Anthony Romero, national executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Romero will be the featured speaker for Disparate Opportunity in America: The Ongoing Struggle for Equal Rights sponsored by the UAA Justice Center and ACLU of Alaska.  The program will focus on recent developments in the continuing challenges faced by minority and underprivileged communities and the work of the ACLU in fighting for equal rights.

The “Great Society” and War on Poverty of the 1960s began with a promise of a brighter future for lower-income and minority persons, as well as the elderly. The realities of the intervening years have shown that there are still many problems awaiting resolution. Rates of poverty and incarceration for minority groups and the number of minority youth in the juvenile justice system are disproportionately high. Education, jobs, and health care remain pressing concerns in this country for minority and underprivileged communities, and are increasingly concerns for other sectors of the U.S. population as well.

• Date/time: Thursday, July 14 from 7:00–8:30 PM, with reception to follow
• Location: Wendy Williamson Auditorium, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage (see map).
• Cost of admission: No cost.
• Further info: See UAA Justice Center event announcement or event page at ACLU of Alaska.

Earlier today, Romero, along with ACLU of Alaska executive director Jeffrey Mittman, was a guest on APRN’s Talk of Alaska with host Steve Heimel. The discussion ranged from the challenge to civil liberties in the U.S. since 9/11, which occurred just four days after Romero became ACLU’s executive director in 2001, to ACLU of Alaska’s efforts in Schmidt and Schuh v. Alaska challenging the state’s tax-assessment rules which discriminate against same-sex couples (about which Bent Alaska has previously written), to DOMA, to the “Bong Hits for Jesus” Supreme Court case which originated at Juneau-Douglas High School (and which was the topic of a Talk of Alaska program on July 5), to public inebriates in Anchorage, to whether civil liberties is just a “liberal” issue. (It’s not.) Listen to the program at APRN’s website.

Romero, an attorney with a long history of public-interest activism, has been executive director of the ACLU since 2001. Under his tenure, the organization has expanded its nationwide litigation, lobbying and public information efforts, including new initiatives focused on human rights, religious freedom, technology and privacy, reproductive freedom, and LGBT rights. He is the first Hispanic to serve as executive director and in 2005 was named one of Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.” Romero is the co-author, with National Public Radio’s Dina Temple-Raston, of In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror, published in 2007.

Romero appeared on The Colbert Report on January 12, 2009 to discuss the need for Barack Obama to close Guantanamo down. Watch the video: