News & Commentary

If you were one of the thousands of people in California protesting the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the countless other Black lives taken by police violence, there’s a good chance you heard California Highway Patrol helicopters circling over your head.

Scanning QR codes instead of ordering from a physical menu is a way for companies to insert all the machinery of the online advertising ecosystem between you and your food.

The ACLU News archive, dating back to 1945, documents the various forms of legalized housing discrimination leveled at Black people in Northern California, and also charts severe backlash to progress, whenever it was made. It provides a snapshot of the ways that businesses, the state, and individuals partnered to exclude Black people from the accumulation of wealth through dispossession and the denial of their means to secure a home.

We must continue the fight to ensure that Floyd’s death has not been in vain. We renew our commitment to overhauling the role of policing in American society—in the memory of Floyd, and in the memory of the incalculable other Black lives lost to police violence.

The ACLU of Northern California salutes two of our movement partners Ms. Janetta Johnson of the TGI Justice Project and Janelle Luster of Trans Heartline. These fierce, unapologetic Black trans women have been visionary leaders in the fight against the over-policing of their community.