News & Commentary

Leila Rafei, Former Content Strategist, ACLU

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Udi Ofer, Former Director, Justice Division, ACLU National Political and Advocacy Department

Ashoka Mukpo, Staff Reporter, ACLU

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Coronavirus could make it hard for Oklahomans to vote in our upcoming elections, but it doesn’t have to. We are a coalition of concerned Oklahomans who’ve come together to ensure no one has to risk their safety in order to exercise their right to vote in the midst of a pandemic.Casting an absentee ballot by mail should be the easy solution to ensure Oklahomans can safely exercise their right to vote from the security of their own home. But Oklahoma is one of only three states where the ballot form requires absentee ballots to be notarized in order to be counted on Election Day. This must change immediately.

A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform Details Millions of Racially Targeted Marijuana Arrests Made Between 2010-2018

Jennifer Stisa Granick, Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

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April is always an exciting month for our Board of Directors and the ACLU of Oklahoma staff. It's our opportunity to share our successes over the past year with our supporters face to face at our annual membership meeting and celebrate the efforts of our fellow advocates working towards a fair Oklahoma.

As many Americans round out the end of their first month of social distancing, it’s clear that the toll of “stay at home” orders during the COVID-19 pandemic is much more than economic. The anxiety and fear that wash over us each day that we spend alone, away from friends, coworkers, and family, inflict their own kind of emotional damage.  The cost of social isolation is a worthy cost in this case — staying home can quite literally save lives. But for some people, the advent of social isolation came long before the coronavirus. At the ACLU, we work with many communities who deal with the long-term impacts of social isolation: people living with disabilities who often experience accessibility issues, people held in detention, and people imprisoned in solitary confinement, just to name a few. Joining us on this episode of our podcast, At Liberty, is Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University who understands the psychological and physiological impacts of isolation, and how we can mitigate them for both ourselves and others. We also spoke with a few people — Anna Landre, TreShaun Pate, Jason Hernandez and Claire Goldberg — who know a thing or two about social distancing. Their circumstances have made them familiar with isolation long before COVID-19. Listen here to learn from their experiences, and for tips from Dr. Holt-Lunstad on how to ease the pain of isolation during this pandemic. 

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

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