cities and counties enact local regulatory structures, the sale of marijuana would remain illegal under state law. The endorsements are an affirmation that Prop. 19’s passage would go great lengths toward dismantling one of the defining injustices of our nation’s “war on drugs”: across the country, people of color, particularly youth of color, are disproportionately arrested for low level marijuana possession. This reality has resulted in widespread harassment of and distrust among communities of color of law enforcement, as well as diversion of critical court and law enforcement resources that could otherwise be used to solve violent crimes.

Indeed, California voters grappling with Proposition 19 face a decision that extends well beyond the simple question of whether to legalize marijuana. In light of the disproportionate arrests of people of color for marijuana possession, many are seeing Prop 19 as a racial justice issue. If passed, Prop 19 would eliminate a significant source of racially-biased policing while redirecting resources to law enforcement to solve violent crimes.

A Drug Policy Alliance study published last month shows with clear statistical evidence just how nefarious the disproportionate arrests of people of color for marijuana possession are. Nationally, whites have been found to use marijuana at far greater rates than either blacks or Hispanics. Yet in the 25 largest counties in California, for example, blacks are usually arrested for marijuana charges at double, triple or quadruple the rate at which whites are arrested. In Los Angeles County alone, with a population of 10 million, blacks are arrested for marijuana charges at a rate 332 percent higher then the arrest rate for whites. Blacks make up 10 percent of the population of Los Angeles County, but comprise 30 percent of those arrested for marijuana possession

Conditions are the same in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s problematic policies criminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer last week compared two disparate regions of New York City, the Upper East Side and Brownsville in Brooklyn, and reports a huge gap between the frequency of marijuana related arrests in each location. For the years 2007, 2008 and 2009, 20 people for every 100,000 were arrested on the Upper East Side in comparison with the rate of 3,109 for every 100,000 in Brownsville. Additionally, almost nine out of 10 people arrested were black or Latino. In a report on marijuana related police policies in New York City by Harry G. Levine and Deborah Peterson Small, it is shown that between the years of 1997 and 2007, Hispanics were arrested for marijuana charges at a rate three times higher than whites, and blacks were arrested at a rate five times higher. 

In other cities all across the country, from Atlanta to Indianapolis, and from San Francisco to Buffalo, people of color are arrested for marijuana possession at rates as high as 10 times greater than whites.

Though marijuana arrests alone do not typically result in extensive jail sentences, once someone is entangled in the criminal justice system, it is likely that he or she will have additional encounters with the law. Once a drug charge appears on a background check, one’s professional, educational and housing opportunities are severely limited. By targeting Black and Hispanic communities, and specifically young men, this law enforcement strategy helps funnel youth of color into the criminal justice system at shockingly high rates.

The passing of Proposition 19, which has also been endorsed by former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, the California NAACP, labor unions and law enforcement officials from around the state, would be a major victory for California. But it would also send a clear signal across the country that taxing and regulating marijuana is a smarter drug policy than disproportionately arresting people of color and diverting scarce law enforcement resources away from violent crimes.

On August 6, 2009, DHS Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton announced plans for sweeping reforms of the immigration detention system. 

On the occasion of the fast-approaching one year anniversary of the announcement of major detention reforms at ICE, the agency and detention advocates have an opportunity to reflect on the progress to date.  Although there have been some accomplishments on detention reform, there is a long way to go before the system can be characterized as civil and humane.  (ICE lists its own perspective on its achievements here.)

One aspect of the promised reforms launched last week: ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System. 

For years, many immigrants taken into ICE detention have been whisked off and effectively disappeared, as family and attorneys struggled to find them in the maze of ICE’s vast detention system.  With the Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), anyone can search for a detainee by name and country of birth, or Alien Registration Number and country of birth.  The locator will report whether the detainee is currently in ICE custody or not, and provides information about what facility the detainee is in.  If an individual has been released from ICE custody within the last 60 days, the locator provides the telephone number for the ICE field office with jurisdiction over the former detainee. 

The ODLS should result in significant improvements in detention management and transparency for the agency.  Given the huge proportion of detainees that are transferred between facilities, often multiple times, during their detention, advocates hope that the ODLS will greatly reduce the previously widespread problems of detainees functionally vanishing, leaving families desperate to know what has happened to their loved ones, and frustrating attorneys with hours of dead-end phone calls trying to locate their clients.  There are limits to the locator system.  One, for those searching by name, the spelling of the detainee’s name must exactly match ICE’s detention records, down to the hyphens.  Hopefully, searchers will keep guessing alternative spellings if they don’t have a hit on the first try.  Secondly, ICE’s track record on the accuracy of detainee information has not instilled faith in the ability of the agency to keep track of all their detainees.  Third, the ODLS is inaccessible to anyone who lacks computer and internet access; there is no telephonic option.

Unfortunately, more people than ever before have a need to use the ODLS to locate a member of their family or community.  The Obama administration is detaining and deporting immigrants in greater numbers than ever before.  For the hundreds of thousands detained and deported in just the last two years, the ODLS comes too late to have helped their families find them in detention or try to find them a lawyer.  

A major problem with the detention system that has yet to be addressed is the incarceration of mentally disabled detainees.  Many of these individuals are held by ICE in unsafe conditions, while their cases are indefinitely continued because they are unprepared to represent themselves in immigration court.  As part of a large study on people with mental disabilities in the immigration system, Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed over 100 mentally impaired detainees, several of whom had been in detention for more than a year, although 2/3 of HRW’s interviewees did not even know when they had entered ICE detention.  Detainees with mental illness or cognitive disabilities, an estimated 15% of the entire detained population, often end up in segregation, the agency’s term for solitary confinement, as a result of their disability.

ICE recently directed its personnel against detaining individuals with medical or mental illness in some instances.   A June 30, 2010 ICE memo on civil immigration enforcement priorities stated that ICE field office directors should not “expend detention resources on aliens who are known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness, or who are disabled, elderly, pregnant, or nursing, or demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm person, or whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest.”  It’s too soon to see what results this memo can bring.  We hope that de-prioritizing the confinement of nursing mothers and seriously ill immigrants will be an easily obtainable outcome.  It is long overdue.

Image by Flickr user 710928003.

On August 6, 2009, DHS Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton announced plans for sweeping reforms of the immigration detention system. 

On the occasion of the fast-approaching one year anniversary of the announcement of major detention reforms at ICE, the agency and detention advocates have an opportunity to reflect on the progress to date.  Although there have been some accomplishments on detention reform, there is a long way to go before the system can be characterized as civil and humane.  (ICE lists its own perspective on its achievements here.)

One aspect of the promised reforms launched last week: ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System. 

For years, many immigrants taken into ICE detention have been whisked off and effectively disappeared, as family and attorneys struggled to find them in the maze of ICE’s vast detention system.  With the Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), anyone can search for a detainee by name and country of birth, or Alien Registration Number and country of birth.  The locator will report whether the detainee is currently in ICE custody or not, and provides information about what facility the detainee is in.  If an individual has been released from ICE custody within the last 60 days, the locator provides the telephone number for the ICE field office with jurisdiction over the former detainee. 

The ODLS should result in significant improvements in detention management and transparency for the agency.  Given the huge proportion of detainees that are transferred between facilities, often multiple times, during their detention, advocates hope that the ODLS will greatly reduce the previously widespread problems of detainees functionally vanishing, leaving families desperate to know what has happened to their loved ones, and frustrating attorneys with hours of dead-end phone calls trying to locate their clients.  There are limits to the locator system.  One, for those searching by name, the spelling of the detainee’s name must exactly match ICE’s detention records.  ICE might not have entered the name correctly, especially in cases where a detainee has two last names that may or may not be hyphenated.  Hopefully, searchers will keep guessing alternative spellings if they don’t have a hit on the first try.  Secondly, ICE’s track record on the accuracy of detainee information has not instilled faith in the ability of the agency to keep track of all their detainees.  Third, the ODLS is inaccessible to anyone who lacks computer and internet access; there is no telephonic option.

Unfortunately, more people than ever before have a need to use the ODLS to locate a member of their family or community.  The Obama administration is detaining and deporting immigrants in greater numbers than ever before.  For the hundreds of thousands detained and deported in just the last two years, the ODLS comes too late to have helped their families find them in detention or try to find them a lawyer.  

A major problem with the detention system that has yet to be addressed is the incarceration of mentally disabled detainees.  Many of these individuals are held by ICE in unsafe conditions, while their cases are indefinitely continued because they are unprepared to represent themselves in immigration court.  As part of a large study on people with mental disabilities in the immigration system, Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed over 100 mentally impaired detainees, several of whom had been in detention for more than a year, although 2/3 of HRW’s interviewees did not even know when they had entered ICE detention.  Detainees with mental illness or cognitive disabilities, an estimated 15% of the entire detained population, often end up in segregation, the agency’s term for solitary confinement, as a result of their disability.

ICE recently directed its personnel against detaining individuals with medical or mental illness in some instances.   A June 30, 2010 ICE memo on civil immigration enforcement priorities stated that ICE field office directors should not “expend detention resources on aliens who are known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness, or who are disabled, elderly, pregnant, or nursing, or demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm person, or whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest.”  It’s too soon to see what results this memo can bring.  We hope that de-prioritizing the confinement of nursing mothers and seriously ill immigrants will be an easily obtainable outcome.  It is long overdue.

Image by Flickr user 710928003.

(Originally posted on RHRealityCheck.)

I got married at the beginning of July. The church, the flowers, the family, the cake and champagne, the whole deal. Why, you ask, am I now planning to spend 2 straight weeks on the road in Illinois traveling with someone other than my new spouse? Why am I leaving the love of my life at home in Chicago to eat food from truck stops, sleep in unfamiliar beds and talk to strangers?

Two reasons: corn dogs and Chlamydia.

The corn dogs should be obvious. Springfield, Illinois, in addition to being our state’s capitol, is home to the Cozy Dog Drive Inn – the birth place of the corn dog. I am a huge fan of corn dogs; delicious and portable, they are nature’s perfect food. And the highways and byways of Illinois are one of the best places to find them in their native habitat.

Chlamydia is a different matter. In 2007, Illinois had more than 55 thousand cases of Chlamydia – at a rate nearly double the national average. Moreover, those cases were disproportionately in adolescents and young adults. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, 34% of cases were in youths ages 15-19 and 36 in young people ages 20-24.

Those statistics ought to make Illinois lawmakers stand up and take notice. According to SEICUS, in that same year, “The [Illinois] Department of Human Services and community-based organizations in Illinois received approximately $8,815,804 in federal funds for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs…” Since 1998, rates of Chlamydia have risen every year in Illinois. From 32,861 reported cases in 1998 to 55,470 in 2007. During those same years, Illinois has spent tens of millions of dollars on failed abstinence-only education programs that don’t prevent the spread of disease or unwanted teen pregnancies and don’t equip our youth to make healthy decisions and protect themselves.

Even if a young person manages to receive medically-accurate sexual health information, there’s no guarantee that they can access the reproductive health care services they need throughout their lives. Women in Illinois, especially outside of the Chicago area, can face enormous barriers to getting reproductive health services. They may have to travel great distances to find a pharmacy which will fill their birth control prescription. They may find that their local doctor or hospital will no longer provide abortions or emergency contraception because they’ve merged with a religious hospital network. They may have to pay out of increasingly empty pockets because Medicaid doesn’t adequately cover the reproductive health services that they need.

We’re going on the road to talk to the men and women who face these challenges in accessing or providing reproductive health services and information. We’re trying to put a human face on those challenges so that they cannot be ignored by the media or the state legislature.   We’re trying to make the case for why Illinois so desperately needs comprehensive reform of laws regarding reproductive health and access. That’s why I am delighted to spend the next two weeks on the road in Illinois.

That, plus the corn dogs.

The ACLU of Illinois is embarking on a project to put a human face on the status of reproductive health and access to care in Illinois. Over 10 days in July and August, we will be traveling the state, listening to women, men, young people and doctors throughout Illinois as they share stories about the barriers they face in accessing and providing reproductive health care and information. As we travel more than 2000 miles, through 13 Illinois cities and towns, we will learn more about the challenges everyday people face in filling prescriptions for birth control, in finding doctors who will provide needed services, including abortions, in dealing with Medicaid funding or in receiving comprehensive, age-appropriate sexual health education in public schools.

You can follow along at acluroadtrip.org or on twitter and facebook.

Do you have a story to tell? We’re listening. Email us at stories@aclu-il.org or visit action.aclu.org/rhstories.