Cville Dems

The Charlottesville Democratic Committee

Prof. Danielle Citron on Privacy, Surveillance, and Love in the Digital Age (October 11)

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UVA Law Professor and MacArthur Fellow Danielle Citron, an international expert on online privacy, will speak about the latest developments at the intersection of technology, public policy, and our daily Internet-driven lives at 6:45pm Tuesday October 11th at the Downtown Library’s Swanson Case Room and also on Zoom. Prof. Citron will be “in conversation” with UVA History Prof. William Hitchcock, co-host of the Democracy in Danger podcast, and Q&A will follow. Copies of Prof. Citron’s new book The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age (coming out the week before she speaks!) will be available for purchase. All are welcome, please mark your calendars and join us!
 
Front cover of Danille Citron book "The Fight for Privacy"For the past decade, Citron has worked with lawmakers, law enforcement and tech companies to combat online abuse and to protect intimate privacy. In June 2019, she testified before Congress about the national security and privacy risks of deepfakes. She has been involved in reform efforts around the regulation of online platforms. In October 2019, she testified before Congress about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. From 2014 to 2016, Citron served as an advisor to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris and as a member of Harris’ Task Force to Combat Cyber Exploitation and Violence Against Women. In 2011, Citron testified about misogynistic cyber hate speech before the Inter-Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism at the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. Since 2011, she has been a member of Facebook’s Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery Task Force and an adviser and a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Task Force and as an adviser to the company since 2009. She is an adviser to the dating app Bumble, the music streaming service Spotify, and video sharing platform TikTok.
For full information:

Full Committee Meeting (Monday 10/24, 6:30 pm)

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cartoon people sitting around a meeting tableWe’ll be meeting at the Central Library’s Swanson Case Room, but you can also attend over Zoom; please contact cvilledemschair@gmail.com if you’re not on the committee and would like the Zoom login information.

The main business of the meeting will be pulling together all of our energies and organization to get Josh Throneberg across the finish line victorious! We’ll also provide some updates on voting-reform issues such as proposals for ranked-choice voting, as well as the urgent business of the Governor’s destructive policies on (1) transgender students in public schools and (2) withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Voter Registration and Voter Information (updated information)

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graphic showing a ballot being submitted via insertion into a box with a narrow slit at the top. into Now that Virginia is a same-day registration state, some of the rules are a bit different! Complete info is on our voting info page, but two things we’ll flag here:
  1. After regular voter registration ends on October 17, people living in Charlottesville who are eligible to become Virginia voters can, from 10/18-11/5, go to the Registrar’s Office (City Hall Annex, 7th St. NE off of Market St.) to register to vote and cast a provisional ballot.
  2. Even on Election Day (11/ 8) itself, they can go to their mailing address-based polling place, fill out a voter registration application form, and cast a provisional ballot (to find the right polling place, refer to the updated webpage above or call the Voter Registration Office at 434-970-3250).
These are important changes, please spread the word!

Dahlia Lithwick 9/22 recap (and link to event recording)

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LegaDahlia Lithwick portrait, wearing a blue blouse against a black backgroundl commentator Dahlia Lithwick knocked it out of the park when she returned to town 9/22 to speak to us (and the general public) about her great new book (now officially a NY Times bestseller!!) Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America. Her conversation with Amy Woolard was informative and inspiring… at times heartwarming and very personal… we all went for a ride.

If you missed the event, or want to share with friends, or just enjoyed it so much that you want to listen/watch it again, the recording is online at https://nowcomment.com/documents/328151 (with annotations showing what questions were asked when).

Our next speaker event: Tuesday October 11, 6:45pm: Prof. Danielle Citron on Privacy, Surveillance, and Love in the Digital Age; in conversation with Prof. William Hitchcock, she’ll talk about her brand new book The Fight for Privacy. Full information at https://cvilledems.org/event/prof-danielle-citron/

Cville Dems Host Legal Superstar Dahlia Lithwick for September 22nd Event

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Image of Dahlia Lithwick (right pane of two) as a guest on Brian Stelter's CNN show. The topic being discussed is "Are Trump's Offenses Getting a Free Pass?"Legal journalist/podcaster Dahlia Lithwick, one of Charlottesville’s very favorite ex-residents, returns “home” Thursday evening, September 22 at 6:45pm to PVCC’s beautiful Dickinson Auditorium to talk about her new book, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America. She’ll be in conversation with Amy Woolard, Chief Program Officer for the ACLU of Virginia, with audience Q&A to follow. This special Cville Dems-organized event is free and open to all, no reservations required.

You’ve very likely seen her on MSNBC and CNN, listened to her influential “Amicus” podcast, read her columns in Slate and New York Times… now come out and see her in person!

Lady Justice profiles the women lawyers who worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis for their 2017 “Unite the Right” violence here. And Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020.

We’ll have copies of her book available for sale at the event: please buy a copy to support Dahlia. It will make a great holiday gift for anyone, but especially for that idealistic daughter, granddaughter, or niece of yours!

We’ll also be giving a shout-out at the event to the local nonprofits who are doing the good work locally in some of the areas covered by her book: Protection of Immigrants and Refugees (IRC and International Neighbors and Sin Barreras), Sexual Assault and Harassment (S.A.R.A.), Women’s Rights (Charlottesville ​​NOW), Abortion and Reproductive Rights (Blue Ridge Abortion Fund and Planned Parenthood), and Racial Justice and Voting Rights (NAACP, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, League of Women Voters, and Virginia Organizing). [Note: these groups are neither affiliated with the Democratic Party nor necessarily endorse our policy positions.]

Dahlia will be “in conversation” with Amy Woolard, a writer and attorney who’s lived and worked in Charlottesville for over 30 years, much of that time working on civil rights policy and legislation. Amy is now Chief Program Officer for the ACLU of Virginia and previously was Director of Policy for the Legal Aid Justice Center. Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Dahlia Lithwick portrait, wearing a blue blouse against a black background

Bio: Dahlia Lithwick is the senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law.  Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Commentary, among other places. Lithwick won a 2013 National Magazine Award for her columns on the Affordable Care Act. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 2018.