News & Commentary

Are you headed to the Camden International Film Festival this weekend? If so, why not add a few films with a civil liberties angle to your schedule? Here are our picks:

Last week, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released a national update on the number of state and federal prisoners in 2013. While the federal prison population declined for the first time since 1980, the number of people incarcerated in state facilities increased by 6,300 – causing an overall increase in the number of people incarcerated in the United States.

Today we filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Bar Harbor couple who were arrested for observing and attempting to film an interaction between several police officers and a woman in downtown Portland.

Last week, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report condemning drug criminalization and prohibitionist policies. The Commission, which includes the former presidents of Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico and Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, called on world leaders to undertake a fundamental review of current drug control regimes and redirect both national and international drug policies to better fall in line with the UN mandate to “ensure security, human rights and development.”

This week the Obama administration announced that, yet again, desperately needed immigration reform will be delayed. This is truly terrible news for the thousands of families currently unable to reunite with their loved ones, and the millions of people across our country that have been forced to live in the shadows. In addition to this disappointing news, the New York Times published an editorial this week detailing the failure of the "Secure Communities" program and the deeply harmful impact it has had on communities across the United States.

Last week, in the wake of the tragic killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the renewed national debate about racialized policing, the Bangor Daily News editorialized on the discriminatory nature or our criminal justice system.

August 26 is Women's Equality Day, commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote 94 years ago. Unfortunately, we are still a long way from full equality for every woman. The mainstream conversation about women's rights over the last century has at best left behind, and at worst ignored, intersectional identities (women of color, transgender women, poor women, immigrant women, etc.). For example, we often see the data that women who work full time earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar men earned. But the figures are astoundingly worse for women of color. African American women earn only approximately 64 cents and Latinas only 54 cents for each dollar earned by a white male.

In 2012, the Portland Police Department acquired a Lenco BearCat, which is essentially an armored, four-wheeled mini-tank with a turret and spaces to fire guns out the sides. The $270,000 price tag paid for by a federal Port Security Grant.

The tragic killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown has raised many questions for the community of Ferguson, as well as the entire nation. From the ACLU’s perspective there are many civil liberties issues at play, which has prompted an immediate response both from our affiliate in Missouri as well as the entire ACLU nationwide.