Due to COVID-19, workshops are being held virtually, with some in-person options available. Please fill out a request form below to schedule a training and get instructions for hosting and participating in a virtual or in-person workshop.
The NYCLU offers numerous trainings and workshops for New Yorkers on a range of civil liberties and civil rights issues. These sessions are interactive and give participants the opportunity to share their experiences, voice their concerns, and ask questions. Below is a list of our current trainings and workshops by topic:
Police Accountability and Criminal Justice Reform
Immigration
Education and School Climate Reform
Reproductive Rights
General
- Know Your Rights: What to Do If You’re Stopped By the Police This training covers civilian-police interactions on the street, in your car and in your home. The training focuses on Fourth Amendment rights in relation to searches and seizures, and provides practical advice for getting through a police encounter safely and calmly, with your rights fully intact. This training is an hour and a half in length and appropriate for groups of between 10 and 50 youth and/or adults.
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- Know Your Rights: Digital Privacy & Technology This interactive workshop for students and community members focuses on how existing privacy laws apply to New Yorkers in the digital age. All of us rely on our cell phones and the internet to connect, communicate, work, manage our finances and research information, including on sensitive topics such as politics and health care. But law enforcement is increasingly taking advantage of New York’s outdated privacy laws to turn your cell phones into tracking devices and access your sensitive digital information without proper oversight. This workshop is 50 minutes long and appropriate for groups of 15 to 30.
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- Know Your Rights: What to Do If You’re Suspended This interactive workshop for students covers the rights of public high school students in New York City who are interested in learning how to reduce suspensions in their school. The presentation focuses on students’ state and federal due process rights when they are suspended from school. The workshop includes several activities that highlight students’ rights such as the right to notice of a suspension, to have an attorney or advocate defend the student in their suspension hearing and the requirement that students receive alternative instruction that is substantially equivalent while suspended. This workshop is 45-minutes long and appropriate for groups of 15-30 students. Each participant will receive a copy of the NYCLU’s Know Your Rights When Facing a Suspension pamphlet written for young adult audiences.
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- Know Your Rights: Interacting with Police in Schools This training covers the rights of public school students in New York City when School Safety Agents and police officers are in schools. The training focuses on student Fourth Amendment rights when being searched by School Safety Agents, detailing under what circumstances a student, or his or her belongings, can and cannot be searched. It covers backpack searches, locker searches and metal detector scans, as well as interrogation by School Safety Agents, arrests on school grounds, and how to file a complaint against an abusive School Safety Agent or police officer. This training is an hour long and appropriate for groups of between 20 and 50 youth and/or adults. Each training participant will receive a Know Your Rights with Police in Schools palm card.
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- Know Your Rights: What to Do If You’re Stopped by the Police/Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Customs and Border Patrol This training informs immigrant New Yorkers, both documented and undocumented, of their rights when interacting with both immigration officers and police. The training covers the right to remain silent, the right to speak to an attorney, the right for proof of a warrant before a home raid, and the right for undocumented individuals not to hand over documents that prove their status. It also suggests best practices by immigrant individuals when they are stopped by police, state troopers, Customs and Border Patrol agents, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
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- Teenagers, Health Care and the Law: An Overview (Youth) This interactive training empowers youth regarding their rights to access health care confidentially in New York. Students will discuss mental health care, substance abuse treatment, emergency care and students’ rights to stay in school while pregnant or parenting. This workshop can be tailored to groups of between 10 and 100 youth for periods ranging from 40 to 90 minutes. Each training participant will receive a Do My Parents Have to Know? Your Rights to Sexual Health Services reference card and Pregnant and Parenting Teens’ Rights reference card.
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- Know Your Rights: LGBTQ Youth in Schools This training covers LGBTQ student rights and public school obligations to keep young people safe. It includes issues of harassment, GSAs, school functions such as prom, freedom of speech and expression and more. The training is appropriate for groups of between 5 and 50 youth and/or adults. Each training participant will receive Know Your Rights information. This training can be tailored to be a more general LGBTQ awareness training, or to focus more specifically on issues of gender and transgender issues.
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- Know Your Rights: Protest and Demonstrations This training informs New Yorkers of the basic rules governing the right to engage in protest activities on public sidewalks, in public parks, and on public streets in New York City. The training covers the right to distribute handbills or leaflets; the right to hold press conferences, demonstrations, and rallies; and the right to march on public sidewalks and in public streets.
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Trainings
- Lobbying 101 — Everything You Need to Know About Lobbying for Social Justice This training covers techniques and strategies for effective legislative advocacy with elected officials or policymakers at any level. Participants will learn how to prepare for a lobby visit with an elected official, best tools for framing an argument, how to translate a lobby visit into legislative action, and how to follow-up after a lobby visit to ensure productive results. Trainings can focus on general lobby technique or on a specific NYCLU legislative or policy issue. The training is appropriate for groups of between 5 and 50 youth and/or adults.
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- Teenagers, Health Care and the Law: An Overview (Providers) This interactive training outlines the rights of minors to access health care confidentially in New York. The presentation covers reproductive health care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and emergency care as well as circumstances that may compromise a minor’s ability to access care using scenarios common to adolescent service providers. As appropriate, the training can include students’ rights to stay in school while pregnant or parenting. This presentation requires a minimum of 20 attendees and the recommended facilitation time is 90 minutes. Reimbursement may be required for travel outside New York City and/or beyond office hours.
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