News & Commentary

Around 150 people representing the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut took action at the Capitol in defense of civil liberties.The ACLU teamed up with Compassion and Choices Connecticut, the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, Hartford Rising and the NAACP Connecticut State Conference to advance important civil liberties in the state.Stephen Glassman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Connecticut, said, “Our numbers reflect the enthusiasm that people feel for protecting individual privacy, autonomy, due process and equality under the law. People are motivated to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in our state.”Activists met with elected officials and urged them to support priority areas for legislative advocacy, which include:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut is proud to join with the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance for Lobby Day 2015 to defend important civil liberties in the Constitution State.Lobby Day 2015 is an opportunity to meet with your legislators and have your voice heard on critical civil liberties issues. The items on this year’s agenda include:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut is proud to join with Hartford Rising! for Lobby Day 2015 to defend the rights to privacy, due process and battle against discriminatory policing.Lobby Day 2015 is an opportunity to meet with your legislators and have your voice heard on critical civil liberties issues. The items on this year’s agenda include:

Alarmist theories linking comic books and juvenile delinquency gained currency in the 1950s and brought on decades of wary self-censorship by publishers, author David Hajdu said at an observance of Banned Books Week at Hartford Public Library.Congressional hearings and media hype, including a highly promoted series in The Hartford Courant entitled Depravity for Children: 10 Cents a Copy, heightened the hysteria, Hajdu said in a conversation with Julia Pistell, a Hartford writer, improviser, teacher and public relations consultant. Pistell and her comedy improv troupe, Sea Tea Improv, also performed at the event, sponsored by the library and the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut on September 23, 2014.Comic books and graphic novels were the focus of Banned Books Week observances across the country.Hadju has written several books, including The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America. He is also the music critic for The New Republic and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Censorship in prison and the chilling effects of surveillance on freedom of expression were at the forefront of the 2013 Banned Books Readout on Monday.The event featured seven celebrity panelists reading from banned or challenged books. They included Wally Lamb, whose book She's Come Undone was briefly banned at York Correctional Institution. The event, held at the Mark Twain branch of Hartford Public Library, was sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, Hartford Public Library and the Law and Government Academy at Hartford Public High School.Tom Condon, deputy editorial page editor of The Hartford Courant, read from George Orwell's classic 1984, describing it as "the book that put the 'dys' in dystopian." He noted the similarity between Orwell's vision and recently revealed government surveillance in the United States, adding "Is there a greater irony than banning a book that warns of the dangers of totalitarianism?"In welcoming the audience, Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut, also drew a parallel between the government surveillance described by Orwell and the surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency. The government can track not only phone calls but also the websites that people read and the online records of their book buying and borrowing, he said."We need to continue our vigilance against censorship in all its forms," he said, "including the chilling effects of surveillance on readers and the potential damage to our democracy."Lamb talked about the controversy around the decision earlier this month to pull his novel She's Come Undone from the library at York Correctional. The decision was reversed after a public outcry, as was a decision to consider banning a book of inmates' writing that Lamb edited, I'll Fly Away.Hearing the voices of incarcerated women emerge as they write their stories has been a privilege, Lamb said. "A lot of women in prison have already been silenced," he said.Fellow panelist Stan Simpson, a columnist and TV talk show host, pointed out that most inmates don't have high school diplomas and many are functionally illiterate. "Banning books doesn't help," he said.The other panelists were Cathy Malloy, executive director of the Greater Hartford Arts Council; local musician Lorena Garay; Wilfredo Nieves, president of Capital Community College; and Rebecca Duncan, a student at the Law and Government Academy. John Dankosky, news director of WNPR radio and host of Where We Live, served as moderator.

"To ban a book is to gag the writer and blindfold the reader. Neither is acceptable in a country where freedom of speech is treasured." - Wally LambWally Lamb will read from his acclaimed novel She's Come Undone on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013, at the annual Banned Books Readout sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, Hartford Public Library and the Law and Government Academy at Hartford Public High School.Other readers will include Cathy Malloy, executive director of the Greater Hartford Arts Council; Tom Condon of the Hartford Courant; local musician Lorena Garay; Wilfredo Nieves, President of Capital Community College; Rebecca Duncan, a student at the Law & Government Academy; and Stan Simpson, host of Fox TV's The Stan Simpson Show. John Dankosky, news director of WNPR radio and host of Where We Live, will serve as moderator.The event will begin at 6 p.m. at Hartford Public Library's Mark Twain Branch in Hartford Public High School, 55 Forest St. Light refreshments will be available at 5:30 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.She's Come Undone, Lamb's first novel, was briefly banned earlier this month at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, where Lamb volunteers and teaches a writing course. A review board objected to what it described as "graphic content" in the best-selling 1992 novel, which follows a troubled young woman's path to redemption. The ban was quickly reversed after a public outcry, as was the decision to review a collection of inmates' writing edited by Lamb.The readout will feature several other books that have been challenged, censored or banned, including Alice Walker's The Color Purple, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers and George Orwell's classic 1984."Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship," said Matthew K. Poland, chief executive officer of Hartford Public Library. "While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read."Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut said, "The government's urge to censor has not abated, as the Connecticut Department of Correction recently demonstrated. We must strive to protect the right of all people, including prisoners, to read, learn and confront new ideas. And we must also confront a more subtle and insidious threat to our right of free expression - the pervasive, universal and secret government surveillance that compels people to guard their words, stifle their ideas and chill their free expression."

Drone regulation was at the forefront of Lobby Day 2014, the ACLU of Connecticut's annual legislative event, at the state Capitol on March 18.Kade Crockford, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project, explained the challenges to privacy presented by government surveillance via cameras mounted on drones. David McGuire, staff attorney for the ACLU of Connecticut, briefed participants on the drone regulation bill pending before the legislature as well as three other legislative priorities. They were:A bill requiring support the regulation of police officers in schools through mandatory memoranda of understanding, requiring schools to specify what offenses will be handled internally as disciplinary matters and what will be handled by the police as a criminal matter.A bill requiring police to accept complaints from civilians, an initiative prompted by a 2012 report by the ACLU of Connecticut showing that many police departments in the state create barriers that discourage members of the public from filing complaints of police misconduct.A bill to reform the sentencing of juveniles. The legislation would end the practice of sentencing people to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed before the offender was 18 years old and would require parole hearings for juvenile offenders serving sentences of 10 years or longer.Participants in the event, co-sponsored by the Council of American-Islamic Relations in Connecticut, were encouraged to lobby their legislators on those issues.

The winners of the 2013 First Amendment High School Essay Contest are: