{"id":1401,"date":"2011-02-28T17:11:21","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T22:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2016-11-17T08:21:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T13:21:09","slug":"essay-why-the-aclus-president-is-a-card-carrying-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/essay-why-the-aclus-president-is-a-card-carrying-member\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay: Why the ACLU\u2019s President is a Card-Carrying Member"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Susan N. Herman, President, American Civil Liberties Union<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The genesis of a civil libertarian: <\/strong>When I was a third-grader in public school (in Long Beach, NY) our class play was <em>Johnny Tremain<\/em> &#8212; the story of a 14 year old boy caught up in the American Revolution.\u00a0 I decided to take the book version out of the school library to read the whole story but the librarian told me I wasn\u2019t allowed to.\u00a0 That book was in the boy\u2019s section.\u00a0 The girl\u2019s section, as I well knew, contained collections of fairy tales and biographies of Presidents\u2019 wives, Florence Nightingale, and Clara Barton.<\/p>\n<p>I was very interested to learn that my mother found the school\u2019s gendered reading policy as offensive as I did and even more interested to discover that she did not simply accept the school\u2019s decision.\u00a0 She wrote a note to the librarian and the principal to express her own view of their policy.\u00a0 Because of the activism of my mother, the first civil libertarian I knew, I got to read <em>Johnny Tremain<\/em> and anything else in the library.\u00a0 Take that, discrimination and stereotyping!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Then and Now: <\/strong>As ACLU founder Roger Baldwin remarked, no battle for civil liberties ever stays won.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The ACLU was founded in 1920 in response to suppression of dissident speech during World War I and to the Palmer Raids, when fear of Communism led to wholesale deportation, prosecution, and abuse of thousands of innocent people. Today we fight the excesses of the fear-driven \u201cWar on Terror.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>In the 1920\u2019s, we represented a Tennessee science teacher who was prohibited from teaching the theories of Charles Darwin; in 2005, we successfully challenged a Dover, PA policy requiring science teachers to teach \u201cintelligent design.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>In the 1930\u2019s, we were involved in defending the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-American teenagers caught up in a racist maelstrom in Alabama; today we are fighting overincarceration and \u201cschool to prison pipeline\u201d policies that turn the criminal justice system into a new form of Jim Crow all around the country.<\/li>\n<li>In the 1960\u2019s, we represented student Mary Beth Tinker, who wanted to wear a black armband to school to express her antiwar views.\u00a0 We won a Supreme Court declaration that the Constitution does not stop at the schoolhouse door.\u00a0 Public schools around the country still try to control what students say even outside of school (suspending kids for Facebook comments about their teachers, for example), what religion they exercise and, yes, what they can read.\u00a0 At least one southern public school established \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201cnon-Christian\u201d sections in the school library, drawing a letter from an ACLU lawyer that probably sounded a lot like my mother\u2019s note to my elementary school librarian.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Connecting the Dots: <\/strong>Many fine organizations fight discrimination or promote rights in particular areas.\u00a0 The ACLU connects the dots, as do our clients.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the 1940\u2019s, Fred Korematsu fought a relocation order issued on the theory that any person of Japanese ancestry in California during World War II could be presumed to be a threat to national security; in 2003, Korematsu filed an amicus brief on behalf of Guantanamo detainees, arguing that they too are entitled to be treated fairly and as individuals.<\/li>\n<li>Mildred Loving, an ACLU client who successfully fought for her right to marry a man of a different race, later backed the right of same sex couples to marry.<\/li>\n<li>Mary Beth Tinker continues to be an activist, supporting students who want to express their opinions and students who need protection against bullying.\u00a0 Follow her at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.aclu.org<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why I have two jobs: <\/strong>My day job is teaching Constitutional Law at Brooklyn Law School.\u00a0 As President of the ACLU, I work to give life and breath to what might otherwise be mere constitutional platitudes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Word from Our Sponsor: <\/strong>Please visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\" target=\"_blank\">www.aclu.org<\/a> to find out more about what we do.\u00a0 The website has a great deal more information about the cases and issues I mention here, as well as a priceless forecast of what it could be like to order a pizza in the year 2015 if we don\u2019t convince Congress to protect our information privacy; a heartbreaking video of Wendy Walsh, whose son Seth was bullied to death, begging for recognition of the needs of other LGBT youths; and video excerpts of an ACLU\/PEN <em>Reckoning with Torture<\/em> event held at the Sundance Film Festival, with the participation of filmmaker Doug Liman, artist Jenny Holzer, and a series of writers and actors including Robert Redford himself.\u00a0\u00a0 I could go on, as our work in fifteen different areas includes many other issues I haven\u2019t mentioned (reproductive freedom, voting rights, immigrants\u2019 rights, etc.).<\/p>\n<p>And while you\u2019re on the website, please join us.\u00a0 Student membership is a bargain and you get to be counted when we are lobbying Congress or the President, or state governments.\u00a0 Numbers count a lot with politicians.\u00a0 And if there are one or two areas where you disagree with our interpretation of the Constitution, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised or displeased \u2013 we support everyone\u2019s right to their own opinions \u2013 and I hope you won\u2019t be deterred from supporting the rest of our work.\u00a0 As one of my colleagues recently said, if you agree with the ACLU 80 percent of the time, you should be a member; if you agree 50 percent of the time, you should be on the board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a third-grader in public school (in Long Beach, NY) our class play was Johnny Tremain &#8212; the story of a 14 year old boy caught up in the American Revolution.  I decided to take the book version out of the school library to read the whole story but the librarian told me I wasn\u2019t allowed to.  That book was in the boy\u2019s section.  The girl\u2019s section, as I well knew, contained collections of fairy tales and biographies of Presidents\u2019 wives, Florence Nightingale, and Clara Barton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35],"tags":[62,126,127],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amicus","category-guest-author","tag-aclu","tag-civil-liberties","tag-civil-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZrWS-mB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}