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NYCLU: Rockefeller Drug Laws Cause Racial Disparities, Huge Taxpayer Burden

skemmis — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:59:48 -0700

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At a legislative hearing held today in Manhattan, the New York Civil Liberties Union presented testimony illustrating the stark racial disparities and enormous financial burden generated by the Rockefeller Drug Laws in New York City.

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May 8, 2008

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Robert Perry, the NYCLU’s legislative director, testified at the joint hearing of the State Assembly’s standing committees on codes, judiciary, correction, health, alcoholism and drug abuse, and social services.

“We urge you, as legislative leaders, to advance the critique of a sentencing structure that ties the hands of judges, grants prosecutors enormous and essentially unreviewable powers, and results in the routine miscarriage of justice,” Perry said.

Click here to see full-size map.

Using maps created by the NYCLU and Justice Mapping Center, Perry showed legislators that 25 percent of adults sent to prison from the city come from areas, black and Latino communities, with only 4 percent of the city’s adult population. More than half are incarcerated on drug offenses and 97 percent are black or Latino.

A second map showed that state taxpayers will spend more than $1.1 billion to imprison New York City residents convicted of drug offenses in 2006 over the course of their prison terms. Drug offenses will account for more than 40 percent of prison costs for all city residents sent to prison that year.

“The Rockefeller Drug Laws are unjust, inhumane and ineffective,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman, who did not testify. “Our lawmakers can end this chronic injustice. They must muster the courage to restore judicial discretion to drug sentencing and explore alternatives to incarceration that treat non-violent drug offenders instead of locking them away for years.”

Enacted in 1973, the Rockefeller Drug Laws mandate extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Supposedly intended to target drug kingpins, most of the people incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses, and many of them have no prior criminal record.

Click here to see full-size map.

Despite modest reforms in 2004 and 2005, the Rockefeller Drug Laws continue to deny people serving under harsh sentences the ability to apply for shorter terms, and restrict the power of judges to place addicts into treatment programs.

The Sentencing Commission, established by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is charged with reforming New York’s convoluted and complex sentencing system. The commission released preliminary report last year that did not include any substantive recommendations for reforming the Rockefeller Drug Laws, despite previous claims that the laws were a top priority.

NYCLU Sues City, NYPD on Behalf of New York Post Reporter Subjected to Racial Profiling

jcarnig — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:08:21 -0700

Feature Spot Summary

<table align = "right"> <tr><td> <object width="300" align = "right"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l7qp5WEHua4&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l7qp5WEHua4&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" ></embed></object> </tr></td> <tr><td height = "50"> </tr></td> </table> The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of a New York Post crime reporter who was the victim of racial profiling by NYPD officers. The reporter, Leonardo Blair – a Jamaican-born black man – was stopped, arrested and jailed without justification in November while walking from his car to his aunt’s home in the Bronx. The lawsuit maintains that Blair’s constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments were violated and names the City of New York, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and NYPD officers William Castillo and Eric Reynolds as defendants.

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May 7, 2008

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The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of a New York Post crime reporter who was the victim of racial profiling by NYPD officers.

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The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of a New York Post crime reporter who was the victim of racial profiling by NYPD officers.

The reporter, Leonardo Blair – a Jamaican-born black man – was stopped, arrested and jailed without justification in November while walking from his car to his aunt’s home in the Bronx. The lawsuit maintains that Blair’s constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments were violated and names the City of New York, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and NYPD officers William Castillo and Eric Reynolds as defendants.

“Leo Blair was handcuffed and hauled to a precinct house for simply walking down the street,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “Walking while black is not a crime, and yet every year hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers are stopped, searched and interrogated by the police for doing just that. For justice in our city to be truly just, the NYPD needs to start treating all New Yorkers fairly, regardless of the color of their skin.”

According to data released earlier this week, New York City police officers stopped more people on the streets during the first three months of 2008 than during any quarter in the six years the Department has reported the data.

In 2007, the NYPD stopped about 469,000 New Yorkers – almost 1,300 people every day. Eighty-eight percent were completely innocent. Though they make up only a quarter of the City’s population, more than half of those stopped were black. Another 30 percent were Latino. Though whites make up more than 35 percent of New York City’s population, they were only 11 percent of those stopped. In 2006 and 2007, blacks and Latinos were the target of about 90 percent of the nearly one million stop-and-frisk encounters.

The suit also challenges the legality of a database the NYPD maintains with the names and addresses of every person stopped and frisked by the police, even though more than 90 percent of those people, like Blair, have done nothing wrong. That police database likely now has the names and home addresses of over one million law-abiding New Yorkers.

“The NYPD is using its sweeping stop-and-frisk operation to build a massive database of the names and addresses of law-abiding New York City residents, most of are black or Latino,” said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn, lead counsel on the case. “As a result of this, hundreds of thousands if not more than one million New Yorkers who, like Leo Blair, have done nothing wrong now are at risk of becoming the subjects of criminal investigations by virtue of being in the database.”

Blair, 28, immigrated to the United States in 2006 and resides here on an optional practical training visa. He graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in May 2007 and landed a job writing for the Post. At the time of his arrest, he lived with his aunt and uncle in the Bronx.

On Nov. 28, Blair was returning home after visiting his then-fiancé and current wife. He parked his car on Arnow Avenue, and began walking to his family’s house. He returned to the car to make sure he’d locked the door. Upon resuming his walk, he noticed a patrol car following him.

An NYPD office threateningly asked Blair what he was doing. Officer Castillo jumped from the patrol car and confronted Blair on the sidewalk, ordering him to raise his hands in the air. Officer Reynolds exited the patrol car and joined the confrontation.

Though baffled and frightened, Blair cooperated with the officers as they questioned him and searched his bag without reasonable grounds to believe he had committed a crime.

Blair, who had no criminal record, dropped his hands after the officers had completed their search, which upset one of the officers. Blair was handcuffed and pushed into the backseat of the patrol car.

At the 49th precinct, Blair endured hostile and demeaning remarks from police officers while standing in a jail cell (the officers, for example, said they were shocked that though Blair is black, he did not live in “the projects.”) Hoping to end the ordeal, Blair informed the officers that he was a reporter for the Post. Only at that point was he released.

“The only reason why I declared to these officers that I was a reporter for the New York Post, that that I was a graduate of Columbia University, is because I wanted it to end,” Blair said. “I should not have to pull on cards to be respected as an individual.”

Blair was issued two summonses, one alleging he disobeyed a lawful order and the other alleging he made “unreasonable noise.” A judge dismissed both summonses on Feb. 8.

“The NYPD must be held accountable for harassing this hard-working, innocent young man and permanently scarring his record with an unwarranted arrest,” said Christopher Dunn, NYCLU associate legal director. “This systemic racial profiling has to stop.”

The NYCLU is asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment that the defendants violated Blair’s constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. It also is asking that all records of Blair’s arrest, including those entered in the NYPD’s massive stop-and-frisk database, be sealed or expunged.

Also serving as counsel on the case are NYU Civil Rights Clinic students Erin Braatz, Jonathan Herczeg and Jessica Thomas, as well as NYCLU Legal Director Arthur Eisenberg.

New York’s Highest Court Denies Review of Ruling Recognizing Lesbian Couple’s Canadian Marriage

jcarnig — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:32:23 -0700

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Today, New York’s highest court handed down a victory for many gay and lesbian couples throughout the state by letting stand an appellate court’s groundbreaking ruling that recognized same-sex couples’ valid out-of-state marriages.

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May 6, 2008

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“Today's decision represents another step in the ongoing fight for human rights," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Each time a gay or lesbian couple's marriage is recognized, it is a victory for familes and for fairness in New York State."

The case, Martinez v. County of Monroe, was brought by the NYCLU and cooperating attorney Jeffrey Wicks on behalf of Patricia Martinez. Martinez, an employee of Monroe Community College in Rochester, sought health care benefits for her wife whom she married in Canada in 2004. The case was filed in 2005 in State Supreme Court.

In February of this year, an appellate court unanimously affirmed the couple’s marriage – the first appellate court decision in the state and the first known decision in the country to hold that a valid same-sex marriage must be recognized. Monroe County then requested that the state’s highest court review and overrule the Fourth Department’s decision.

With the highest court letting the earlier ruling stand, the appellate court’s decision continues to remain the statewide law in New York with respect to recognition of gay and lesbian couples’ valid out-of-state marriages.

The case raised the issue of whether the longstanding “marriage recognition rule,” which requires New York State to recognize marriages that were solemnized outside the state, applies to gay and lesbian couples’ valid marriages. The court held that it does and that Martinez and Golden’s valid Canadian marriage at issue in the case is entitled to recognition.

“If a marriage is valid in the state or country in which the marriage took place, New York law generally requires the recognition of that marriage,” said Arthur Eisenberg, the NYCLU’s legal director. “This case involved a straightforward application of that principle.”

The decision is consistent with the practices of various state and local entities. The Department of Civil Service, State Comptroller and numerous counties, towns and cities have been recognizing gay and lesbian marriages for years.

Martinez has been a word processing supervisor for Monroe Community College in Rochester since 1994. Her wife, Lisa Golden, was employed as an inventory control specialist and had her own benefits until she lost her benefits in the spring of 2004. The women have been in a long term, committed relationship since 2000. They own a home together, share financial responsibility for their expenses and each other’s needs and have drawn up mutual wills.

“Gay and lesbian couples make the same long term commitments to each other as heterosexual couples,” said Gary Pudup, director of the NYCLU’s Genessee Valley Chapter. “This case highlights the fact that same sex couples are entitled to the same protection under state law.”

NYCLU to Announce Lawsuit Today Over NYPD Racial Profiling

jcarnig — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:43:26 -0700

Feature Spot Summary

The New York Civil Liberties Union will announce a lawsuit at 1 p.m. today on behalf of someone who was the subject of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program. The lawsuit challenges the racially-biased practice as well as the legality of a database the NYPD maintains with the names and addresses of every person stopped and frisked by the police, even though more than 90 percent of those people have done nothing wrong.

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May 7, 2008

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In 2007, the NYPD stopped about 469,000 New Yorkers – almost 1,300 people every day. Though they make up only a quarter of the City’s population, more than half of those stopped were black. Another 30 percent were Latino. Though whites make up more than 35 percent of New York City’s population, they were only 11 percent of those stopped. In 2006 and 2007, blacks and Latinos were the target of about 90 percent of the nearly one million stop-and-frisk encounters.

WHAT:
News conference to announce a lawsuit action against New York City and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly

WHERE:
NYCLU Offices, 125 Broad Street, 19th Fl., New York, NY

WHEN:
Today, May 7, 1 p.m.

WHO:
Donna Lieberman, executive director of New York Civil Liberties Union
Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union
Leonardo Blair, New York Post reporter and the subject of an NYPD stop-and-frisk encounter

Oneida County Board Of Elections Urged To Allow Students To Vote In Their College Community

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:42:23 -0800

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May 26, 2004

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Three New York civil rights groups are asking the Oneida County Board of Elections to change its policy regarding voter registration by students of Hamilton College. The New York Civil Liberties Union ("NYCLU"), the New York Public Interest Research Group ("NYPIRG"), and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law take issue with the County Board's directive “encouraging students to register and vote from their home communities.” The groups say that the County Board's opposition to student registration in the campus community violates settled law and will work to disenfranchise students.

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“Federal court precedent prohibits election officials from denying college students the right to register to vote in the communities where they attend school,” says Arthur Eisenberg, Legal Director of the NYCLU. “Students, like all other voters, must be permitted to vote in the communities in which they have their greatest immediate contacts. For most students, that community is their college town.”

The Oneida County Board of Elections has sent a form letter to college students who have attempted to register to vote where they are attending college. The letter basically tells college students to vote as residents of their parental home. In a letter cosigned by the Brennan Center and NYPIRG, the NYCLU cites three precedents ignored by the Board of Elections.

Local officials cannot deny an applicant the right to register to vote because he or she is a student or resides in a college dormitory.
Elected officials must apply the same standards for determining voting residency to students as it does for non-students.
The “only constitutionally permissible test” for voting residency is one that focuses on the individual’s present intentions; the objective is to determine where the center of the individual’s life is now.

College students carry out the daily activities of their lives in their college towns and often take part-time jobs there as they study, eat and sleep in those communities. These students no longer live in their parental home and most have no intention of returning there. For these students, the appropriate voting residence is in the community where they attend school.

The letter calls on the Oneida Board of Elections to rescind its form letter and to comply with constitutional standards governing the right of college students to vote. “At a time when voter turnout for young people has reached catastrophically low rates, it is critically important that Oneida County remove all legal and administrative barriers to student voting," says Jennifer Weiser, Associate Counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice. "If young people are unable to register the first time they attempt to vote, they are unlikely to participate in our democracy in the future."

“Oneida County can’t have it both ways, welcoming students with open arms because colleges underpin the local economy and then slamming the door to the polling place shut when students want to vote in the communities where they live,” said NYPIRG Senior Staff Counsel Russ Haven. “This is an ultimate ‘dis’ to students and blatantly illegal.”

Click here to read the NYCLU's letter.

NYCLU Analysis of NYPD Reports Reveals Troubling Patterns in Police Shootings, Lack of Diversity in NYPD Leadership

jcarnig — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:09:47 -0700

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May 5, 2008

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The New York Civil Liberties Union today released an analysis of recently obtained NYPD reports that raise serious questions about police shooting practices and about the lack of racial diversity in the NYPD’s leadership. The highlights of the analysis, which was included in testimony delivered today to the City Council this morning, are:

During the last two years the NYPD reported the race of those shot by police, nearly 90 percent of the people shot at by officers were black or Latino. In 1998 the Department stopped reporting the race of civilian targets and started reporting the breed of dogs being shot.
The NYPD command structure remains almost entirely white. At the end of 2002, 85.3 percent of the 735 members of the NYPD at or above the rank of captain were white males, with blacks holding only 3.9 percent of those positions. At the end of 2007, after five years of a large number of retirements and promotions, 84.3 percent of leadership positions were held by white males, with the numbers of blacks actually shrinking to 3.7 percent.
In 77 percent of the incidents where officers fired their weapons at civilians between 1999 and 2006, the officers were the only ones shooting, with officers often shooting at unarmed civilians (like Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo).
In 2006 (the most recent year for which there is information), police officers fired an average of five shots per incident when they were the only ones shooting, which is the highest number for the entire eight years for which these figures have been reported.

The NYCLU’s analysis was delivered this morning at a Public Safety Committee hearing about a bill that would require the NYPD to provide detailed reports about shooting incidents, including the race of civilians shot at by the police. The NYPD opposed the bill.

“These numbers scream out for serious review by the City Council,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “As with the hundreds of thousands of stops and frisks and the hundreds of thousands of marijuana arrests, being black should not make people a target for a police shooting.”

“In the aftermath of the Sean Bell verdict, it is particularly important that there be full disclosure about every aspect of NYPD shootings, including the role that race may be playing,” said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn, who delivered this morning’s testimony. “We are deeply concerned about the figures showing that virtually everyone shot at by the police is black or Latino. Equally troubling is the fact that the NYPD leadership remains almost entirely white, with only a tiny number of black supervisors. The NYPD will never shake concerns about racial insensitivity unless it becomes more diverse at the top.”

NYC Marijuana Possession Arrests Skyrocket, Illustrate NYPD Racial Bias, New Report Shows

skemmis — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:57:02 -0700

Feature Spot Summary

The NYPD arrested and jailed nearly 400,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana between 1997 and 2007, a tenfold increase in marijuana arrests over the previous decade and a figure marked by startling racial and gender disparities, according to a report released Tuesday at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

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April 29, 2008

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The report, The Marijuana Arrest Crusade in New York City: Racial Bias in Police Policy 1997-2007, is the first ever in-depth study of misdemeanor marijuana arrests in New York City during the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations.

Researched and written by Prof. Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College, and Deborah Peterson Small, an attorney and advocate for drug policy reform, the report is based upon two years of observations in criminal courts as well as extensive interviews with public defenders; Legal Aid and private attorneys; veteran police officers; current and former prosecutors and judges; and those arrested for possessing marijuana.

“The massive, organized and relentless pursuit of these arrests under two mayors and three police commissioners represents a crusade by law enforcement,” Levine said. “But that term does not capture other important characteristics of these arrests – including the harm they inflict on black and Latino young people and their families.”

Click here to see the full-size graph.

Between 1997 and 2007, police arrested and jailed about 205,000 blacks, 122,000 Latinos and 59,000 whites for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Blacks accounted for about 52 percent of the arrests, though they represented only 26 percent of the city’s population over that time span. Latinos accounted for 31 percent of the arrests but 27 percent of the population. Whites represented only 15 percent of those arrested, despite comprising 35 percent of the population.

Government surveys of high school seniors and young adults 18 to 25 consistently show that young whites use marijuana more often than young blacks and Latinos. The arrests also are heavily skewed by gender. About 91 percent of people arrested were male.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “The NYPD routinely targets young men based on their skin color and where they live. Arresting and jailing thousands for marijuana possession does not create safer streets. It only fosters distrust between the police and community and strips hundreds of thousands of young New Yorkers of their dignity.”

The arrests, which cost taxpayers up to $90 million a year, are indicative of the NYPD’s broken windows approach to law enforcement, in which police focus on minor offenses as a method of reducing crime. This approach, also called quality of life policing, has caused a dramatic spike in stop-and-frisk encounters between police and city residents.

In 2007, the NYPD stopped nearly 469,000 New Yorkers. Eighty-eight percent were found completely innocent of any wrongdoing. The racial disparity in the stop-and-frisk encounters is almost identical to the disparity in marijuana arrests: Though they make up only a quarter of the city’s population, more than half of those stopped were black.

Robin Steinberg, executive director of the Bronx Defenders, said the increase in marijuana arrests is linked to the quality of life initiative and the increase in NYPD stop-and-frisk street interrogations.

“If you work in this community for any length of time, you see it first hand – police randomly stopping and searching kids on the streets,” she said. “It’s no surprise that so many residents feel like they are living in a police state. The people in these neighborhoods are subject to a level of intense policing not found in affluent communities.”

Marijuana arrests do not reduce serious or violent crime. According to a study by two University of Chicago professors, these arrests only take police off the streets and divert them into nonessential police work. What they do succeed in is driving thousands of young men of color into the criminal justice system.

“By targeting black and Latino youth for misdemeanor marijuana arrests, the NYPD is labeling children with criminal records for offenses the law deems a violation, not a crime,” said Small, executive director of Break the Chains, a non-profit organization that advocates for reforms of punitive drug laws. “The consequences of the arrests follow these children for the rest of their lives. It was to avoid these consequences that marijuana possession was decriminalized in the first place. It is particularly perverse that black and Latino youth are being targeted for violating a law that was passed to reduce the likelihood that young people would acquire criminal records for possessing small amounts of marijuana.”

The majority of the nearly 400,000 people arrested for possessing marijuana were not carrying or smoking the drug in public. Most people simply had a small amount of marijuana in their possession, usually concealed in a pocket or backpack. New York State decriminalized marijuana possession in 1977, making it a violation like speeding or driving through a stop light. When police officers coerce or intimidate people into showing marijuana in the open, though, they are able to classify it as a misdemeanor and arrest for it.

“The criminal complaint always charges that they had it in open view,” Steinberg said of her clients in the Bronx. “That is preposterous. It’s obvious that everyone isn’t walking around carrying pot in open view.”

Police did not focus on marijuana arrests from 1977 through 1996, arresting around 30,000 people total in both decades for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana. But police equaled or topped that 10-year arrest total in nine of the next 11 years. In 2007 alone, police made 39,700 arrests for marijuana possession.

The NYPD, rarely shy about touting success, does not promote its record-breaking crackdown on small-time marijuana possession. The report identifies incentives for the NYPD to focus on marijuana arrests. For instance, the arrests provide police officers a relatively safe and easy way to demonstrate productivity, especially in an organization such as the NYPD that heavily relies on statistics to measure effectiveness. Among other benefits, the arrests also help officers accrue overtime pay. Supervisors use marijuana arrests to generate arrest records, facilitate supervision of police activities and show that their officers are productive.

The arrests also succeed in dramatically expanding the NYPD’s vast database of New Yorkers’ personal information. Each marijuana arrest brings a new set of fingerprints and photos into the NYPD’s extensive system.

Three former police chiefs of some of the nation’s largest cities have endorsed the report’s findings. All three of the former chiefs believe marijuana possession arrests are a waste of police resources that do not reduce violent crime.

“Illegal, trivial, meaningless arrests undermine confidence in the justice system and corrupt the enforcers,” said Anthony V. Bouza, a former NYPD commander in the Bronx who was chief of police in Minneapolis from 1980 to 1989. “New York’s marijuana arrests are counterproductive, a classic misapplication of police resources.”

Norm Stamper, Seattle’s police chief from 1994 to 2000, said the enormous spike in marijuana arrests negatively affects both law enforcement and the community.

“I do not believe the two New York City mayors and three police commissioners who have presided over these practices are motivated by personal racism,” Stamp said. “But the effects of these practices are deeply, undeniably discriminatory, as well as damaging to legitimate crime fighting, community relations and police morale.”

George Napper, Atlanta’s chief of police from 1990 to 1997, said the report reveals common policing patterns, including racially skewed stop-and-frisk searches, that are poorly understood by the general public.

“People who care about the fate of American cities and the incarceration of racial minorities should read this fine study,” Napper said. “As a New York City police officer quoted in the report says: ‘Welcome to the real world.’”

Among an extensive list of recommendations, the report urges policymakers to:

Hold public hearings and thoroughly examine the costs, consequences, and racial, gender, age and class disparities of the NYPD’s marijuana arrest practices.
Ensure that law enforcement of marijuana offenses is consistent with the intent of New York State law.
Substantially increase the pay scale of police officers to reduce the need for overtime.
Require the NYPD to provide the City Council and state detailed, accurate and timely data on its arrests, citations and other practices, and make that information public.

Third Annual GVC-NYCLU PSA Film Festival

petercascio — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:40:04 -0700

Date and Time: June 8, 2008 / 3:00 Eastern

The First Amendment behind the lens of young people

Sunday June 8, 2008
3-5pm
Little Theater
240 East Avenue
Rochester

Now accepting Public Service Announcements from Monroe County High School and Middle School students. Enter your student's work by May 23, 2008.

Any format accepted: 8mm, DVD, Mini-DV, VHS, etc.

Juried: Critics will pick the top entries.

Judges include

George Grella, City Newspaper film critic,
Marla Schweppe, Computer Animation Professor at RIT,
Zena Collier, local novelist and author of "A Cooler Climate",
Van White, Esq. local attorney and director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights Laws,
Gloria Read, retired film specialist from Kodak, and
James Pappas, Internationally renowned artist and film critic

Prizes awarded to

"Best Picture" $100.00
"Best Message" $50.00
"Most Creative $50.00
"Best Class Participation" $250.00

An exciting opportunity for your students to have their work screened at the Little Theater!

Click here to register now.

NYCLU Annual Membership Meeting

jcarnig — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:13:19 -0700

Date and Time: June 11, 2008 / 6:00 Eastern

The annual meeting of the members of the New York Civil Liberties Union will be held on Wednesday, June 11 at 6 p.m. in the NYCLU offices:

125 Broad St., 19th Floor
New York, NY

The purpose of this meeting will be electing members, receiving the annual report and transacting any other appropriate business. To download a ballot, click here.

2008 ACLU Membership Conference in Washington D.C.

jcarnig — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:18:03 -0700

Date and Time: June 8, 2008 / 2:00 Eastern

Join fellow New Yorkers and NYCLU members at the
2008 ACLU Membership Conference in Washington D.C.

Click here to learn more and register.

On June 8 through 10, ACLU members from across New York and throughout the U.S. will come to our nation's capital for three days of advocacy, leadership discussions, Capitol Hill meetings and hands-on activist training. Elected officials, celebrities, renowned experts, and some of the ACLU's most inspiring clients will join us to stand up for freedom.

NYCLU News Feed

NYCLU: Rockefeller Drug Laws Cause Racial Disparities, Huge Taxpayer Burden

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NYCLU Sues City, NYPD on Behalf of New York Post Reporter Subjected to Racial Profiling

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New York’s Highest Court Denies Review of Ruling Recognizing Lesbian Couple’s Canadian Marriage

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NYCLU to Announce Lawsuit Today Over NYPD Racial Profiling

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Oneida County Board Of Elections Urged To Allow Students To Vote In Their College Community

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NYCLU Analysis of NYPD Reports Reveals Troubling Patterns in Police Shootings, Lack of Diversity in NYPD Leadership

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NYC Marijuana Possession Arrests Skyrocket, Illustrate NYPD Racial Bias, New Report Shows

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Third Annual GVC-NYCLU PSA Film Festival

The First Amendment behind the lens of young people

NYCLU Annual Membership Meeting

2008 ACLU Membership Conference in Washington D.C.