News & Commentary

Kanya Bennett, Former Senior Legislative Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union

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Journalists covering protests against police brutality across the country are facing an influx of violence, suppression efforts, and arrests by police. Since the George Floyd protests began, there have been more than 400 claims of aggressions against the press, according to the U.S. Press Freedom tracker. Violations include being assaulted with pepper spray and rubber bullets, dealing with damaged equipment, and even facing arrest. This week, At Liberty is joined by Jared Goyette, a freelance reporter who was hit in the eye with a police projectile while covering a protest in Minneapolis. “There’s always been a degree of tension between police, protesters, and media,” said Goyette of the protest at which he was attacked. “They are tense environments…But based on my experience in these types of events, this was markedly different than anything I’d seen before. It was different by the degree of the lack of clear communication. And it was different in the degree to which the projectiles coming from police seemed continuous, and to some degree arbitrary.”Goyette is now the named plaintiff in a lawsuit the ACLU of Minnesota filed last week against the City of Minneapolis, seeking justice for the violence he and other journalists experienced covering the protests.“There’s a feeling of just being in a historic and important moment and wanting to do as good a job as possible to document it,” Goyette told At Liberty. “And there’s just so much happening at once. As journalists, we’re doing the best we can.” 

Paige Fernandez, Former Policing Policy Advisor, ACLU National Political Advocacy Department

This OpEd

Police are supposed to “protect and serve” the community, but that’s a far cry from what modern-day policing often looks like in our country. The recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and others highlight the need for drastic systemic change, yet again, as Americans across the country take to the streets in protest.

Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director

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Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project

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Vera Eidelman, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

Pride has never been just about the parties. To the LGBTQ community, Pride is about staking our place in the world and speaking truth to power. It’s about making clear that we’re here, we belong, and we are resilient — resilient together. As our Trans Justice Campaign Manager LaLa Zannell has said: “For many Black and Brown queer and trans people, gathering in person has always come with a health and safety risk — including from law enforcement, and others who feel they have the right to harm us for simply being who we are … For many of us, this is not the first pandemic that shows the injustices in our health care, economic, and criminal justice systems.”   Whether you’re celebrating Pride 2020 over Zoom, on the phone, or standing six feet apart from your friends donning rainbow masks — the message of Pride remains, and it’s stronger than ever. The history of Pride is rooted in the LGBTQ community responding to police violence and abuse of LGBTQ people and sex workers and those who fought back. This year, we’re showing what Pride means to us with a new Pride 2020 zine that sums up the year in LGBTQ rights, the meaning of pride to our community, profiles of trailblazers in trans rights including Aimee Stephens, and the fight ahead as we tackle sex work decriminalization, bans on trans athletes, attempts to license discrimination in the name of religon, and more. Plus, you’ll get a crossword, word search, a coloring book page, and more fun, socially distant ways to celebrate pride in 2020. This is how we stay resilient.

The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, people across the country have taken to the streets to demand racial justice and an end to police brutality and systematic racism against Black people.