News & Commentary

Jameer Baptiste is a native Floridian born in Hollywood and raised in Pembroke Pines. While at Florida International University, he dedicated his time to the advancement of the LGBT community as president of the GLBT Advocacy Coalition, vice-president of Stonewall Pride Alliance, and recruitment officer/sergeant-at-arms and proud brother of Delta Lambda Phi Fraternity; Beta Delta Chapter.
Jameer graduated, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Public Relations. He continues to focus his attention and talents on the advancement of the LGBT comm

By Bill Lara Director/Editor In Chief International Press Club Miami

In the midst of the GOP and DNC national conventions, the trenches are filled with the local activists of one political persuasion or another clawing at the wheels within the wheels of local government politicking. The ACLU is right in the middle of the fight and, it has its hands full.

Thursday morning, the ACLU hosted a breakfast for the Miami-area Hispanic media. The breakfast was organized by the Florida Association of Hispanic Journalists and the International Press club-Miami. On this occasion, the main objective was to muster some support for the ACLU's legal and political battle against Florida Governor Rick Scott’s administration, which they are suing to oppose number of amendments (5,6 & 8) and, specifically at this moment, what the organization calls the “Voter Suppression Law,” a.k.a. HB-1355.

On Tuesday, August 28, the Republican National Convention in Tampa fully got underway, and the ACLU of Florida had volunteers on the ground to make sure people knew their First Amendment rights. Our volunteers were fantastic in their sheer numbers, in their work ethic and in their enthusiasm for protecting and celebrating the Constitution.

This week, we made a bombshell discovery in our work defending the right to vote in Florida against voter suppression. A public records request we filed with the Florida Parole Commission has uncovered 17,604 Restoration of Civil Rights (RCR) certificates that were returned to the Parole Commission as “undeliverable."

The ACLU and the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law wrote to the Florida Secretary of State today to inform the state that the ongoing effort to remove legal, registered voters from the voting rolls is "in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993..."

Yesterday a federal court in Tallahassee blocked enforcement of a key portion of Florida’s new voting laws – the section which placed new restrictions and financial penalties on civic groups which undertook voter registration drives.

The new law was so bad that groups such as The League of Women Voters stopped registering voters entirely and two teachers were threatened with fines for registering students in their classrooms under the guise of cracking down on ‘voter fraud.’

Here at the ACLU of Florida, we produce a lot of resources to help people in Florida know their rights. In this cartoon, it looks like Governor Rick Scott has decided to do our job for us with the state's new election laws.