I support and volunteer with the ACLU of Colorado because there is no better way to ensure social justice than by working within the ACLU to protect, defend, and extend the civil rights and civil liberties of all people.
The ACLU does its work through litigation, education, and legislation, never forgetting the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not just words, but values to live by. I share in the vow to defend these values.
How could you not be drawn to an organization that works with the sole intent to reverse fundamental wrongs?
Juveniles (2005) and persons diagnosed with mental disabilities (2001) subjected to capital punishment? The ACLU reversed those laws.
Same sex couples (2003) and interracial couples (1967) prosecuted for private acts of intimacy? The ACLU reversed those laws too.
In 2013, when a residential treatment center forced children, many with developmental and mental disabilities, into solitary confinement in the name of therapy, the ACLU of Colorado stopped them.
In 2014, after a long history of courts throwing people in jail because they could not afford to pay fines and fees, the ACLU helped pass a bill to stop this medieval practice.
My donation helps the ACLU and its many civil rights campaigns, including:
- The Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, a broad coalition effort to address systemic problems with our state’s criminal justice system.
- To help create the legal, legislative, and community environments where police brutality is never tolerated.
- To end solitary confinement for inmates with mental illness.
- To secure, once and for all times, reproductive freedom for men and women by keeping government out of our bedrooms!
We know no battle for our civil rights and liberties remains won forever. So, we need the help of many. And, today I encourage you to help.
I hope you will join me in supporting the ACLU of Colorado on Colorado Gives Day.
Kathleen Hynes is a volunteer speaker for the ACLU of Colorado's Speakers Bureau. For more information about the Speakers Bureau and/or to book a speaking engagement, please visit the Speakers Bureau page.