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  • Cedric Watkins is a father, uncle, entrepreneur-in-training, and a vital community pillar for many others. While behind bars, he has tirelessly devoted himself to serving his peers and his community. He developed gang disaffiliation programs for other incarcerated individuals and is currently involved with Defy Ventures. He sends letters and calls his daughter as much as he can.

    Cedric is currently in prison at Sterling Correctional Facility. He was convicted of aggravated robbery, burglary, kidnapping, theft and sentenced to 80 years; no one was seriously injured or killed. For comparison, a person convicted of second-degree murder in Colorado faces a maximum sentence of 48 years. Cedric has already served 20 years and has fully rehabilitated during that time.

    It’s time to bring Cedric home: acluco.org/redemption. Redemption is real. Clemency is compassion.

  • On November 21, 2016, 13 Aurora police officers responded to a simple noise complaint at Alberto Torres’s home. As happens all too often, Aurora police officers escalated this minor issue into a brutal affair. They beat Mr. Torres solely because he delayed exiting his garage to ask his wife to interpret for him. With that beating, the lives of Mr. Torres and every member of his family were changed and he has yet to recover. ACLU of Colorado fought to obtain justice for Mr. Torres, and Aurora has now paid him $285,000. But money is not justice, and the brutality of the Aurora Police Department against people of color has continued unabated.

    It doesn’t have to be this way.

    Imagine, if instead of 13 officers being dispatched to Mr. Torres’s home for a noise complaint, the City of Aurora sent a civilian-led response team to check on his welfare and ask that he and his friends lower their sound, resulting in a non-violent solution to a minor issue?

    ACLU Settles Case With Aurora After Police Brutalize and Unlawfully Arrest Alberto Torres

  • Hope is a discipline. It’s a commitment that together, we can create a more perfect union. We won’t rest until we fulfill the promise of equal rights for ALL people in the United States.

    Join us in our fight to fulfill this promise and move forward with hope by donating to the ACLU of Colorado. Your donation supports the ACLU’s strengths that make our work effective and collaborative.

    Donate now at https://action.aclu.org/give/support-aclu-colorado

  • Anthony Martinez is 84-years-old and suffering from renal failure, as well as other serious medical conditions including dementia. He is currently incarcerated in the Sterling Correctional Facility, site of one of Colorado’s largest COVID-19 outbreaks with almost 600 active COVID-19 cases. He and his family are understandably terrified that he will catch the virus and die.

    In the midst of this public health crisis, incarcerated people as vulnerable as Anthony, could and should be immediately released to safely live out their remaining years with family.

    Read more about Anthony Martinez and other at-risk incarcerated people. 

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8.24.10

New documents confirm that FBI

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado released new documents today that it says confirm that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) is inappropriately treating peaceful protest as potential terrorism. The ACLU obtained the documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last December on behalf of sixteen organizations and ten individuals. The files released today concern the Colorado American Indian Movement and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center..... | Read More

8.24.10

New documents confirm: FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force targets peaceful activists for harassment, political surveillance

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado released documents today that it says confirm that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Denver is targeting peaceful political activists for harassment and building files on constitutionally-protected political activities and associations that have nothing to do with terrorism or other criminal activity. The documents are the first FBI responses to a formal request that the Colorado ACLU filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).... | Read More

8.24.10

ACLU Launches Nationwide Effort to Expose Illegal FBI Spying on Political and Religious Groups

Read the full post at www.aclu.org. | Read More

8.23.10

Denver Post: Senate panel approves tuition bill

Read the article by Tim Hoover. | Read More

8.20.10

Recent civil rights losses and violations spur citizens to form Pueblo County ACLU Chapter

Local Puebloans Join Campaign to Demand the Facts Responding to executive abuses of power and general concerns about the loss of civil rights, Pueblo and surrounding area residents are forming a Pueblo County ACLU of Colorado Chapter. Warrantless wiretapping, presidential signing statements and the illegal collection of private phone records by government spies are examples of abuses of power grabbing both national and local attention. More than 100 people packed the Historic Pueblo Union Depot.... | Read More

8.20.10

Pueblo County ACLU Chapter on the move

Pueblo Organizes and Demands Cessation to Governmental Abuses of Power   Actively organizing to protect our civil liberties, fired up Pueblo County ACLU of Colorado Chapter hosted its first Annual Members Meeting last night at the Historic Pueblo Union Depot. Nearly 75 people gathered to listen to Lisa Graves, ACLU Senior Counsel for Legislative Strategy in Washington D.C, speak on important issues surrounding constitutionally protected rights, the result of the Patriot Act, and post-9/11.... | Read More