Amy Woolard
Attorney & Chief Program Officer (Legal, Policy, Organizing) at @ACLU of Virginia. Poet—NECK OF THE WOODS, Alice James Books. Teaching Law & Lit—UVA Law. Legal aid alum. Former bartender. she/her.
Words here = mine alone.
- BREAKING: Judge Giles ordered the immediate release of our ACLU-VA client Dr. Badar Khan Suri from Prairieland Detention Center in Texas!! We argued motions in Alexandria, VA this morning & are also in TX w/Center for Constitutional Rights ready to bring our client home to his family in Virginia.
- All this news out of Omaha (& TX, & elsewhere) is so heartening & dare I say hopeful, & relatedly also: pls support @taniel.bsky.social & @boltsmag.org in whatever way you can—I can't say enough abt how important coverage of local & state races is. No such thing as off-year or downballot anymore.
- actively choose to be sincere, reliable, competent & caring toward the people you love. also, there is no love like the love a dog gives—do whatever it takes to adopt a dog & love it beyond the limits of what you think love is.
- We are seeing some of the worst 1A violations of our lifetimes unfold over these months & intersect with an all-out assault on the judiciary. This is of course the correct decision, but it’s tough to think abt what true justice would be, if it’s even possible.
- BREAKING: Federal judge in Vermont orders that Rumeysa Ozturk be released from detention "immediately" and on her own recognizance with no travel restrictions. More to come at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com
- I thought the Chicago/APA/MLA pope joke won, but this one might be undefeatable.
- It's honestly moments like this that places like BlueSky are just chef's kiss demonstrations of human possibility in the sheer comedic force it generates
- Reposted by Amy WoolardA Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope
- omg The Bear is going to become even more insufferable to watch now, isn't it
- Reposted by Amy WoolardIn retrospect, there’s much that I could have seen coming when one considers Virginia’s Gadsden flag vanity plate, where you can signify your individuality and distrust of government by giving money to the government.
- Our ACLU-VA release on this win in Dr. Khan Suri's case here: www.aclu.org/press-releas...
- Breaking (we'll have a release up v soon): A federal judge tonight ruled against the Trump admin to keep our client Dr. Badar Khan Suri's case here in Virginia, where it belongs. It's the first time a court has ever applied the district of confinement exception www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
- Breaking (we'll have a release up v soon): A federal judge tonight ruled against the Trump admin to keep our client Dr. Badar Khan Suri's case here in Virginia, where it belongs. It's the first time a court has ever applied the district of confinement exception www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
- Tfw the U.S. Secretary of Education essentially writes a longform NextDoor post to Harvard.
- post yr favorite one-word movie
- for here there is no place / that does not see you. You must change your life.
- if you see this post your getaway vehicle
- Btwn 2011-2021, suicide rates increased staggeringly among people of color: 70% increase in AI/AN ppl, 58% increase among Black ppl & 39% increase among Hispanic ppl. Black youth have the fastest rising rate of suicide of any group (>144% since '07) & are less likely than peers to receive care.
- interspecies animal best friendships
- Reposted by Amy Woolard“‘They want to smash up the 14th Amendment,’ Mr. Zeskind said, addressing Democratic officials, ‘and I think you guys should scream about it.’”
- Anyone who's worked in restaurants knows exactly the kind of customer this guy is.
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- I taught my final class of the semester at UVA law today, so I'm feeling especially tender toward law students rn, but: the kids are all right.
- "Law students organize to give Trump-caving firms a recruitment problem" Georgetown Law students made a spreadsheet. National coverage followed. Now, the world's richest firms face PR & recruitment headaches. An organizer on how it unfolded @www.AllRiseNews.com www.allrisenews.com/p/skadden-st...
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- no answer more clear from their perspective to the question "when was America great" than using the highest office in the country to claim to nullify/gut enforcement of the Civil Rights Act
- Reposted by Amy WoolardReally need journalists to push back on this bullshit. When they say this, just ask them point blank: "Are you saying that because one Latino man committed a murder, another Latino man deserves a life sentence? Do you think all Latino men interchangeable?"
- Cville, my "liberal bubble" home. "the enforcers called in to detain the two men were wearing plain clothes & did not display badges or arrest warrants...who handcuff him & lead him out the front door of the courthouse and into an unmarked van." How does this sound any different than a kidnapping.
- Men in plainclothes, one in a balaclava, raided the Charlottesville courthouse today. They abducted a local painter whose case (allegedly fighting with his roommate) was being dismissed, and another who was there paying fines. They took them away in unmarked vans. dailyprogress.com/news/local/c...
- Reposted by Amy WoolardHas anyone ever said "My rights are a distraction?" It's always someone else's rights, right?
- Horrifying. If anyone ever thought of due process as just an abstract concept or a bureaucratic means to an already written end...
- NEW from @nytimes.com: A bone-chilling account. A Venezuelan man detained alongside the 238 sent to El Salvador on March 15 seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. His name isn't among the names of those sent to CECOT that day and no one spotted him among those men. He's just... gone.
- Cruelty, fear & degradation of detention. World-changing, life-saving research left to perish. Incalculable talent & skill pouring out of our country to go elsewhere. This president will literally give up a cure for cancer to put people in prison & exile for what.
- Almost every line of this story would have been simply unbelievable a few months ago: —Pioneering cancer researcher; —*Arrested* at airport in Boston; —Now indefinite ICE detention in Louisiana; —"Crime": not declaring some frog-embryo samples for research. Read it. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
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- Today, of course, is already an important anniversary of a huge global loss. 9 years. They stand in the way of love & we will smoke them all.
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- I prob post this every year around this time, but it remains the case the best Easter poem ever written is this James Tate fire:
- This one goes out to my fellow Xers & especially my restaurant crew. The manuscript this belongs to is/will be dedicated to restaurant workers everywhere. Thank you so much to Walt & everyone at @theatlantic.com who made this possible.
- So it doesn't include any confidential national security details in it, but I do have a new poem in @theatlantic.com today called "1994"—so incredibly grateful to the editors for offering me the opportunity. www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
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- He almost certainly will try to come after us as well, but I've honestly never been prouder to be an ACLU lawyer & to work w/my Virginia staff & all my colleagues all across the country.
- an important clarification/update:
- or they worked in restaurants so long that all their kitchenware is essentially shift meal dishes that never made it back to the restaurant from my—I mean their—house
- As an atty who used to represent kids in school discipline & court & had to deal w/"gang task forces" all the time, I do want ppl to know it's always been easy for the govt to accuse/label someone (esp a kid) as a gang member w/no real evidence & then treat them as such ongoing—that part is not new.
- Reposted by Amy WoolardBREAKING: Days after a Louisiana judge ruled that the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil can proceed, thousands are holding an emergency Passover Seder at the ICE headquarters in New York City, saying: If you come for one, you face us all.
- Posted this a while back & even w/in the last 8 days it's been scarily on point. LSA did create a somewhat virtual option for attendees, which: good. Every other such conference needs to do the same or similar. And ppl—even if you expect to gain entry, pls be careful abt technology you're carrying.
- Doesn't make it any less abhorrent but if the truth can't live on one gov't website, lawmakers shld make sure it officially lives on every other one. Adopt it into a Congressional committee report & post it there. Attach it in full as exhibit to any relevant court filings. Put it on local gov sites.
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- I had a joke about Eurydice but looking back on it now, I should've kept it to myself.
- I think I coveted this from @vitriol.bsky.social sharing theirs on social a while back, but so excited to receive this ultimate Southern mug from Liz Kelly Pottery today, my new personal power object.
- It can’t be lost in the horror of all this that Justice Jackson is always just a master class in dissent, unfortunate as it is that she’s so often in that position. This is also why it matters that a public defender now sits on SCOTUS.
- An extraordinary separate dissent from Justice Jackson accuses the majority of trying to pass off its dirty work under the cover of the shadow docket and explicitly invokes Korematsu, the Japanese internment case. Wow. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...
