Supporters of A.C.L.U. Call for the Ouster of Its Leaders
Posted on September 25, 2006
Wow! This is quite interesting, especially since Stoptheaclu.com made the NY Times!
More than 30 longtime supporters of the American Civil Liberties Union are calling for the ouster of the organization’s leadership, saying it has failed to adhere to the principles it demands of others and thus jeopardized the organization’s effectiveness.
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.
“We come together now, reluctantly but resolutely, not to injure the A.C.L.U. but to restore its integrity and its consistency of principle,’’ the group said in a mission statement to be posted on its Web site, www.savetheaclu.org, which is to go live on Tuesday.
The statement does not name individual officials that the group wants to see removed, but in the past, criticism has been focused on Anthony D. Romero, the executive director, and Nadine Strossen, the board president, as well as members of the executive committee.
The Web site, which was first reported in The New York Sun in June, initially will feature letters from members and donors who have joined the effort, lists of articles about the A.C.L.U. and ways for readers to join the effort.
“It’s a home for A.C.L.U. loyalists who have been shut out of the organization,” said Ira Glasser, who was executive director of the organization from 1978 to 2001 and has signed the statement.
Mr. Glasser emphasized that the group, conceived by Alan Kahn, a retired Wall Street executive and longtime A.C.L.U. member, was an informal one.
“We’re not starting a new organization,” he said. “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.”
Emily Whitfield, an A.C.L.U. spokeswoman, defended the organization, saying it continued to fight aggressively for the principles of free speech.
“Our programs, both legal and legislative, have never been stronger,” Ms. Whitfield said, “and then there’s the phenomenal growth of the A.C.L.U., where we’ve nearly doubled staff, our revenues are higher, membership and donations are higher, and that, to us, tell us where we are right now, in terms of our organization. We’re proud of it.”
She added, “We’re proud to be the leading organization fighting for freedom of speech on the Internet,” noting that the A.C.L.U. would go to court next month to argue that federal efforts to limit access to certain kinds of content on the Web to protect children violated the free speech protection in the Constitution.
And she pointed out that other independent Web sites already reported and commented on the A.C.L.U., including acluprocon.org and stoptheaclu.com, among others.
Wow! I’m glad we are being noticed. Anyway, I’m even happier that those within the ACLU are waking up to its hypocrisy and are attempting to do something about it. I probably will not agree with all of the things this new organization is trying to accomplish, but one thing I can agree on is the ACLU’s hypocrisy. If the organization could stand on real principles it would be much more difficult to critique. Hypocrisy is always the easiest thing to target the ACLU with.
I wish the group luck, but I think they have an uphill battle. I really think the ACLU are entirely too corrupt to be saved. Whenever people within the organization that stand up on principle have had efforts to silence them or they have been voted out.
From the savetheaclu website:
We reject the claim that the ACLU is injured not by its unprincipled, anti-libertarian actions, but by those who disclosed or criticized them. Repeated breaches of principle by the ACLU leadership have been fundamental and cannot simply be attributed to isolated lapses in judgment: they reflect basic disrespect for the values that the ACLU was created to defend.
This has gone on for so long, and has become so pervasive, that we now believe that only a change in leadership will preserve the ACLU and insure its future as the nation’s leading civil liberties group.
Hey, getting rid of the hypocrisy in the ACLU will not get rid of all of the ACLU’s numerous problems, but it is a start.
Volokh talks about this as well.
Trackback URL
Comments
5 Responses to “Supporters of A.C.L.U. Call for the Ouster of Its Leaders”
-
Affiliations
The Giants
-
Advertise
Donate
Our Store
Click the design to visit our store and help Stop the ACLU!
Stop the ACLU blogburst
-
More blogs about the ACLU
Syndicate Me
I like the hypocrisy in the ACLU. It causes division and takes away from its effectiveness. Hopfully it also leads to leaks.
Yes, but without the hypocrisy their danger would be dulled. They would have to treat pro-lifers equal in free speech protection to pro-choicers. They would have to listen to their internal critics when they delve into their own members finances that the policy is against what they are supposed to stand for. When someone within the organization speaks out for what they think is right, the ACLU can’t shut them down. If the ACLU really believes in what they say they do…these critics can hopefully wake them up.
Jay–
First, congrats on getting in the NYT. Nice work.
I don’t think painting a turd gold makes it any less of a turd, so simply exposing some internal dirty laundry won’t fix the unfixable. Here is the crux of savetheaclu’s campaign (from its website):
“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.”
This group is not rising up to oppose the ACLU’s vigorous defense of child molesters and an organization that has written Getting Away with Child Rape for Dummies. The group is not protesting the ACLU’s support of group “marriages.” They are not criticizing the ACLU’s utter disregard for our national security and the aggressive campaign to challenge EVERY effective counter-terrorism tool available. This groups is not exposing the ACLU’s opposition to school choice and its dedication to make sure even half-born children are slaughtered if it’s the “mother’s” “choice” to order the execution. This group isn’t bothered by the ACLU’s campaign to remove all religous symbols from public grounds regardless of whom these symbols honor or the deep history behind the use of these symbols. They have no problem with the ACLU litigating to leave taxpayers no “choice” as to whether we want to fund inmate abortions and sex-organ mutilation procedures. No need to go on…
The group should receive limited credit for wanting to stick the finger in this particular dike, but it shouldn’t be surprised that this is what it’s come down to. The ACLU is a totalitarian organization, so the fact that its authoritarianism has begun to approach complete metastasis has always been inevitable. Be that as it may, this group is still sold out to the ACLU agenda and should not recieve any sloppy kisses here.
Indeed, but a few changes for the better are better than none. Many of the critics that were told to shut up were asking for free speech of pro-life advocates to be treated equal with those of pro-abortionists. At least if they have a few internal critics like this that will be whistleblowers in the ACLU…perhaps they will be just a little less dangerous.
The housecleaning effort by the folks at savetheaclu.org is commendable if long overdue — however, the odds are off the charts against their successful conversion of a cancerous monster into an angel of light. With cancer, the excision of only the malignancy is doomed to failure, especially after metastasis has begun.
The best answer is eradication of the ACLU altogether, but that is not realistic considering the number of operatives they have smuggled into the judiciary — to say nothing of their coffers, awash in socialist graft and lucre.
Still, I have added my name to the petition at savetheaclu.org and encourage others to do the same. Anything that may disrupt their crusade against our heritage even briefly is a good thing, I say.
Meanwhile, let us support and pray for the success of organizations like stoptheaclu.com and Jay Sekulow’s ACLJ that have taken on the formidable task of going toe-to-toe with the ACLU, fighting fire with fire.
The worst thing we can do is assume that the ACLU will change into something respectable simply because a group of somewhat less despicable ACLU loons has been embarrassed into taking action — action not intended to alter the ACLU’s vile agenda, but merely to tone down its brazenness.