A group of former American Civil Liberties Union officials, employees, and longtime supporters are caling for the ouster of the ACLU's current leadership and a renewed focuson the organization's founding principles. As the New York Times reports
The new group is made up of donors, former board and staff members, and the lawyer who won what was perhaps the A.C.L.U.’s most famous legal battle, its defense of the right of Nazis to march through a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago.
According to the missoin statement posted on the group's website, SavetheACLU.org:
We believe strongly in the ACLU and believe the ACLU is especially important now during a time of grave and systemic attacks on civil liberties by the national government. But an ACLU compromised by its repeated failures to practice what it preaches will be unable to resist these attacks for long. Our credibility and effectiveness depend upon our consistency of principle.
We come together now, reluctantly but resolutely, not to injure the ACLU but to restore its integrity, and its consistency of principle and remedy its failure to apply to itself core civil liberties principles that it insists everyone else observe. The failure to practice what we preach– until publicly embarrassed– has already done grievous injury to the ACLU and ultimately threatens its historic mission.
We applaud the ACLU’s recent fundraising successes , but they cannot compensate for or justify persistent breaches of principle or the abandonment of honesty when those breaches are revealed. The ACLU now stands exposed, and widely ridiculed, for repeatedly acting in contempt of its own core principles, and for chilling and even attempting to prohibit dissent within its own ranks.
Over the past three years, these breaches of principle include the ACLU’s approval of grant agreements that restrict speech and associational rights; efforts by management to impose gag rules on staff and to subject staff to email surveillance; a proposal to bar ACLU board members from publicly criticizing the ACLU; and informal campaigns to purge the ACLU of its internal critics.
All of these breaches, as well as others, violate the ACLU’s historic commitment to free speech. We take little comfort from the fact that some were reversed after bad publicity and donor complaints.
According to Ira Glasser, one of those listed on the protest site
We’re not starting a new organization . . . “We’re a protest group, trying to get the board to exercise its fiduciary and governing responsibility in a way that it has not. We’re loyal to the existing organization and above all to the principles it is intended to advance.
Learning about the ACLU's efforts to protect free speech, including their work in Skokie, inspired me as a child. As an adult, however, I've often felt that the organization had lost its way. Maybe this protest will serve as a useful corrective.
Related Posts (on one page):
- "Voices for the ACLU" Campaign:
- "Save the ACLU" Campaign:
I am one of many who at one point in my life belonged, until they took positions on the wrong side of what I thought was their core mission. I know of many others.
This came before I read Bernstein's book, which points out how far they really have strayed.
Funny how on their website where they flash images of various protests and demonstrations as examples of past triumphs of the ACLU, they don’t show the one of Nazis marching through the suburbs of Chicago. ;)
What is this second amendment of which you speak.
Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union
And that's a silly argument. Because when members of a foreign or stateless terrorist group captured on a foreign battlefield don't have constitutional rights, then none of us have constitutional rights. If private Joe Snuffy can just lock up a
terroristafreedom fightera well-armed dissident without Miranda warnings, then Officer Clancy can do the same to you. Personally, I'm hoping for this wasteful war on terror to end so the ACLU can get back to its core missions of stomping out the fragmentary relics of judeo-christianity in the public square, and pushing gay marriage. Those are the core missions, right? They need a new slogan too. I'd suggest:ACLU - Embarassing Non-Leftists Who Favor Civil Liberties Since 1973
I remember back then that the NYCLU board had before it, and wisely declined to take, a case from an Orthodox Jewish woman who didn't like her segregated seating behind a curtain at services. Who knows how the NYCLU/ACLU would deal with such a situation today.
Hence, they only defend those rights of interest to wealthy, liberal donors in NYC.
Sort of like their support for governmental discrimination on the basis of race and gender in the name of “affirmative action.”
So again, a lot of innuendo here, but not really much going on as implied.
I think the ACLU has basically been on point with their stances, even today. They've clearly gone overboard in some cases, but not excessively so, and it's nice to have at least someone forcing people to argue instead of simply rolling right over the rights of others willy nilly.
Most of the criticisms of the ACLU I've seen from the right only highlight how extreme and wacky the right has become rather than the ACLU itself. I mean, is there any blog out there with such a high volume of poorly informed legal opinion and just pure driven nonsense as STOPtheACLU?
The ACLU goes beyond simply trying to defend the constitutional rights of illegal aliens and takes their side against U.S. citizens and U.S. interests. See their threats to sue cities that pass immigration ordinances, and see their response to the 2005 MMP patrols in Arizona.
Click my link to read about a new coalition that several ACLU chapters are involved in. At least three other members of that coalition have links to the Mexican government.
This is exactly the sort of crackpot criticism I'm talking about. Anyone who believes that the ACLU has a "core mission of anti-Americanism" is just working out of a fantasyland. There are many things on which the ACLU can be legitimately criticized.
But people like STOPtheACLU and those who declare the ACLU to be out to destroy Christianity, or support terrorists are simply running roughshod over the actual facts and legal issues at stake in the fights they cite.
The idiocy of STOPtheACLU has been many many times highlighted on this very blog. They cite legal principles that don't exist, and have been so sloppy that they've asked "where is the ACLU on THIS" when the ACLU is already directly involved: they just never bothered to check. That's the sort of thing that characterizes much of the truly unhinged criticism of the ACLU.
The ACLU, like any organization, has it's faults and sins. Seeing as that it doesn't have a powerful central organization (which some are attempting to create but others, as this protest movement is representing, oppose) and relies mostly on requests for help as well as pro bono volunteer legal work, it often isn't even entirely consistent across states (though, of course, the difference in state laws is also something critics regularly overlook, pretending that all law and state constitutions are the same: and this from the same people who claim to defend states rights!)
You'll also, I'll point out, find a lot of measured and legally informed and sensible criticism of the ACLU here, btw.
No discussion is warranted?
Really?
Orin? Eugene? Have Balkinization, National Security Advisors, and Kenneth Anderson said all there is to say?
This silence is a little pathetic for a libertarian law blog, especially when it can take the time to rehash once again whether the ACLU has lost its way.
Also, I guess all the Conspirators already knew who he was.
Posting more about the Omnibus War Crimes &Torture Authorization Act of 2006 would be a bit like having multiple posts on what should be done about the fact it is raining today.
BTW--make sure to "speak truth to power," as long as you're sure that you're in a venue where 99% of the listeners think exactly like you're sayin. And don't forget to pat yourself on the back on the way out, Plunge
Whereas I fondly recall a time when a location was a site and not a sight... ah that site was a sight for sore eyes.
But I'm not disappointed that a call for the better intelligence of the past fails to properly spell the words required. In fact I almost demand it even though the irony hurts my fillings.
I think the real problem with your posts is that they are so poorly reasoned, regardless of your worldview, that they reflect poorly on you. No one would want to hire someone who reasoned that poorly, regardless of whether they agreed with you on the underlying substantive point.
I suppose anonymity can protect you in the short run, but the quality of your reasoning will catch up with you eventually. I doubt it is confined to anonymous posts on VC. So you may get hired, but you won't last very long. Of course, you'll probably chalk this up to another left-wing conspiracy to silence you . . .
If there was anything to your comments other than just silly accusations and motive-hunting, I think you would see more responses. Otherwise people will conclude that you are either an idiot, a blowhard, or a troll. In the first two cases, there is no need to respond, since first, "you should never try to teach a pig to sing," and second, your posts will out you without any need to respond. In the last case, the best bet is probably to ignore you and let you go back to whatever other blog(s) you came from.
The first is how broad to cast your net: will you just concentrate on one right, the whole bill of rights, or some subset of them? If you pick more than one right, you are bound to alienate people who agree with you on one issue but not on others, unless you assume that all people take either the "left" or the "right" position on everything.
The second is whether to take a "principled" position on an issue, even when it kills your ability to persuade the average Joe (or the average legislator or judge), or whether to take a "pragmatic" position that allows you to get results, even if it is less principled.
Seems to me that the ACLU has recently taken the broad approach to the first question and the pragmatic approach to the second. Is there a right or wrong answer to these questions? Perhaps as a fundraising issue, or as an issue that could lead to a schism in the organization, but any other choice would likely do the same.
If instead, they took a narrow approach to the Bill of Rights, only focusing on the 1st Amendment, for example, they would lose the support of those who are primarily interested in the 4th Amendment or privacy issues, to take two other examples. Similarly, if they took a principled approach to the 1st Amendment (even as applied to internal organizational matters), they could lose any ability to be effective in the real world. Sure, they would be more consistent, but at what cost?
At the end of the day, the remedy for the protesters is to form a rival organization that hews to the ideals they assert. If the choices of that organization prove to be better conceived, the organization, over time, will do better in soliciting funds and recruiting volunteers and (ultimately) in achieving results.
I do send some money to the Rutherford Foundation, John Whitehead does some good work.
I'm leery of castigating the ACLU for not getting involved in any specific case, no matter how important. As with any private organization, you can't be disappointed if you don't take them for granted.
you are very much mistaken. Just recently, here in Philadelphia, the ACLUofPA filed an amicus curiae brief supporting a group of anti-gay protestors who had been arrested while protesting a Gay Pride event. The staff attorney that handled it is a friend of mine. And it was interesting to see that none of the conservative bloggers mentioned that, or in fact questioned, "where is the ACLU now?", never bothering to check.
Not being involved in a case is not the same as opposing it.
And getting back to its founding principles? If it did, it would be forced to concede that it has communist roots (do some research before you dismiss me as a right wing nut).
Many of the rest of the comments are the same old drivel you see everythime the ACLU's name is mentioned--gripes that the organization doesn't defend each reader's complete vision of the Bill of Rights.
An organization can't be everything to every one. The Institute for Justice won't defend property rights in criminal cases. The ACLJ won't defend abortion rights. And if the ACLU won't take your Second Amendment case, stop whining and call the NRA.
Poopstain:
(1) Please change your user id. It's vulgar.
(2) You've posted 21 of the 59 comments so far, including at one point four in a row. Is it likely that all of these were helpful? Or is it nearly certain that some were repetitive, or unsubstantive? Even a genius would have a hard time populating 21 comments with really thoughtful, useful contributions.
Notway: The ACLU filed an amicus brief in Hurley -- the case in which the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade wanted to exclude some pro-homosexuality floats -- supporting the right of nongovernmental organizations to exclude such speech. The Hurley brief was on behalf of neither party, because the ACLU argued, not implausibly, that the parade organizers might in fact be state actors because the city had given them preferred treatment. If this were so, and the ACLU asked that the case be remanded for findings on whether this indeed was so, then the gay rights group would itself have had a legitimate First Amendment claim to equal access to a state-actor-organized parade. But in any event, the ACLU expressed its full support for the rights of non-state-actors to speak, even when their speech involved the exclusion of pro-gay messages.
Tribalism is the enemy of civilization.