The Liberties Of The Aclu - 1639 Words

Dear [Inside Salutation], This has been a truly exciting year for the ACLU. Whether we’re talking about national wins, like winning the freedom to marry at the Supreme Court, or state-level wins, like California’s groundbreaking reforms to protect digital privacy and fight racial profiling, we have a lot to be proud of. As our closest allies and stalwarts for civil liberties, we would not have such cause for celebration without your vital partnership. But we both know that the work of defending freedom is unending. As today’s generation of civil liberties advocates, we have inherited the hard-won freedoms that our predecessors fought for in courts, legislatures, and communities across the nation. With those freedoms, we have also†¦show more content†¦The ACLU has a long history of fighting police misconduct. From our landmark litigation in the 1940s and 50s establishing that police conduct which â€Å"shocks the conscience† is unconstitutional, to our current advocacy efforts against the targeted surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists, we are well-positioned to push for critical police reforms. With national advocacy efforts, state-level litigation and legislative work, and local grassroots organizing, we are more active than ever in demanding critical and long-overdue reform. The police brutality, racial profiling, and excessive force practices that plague police departments around the country also infect the San Francisco Police Department. Just this year, the department investigated four of its officers after dozens of racist and homophobic text messages between officers were disclosed in federal court. A third party report confirms the pervasive racial bias in the department, finding that Black adults in San Francisco are seven times as likely as white adults to be arrested. We recently filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department and several individual officers on behalf of Travis Hall, a 23-year old Black college student who was unlawfully detained, arrested, and beaten by SFPD officers. After suffering multiple injuries, Travis was held