Coming home to Detroit after my first year in college at Tufts University near Boston has been made all the more insightful and interesting by having the opportunity to work at the ACLU of Michigan.

In my first week here as a Communications Intern, I have been overwhelmed in the best possible way by all of the amazing work being done that remains critical in the fight to protect civil liberties and preserve democracy for all of us.

I’d be remiss to pretend as though I was at all aware of the legal battles being fought across the state or what their significance is to the lives of every Michigander… and even at the end of stint here come mid-August, I doubt I will have done much more than scratched the surface of a truly inimitable organization.

That said, I hope to document my journey here taking into account not only my unique perspective but more so the common perception of what it is the ACLU actually does, and perhaps more critically: why?

I’ll be sharing blogs, photos, legislative snapshots and updates on important work being done by incredible people here at the ACLU of Michigan, all flavored with who I am and what I hope to gain (and give) during my time here. To start this endeavor off, I thought I’d share a few things about myself and what has brought me here to the ACLU, as well as what I’ve managed to digest thus far!

  1. I'm from Detroit, born and raised on the Northwest side. I graduated from Southfield High School and just finished my first year at Tufts University, where I’m majoring in American Studies & Minoring in Mass Media & Communications.

  2. My research and activist interests include QPOC (queer people of color) activism and health advocacy, criminal justice reform and an end to the war on drugs, intersections of race and sexuality, and radical anti-white supremacy organizing on college campuses.

  3. I’m a writer and blogger for Huffington Post as well as a spoken word poet.

  4. I love dogs, chicken Alfredo, and Orange is the New Black in no particular order. 

  5. The ACLU case I think everyone needs to get hip to ASAP: Adkins et al. vs. Morgan Stanley! In a true assault on racial economic violence, Morgan Stanley is being sued by ACLU, along with the National Consumer Law Center and the law firm of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein on behalf of African-American residents of Detroit that fell victim to predatory sub-prime mortgage lending, claiming that the rights of people like Rubbie McCoy have been violated under the Fair Housing Act. It’s pretty amazing work.

By Jonathan Moore, ACLU of Michigan Communications Intern