In this day and age people are having to fight for their rights. Rights that should not be challenged by any person or any thing. Just like in the past the main groups that are having their rights challenged are minorities. However, these groups do not only include ethnic minorities they also include groups of people that do not conform with the status quo of the society around them.
In recent years one the most notable groups that have to fight for their rights are the LGBTQ. In some places these people are refused service simply because they may love someone the same gender as them, or because they may identify with the gender opposite than the one they were born to. In wake of these struggles several organizations have started to help the fight against LGBTQ discrimination.
The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the largest LGBTQ advocacy organizations in the nation. The ACLU offers a monthly membership. When someone becomes a member of the ACLU they are given protections against discrimination and other things. This organization works very hard to ensure that these people are not denied rights because of sexual orientation.
Sometimes help for causes like these even comes from unexpected places. For example, The Larkin and Lacey Frontera Fund donates money to help with the advancement of migrant workers in the state of Arizona. To the average person the names Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin will not ring a bell, but after some research you’ll see that they are the founders of the Phoenix New Times newspaper and Backpage.com. Learn more about Jim Larkin: http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/potmsearch/detail/submission/6427818/Michael_Lacey and http://www.laceyandlarkinfronterafund.org/about-lacey-larkin-frontera-fund/michael-lacey/
For those that are not familiar with Backpage it is like Craigslist, but it features less couches for sale and more prostitutes. In 2007 they were both arrested on charges including profiting from prostitution and giving away classified information.
They were released from jail less than 24 hours later, and sued saying that their First Amendment rights had been violated. The two men were awarded 3.7 million dollars. With the settlement money they received Larkin and Lacey set up the Frontera Fund.
The Frontera Fund was set up to help Hispanic migrant workers in the state of Arizona, a state that at one time had laws requiring people to show proof of citizenship on the spot.
This law was almost exclusively targeting the same people the Frontera Fund was set up to help. Part of the reasoning that Larkin and Lacey decided to help this group is because they got tired of seeing the blatant racism against Hispanic people.
The man that was responsible for their arrest, sheriff Joe Arpaio, was one of the main public figures that “demonized” this group of people. Thanks to Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin the Frontera Fund has done a great job fighting against the people that paint migrant workers out to be bad people.
Hopefully in the near future we will not need organizations like the ACLU, the NAACP, or the Funtera Fund because these minority groups will be treated with the same respect as other groups in the United States.