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I was poking around on the web again and I came across the ACLU's
website. It's at http://www.aclu.org/. I have placed a link to
this site on our Useful Information Links Page. While there, I
found this document which I copied for your scrutiny. It seems
to be the ACLU's statement of cause. I do not always agree with
these folks, but I believe their net effect is good. Whether you
agree or not, this document is well worth the reading. Please
be aware that this material is copyrighted by the ACLU.
Number 1
GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY:
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION |
The American Civil Liberties Union is the nation's foremost
advocate of individual rights -- litigating, legislating, and
educating the public on a broad array of issues affecting individual
freedom in the United States. This is a general introduction and
history to the ACLU, the first in a series of briefing papers.
Other briefing papers, produced by the ACLU Office of Public Education,
explain the organization's position on a range of specific civil
liberties issues.
The American system of government is built on two basic, counterbalancing
principles: 1) that the majority of the people, through democratically
elected representatives, governs the country and 2) that the power
of even a democratic majority must be limited to insure individual
rights. In every era of American history, the government has tried
to expand its authority at the expense of individual rights. The
American Civil Liberties Union exists to make sure that doesn't
happen, and to fight back when it does.
The ACLU is not a public defender like Legal Services or Legal
Aid. It does not handle criminal cases or civil disputes or choose
sides according to financial criteria. Nor do we take political
sides; we are neither liberal nor conservative, Republican nor
Democratic. The ACLU is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 275,000-member
public interest organization devoted exclusively to protecting
the basic civil liberties of all Americans, and extending them
to groups that have traditionally been denied them. In its almost
seven decades in existence, the ACLU has become a national institution,
and is widely recognized as the country's foremost advocate of
individual rights.
The mission of the ACLU is to assure that the Bill of
Rights -- amendments to the Constitution that guard against unwarranted
governmental control -- are preserved for each new generation.
To understand the ACLU's purpose, it is important to distinguish
between the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Constitution
itself, whose bicentennial we celebrated in 1987, authorizes the
government to act. The Bill of Rights limits that authority.
What rights are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights?
First Amendment rights: These include freedom of speech, association
and assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, including
the strict separation between church and state.
Equal protection of the law: The right to equal treatment regardless
of race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age,
physical handicap, or other such classification. These rights
apply to the voting booth, the classroom, the workplace and the
courts.
Due process of law: The right to be treated fairly when facing
criminal charges or other serious accusations that can result
in such penalties as loss of employment, exclusion from school,
denial of housing, or cut-off of benefits.
The right to privacy: The right to a guaranteed zone of personal
privacy and autonomy which cannot be penetrated by the government
or by other institutions, like employers, with substantial influence
over an individual's rights.
Expanding those protections: Although some segments of our population
have traditionally been denied these rights, the ACLU works to
extend protection to racial minorities, homosexuals, mental patients,
prisoners, soldiers, children in the custody of the state, the
handicapped, and Native Americans.
When Roger Baldwin founded the ACLU in 1920, civil liberties were
in a sorry state. Citizens were sitting in jail for holding antiwar
views. U.S. Attorney General Palmer was conducting raids upon
aliens suspected of holding unorthodox opinions. Racial segregation
was the law of the land and violence against blacks was routine.
Sex discrimination was firmly institutionalized; it wasn't until
1920 that women even got the vote. Constitutional rights for homosexuals,
the poor, prisoners, mental patients, and other special groups
were literally unthinkable. And, perhaps most significantly, the
Supreme Court had yet to uphold a _single_ free speech claim under
the First Amendment.
"We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.
The ACLU remembers and it acts. The cause it serves so well is
an imperative of freedom." --- William Reece Smith, Jr.,
former president, American Bar Association
The ACLU was the first public interest law firm of its kind, and
immediately began the work of transforming the ideals contained
in the Bill of Rights into living, breathing realities. Some highlights:
1920: The Palmer Raids
In its first year the ACLU worked at combating the deportation
of aliens for their radical beliefs (ordered by Attorney General
Palmer), opposing attacks on the rights of the Industrial Workers
of the World and trade unions to hold meetings and organize, and
securing release from prison for the hundreds sentenced during
the war for expression of antiwar opinions.
1925: The Scopes Case
When Tennessee's new anti-evolution law became effective in March
1925, the ACLU at once sought a test of the statute's attack on
free speech and secured John T. Scopes, a young science teacher,
as a plaintiff. Clarence Darrow, a member of the Union's National
Committee and an agnostic, headed the ACLU's volunteer defense
team. Scopes was convicted and fined $100. On appeal, the Tennessee
Supreme Court upheld the statute but reversed the conviction.
1933: The Ulysses Case
Federal Judge John M. Woolsey in New York rendered a historic
anticensorship decision that admitted James Joyce's Ulysses into
the U.S. after a long legal battle supported by the ACLU.
1939: Mayor Hague
Mayor Frank ("I Am the Law") Hague of Jersey City claimed
the right to deny free speech to anyone he thought radical. The
ACLU took Hague to the Supreme Court, which ruled that public
places such as streets and parks belong to the people, not the
mayor.
1942: Japanese Americans
Two and half months after Pearl Harbor, 110,000 Japanese Americans,
two-thirds of whom were citizens, were evacuated from their West
Coast homes and relocated in a series of inland U.S. concentration
camps. The episode was a national tragedy, rightfully called by
the ACLU "the worst single wholesale violation of civil rights
of American citizens in our history." The strongest voices
against evacuation and relocation came from the ACLU affiliates
on the West Coast.
"The ACLU's 60-year guardianship of the Bill of Rights has
done much to advance the cause of working men and women."
---Douglas Fraser, former president, United Auto Workers
1950: Loyalty Oaths
During the Cold War era after World War II, Congress and many
state legislatures passed loyalty-oath laws requiring one group
or another, particularly public school teachers, to swear that
they were not Communists or members of any "subversive organizations."
Throughout the decade the ACLU fought a running battle against
the government's loyalty-security program.
1954: School Desegregation
On May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court
issued its historic decision that segregation in public schools
violates the 14th Amendment. The ACLU joined the legal battle
that resulted in the Court's decision.
1960: Civil Rights Movement
From the first lunch counter sit-in in 1960 through the freedom
rides and later mass marches, the ACLU supported the civil rights
movement's goal of equality and its means of achieving that goal
through peaceful demonstrations.
"We in business applaud and share the ACLU's commitment to
preserving the fundamental principles which have made this country
work for over 200 years." ---John H. Filer, former chairman,
Aetna Life and Casualty
1973: Impeach Nixon
The ACLU was the first major national organization to call for
the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. The Union listed six
grounds for impeachment affecting civil liberties -- specific,
proved violations of the right of political dissent; usurpation
of Congressional war-making powers; establishment of a personal
secret police that committed crimes; attempted interference in
the trial of Daniel Ellsberg; distortion of the system of justice;
and perversion of other federal agencies.
1973: Abortion Decriminalized
In Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court held that
the constitutional right to privacy encompasses a pregnant woman's
decision whether to bear a child or have an abortion. The ruling
struck down state laws that had made the performance of an abortion
a criminal act. The ACLU was and remains active in the courts
to protect that right.
1981: Creationism in Arkansas
In Arkansas, 56 years after Scopes, the ACLU challenged a statute
that called for the teaching of the biblical story of creation
as a "scientific; alternative" to the theory of evolution.
The statute, which fundamentalists saw as a model for other states
, was ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge William R.
Overton. Creation-science, he said, was not science but religion,
and could not constitutionally be required by state law.
1982: Voting Rights Extended
More than 15 months of grassroots lobbying by the ACLU and other
groups paid off when the Senate, following the example of the
House, overwhelmingly voted to renew the Voting Rights Act of
1965.
1987: Block Bork
The ACLU, changing a 51-year-old policy of neutrality on Supreme
Court candidates, mounted a national campaign to defeat the nomination
of Judge Robert Bork. Bork, the ACLU said, posed an extraordinary
threat to fundamental liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights,
and to the role of the Supreme Court as the guardian of those
rights. A majority of Senators agreed and rejected his nomination.
1989: Fall-out From Attacks
Months after the ACLU had been attacked by George Bush during
the presidential election campaign, 50,000 new members signed
up in a surge of support for the organization.
1993: Resurgence of the Radical Right
Though the end of the Reagan-Bush era brought improved prospects
for civil liberties at the federal level, numerous right-wing
extremists saw opportunities for local organizing. The ACLU opposed
the agenda of school boards dominated by extremists and challenged
anti-choice anti-gay ballot initiatives.
Today: Staying the Course
The ACLU confronts both traditional and new threats to civil liberties
on many fronts. Advanced technologies presage new systems that
have the capacity to either diminish or expand rights. Meanwhile,
our society's most intractable problems remain age-old ones: racism,
sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance. The ACLU's mission
remains realizing the promise of the Bill of Rights for all and
expanding the reach of its guarantees to new areas.
|
HOW THE ACLU CHOOSES ITS CASES |
The ACLU is frequently asked "Why did you defend
that person or that group -- Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, the Ku
Klux Klan, the Black Panthers?" The ACLU defends the _right_
of people to express their views, not the views that they express.
And historically, the people whose opinions are the most controversial
or extreme are those whose rights are most often threatened. Believing
that once the government is empowered to violate one person's
rights it can use that power against everyone, the ACLU works
to stop the erosion of civil liberties before its too late.
The ACLU cannot take on every worthy case. Instead, our lawyers
select cases that will have the greatest impact, cases that will
have the potential to break new ground and to establish new precedents
that will strengthen the freedoms we all enjoy.
The ACLU is a 50-state network of staffed affiliate offices in
most major cities, more than 300 chapters in smaller towns, and
regional offices in Denver and Atlanta. Work is coordinated by
a national office in New York, aided by a legislative office in
Washington that lobbies Congress. The ACLU has more than a dozen
national projects devoted to specific civil liberties issues:
AIDS, arts censorship, capital punishment, children's rights,
education reform, lesbian and gay rights, immigrants' rights,
national security, privacy and technology, prisoners' rights,
reproductive freedom, voting rights, women's rights and workplace
rights.
The ACLU has more than 60 staff attorneys, who collaborate with
at least 2,000 volunteer attorneys in handling close to 6,000
cases annually -- making the Union the largest public interest
law firm in the nation. The ACLU appears before the U.S. Supreme
Court more than any other organization except the U.S. Department
of Justice.
"So long as we have enough people in this country willing
to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy."
--- ACLU founder Roger Baldwin
The ACLU is governed by an 84-member Board of Directors which
has one representative from each state affiliate and 30 at-large
members elected by the affiliate and national boards. The affiliate
boards, in turn, are elected by all ACLU members within the state.
On a day-to-basis, each affiliate is autonomous and makes its
own decisions about which cases to take and which issues to emphasize.
They collaborate with the national office in pursuit of common
goals.
The ACLU is supported by annual dues and contributions from its
members, plus grants from private foundations and individuals.
The ACLU does not receive any government funding.
If you believe your civil liberties have been violated, contact
the local ACLU office listed in your telephone directory. For
more information, or to join the ACLU, contact your local affiliate
or the ACLU's national office.
A C L U –– American Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad
Street, 18th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10004-2400
Copyright 1997, The American Civil Liberties Union
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