ACLU

The Epler Effect will be on hiatus for a while. I am having computer trouble and we will be going on a family vacation so I will not be posting very often in the next 2 weeks or so. Here is some interesting information that should keep you busy.

From: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org

AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Phone :212-549-2500
URL : http://www.aclu.org/

Co-founder Roger Baldwin stated, “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the properties class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”

Driving force behind the Open Borders lobby and anti-Patriot Act movement

Defends Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader and funder Sami Al-Arian

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) characterizes itself as America's “guardian of liberty,” ostensibly working to “defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” “We work,” says the ACLU, “also to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people; women; mental-health patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor.”
The ACLU was established in 1920. Its co-founder Roger Baldwin candidly stated, “I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the properties class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. It all sums up into one single purpose -- the abolition of dog-eat-dog under which we live. I don’t regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the communists wanted and I traveled the United Front road to get it.”
As of early 2004, the ACLU had nearly 400,000 members and supporters. The organization handles nearly 6,000 court cases annually from its offices in almost every state. During the twenty months following September 11, 2001, its membership rolls swelled by some 55,000 – largely in response to its attacks on the Bush administration for allegedly trampling on the civil liberties of citizens and non-citizens alike.
In practice, the ACLU is part of the “legal left” and works in concert with radical, anti-capitalist, anti-American organizations like the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights to hack away at the fabric of the American constitutional framework.
The ACLU has worked with terrorists like Sami al-Arian, the North American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to undermine the security protections put in place by both the Clinton and Bush Administrations in the wake of terrorist attacks. Since 9/11, the ACLU has led a coalition of “civil liberties” groups to promote non-cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security in implementing the provisions of the Patriot Act. More than 300 municipalities and several states have adopted the ACLU resolution of non-cooperation. “Under the new Ashcroft guidelines,” reads an ACLU press release, “the FBI can freely infiltrate mosques, churches and synagogues, and other houses of worship, listen in on online chat rooms, and read message boards, even if it has no evidence that a crime might be committed.” The ACLU refuses to recognize that mosques, for example, have been prime recruiting sites for terrorist organizations.When the INS and Justice Department instituted a program requiring males visiting the U.S. from Arab and Muslim nations to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the ACLU organized protests against what it called this “discriminatory” policy. It similarly protested an FBI anti-terrorism initiative to count and document every mosque in America. On the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, when FBI and Homeland Security agents were tracking down illegal Iraqi immigrants considered to be dangerous, the ACLU set up a telephone hotline and conducted “Know Your Rights” training sessions giving illegals free advice on how to avoid deportation. And, in a 2002 federal lawsuit naming Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta as a defendant, the ACLU challenged a new Aviation Transportation Security Act policy prohibiting non-citizens from working as airport security screeners.
In conjunction with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- a Hamas spinoff, several of whose leaders have been indicted for and convicted of terrorist activities, the ACLU has lobbied hard against heightened scrutiny for passengers from terrorist countries at airports and border checkpoints. “Profiles are notoriously under-inclusive,” says ACLU legislative counsel Gregory Nojeim. “Who knows who the next terrorist will appear as? It could be a grandmother. It could be a student. We just don’t know.” The ACLU also opposes the Computer-Assisted Passenger Profiling System (CAPPS) used by airlines to check for various passenger characteristics that have historically been correlated with terrorist motives – red flags such as passengers who purchase one-way, rather than round-trip tickets; who buy tickets with cash rather than with a credit card; who are infrequent, rather than regular, fliers; and who do not purchase their tickets far in advance of their trips. In late 1997, when the CAPPS system was first set to be put in place, the ACLU set up a special online complaint form to collect information on incidents of discrimination and mistreatment by airport security personnel. As Gregory Nojeim explained, his organization was “concerned that the CAPPS system will have an unequal impact on some passengers, resulting in their being selected for treatment as potential terrorists based on their race, religion or national origin.”
To prevent heightened scrutiny of passengers with potentially terrorist profiles, the ACLU has represented many Muslim plaintiffs in discrimination lawsuits against the airline industry. In June 2002, for example, it filed suits on behalf of five men of Middle Eastern and Asian extraction – each of whom airline security agents had escorted off their scheduled flights for various security-related concerns between October and December 2001. “In ejecting our clients from their flights, the airlines were indulging in discrimination, not enforcing security, and that is both shameful and unlawful,” said ACLU staff attorney Reginald Shuford.
The Texas chapter of the ACLU was a signatory to a February 20, 2002 document, composed by the radical group Refuse & Resist, condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations. Titled “National Day of Solidarity with Muslim, Arab and South Asian Immigrants,” the document read, in part, “[T]hey [the U.S. government] are coming for the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants. Based on their racial profile, over 1500 have been rounded up and the government refuses to say who they are, where they are jailed and what the charges are!!! Already, a Pakistani man has died in custody. Who will be next? The recent ‘disappearances,’ indefinite detention, the round-ups, the secret military tribunals, the denial of legal representation, evidence kept a secret from the accused, the denial of any due process for Arab, Muslim, South Asians and others, have chilling similarities to a police state. We will not allow our grief for the tragedy of September 11 to be used to justify this new repression. We are clear that being an immigrant is not a crime; Muslims, Arabs and South Asians are not terrorists.”
On many occasions, the ACLU has publicly and proactively defended individuals accused of serious terrorism-related offenses. In 2003, for example, it held rallies on behalf of an Intel software engineer in Oregon named Maher Mofeid Hawash, whom U.S. officials were keeping in custody on suspicion that he had given material support to Taliban and al Qaeda forces fighting American troops in Afghanistan. In February 2004, Hawash was convicted of the aforementioned crimes and was sentenced to seven years in prison. The ACLU also came to the defense of the aforementioned Professor Sami Al-Arian. In an effort to thwart the government’s investigation of Al-Arian’s role in funding PIJ suicide bombings in Israel, the ACLU said that the search warrants authorizing an FBI raid of his home and offices were overly broad, and that the items seized as evidence should therefore be returned.The ACLU’s Immigration Task Force is a driving force behind the Open Borders Lobby. Among its current projects are: expanding anti-discrimination laws to require employers to hire illegal aliens; weakening sanctions against employers who hire illegal aliens; barring the INS from conducting inspections without a search warrant; requiring the INS to provide free legal counsel to illegal aliens; and ensuring illegal aliens’ eligibility for welfare benefits. The ACLU has opposed all Justice Department proposals to fingerprint and track immigrants and foreign visitors to the United States, claiming that such measures “treat immigrant populations as a separate and quasi-criminal element of society.” The ACLU also opposes a Justice Department initiative that would give local and state police the power to enforce immigration laws. “Local police should not be in the business of detaining or arresting law-abiding aliens based on their immigration status,” says Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
The ACLU endorsed the 2002 Market Workers Justice Campaign of the activist coalition Communities in Solidarity with Immigrant Workers. This campaign called for increased wages and benefits for Korean and Latino immigrant workers, including those living illegally in the United States.Former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser attributes the concerns that many Americans have about illegal immigration to a “wave of anti-immigrant hysteria.” According to the essay “Justice For Aliens” by Steven Shapiro of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Wade Henderson of the ACLU’s D.C. office, the desire to limit immigration can be traced directly to “hostility motivated by nativism, racism, and red scare.”
“Church and state” issues have been a recurring theme on the ACLU docket over the years. In April 1997 the ACLU of Illinois filed a federal lawsuit challenging the City of Chicago’s operation of scout troops affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) – on grounds that the Scouts excluded participants based on religious belief and sexual orientation. The suit was filed on behalf of a Methodist minister objecting to what he viewed as the City’s implied endorsement of a particular religion – because of its affiliation with the BSA, whose members are required to profess their belief in God. The co-plaintiff in the suit was a gay agnostic objecting to having been turned down as an adult leader in one of the City’s scouting programs. “The City of Chicago should not be in the business of discriminating,” said Roger Leishman, director of the Illinois ACLU’s Gay & Lesbian Rights Project.
In 2000 the ACLU sued to prevent the BSA from continuing to conduct operations in Balboa Park, a plot of public land in San Diego. Asserting that the BSA is a religious organization, the ACLU deemed its presence in the park a violation of “separation of church and state” requirements. The ACLU won this case, the settlement of which required the city of San Diego to pay the ACLU nearly $1 million in court costs and attorney fees.
Consistent with its belief that the U.S. is a nation infested with racism and injustice – particularly in the criminal-justice system – the ACLU of Southern California endorsed an October 22, 2002 National Day of Protest exhorting Americans to rise up and “Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.” The document announcing this event stated: “Since September 11, 2001, the authorities have rapidly imposed a resoundingly repressive atmosphere. Law enforcement on both the local and national level has been given broad new powers. Laws and policies that drastically restrict civil liberties have been put into place. . . . we cannot and must not allow the authorities to get away with using September 11th to let cops who brutalize and kill people go free. . . . All over the U.S. people are being killed by law enforcement officers at an escalating rate. . . . In city after city, cops viciously beat people, confident that they will face no punishment. . . . The authorities have used the post-September 11th atmosphere to exonerate cops convicted of brutalizing people and to continue to allow cops who brutalize and kill to get off either completely free or with a wink and slap on the wrist. . . . Racial profiling, which had been widely exposed and discredited through people’s struggles, has now come back with a vengeance. . . . Since September 11th thousands of Muslims, Arabs and South Asians have been rounded up, detained and disappeared. . . . Hard-won civil liberties and protections have been stripped away as part of the government’s ‘war on terrorism.’ The USA-PATRIOT Act brings in a new set of repressive laws and restrictions on people and grants even greater power to law enforcement agents of all kinds.” Moreover, this document explicitly defended terrorists and murderers such as Lynne Stewart, Jose Padilla, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Leonard Peltier – depicting them as persecuted political prisoners of a repressive American government.
The ACLU was a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter exhorting members of the U.S. Congress “to oppose the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA), also known as ‘Patriot [Act] II,’” which was then under consideration. These signatories stated that the new legislation “fail[ed] to respect our time-honored liberties,” and “contain[ed] a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers . . . that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights.” In addition, the ACLU has given its organizational endorsement to the Community Resolution to Protect Civil Liberties campaign, a project of the California-based Coalition for Civil Liberties (CCL). The CLL tries to influence city councils to pass resolutions creating Civil Liberties Safe Zones; that is, to be non-compliant with the provisions of the Patriot Act.
The ACLU also endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act (CLRA) of 2004, which was introduced by Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Russell Feingold, Richard Durbin, and Jon Corzine, and Democratic Representatives Howard Berman and William Delahunt. The CLRA was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Furthermore, the ACLU was an Organizer of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives” held in Washington, D.C., a rally that drew more than a million demonstrators advocating that women be granted unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortions at any stage of pregnancy.
The ACLU has received funding from the Open Society Institute, the Arca Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Columbia Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Lear Family Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Woods Fund of Chicago.