Racial Justice Initiative Continues
Redditt Hudson, a former St. Louis police officer, left the force in 1999 and devoted himself to addressing issues of police misconduct and to searching for ways to improve police-community relations. He has a significant history of work on issues critical to the social, cultural, and economic well-being of African-American communities and is especially concerned with the well-being of youths. In the past, he worked with serious juvenile offenders at the Hogan Youth Correctional Facility and provided them with alternative constructive choices to help them to modify behavior prior to community reentry. Redditt Hudson has held positions with the St. Louis Emergency Children's Home and Better Family Life Incorporated. In 2000, he founded Project Peace, an organization which addresses issues of accountability and responsibility for students in high schools and in communities.
Redditt begins the second year of the Racial Justice Initiative with a continued focus on police-community relations. He talks about the beginning focus of his work:
“Racial Justice has been a critical focus of efforts to defend civil liberties and civil rights in the United States for decades. At this pivotal time in our history, with the alarming expansion of government powers that clearly places our civil liberties in real danger, it is hard to overstate the importance of the work done by the ACLU.
ACLU-EM’s racial justice work in St. Louis will be community-centered. Through this project, the ACLU-EM will help empower targeted communities to protect their residents by teaching them about their civil rights and training them to interact safely and effectively with police officers. We want to facilitate the organization of well trained teams of monitors that can establish when, where, and how residents’ civil liberties are being violated; recognize when police power is being misused or abused; and know how to follow up effectively to report and address the violations.”
The ACLU-EM Racial Justice Project will address a variety of racial justice issues and will work actively with the ACLU’s legal, legislative, and public education programs.
Revisit this site for information about the launch this summer of an exciting ACLU-EM pilot program in a targeted St. Louis community.
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