News & Commentary

Meet our new executive director

Americans delivered a mandate to Congress and President Biden: fix our broken immigration system.

It’s not enough to take racist policies off the books. We must pursue systemic equality.

The safety of women in all spaces is a civil rights and human rights issue, and the safety of women at the Oregon State Capitol is a civil liberties issue. Because these rights are fundamental, the ACLU of Oregon joins over 130 organizations and individuals who have called for the Oregon House of Representatives to ensure safety for women working at the Capitol and appropriate accountability for Representative Diego Hernandez.

It shouldn’t have taken a team of four lawyers and a federal lawsuit for Maria Soto to receive her passport.

Thanks to hundreds of ACLU supporters, our Justice for All 2020 Statewide Membership Conference was a success! We heard an inspiring speech from ACLU National Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Amber Hikes. Our keynote speaker, Walidah Imarisha, grounded us in Oregon’s Black History by examining institutional white supremacy and centering the resistance of Black communities and other communities of color as active change makers. The keynote highlighted how history, politics, and culture have shaped—and will continue to shape—the landscape not only for Black Oregonians, but all Oregonians. And our panels on police divestment and immigrants' rights were truly inspiring. 

In the midst of the pandemic and economic crisis, we are in a collective distress, witnessing so many ways our systems and institutions are inequitable and devastating to the lives of so many Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, and others who live in poverty.

What happened to Isidro Andrade-Tafolla outside the Washington County Courthouse is part of a pattern of abusive and secretive tactics that the DHS and ICE have employed for far too long against communities of color, particularly Black and Latinx communities.

I’ve been documenting violent and militarized police responses to protests in Portland for more than four years, but nothing prepared me for the unrestrained brutality I’ve witnessed and experienced in recent days. Night after night, since the police killing of George Floyd, people have been taking to the streets to demand an end to racist policing and a new vision of public safety for our community, one that protects the safety of our Black community members. Police in Portland, who have their own history of killings, have been meeting those demands with violent attempts to silence the protests.