News & Commentary

The Departments of Justice and Education just rescinded Obama-era guidance clarifying that trans students are federally protected from discrimination under Title IX. Here's what you should know.

The following Op-Ed by Alan Schlosser and Diana Tate Vermeire was originally published in the Daily Californian on Friday, February 10.

Last week, free speech suffered a blow when force and intimidation by some protesters prompted the University of California at Berkeley to cancel a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, who had been invited by the Berkeley College Republicans and who advocates racist, sexist, and transphobic views. The cancellation should give no comfort to those who value equality and oppose these views; if anything it likely gave Mr. Yiannopoulos and his abhorrent messages more attention than if he had been allowed to speak.

Donald Trump told the American public, repeatedly, that upon taking office his policy agenda will include efforts to identify and immediately deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to track and surveil Muslims throughout the country, and to push for even more aggressive policing against communities of color. He may play fast and loose with facts, but when it comes to his most outrageous campaign promises, Trump is showing himself to be a man of his word.

What is America? From its beginning it has always been a painful paradox, a country founded on violent dehumanization but proclaiming the highest ideals of human kinship. As generations have before us, today millions join together to make it what it must become.

Trump didn’t appear to know that Douglass died 132 years ago.

Last weekend, I was flooded by email and text messages from people contacting me both for legal help for their families stranded at airports and from people contacting me to find out how they can help. Being Iranian-American and working at the ACLU, the incoming messages came from both those worlds that are integral to my life.

It was 75 years ago that President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which began the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Tens of thousands of American citizens were declared dangerous to domestic security and forced to go to internment camps in isolated areas across the Western United States.

January 30 is Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution, established by the California legislature in 2010 to commemorate the ACLU of Northern California’s client who was interned during World War II.

Everyone has a right to safe, clean, affordable drinking water. And the news this week means we’re going to have to shout it from the rooftops. Water is life. Water is a human right.