For two decades in my experience (and a decade before that when I was less active), the local ACLU has sat on its hands (or place them in front of eyes, ears, nose, and mouth) when asked to back ending the City's anti-homeless 11 PM - 8:30 AM Sleeping Ban [http://huffsantacruz.org/code/6.36. pdf]. The only attorneys and legal workers who ever provided consistent pro bono support to homeless and countercultural people struggling to survive in the face of this law were Kate Wells and Ray Glock-Grueneich. The ACLU repeatedly dodged, ducked, dawdled and diddled, while poor people went to jail and some of them froze to death. To his credit, Don Zimmerman, the legal eagle of the local ACLU, took on a battle with the Downtown Commission and the City Council to soften the ridiculous space-stealing Parking Garage Trespass Law last year. (No right to enter a parking garage unless you have a bike or vehicle there; and only 15 minutes if you do.) This law particularly targets the homeless (though that word rarely passed his lips). However, Zimmerman and his ACLU colleagues have been stalling for a year and a half since April 2006 when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the LA Sleeping Ban in the Jones decision. Z. claims our law is more liberal and so less vulnerable (since it allows homeless people--in theory--to sleep during the day though not 11 PM - 8:30 AM). That we must wait until all appeals are finalized. That a harsher decision is more likely from a district judge who, for some reason, won't follow the Jones precedent (which says if there's generally inadequate shelter, you can't arrest people for sleeping at night). Laird, during his reign as Mayor in 1988, had more homeless people arrested for trying to raise this issue at City Council than any mayor since (with the exception of the legendary Rotkin--who is on the Board of Directors of the ACLU). Anti-war note: Laird also voted for Bush's anti-Iranian wardrive--see http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/05/18433386.php The ACLU pleads poverty, lack of financial resources, and timing problems when asked to support or advocate for a lawsuit based on the Jones decision. Nor can you read a letter from them asking the City Council to stop violating the 8th Amendment with its stepped up crackdown on the homeless along the river, in the Pogonip, downtown, etc. It's particularly noxious that an organization that denounces federal trashing of civil liberties, remains continuously silent here in Santa Cruz on a much more pressing issue close at home, over which it has some significant impact.