News & Commentary

The most recent numbers showing lead levels in the water of Flint’s public schools continue to hit with spine-chilling impact.Thirty months after an appointed emergency manager made the ill-fated decision to begin using the dangerously corrosive Flint River as the municipal water source for a city of nearly 1

A remarkable event quietly took place recently in Saugatuck. A panel of courageous women and men took the stage at the local arts center to share with area residents their experience as transgender people.

By Hannah Pollard-Garber, Guest Blogger

Here’s a news flash that only confirms what people in communities such as Flint already knew to be true:

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – Week of September 19, 2016

One year ago, on Sept. 15, 2015, a press conference was held on the lawn in front of Flint City Hall. Gathered before a small throng of reporters were members of Flint’s Coalition for Clean Water, scientists Marc Edwards and Siddhartha Roy of Virginia Tech and the ACLU of Michigan.

Months before professional football player Colin Kaepernick registered his protest against police violence by refusing to stand for the national anthem, an African American Lincoln Park Middle School student who shares Kaepernick’s frustrations carried out his own quiet protest by refusing to stand for the daily classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

I’m a “glass half full” kind of guy, but it hasn’t been easy these past two months to feel optimistic about prospects for LGBT equality in Michigan.

In 2006 and 2011, the state legislature expanded the Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA), originally passed in 1994, creating harsher measures for registrants. The amendments retroactively made most registrants register for life and imposed geographic exclusion zones barring them from living, working, or spending time with their children in large areas of every city and town. Additionally, the legislature added extensive and onerous new in-person reporting requirements that make it a crime for registrants to borrow a car, travel for a week, or get a new email account without immediately notifying the police. The changes were imposed without due process or a mechanism for review or appeal for the vast majority of registrants.