Articles Tagged ‘Policy and Legislative Advocacy’

Stand up for reproductive freedom on Monday, January 23rd, 2:30 pm at the New Mexico State Capitol Building in Santa Fe. Supporters will meet inside in the Rotunda where it’s warm! To maximize visibility, wear pro-choice t-shirts, buttons and stickers! No signs are allowed inside the Capitol.

Today the national ACLU released a video featuring Ruthell Frank, an 81 year-old woman living in Brokaw, Wisconsin, a tiny hamlet of just over 100 people. Ruthelle has been voting in elections since 1948 and serves on the village board. But since the Republican controlled Wisconsin legislature passed a law requiring a photo ID to vote earlier this year, Ruthelle may for the first time in over 60 years be unable to vote. Watch the video to learn why:

Politicians all over the United States are attempting to ram these Voter ID laws through the legislature ostensibly to prevent voter fraud. Of course investigation after investigation shows that there is no widespread voter fraud anywhere in the United States-and that includes New Mexico. Essentially, these vote-suppressing “Voter ID” laws are a solution in search of a problem.

Here in New Mexico we can be sure that legislators will once again attempt to foist the stale and debunked specter of fraud on us in an attempt to pass a Voter ID restriction in the upcoming 2012 legislative session. Secretary of State Dianna Duran’s well-publicized but opaque (and ultimately empty handed) fishing expedition through the voter rolls these past nine months is a clear preamble to the bill’s introduction. So when the session rolls around this coming January, we need to be prepared to ask our legislators why they want to make it harder for New Mexicans to vote?

As we saw in the video, Voter ID bills disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, the homeless, Native Americans and other minority groups who may not have valid photo IDs. Many people, like Ruthelle, may not even have access to or are unable to afford the documents that are needed to obtain a valid photo ID. Obtaining copies of birth certificates, passports or other documents required can be expensive-sometimes hundreds of dollars-and acts as a de facto poll tax on those who are least able to afford it. Voting is not a privilege, it is a constitutional right, and no eligible citizen should have to pay to vote.

Even though there is no evidence that photo IDs would be effective in preventing fraud, Voter ID apologists often use the line, “Even one instance of voter fraud is too many” to justify their crusade to impose roadblocks to the poll booth. But how many cases of voter disenfranchisement are too many? One? Two? Ten? Demographically, thousands of eligible New Mexicans stand to be disenfranchised by Voter ID legislation.

There are already hefty federal criminal penalties to deter people from committing voter fraud-and it works. There has never been a documented case of voter fraud in the state of New Mexico that would have been prevented by photo IDs. This coming January, let’s ask our representatives to focus their energy on coming up with real solutions to the real problems we face-not ginned up issues designed to disenfranchise large swaths of the electorate.

On November 15,

Panelists: Jennifer Podkul from the Women's Refugee Commission, Tania Chozet from the ACLU of New Mexico, and Danielle Alvarado from No More Deaths.

advocacy organization representatives and congressional staffers gathered in a small room in the Canon House Office Building for a congressional briefing on No More Deaths’ “Culture of Cruelty” report.  As we have reported previously (here and here), No More Deaths conducted interviews with nearly 13,000 migrants and documented 30,000 incidents of abuse and mistreatment by the U.S. Border Patrol in short-term detention over the course of three years. At the briefing, Danielle Alvarado from No More Deaths, Jennifer Podkul of the Women’s Refugee Commission, and Tania Chozet from the ACLU of New Mexico’s Regional Center for Border Rights each spoke about their experiences working with migrants near the border and their frustration surrounding the Border Patrol’s flat out denial of the report’s findings.

While the report presents a multitude of alarming statistics about the situation on our southwestern border (for example: “out of 433 incidents in which emergency medical treatment or medication were needed, only 59 (14%) received it before being deported – the other 86% were deported without receiving needed medical care”), yesterday’s briefing focused on the actions that members of Congress can take to alleviate the situation.

Despite the report’s disturbing findings, the Border Patrol has been unwilling to meet with No More Deaths locally.  This is not an isolated incident–Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has a reputation for being unresponsive to both civil society and congressional information requests.  The only existing oversight mechanism–the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights & Civil Liberties (CRCL)–is understaffed, does not have the authority to issue penalties or make binding recommendations, and is not independent enough to truly hold the agency accountable.  Consequently, no one is asking questions about questionable Border Patrol policies.

In contrast, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has introduced access policies to allow advocacy groups to visit their detention facilities and conduct independent monitoring.  This program allows ICE to benefit from the expertise and advice of the advocacy community as well as fosters dialogue about ICE policies.  This model could provide similar accountability for Border Patrol policies and facilities.

The panelists emphasized that they are not asking that the laws go unenforced, just that they be carried out in a humane way.  This kind of abuse and mistreatment is inexcusable, particularly in the United States of America.  Moreover, though these policies are conducted under the guise of national security, human rights abuses do not make us safer.  Congress can do a number of things to hold the Border Patrol accountable for their actions including adding oversight and reporting conditions in budget bills and calling for oversight hearings.  Our members of Congress need to start asking the tough questions and requiring the executive agencies to take responsibility for the abuses occurring on their watch.

This blog post originally appeared on the website of Standing on the Side of Love, a Unitarian Universalist public advocacy campaign that seeks to harness love’s power to stop oppression.

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Want to do something about Border Patrol abuse?  Sign the petition.  Call the White House and ask the administration to launch an investigation.  Contact your members of Congress and ask them to call for an oversight hearing.  Make your voice heard!

Dear Friend of Liberty,
I’m writing you today to ask you to stand up to an organization that is willing to go to any length to take away a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion care here in New Mexico. I’m talking about Kansas-based “Operation Rescue,” a group of extremists with a track record of violence, harassment and intimidation towards abortion providers and women seeking abortions.Dear friend of liberty,

Their main target was once Kansas late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller is now dead, murdered as he ushered Sunday worship at his church, and Operation Rescue followed Tiller’s surviving associates to Albuquerque where they relocated to continue providing late-term abortion care to women in need.

Stand up for women’s right to access reproductive health care and keep Operation Rescue’s extremist agenda out of New Mexico.

Operation Rescue recently made headlines in Albuquerque when they released recordings of 9-1-1 calls made from two health clinics where abortions are performed and demanded that the New Mexico Medical Board investigate several local physicians for alleged “unsafe” practices.

This is not a new tactic for Operation Rescue. The organization has used bogus complaints to medical boards in several other states in an attempt to harass and intimidate doctors. The person responsible for most of these complaints is Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s Senior Policy Advisor, who served two years in U.S. federal prison for conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in 1987.

In 2009, Sullenger lied about and then later admitted to feeding information regarding the whereabouts of Dr. Tiller to an anti-choice extremist named Scott Roeder. On Sunday, May 31, 2009, Roeder walked into the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas and shot and killed Dr. Tiller.

Making repeated complaints to the medical board and demanding endless investigations of abortion providers is the same strategy Operation Rescue used in Kansas to harass Dr. Tiller before he was murdered. Now Operation Rescue is using the same strategy here in New Mexico.

This has a serious chilling effect on abortion providers because time and expense required to hire attorneys, respond to an unending stream of subpoenas, and repeatedly appear before the medical board makes it extremely difficult to run a medical practice. And that is exactly what Operation Rescue is counting on.

Help keep our medical board from being hijacked by anti-choice extremists. Remind the Executive Director of the NM Medical Board that they should make decisions based on medicine – not the political agendas of out-of-state extremists.

Sincerely,

Peter Simonson

Executive Director

Tania Chozet, Policy Advocate

We recently reached the two-year anniversary of the Obama administration’s announcement that it would reform our country’s immigration detention system, moving from our current penal-based system of detention to a more humane system that is tailored to individuals who have only violated civil codes of immigration law. Tonight, PBS’s Frontline will debut “Lost in Detention,” an investigative documentary that will examine the progress of these reform efforts and where they still fall short.

Immigration advocacy groups have sized up the reform efforts thus far in comprehensive reports and blogs. They show that, although there has been some progress at the policy level, the detention conditions on the ground have not improved.  Also, recent FOIA requests by the ACLU and the Houston Chronicle confirm that, internally, ICE is aware of the continued, severe problems in its detention system, despite publicly touting its reforms.

In all of this analysis of how far the Obama administration’s efforts have or haven’t come, immigration advocates should recognize that there have been some productive results in our collaborative efforts.

For example, two years ago, the Obama administration began ramping up Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program that is ostensibly intended to identify serious criminals who are in the country illegally. In response, advocates went to work on exposing the program’s many problems , not the least of which is that the program compromises community policing models and undermines the public’s trust in local police by discouraging witnesses and victims from reporting crimes for fear that they will be deported. In addition, advocates noted that, despite the stated mission of the program, half of the people deported under Secure Communities have no criminal background. Immigrant advocates collaborated to develop successful campaigns urging states to withdraw from Secure Communities, ultimately convincing governors, mayors and chiefs of police to denounce the program publicly.

These efforts exposed the program’s many shortcomings in the public and the media. Eventually, the Obama administration took notice.

In “Lost in Detention,” Cecilia Muñoz, a top Obama official, acknowledges that the administration has heard the calls for reform, and has reacted to them. Although the administration has not suspended Secure Communities, there is some hope in that the administration announced changes to the program, including the use of prosecutorial discretion to reduce the deportation of immigrants without criminal histories. The administration also recently announced that it would review 300,000 cases currently in deportation proceedings. 

These are not the best solutions, but they do represent progress.

Similarly, in the area of detention reform, advocates have had to expend herculean efforts and, while improvements have been far from overwhelming, there have been some wins. In 2009, a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU triggered a review of the system. The Obama administration took an honest look at its immigration detention system in a report it issued in October 2009. From that report followed announcements by the Department of Homeland Security about plans to reform the immigration detention system to one that is more suited for civil detention.  Two years later, the system is still a far cry from one that is suited to civil detention. According to a recent report by Human Rights First, even if all of the planned reforms were implemented, only 14 percent of the immigrants detained would benefit. Nonetheless, that same report acknowledges some improvements.

Tonight, as we watch “Lost in Detention,” it will be easier to count the ways in which the system has not changed. I’m probably not giving out any spoilers in saying that the show reveals that the many of the reforms are “smoke and mirrors” rather than real change.  It might be tempting to feel as if our efforts to win real immigration detention reform were in vain. Yet, change at a trickle is still progress, and the administration, though hard of hearing, is listening. Immigration advocates should watch “Lost in Detention” with this in mind. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “[c]hange does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.”