Last night at our Annual Membership Meeting, we honored three Coloradans who advanced civil liberties in three different ways. Arlette Baer volunteered for the ACLU of Colorado every week for 40 years, including serving on our Board of Directors for many of those years. Mia Lopez stood up for students’ and women’s rights when she fought her school for the right to continue her academic progress while on maternity leave. And Public Defender Maralina Schoenfelder brought the solitary confinement of children at the El Pueblo Residential Treatment Center to light, helping to end the abusive practice and protect the rights of the children at the facility.
- ACLU Operations Manager Caryn Osterman and Arlette Baer
In addition to the awards, we hosted a panel on the impact of economic injustice on civil liberties. We were fortunate to have Colorado Center on Law and Policy’s Executive Director Claire Levy and the Colorado Latino Forum’s Amanda Gonzalez join our very own Legal Director, Mark Silverstein, for a discussion that was especially timely given recent efforts by Grand Junction, Boulder, and Pueblo to limit the rights of the homeless and vulnerable.
Thank you to all of our wonderful members who attended!
Be sure to check out our Flickr page for more pictures of the event.