Civil Rights | Politics @ Perkisets

posted by perkiset on Nov 16

It is true, and I am proud to relate that I have been a card-carrying member of the ACLU for a great many years. I not only laugh, but get often disgusted by the attacks on the ACLU as some kind of ultra-left or wildly out of the mainstream organization. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. By defending the Constitution, prosecuting legal wars against laws that violate our civil liberties and taking up legal arms in the defense of our essential American rights, the ACLU might well be the most conservative and patriotic organization that exists today.

The ACLU is, of course, the American Civil Liberties Union. It was founded in 1920 by a room full of civil liberty activists and today has over 500,000 members and prosecutes over 6000 legal cases per year. A quote from their website states:

The American system of government is founded on two counterbalancing principles: that the majority of the people governs, through democratically elected representatives; and that the power even of a democratic majority must be limited, to ensure individual rights.

Majority power is limited by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which consists of the original ten amendments ratified in 1791, plus the three post-Civil War amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th) and the 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage), adopted in 1920.

To this end, the mission of the ACLU is simple and articulate:

The ACLU will work to preserve and guarantee:

Your First Amendment rights - freedom of speech, association and assembly; freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.
Your right to equal protection under the law - equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.
Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.
Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.

At times, just like any organization, they may take on or be involved in cases that seem extreme or even wacky, but in fact the underlying principle of every case taken on by this excellent organization is either supported by Constitutional law, local or federal law or is a challenge to a law that is in conflict with either the Federal or State Constitutions.

As a side note, this may well be why civics classes in general are either not required or wholly unavailable to students today. The more you know about your rights, the less control the police state has over you. Unfortunately for those in power, you and I both have a well established and incontrovertible set of rights which define how the government and governmental agencies, like the police, are allowed to interact with us. Unfortunately they spend a lot more time figuring out how to legally avoid our rights than we do understanding how to implement them.

So it was with both fear and delight that I watched the linked video, which was passed to me by a dear friend this morning and whom I will simply call DB. In it is a set of common interactions with police, as well as both how they went wrong and how they could go right for the citizens involved. The video is 45 minutes long and I strongly recommend every citizen of the U.S. to watch it. It gives excellent and detailed advice on how to adhere to the law, while at the same time making sure that lawmen adheres to your rights and civil liberties.

Thank you DB for this excellent link and for caring enough to share it with me.

Click Here To Watch The Video
You can visit the ACLU by Clicking Here.

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