Colin Donnaruma, President of the Capital-Region Chapter, NYCLU, spoke on "The Continuing Struggle to Defend Civil Rights: the NYCLU's Priorities for 2011-2012." The content was meaty.

Donnaruma began by noting that with the election of Barack Obama we had "overly high expectations". Here in NYS, however, same-sex marriage equality passed fast this year. NYS is now the sixth and the third-most-populous state in the U.S. to do so. Many more – 44 – are yet to follow suit.

We have Marriage Equality in NY but not at the Federal Government level. This hurts with immigration, tax returns, and many things. The "Defense of Marriage Act" (DoMA), signed into law by President Clinton in September 1996, caused this. Correcting this will likely take years in the courts. On the Supreme Court it is Justice Kennedy who will likely provide the swing vote and any decision to be a 5 to 4 "yes" for a good result.

Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights via the (NYS) "Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act" was NOT passed. Discriminations can vary widely with localities, employers, job descriptions, etc. Mr. Donnaruma had begun by encouraging questions during his talk. We obliged. At this point our small but engaged audience posed lively, provocative and even humorous questions as well as "what-if" situations.

Reproductive Rights...are not in NYS on the State level. In 1970 a re-write put this matter in the penal codes and without an exception for the health of the mother. This is all now utterly antiquated. We rely on Federal Constitutional law on this matter. That law, however, has been eroded of late. There are NYS-level efforts to fix our state laws on this matter. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the NYS Assembly are supportive on this. The NYS Senate may prove to not be so.

Criminal Justice was another lively subject. NYCLU is in favor of prisoners being counted as residents of where they come from and not the Upstate prison they are put in. 90,000 are in NYS jails and prisons. 100,000 are out on parole. This skews population counts and politicians can manipulate that for their gains. NYCLU has a lawsuit to challenge this situation which is called "Felony Disenfranchisement". Also noted was that parolees must re-register to vote when parole ends. The quality of prisoner treatment is an issue too.

Again there arose from the audience a goodly number of questions and comments. This reporter joined in by noting to a preceding questioner that military personnel are considered to be residents of where they enlisted from (their previous home address) and not the place where they are stationed. The questioner then pointed out the possibility of a prisoner losing his/her old address while incarcerated (fire, building re-habbed, re-rented, etc.) I then had to note that "that was a good point!" A definition pointed out by another was that a felony conviction of a year or more is when a prisoner loses voting rights. Also noted by the audience and Mr. Donnaruma was that judges must consider alternate sentences for non-violent offenses.

There are 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States. and 7.3 million on parole, [reporter's note: The U.S. Census Estimate of 2011's population is 311 million. 2.3 million is 0.74% of that and 7.3 million is 2.35%. Together it’s 3.09%.] This is the highest rate of incarceration in the world. A book by Michelle Alexander of the ACLU was cited – "The New Jim Crow" (2010) – which provides this example of bad medical treatment for prisoners: If a bad/botched medical procedure is done to a prisoner the only legal recourse is to be able to prove deliberate and malevolent intent.

First Amendment: We had an interesting case from Troy, NY in recent years. An Iraqi artist had a media-art piece on display at the "Troy Sanctuary for Independent Media". There was a castigation of it – by some in some of the media – as being "unpatriotic". Then suddenly the City of Troy came up with a suspiciously timed "code violation" on the building and closed it. Later investigation found a pattern this kind of thing in Troy. A lawsuit has been filed ("Sanctuary vs. City of Troy...") – it’s for "damages" but that means a nominal amount here. Such bad city behavior may be inhibited by this. This case will consume (and has already) some years. A happier byproduct: the Sanctuary enjoyed a spike in donations!

The NYCLU is still active in national-security issues, Civil liberties are still being denied, defendants are still being treated badly, and there is all the clear unconstitutionality of the (continuing) Bush-Era national-security laws. Again, our audience had more questions and made more observations.

This reporter couldn't help but notice that the small but lively engagement (pro and con) of our audience was reminiscent of the early days of CDHS. I joined in the Spring of 1987 when it was 1 year old and was then called Capital District Free Inquirers.