Thinking Freely

After the 2020 election, a national awaking on systemic racism, COVID-19, and a politically divided nation, it is important to reflect on where we have been and where we could go. As 2021 draws near, Maryland and our country have much to do to empower people to exercise their rights so that the law values and uplifts their humanity. On Thinking Freely this month, we were joined by Dana Vickers She...

Another Maryland Legislative session is upon us, with the General Assembly set to start on January 13, 2021. Due to COVID-19, this will be a virtual session and we will work to make sure people’s voices are heard by legislators as they make decisions during this challenging time. That’s why it is important to stay informed on what’s happening next session. In 2021, the ACLU of Maryland will be wor...

School Resource Officers, more commonly known as SROs, are really school police. There are thousands of them in schools across Maryland, even though many of these same schools don’t have access to guidance counselors, therapists,or nurses to support students’ growth. The evidence is clear that school resource officers are associated with higher increases in arrests of students, and there is an una...

Listen to a special episode of the Thinking Freely podcast, as we talk with experts on making voting safe, easy, and accessible for voters during the 2020 election this year's constitution day event. Learn more about your voting rights: https://www.aclu-md.org/voting

As we celebrate Latinx Heritage Month, we must continue to uplift the humanity of Latinx people. We need to protect immigrants from victimization and criminalization. No one should be, but too often, they are profiled for their skin color or denied the respect and dignity that every human being deserves. No one should be "othered" for merely existing. But the Latinx community is resilient, and gro...

The fight for voting rights remains as critical as ever, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. We talked to leading voting rights experts in Maryland: Joanne Antoine, Executive Director of Common Cause, Reverend Kobi Little, President of the Baltimore Branch of the NAACP, and Dana Vickers Shelley, Executive Director of the ACLU of Maryland. We talked about our voting rights, the challenges of v...

With police spy planes, everywhere Baltimore goes, the government will always know. Spy planes carry sophisticated cameras developed for the military, mounted on airplanes, that can see the entire city, and that track the movement of every person or vehicle moving outside. Baltimore has a terrible history of racial bias and a lack of accountability for abuses by police. It should be the last place...

Too many people have lost their lives at the hands of police. But perhaps the saddest thing is that many of these deaths were unnecessary and could have been avoided. Today, we will be joined by Tracy Shand, sister to Leonard Shand, and Shamāiah Manriquez, sister to Emanuel Oates, to share their experiences about how the killing of their brothers by police could have been and should have been, pre...

Knowing your rights is vital. Especially during police interactions. You cannot assume that officers will behave in a way that protects your safety or that they will respect your rights even after you assert them. That’s why the ACLU of Maryland developed our free Know Your Rights program so that you can know how to exercise your rights and what to do when your rights are violated. This month, we...

During these difficult times, the ACLU of Maryland is here to defend and protect our civil rights and civil liberties. We are providing guidance to our elected officials, so they can craft a COVID-19 response that is compassionate and protects the populations most vulnerable to harm, including immigrants and those caught in the legal justice system – as well as all Maryland voters. As always, we w...

For Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the issues facing women exiting the criminal legal system and why we need a dedicated pre-release facility for women. The number of women and girls in the criminal legal system has grown substantially over the past several decades. The over-incarceration of women devastates families, because 75% of women who are incarcerated are the primary or sole ca...

We want officers to speak up against racist police practices and sexual harassment to help change the culture of policing. But when officers of color speak up against these unconstitutional practices they often experience discrimination and retaliation. For this Black History Month, we sat down with an African American officer, Lieutenant Sonya Zollicoffer, second vice president of the United Blac...

Another Maryland Legislative session is upon us, with the General Assembly set to start on January 8, 2020. This session, the ACLU of Maryland will be working on six priority areas: 1) Race and wealth equity for Maryland’s school children, 2) the Trust Act to defend the rights of immigrants in our communities, 3) equality in support services for women exiting the criminal legal system, 4) transpar...

Maryland students have a right to a high-quality public education guaranteed by the state constitution. But for far too many students, that right is undermined by generations of underfunding. This has most deeply impacted students from families with low income and Black and Brown children. Janna Parker, a former educator and a public education advocate, and Kimberly Humphrey, Esq., Legislative Cou...

For years, people sentenced as children to life in prison with the possibility of parole, and their families, have tried to get Maryland to live up to the promise of second chances that a parole-eligible sentence is intended to provide. However, many barriers exist that stop this from happening. Many criminal justice stakeholders have turned to technology to help make parole decisions through “ris...

Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy and the fundamental right upon which all our civil liberties rest. But the right to vote and participate in our democracy is currently denied to thousands of people in Maryland, those who who are incarcerated. Dating back to the racist Jim Crow era state felony disfranchisement laws were created to prevent Americans with felonies from voting. After the Ci...

The First Amendment was meant to serve as the backbone of our democracy, allowing people who are critical of the government the right to speak. Historically, white supremacists have co-opted the First Amendment to advance hate and incite violence. At the same time, we have seen People of Color’s First Amendment rights violated when they speak out against oppression and racism. The First Amendment...

Our immigrant communities need to be supported. Instead, their lives and rights have increasingly been attacked, especially under the Trump Administration. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has prioritized building more 287(g) partnerships, where local law enforcement officers are deputized as federal immigration agents. Local police only have to go through a month of training to be f...