A Few Minutes with Norma Chavez-Peterson

Norma Chávez-Peterson, Executive Director, ACLU San Diego & Imperial Counties

With more than 20 years of leadership in San Diego’s civil rights community, Norma Chávez-Peterson knows what it takes to defend those individuals and causes whose rights have been violated.

In many ways, that on-going struggle has been led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a national non-partisan, non-profit organization whose roots go back nearly a century.

Under her guidance, the ACLU’s San Diego-based staff has grown to some 41 professionals, including the addition of an office in Imperial County a year ago.

A San Diego State University graduate, Chávez-Peterson was named ACLU’s executive director in 2013 after being the organizing director and then associate director. Then as now, her priorities include the causes of immigrant rights, criminal justice reform, and police accountability.

What’s your personal connection to LISC?
In 1995, I was going to school and working as a receptionist for a non-profit and in the lunch room, I saw a LISC AmeriCorps flyer that sounded like exactly what I wanted to do. I applied and was lucky enough to be selected. Right away, it exposed me to a wider world and so many dedicated people who were engaged in community development, which is what I wanted to do. I owe that opportunity to LISC AmeriCorps because it changed my life forever.

What do you see as your role?
My job is to make sure that we’re very clear about our mission, which is to make sure we protect the rights of everyone. That, and to make sure we are always advancing a vision of true equity and inclusion in our society, so that everyone can thrive.

What is it about your past experience that brought you to the ACLU?
My background in community building and organizing a– being rooted in a sense of the wider community – that’s what brought me here. Nationally, the ACLU is 99 years old and if we’re going to continue to here for the next 100 years, we need to be fully connected and deeply rooted in the communities and people who are most adversely impacted by rights abuses.

Emotionally, why do you feel so strongly about what you do?
I’m an immigrant who came to this country from Mexico when I was five-and-a-half years old, first to Santa Barbara and then to San Diego. I was raised by a single mother in a low-income situation. That early spirit of resilience, determination and hope, striving to make the world better for me, my family and my neighbors, that’s always been a driving force for me.

What do you wish more people knew about the ACLU?
What most people know about us is that we litigate, using the legal system to defend people’s rights. But that’s not all we do. We also advance our mission through policy initiatives at the local, regional and state level. We have more than 23,000 members in San Diego who are engaged in the process of defending democracy and making our democratic system work.

Norma Chávez-Peterson
Executive Director
ACLU, San Diego and Imperial counties
norma@aclusandiego.org
619-232-2121