On Tuesday, in what will go down as one of the most stunning political upsets in St. Louis County history,  Wesley Bell, a criminal justice reform advocate, unseated Bob McCulloch in the Democratic primary for the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s seat. McCulloch, an incumbent who has been in office for nearly three decades, is best remembered as the prosecutor responsible for overseeing the grand jury proceedings that resulted in the 2014 non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. As we mark the four-year anniversary of Brown’s death this week, McCulloch’s dismissal is historic and a symbol of the power of a broader movement.

There are four important lessons from what happened on Tuesday night. 

First, the story of Bell’s victory is the story of how local Black communities can use the ballot box as a tool for greater accountability. It is fair to suggest that Bell’s win was less about him and more about repudiating the legacy of McCulloch and the long history of state-sanctioned disregard for Black and brown lives. The story of McCulloch’s defeat is, in part, the story of how local communities can continue to use tragedies that are the result of state action as the catalyst for small political revolutions.

Second, Bell’s win calls into question what has become a popular talking point ahead of the 2018 midterms: the idea that Democratic candidates must remain “moderate” or “right-of-center” if they hope to be successful in the Midwest or the south. Bell’s positions such as eliminating cash bail for nonviolent offenders and opposing new mandatory minimum sentencing laws were far to the left of his more “moderate” Democratic opponent. His sizable win over McCulloch shows that Democratic candidates on the left are viable even in traditionally more conservative leaning states such as Missouri.

Third, Bell’s win is testimony to the power of grassroots social movements. Tuesday's primary is yet more evidence of the verifiable impact of the movement for Black lives on today’s political landscape. The emergence of Bell as a candidate for St. Louis County Prosecutor must be situated in the broader historical context of how the death of Michael Brown helped galvanize a new era of organized resistance in Ferguson/St. Louis County and throughout the nation. This is not to say that such resistance was not going on long before 2014. It is simply to acknowledge that the Ferguson uprisings of 2014 marked an important tipping point in the history of local resistance in St. Louis County.

Many of the positions that Bell ran on have been central issues of concern for local organizers for years following the death of Brown. Without them, Bell’s candidacy would have been a political impossibility. McCulloch's defeat would have been inconceivable had it not been for the work over the past four years by local Black-led resistance groups such as the Ferguson Collaborative, the Organization for Black Struggle, the St. Louis Reform Coalition, Millennial Activists United, Lost Voices Faith in Action, and Hands Up United, to name only a few. Action St. Louis, a Black millennial led organization co-founded by activist Kayla Reed in 2014, deserves special acknowledgement for its role in Bell’s victory. The organization’s #WokeVoterSTL and #ByeBob campaigns, as well as their unrelenting organizing efforts, undoubtedly played a key role in McCullough’s defeat.

Finally, the rejection of McCulloch must be viewed as being part of a broader national movement led by Black millennials, Black women, and Black queer folks to rid America of corrupt prosecutors. As I’ve written previously, the ousting of McCulloch comes after of the ousting of Anita Alvarez in Chicago and the ousting of Angela Corey in Florida. Prosecutors have the power to end mass incarceration in their communities. That’s why groups committed to reforming America’s  criminal justice system --- including the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice --- have invested across the country in voter education and mobilization efforts in local prosecutor races like the one in St. Louis County. Progressive prosecutors can set positive, proactive agendas that prioritize the people in their communities rather than prisons. 

As we move toward the midterm elections of 2018, we would do well to pay attention to the continued influence of the movement for Black lives on local elections and on the changing face of criminal justice reform in America.

On Oct. 10, 2012, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a 16-year-old boy, was shot and killed on Calle Internacional, a street in his hometown of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico by a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.

The agent, Lonnie Swartz, fired his gun through the U.S.-Mexico border fence, striking José Antonio approximately 10 times, with virtually all of the bullets entering from his back.

The unjustified death devastated the Rodriguez family, and raised serious legal questions: If a U.S. Border Patrol agent uses excessive and unnecessary force to kill a noncitizen in a foreign country, are there consequences under the U.S. Constitution?

On Wednesday, almost six years after José Antonio was killed, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that his mother can sue Swartz for damages. The Ninth Circuit’s decision involves several constitutional doctrines, but as the court recognized, at its core is a simple principle: “It is inconceivable that any reasonable officer could have thought that he or she could kill [José Antonio Elena Rodriguez] for no reason.”

The opinion is not only a milestone in the fight for justice for José Antonio’s family, it is the first time that a court of appeals has confirmed that the Constitution, and in particular the Fourth Amendment, applies in the context of a cross-border shooting. Indeed, this marks the first appellate case ever to apply the Fourth Amendment internationally. The ruling sets a critical precedent that Border Patrol agents cannot kill without constitutional repercussions just because the victim was across the border in Canada or Mexico.

The American Civil Liberties Union first filed a federal lawsuit in 2014 on behalf of Araceli Rodriguez, José Antonio’s mother, to vindicate her son’s constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment clearly “prohibits law enforcement officers from using ‘objectively unreasonable’ force to ‘seize’ a person.”

Swartz — and the federal government, which took his side in this case at the same time as it is separately prosecuting him for the killing — asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that José Antonio was not deprived of any constitutional rights because as a Mexican national killed in Mexico, he doesn’t have any. In July 2015, the U.S. District Court of Arizona denied that request, finding that José Antonio “was entitled to protection pursuant to the Fourth Amendment.”

Swartz then chose to appeal, doubling down on the arguments that the Constitution stops at the border, that he is immune from suit, and that José Antonio’s mother should not be able to sue him for damages, even if her son’s shooting did violate the Constitution.

It’s that last argument — that the court should not allow a constitutional suit against a federal officer for damages, also called a Bivens suit — that became one of the critical issues in the case. Bivens suits got their name from a 1971 case called Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, where the plaintiff sued federal officers for violating the Fourth Amendment in searching and arresting him. The Supreme Court held that the Constitution allows plaintiffs to seek damages from federal officers for unlawful searches and seizures.

That’s exactly what José Antonio’s mother is doing in this case: She is suing Agent Swartz for violating the Fourth Amendment by killing her son. The Ninth Circuit recognized that. It also rightly rejected the government’s arguments that Araceli should not be able to seek damages because “the cross-border nature of the shooting implicates foreign policy.”

The court noted that the government had not explained how any policy would actually be implicated by allowing the suit to go forward, saying “just as national security cannot be used as a talisman to ward off inconvenient claims, neither does the ‘mere incantation’ of the magic words ‘foreign policy’ cause a Bivens remedy to disappear.”

Those words are especially important now at a moment when the Trump administration is doing all it can to militarize the border. The Ninth Circuit got it right: CBP officers are not above the law, even when they claim that national security is implicated and even when their victim is on the other side of the border.

Recent stories about Amazon’s invasive face scanning surveillance technology and Cambridge Analytica’s exploitation of Facebook data have brought the impact of surveillance and data misuse to the fore. But many people don’t realize how often local law enforcement agencies acquire and use similar technologies in their own communities. A groundbreaking bill pending in California would bring this day-to-day local surveillance out of the shadows and give communities a way to fight back against surveillance systems that are disproportionately aimed at immigrants and people of color.

The bill, SB 1186, requires greater transparency and public oversight when law enforcement agencies seek to acquire surveillance technologies that collect sensitive location or other personal data. It builds on a workable model that several California localities have already enacted.

Right now, a key California legislative committee holds the power to advance the bill, which is supported by a broad coalition of California civil rights and civil liberties organizations. In this political climate, it’s a necessary tool for protecting immigrants and other vulnerable residents from surveillance systems that are readily exploitable by the federal government.

The bill requires local law enforcement to get the approval of elected local representatives before acquiring surveillance technology. Before that vote, law enforcement agencies like police departments, sheriffs, and district attorneys must propose a set of written rules that explain their plans for the technology as wells as limits on its use and collection and sharing of data. Next, residents get a chance to weigh in on these rules and the proposal at a public meeting. If a city council or board of supervisors doesn’t approve a proposal, law enforcement cannot acquire or use that technology.

As surveillance technology becomes more powerful and easily available, California needs this bill now more than ever — and hopefully other states will follow its lead. Often bankrolled by federal funds, technologies like automatic license plate readers, drones, and social media surveillance systems have invaded our communities without our knowledge or input. These technologies collect information about our whereabouts and other sensitive details about our lives, and they are frequently turned on local activists.

Warrantless surveillance not only feeds databases that can be abused, it leads to real-world harms that disproportionately affect immigrants, people of color, and Muslim-Americans. Many law enforcement agencies have used social media monitoring products advertised as tools to track activists of color. For example, San Jose police used it to spy on protesters during a visit by India’s prime minister. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department monitored the residents of Compton using high-powered aerial surveillance. San Francisco police stopped and held an elderly Black woman at gunpoint — all because an automatic license plate reader improperly identified her car as a stolen vehicle. Elsewhere, police have used that same technology to monitor mosque visitors.

Federal immigration authorities are increasingly seeking to exploit these local surveillance systems, often without local knowledge. Earlier this year, for example, news broke that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had obtained access to a database operated by a company called Vigilant, which hosts license plate location data collected by local law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The ACLU of Northern California has sued to learn more about this arrangement, and some California communities have stood up and rejected this company’s technology. However, these systems continue to prowl cities and rural areas, collecting data about immigrants while they’re driving to work, running errands, or bringing their kids to school. ICE should not be able to exploit this data to target and separate families. SB 1186 gives communities statewide a way to ensure that local law enforcement is not facilitating practices like this.

Communities such as Santa Clara County, Oakland, Davis, and Berkeley have already passed ordinances that require law enforcement agencies to be transparent about surveillance proposals, submit those proposals to a vote by elected leaders, and write strict rules for how the technologies can be used. SB 1186 — which would be the first statewide law of its kind — would ensure that all Californians can benefit from these important reforms. Community voices must be heard if surveillance proposals are on the table.

This bill is a piece of a larger movement. Localities across the country are taking part in a national campaign called Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS), a reform effort spearheaded by 17 organizations, including the ACLU, aimed at putting local residents and elected officials in charge of decisions about surveillance technology. To date, local CCOPS efforts have sprouted up in more than 20 cities, including New York and St. Louis.

After passing through the California Senate, the California Assembly Appropriations Committee will decide this bill’s fate in the next week. If you live in California, contact your state assembly representative and encourage them to support SB 1186 across the finish line.

This will not be an easy fight. Law enforcement agencies strongly oppose this bill’s transparency and oversight mechanisms. But public safety in the digital era requires that elected representatives and community members have a voice in important decisions like these.