News & Commentary

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SAN DIEGO – Effective today—the birthday of our Constitution—Norma Chavez-Peterson is the new executive director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, the organization’s board of directors announced. She will celebrate her new role by giving Constitution Day presentations at her alma mater Chula Vista High School at 8:15 a.m., and a presentation in Spanish at Lincoln High School at 10:30 a.m. (Open to the media; contact Jess Jollett for details.) Also, this Thursday night, Chavez-Peterson will receive an award on behalf of the ACLU at the Center on Policy Initiative's gala.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Less than a month after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the nation’s plan to scale back federal prison sentences for low-level drug crimes, the California Assembly today passed an historic drug sentencing reform bill that will allow counties to significantly reduce incarceration costs by giving local prosecutors the flexibility to charge low-level, non-violent drug offenses as misdemeanors instead of felonies.

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Following is a reflection by Dennis Parker, Director of our ACLU Racial Justice Program.
The Fierce Urgency of Now
For me, few anniversaries inspire as much ambivalence as the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Billed as the "March for Jobs and Freedom," the event stands as both a shining example of the promise of the civil rights era and a reminder of how we as a nation have, in many ways, betrayed the ideals and vision expressed by the scores of speakers and musicians who addressed the crowd of a quarter of a million people on August 28, 1963.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luthe