News & Commentary

Instead of seeking peace, the governor has doubled down on police use of force. He can help stop the violence by lifting regulations on state property, telling state police to allow people to gather undisturbed, and ending his order expanding police power.

Now is not the time for escalation of violence against Black people and Black communities by deploying military force of any kind. Even our own military commanders recognized that laws “prohibiting direct military involvement in law enforcement [are] in keeping with long-standing U.S. law and policy limiting the military’s role in domestic affairs". We must oppose resolutely any use of the military to police our communities.

It is clear that Virginians are impacted by this virus at every level, and among the most vulnerable are Black and brown people, including the disproportionate number held in Virginia’s custodial facilities.

The ACLU of Virginia joins the call to end the exploitation of the labor of people living in prisons. Not everything that may be legal is right.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has a responsibility to protect all Virginians, and that includes the thousands of men, women and children being held in Virginia’s prisons, jails and correctional facilities.

The ACLU of Virginia commends the Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam for signing criminal legal reform legislation that would help reduce Virginia’s overdependence on incarceration and bring more justice to our system.

The exponential spread of COVID-19 has made one thing clear: America is jailing way too many people in substandard, dangerous conditions that are highly susceptible to outbreaks of contagious illnesses.

We are asking our community leaders and law enforcement to recognize, however, that now is the time to rethink how our jails and prisons are not effective ways to address the social and community ills of poverty and drug use.

In light of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic now spreading through America and across the Commonwealth, we have closed our physical office temporarily and are continuing our work remotely.