News & Commentary

The rights to free speech and assembly are indispensable in a functioning democracy, but private public partnerships (PPPs), often constitute states of exception. Two organizations in Detroit – Women in Black and Moratorium NOW! – have been denied the right to leaflet and petition along Detroit’s RiverWalk and in Campus Martius as a result of their PPP status as public spaces managed by private entities. Campus Martius and the RiverWalk are managed by the Detroit 300 Conservancy and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, respectively. Both are private non-profit organizations that use their own security forces to monitor these popular spots in the heart of Detroit. Cheryl Labash, a member of Moratorium NOW!, a coalition that seeks to foster economic justice in Detroit, is pursuing legal action on the matter with the ACLU. Labash was stopped by a private security guard and unable to freely protest and make public her organization’s concerns last year. Though public spaces, private security is at liberty to prevent activists and organizations from protesting and speaking in support of their cause as it sees fit. Labash said, in an interview with the ACLU, “Downtown has basically been sanitized and that’s not what this country says that it’s about...We want to make sure that these opposing views or different views or different narratives of what’s happened in Detroit and the things that are important do have a place in downtown Detroit.” Campus Martius and the RiverWalk’s private management and security guards can choose, rather arbitrarily, when they object to a protest. It may be worth noting that, Moratorium NOW!, which seeks to bring light to foreclosures, evictions, and utility shutoffs in Detroit. Their mission and interests effectively run counter to the increasing private influence of the city at large. Similar questions of who is allowed protest in PPPs have arisen elsewhere. Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, a group whose mission it is to fight institutional racism and police brutality, gathered in protest on December 20th at the Mall of America. Mall authorities and the Bloomington police disbanded the protest and stated days later their intentions to pursue criminal charges and seek payment for lost revenue. Though the mall was created in part by and continues to thrive on millions of dollars in public subsidies, its private ownership allows it to criminalize protesters deemed unfit. For instance, 7,000 protestors were allowed to gather in order to honor the life of a man who had passed as a result of cancer, yet half that number was met with riot gear while mourning the life of Eric Garner. The denial of public space as a locus for free speech and assembly experienced by Labash and the Women in Black stands to represent the increasing privatization of Detroit - whether it be in the form of water shutoffs, private security, or through the withdrawal of workers’ pensions funding - and the lack of accountability that too often follows when profit and property are privileged over people. Minneapolis and Detroit are hardly the sole victims of this; the private commandeering of public spaces is becoming an increasingly flagrant phenomenon for urban America at large. The ACLU has worked in Maine as well as New York, as well to ensure that public space can be relied upon as a place of free and unencumbered protest and assembly. The private management and policing of public spaces puts First Amendment rights in a truly dire position, discounting the potential public dissent has in remedying injustice. By Sarah Goomar, ACLU Fellow

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Michigan must recognize the marriages of more than 300 couples who legally wed after Michigan’s marriage ban was struck down in March.

At 33 years old, my biological clock isn’t just ticking any longer—its clamoring at me.

The ACLU of Michigan and all those who treasure civil liberties lost a giant last week, when ACLU of Michigan cooperating attorney William Street died.

The Supreme Court ruled decades ago that it is unconstitutional to jail a person for failure to pay a debt that she or he cannot afford. However, the ACLU of Michigan has documented through repeated court watching efforts since 2011 that numerous judges throughout Michigan are jailing poor people on “pay or stay” sentences—sentences where individuals who are found guilty of a crime are given the “choice” of immediately paying their fines and costs or going to jail.

While we’re certainly not shy at the ACLU of Michigan about making our voice heard, there are still many instances in which our work doesn’t always get widespread public recognition we hope for.

In recent months, it seems like a classic black American nightmare has been put on a feedback loop. With every acquittal of an accused killer cop, with every failure to indict on brutality charges, with every fruitless investigation into anti-black police violence, the country reminds us over and again of both its cowardice and its callousness in the face of its ignominious racial history. Darren Wilson won’t stand trial for the execution of teenager Michael Brown. The New York City police officer who choked Eric Garner to death in broad daylight won’t face charges. The Saginaw cops who sprayed Milton Hall, a mentally ill homeless man, with a shower of bullets were exonerated by both local prosecutors and the feds. After four years of a judicial charade, the Detroit police officer who shot to death 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones as slept in her home walked away scot free. The nightmare, as these and hundreds of other cases remind us, is all too real. The upshot is that these shocking miscarriages of justice have begun to galvanize people of conscience nationwide. Increasingly, Americans are coming to see for themselves the uneasy, abusive and often deadly relationship black and brown people have historically maintained with the police. And people want to make change. But even as we take steps to address the wanton police killings of black people, even as we seek effective reforms, we need to be careful not to try to take on a nightmare with a pipe dream. We are going to have to confront some grave, unsettling realities about the problem – and about who we really are as a nation – before we can develop the real, systemic solutions to police violence and abuse. Which brings me to the issue of body cams. Few ideas have gained as much traction in recent weeks as the notion of putting portable cameras on working cops. While the idea raises worthwhile concerns about privacy, some of the most vocal proponents of law-enforcement reform have settled on body cams as a good first step toward change. The reasoning is simple and seemingly sound: If officers know they are being recorded, they are more inclined to behave properly. Problem is, this often isn’t true. Garner’s death was captured on cellphone video. The slaying of Milton Hall was captured by private citizens’ cameraphones and by a police dashboard camera. We’ve seen footage of the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police officers several weeks ago. We’ve seen the clip of John Crawford being shot to death in Dayton, Ohio, as he stood in a Wal-mart with a toy gun. Whether it’s through eyewitness testimony, DNA, ballistics or videotape – we have never suffered from lack of proof that racist cops are wantonly and unjustly taking black lives. But until we begin to value black life enough to make those cops pay for their crimes, all the evidence in the world won’t matter. Let’s not fool ourselves into believing otherwise. So while I do favor body cams for police officers, I submit that true reform will come only after this nation decides that we will no longer stomach the brazen murder of black men, women and children by armed agents of the state. Reform isn’t about outfitting cops with fancy gadgets—but about accountability and severe punishment for those who engage in racist abuses of their authority. The problem isn’t that we’ve lacked opportunity to view for ourselves the racist violence that cops visit on black people. We’ve borne witness to state-sanctioned assaults on black life since this country was founded. The problem is that, as a nation, we’ve too often chosen to be willfully blind to the humanity of those abuse victims. And we’ve too often chosen to look the other way.

We did it! Together, we stopped the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

With a history of civil liberties stretching back almost a century, the ACLU has got plenty of amazing cases for #TBT. Every Thursday, we'll be sharing updates on cases pulled from our archives of work in Michigan and beyond.