Announcments

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Public Forums

Sender: Kim Easter
Date: 10/31/2008

ACLU to Hold Human Rights Forum on Religious and Ethnic Discrimination

Throughout U.S. history, religious and ethnic discrimination has compromised Americans’ fundamental human rights. On November 14 -15, 2008, the ACLU Human Rights Program and the ACLU of Michigan will tackle these issue during a 2-day workshop for social justice advocates and community activists interested in developing human rights strategies to end these types of religious and ethnic discrimination. The human rights conference entitled "Keeping Your Faith in Post-9/11 America" will be held at the Muslim Unity Center in Bloomfield Hills, MI.

Through identifying shared advocacy goals, participants of the conference will work to develop concrete strategies for using human rights standards and mechanisms to tackle a range of issues including the following:

Religious and ethnic profiling, including people perceived to be South Asian, Muslim or Arab
Discrimination in public places, by government agencies and based on dress including burka/hijab/niqab
Ensuring religious freedom without fear, including meeting one's Zakat obligations
Other issues facing Michigan's Muslims and those perceived to be South Asian, Muslim or Arab
The event is an opportunity for advocates to learn from experts in the field about applying human rights principles and to share experiences and strategies with other social justice advocates. Participants will learn how to actively engage human rights principles to protect the rights of communities against religious and ethnic discrimination, document and expose these human rights violations, and help build a coalition towards ending laws, policies and practices that perpetuate religious and ethnic inequality.

The conference is free but space will be limited. Limited travel and accommodation scholarships will be available and will be awarded based on demonstrated need and interest in the workshop.

For more information and to register, please visit http://action.aclu.org/humanrights

Petitions

Sender: marcia macmullan
Date: 7/30/2008

VERIFIED VOTING, a non profit national organization dedicated to election integrity, urges a NO vote on Diane Feinstein's fatally flawed Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act. S.3212 .

“Here are some of S.3212's most troubling provisions:
1. S.3212 would allow "independent" vote records that would exist only in computer memory.
2. The bill is written in a way that makes it debateable whether or not the voter will have the opportunity to verify the independent record.
3. S.3212 would place a representative of the voting system industry on the committee that drafts federal voluntary voting systems guidelines.
4. By creating a broad restriction on publishing "confidential commercial information" about voting systems, S. 3212 could restrict the publication of valuable information about the security and reliability of voting systems. (We already have a non-transparent system—this would perpetuate it--MM)

Take action today: tell your Senators that we all deserve more reliable voting systems, and ask them to oppose S. 3212.”

In less than a minute you can tell Senators Levin and Stabenow to pay attention and vote NO.
Here is the web address:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/199/t/6122/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25256