Civil Rights

Obama’s Call to Action: Why We Cannot Wait

Obama’s Call to Action: Why We Cannot Wait

By David GreenwaldJanuary 20, 200927 comments

A generation ago in 1961, President John F. Kennedy exhorted the country to take out a new spirit of public service as a new generation took the helm of the United States. Inspired by his call to action, many young Americans would span out across the globe in the Peace Corps and at home came calls for social justice, racial equality, and eventually peace.

In just a few hours today, a new President will take office with as much excitement if not more than that day in 1961. There will be other days to reflect on the pitfalls ahead. There will be other times to reflect on how Camelot and the “Best and the Brightest” to coin the phrase of David Halberstam would end up in the 1960s.

Reflections on Martin Luther King Day as Barack Obama Becomes President

Reflections on Martin Luther King Day as Barack Obama Becomes President

By David GreenwaldJanuary 19, 200910 comments

Every year I have written a special essay on Martin Luther King Day. I usually pick a lesser known Martin Luther King speech to reflect on. At the MLK Dinner last Thursday, I heard an excerpt from the 1967 speech, “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam.”

Dr. King has become so lionized in this country, that people often seem to forget that he was not non-threatening figure that he has now become. He was in his own day radical despite the fact that those on the more radical side felt he was too passive, those on the less confrontational side felt he was too radical.

Former California Supreme Court Court Justice Cruz Reynoso Named to Obama Agency Review Team

Former California Supreme Court Court Justice Cruz Reynoso Named to Obama Agency Review Team

By David GreenwaldNovember 19, 200816 comments

According to a release from UC Davis, Cruz Reynoso, professor emeritus of law at the University of California, Davis, has been appointed to President-elect Barack Obama’s Justice and Civil Rights Agency Review Team. Reynoso will help lead a review of key federal departments, agencies and commissions, as well as the White House. The review will provide the Obama-Biden Transition Team with information needed to make policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

Reynoso is an internationally known civil rights leader, the first Latino to sit on the California Supreme Court, and a 2000 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. He has served as associate general counsel to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, as a member of the Select Commission on Immigration and Human Rights, and as vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He joined the faculty at UC Davis in 2001.