Radio Civil Liberties: Podcasts-Click to Listen
This Week on Radio Civil Liberties: November 7, 2009
This week on Radio Civil Liberties:
The New York State Legislature goes back into session: Are you sick and tired of hearing about Marriage Fairness? Good-Because we're sick and tired of it being denied! Don't Deny your Inner Armchair Activist! Click the Link below and BE the change while still BEing in you Pajamas!
More updates and video on Monday!
Surviving Police Encounters: "A Night at the Wishberry"
Following up on this week's "Night at the Wishberry" event, its never too often that we can feature as important a subject as police encounters, which we'll be highlighting over the next two shows. Recapping, this week the Western Regional Office took the show on the road, stopping on the southern tier in Fredonia, NY at the Wishberry Cafe
After a quick course in surviving police encounters by the WRO staff, the audience was treated to the sounds of Chris Bell and the Broadcast.
Check out the photoalbum here to get a glimpse of the event. Also, listen for new music from "The Broadcast" and the incomparable Chris Bell on upcoming shows. This morning we have an early release of "Realign" from the Broadcast that was recorded live at the Wishberry. More to come on Monday including "Know Your Rights", as well as more music and video from Broadcast and Chris Bell.
Student's Rights and Military Recruiting: NYCLU's Annual Week of Action Oct 22-24
This week, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Western Regional Office will visit public high schools in Buffalo to inform students of their rights regarding military recruitment at school.
The Week of Action, an annual event, targets schools known to have high levels of recruitment activity. Teams of volunteers will visit selected schools before classes start and at the end of the school day to distribute No Student Left Unrecruited palm cards, which help students,
parents, educators, and advocates understand their rights and obligations when it comes to military recruitment. The palm card provides two detachable forms to help students opt out of recruiting databases and keep their information private from recruiters.
This morning on Radio Civil Liberties, we'll hear reports
and updates regarding best practices for students to protect their rights
and their privacy information from being collected by these aggressive military
recruiting practices.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 granted the military wide access to public high schools and students’ personal
information, though the law also requires schools to allow students and parents to withhold personal information from the military. As recruiters intensified activities inside public high schools to meet wartime quotas, stories of aggressive
recruitment targeting low-income communities of color became common.
Do you want to help? It's easy,just give us a call, 716-852-4033 or shoot us an email at westernregion@nyclu.org
What: Week of Action to inform students of their rights regarding military recruitment
When: Tuesday, Oct. 20 through Thursday, Oct. 22
Where: Tuesday: Hutchinson Central Technical High School, 256 South Elmwood Ave.
Wednesday: Kenmore-West High School, 33 Highland Parkway
Thursday: McKinley High School. 1500 Elmwood Ave.
Freedom to Read and Freedom of Thought: Banned Books Week 2009
In 2008, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reported that there were 513 challenges to books. School districts, in particular, continue to restrict students’ access to books based on content and viewpoint—usually because of perceived profanity or offensive depictions of race, gender, and, often, even national identity. In 2006, for example, the Miami-Dade County School Board voted to pull copies of Alta Schreier’s Vamos a Cuba because of parents’ complaints about the author’s representation of life in that country. This year, in North Stafford, Virginia, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States was challenged as “un-American, leftist propaganda.” Recently, students in an Advanced Placement English class at Eastern High School in Louisville, Kentucky were instructed by their teacher not to read the last 30 pages of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
What do students lose out on by not reading those final pages?
This week provides an opportunity for us to reflect on that question, as well as on the importance of safeguarding the right to free expression. While it is important that authors write freely, it is just as important that readers read freely.
For more information on how you can get involved in Banned Books Week and for a listing of events in your area,visit: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org
Back 2 School Special: Part 1 of 1: Student's Privacy Rights Under Assault by Aggressive Recruiting Practices.
The military has launched an aggressive campaign to recruit students to fill the ranks of the armed services. And since some recent laws have gone into effect, many educators, students and parents have complained that recruiters are using heavy-handed tactics to harass students, violate students' privacy rights, and target poor students and students of color.
In response, the NYCLU and its allies have been providing resources for students their parents and teachers who want to protect their right to keep private that information and not be harassed by overly aggressive recruiters and to be able to report abuses if they happen. This week, in Part 1 of our Back to School series on protecting student's privacy rights, we listen to a number of reports detailing some of the abuses that have taken place.
In our first report, we listen in as author David Goodman, from "Mother Jones" and the NYCLU's Ari Rosmarin detail the depth of the problems in a report from Democracy Now.
For More information on how to protect student's privacy rights, and how to keep that information from ending up in the Pentagon and Department of Defense databases, and how to "opt-out" your students, click here for the NYCLU's Youth and Student's Rights web page. And here for the NYCLU Project on Military Recruitment and Student's Rights.
Video of the Week
News from the NYCLU
ACLU Blog
