Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2007/06/08/aclu-replies-to/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] ACLU replies to charges that it doesn't consistently defend free speech [fs] Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:56:37 -0700 From: John Gilmore <gnu@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> CC: politech@private ACLU does a lot of good work, but they sure aren't perfect. Anyone who thinks the ACLU is an unbiased defender of freedom should look into the school choice movement. ACLU always ends up on the wrong side of those lawsuits, seeking to overturn laws that allow parents to choose what school their child will go to. It's apparently because they have a strong political tie to teachers' labor unions, which oppose parental and student choice about who'll teach them. See http://friedmanfoundation.org for the real freedom side of that story. I know ACLU can't litigate every case -- nobody can, not even the government. But it hurt to find that I'm too white to have had my freedom of speech violated, when I got thrown off a plane for wearing a small button whose message the airline objected to. Now ACLU is suing for Raed Jarrar, a guy whose T-shirt contained Arabic lettering (that TSA and the airline couldn't even read, but objected to) which got him thrown off a plane. But he's an Iraqi with dark skin -- and the case they're filing isn't about freedom of speech on common carriers. It's an "airline profiling case" about discrimination against dark people. There seems to be an ACLU policy, or a very strong habit, of conflating amicus briefs with legal representation. As in Steve Shapiro's message about the San Diego anti-gay t-shirt case. And in their discussions of Guantanamo cases, in which they imply to their members that they are right up there fighting on the barricades. Actually, they participate only as observers or amici, but you really have to read between the lines, and get a few clues from non-ACLU sources, to figure that out. There's also a bizarre meme there that involves not giving credit to any 'competing' civil rights organization. It's like entering a Disney world that only contains Disney-branded products. ACLU just sent me a new book ghost-authored by its director, Anthony Romero, all about post-9/11 civil rights tussles. I looked in vain to find any mention of the Center for Constitutional Rights (which took the Guantanamo cases from the beginning all the way to the Supreme Court, without the help of the ACLU -- see http://ccr-ny.org). After long discussions of CCR's cases that skip mentioning CCR, they were listed in an appendix among a laundry list of civil rights groups. There was no mention at all of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which filed the first case against NSA's domestic wiretaps, and which is now co-lead-counsel with ACLU in the case that merges EFF's, AT&T's, CCR's, and about 30 copycat cases -- see http://eff.org). Curiously, everything was worth writing about civil liberties in the six years after 9/11 was apparently done by the ACLU. John Gilmore a donor to ACLU, CCR, EFF, FIRE, the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation, & co-founder of EFF PS: ACLU's active opposition to the Second Amendment is, of course, their most classic blind spot. PPS: The best org to call if you encounter censorship in a school is http://thefire.org, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Censorship to enforce political correctness is epidemic in colleges, frequently to shut down "conservative" or "religious" speakers. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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