American Civil Liberties Union
| American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) |
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|---|---|
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| legal form | nonprofit organization |
| founding | 1920 |
| founder | Roger Nash Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Walter Nelles, Morris Ernst, Albert DeSilver, Arthur Garfield Hays, Jane Addams , Felix Frankfurter , Elizabeth Gurley Flynn |
| Seat | 125 Broad St., 18th floor New York , NY 10004 |
| main emphasis | Defense of civil rights |
| Action space | United States with offices in 50 states |
| Chair | Susan N. Herman |
| Managing directors | Anthony Romero |
| sales | $ 137 million (2015) |
| Employees | approx. 200 |
| Volunteers | approx. 2,000 |
| Members | over 750,000 |
| Website | www.aclu.org |
The American Civil Liberties Union (short ACLU , English "American Civil Rights Union") is a US-based non-governmental organization based in New York City , which has existed since the 1920s. She advocates civil rights and liberalism in general .
She advocates the guarantee of freedom of expression (see First Amendment of the US Constitution ), the individual right to privacy , a right to abortion , equal rights for homosexuals , against the death penalty and police brutality, and often also for separation of church and state . According to its own information on its website (11/2018), the organization has over 1,750,000 members and supporters and handles around 2,000 court proceedings annually.
history
The ACLU was founded in 1920 as a reaction to the consequences of the so-called Red Scare , i.e. the fear of communists that resulted in the Palmer Raids . Prominent members of the early days were Jane Addams , John Dewey , the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and the leader of the Socialist Party, Norman Mattoon Thomas . From the beginning the Bureau of Investigation infiltrated and observed the association.
The ACLU campaigned several times against the banning of the theory of evolution from American schools. In 1925, the ACLU was looking for a teacher who wanted to bring the ban to the test by deliberately violating the law. Local business people wanted to gain publicity for their small town and were able to convince the teacher John T. Scopes of the ACLU project. In the first instance, he was fined despite the assistance of well-known attorney Clarence Darrow . The second instance, the Tennessee Supreme Court, overturned the verdict because of a procedural error by the first instance: only the jury, not the judge, can impose fines. There were then no further proceedings and no sentence was ever carried out.
Nonetheless, the first trial became the first mass media event - dozen of radio stations broadcast live - and the cross-interrogation made the prohibition of the theory of evolution ridiculous (see Scopes trial ).
The case has taken the subject of a Hollywood film ( Who sows the wind , 1960, with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March among others ).
After the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the ACLU vehemently opposed the internment of Americans of Japanese descent .
In 1954, the ACLU played an important role in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which led to the banning of racial segregation in American schools.
In 1973, the ACLU was the first major political organization to demand the removal of US President Richard Nixon due to the Watergate scandal .
In the same year, the organization took part in the Roe v. Wade , who promoted American women's rights to abortion. The US Supreme Court ruled that abortion legislation was an improper invasion of woman's privacy.
In 1977 the ACLU sued the Skokie, Illinois city government for allowing neo-Nazi parades and demonstrations - Skokie has a large Jewish population. A federal court then ordered the city to lift the ban on demonstrations, and that decision was approved by the American Supreme Court. The ACLU's intervention in this case resulted in around 15 percent of all members leaving the ACLU; in Illinois, one in five people quit. Federal Judge Bernard M. Decker described the principle followed by the ACLU as follows:
“It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to spew their rhetorical poison than to let the government, in panic and dangerous fashion, decide what citizens can see and hear ... The ability of American society to defend a hateful society Tolerating doctrine is the best protection we have against the establishment of a Nazi-like regime. "
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , the ACLU has been campaigning against excessive expansion of police and secret service powers , which were established in particular by the USA PATRIOT Act . The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the NSA and was upheld by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor , who ruled the Bush administration's wiretapping operations illegal. In 2009, a lawsuit filed by the ACLU led to the publication of a classified CIA report documenting the torture practices of the intelligence service on 28 persons suspected of terrorism.
In 2017, the ACLU opposed the mandatory declaration requirement in more and more states for applicants for government contracts not to participate in boycotts against Israel or to be a member of the BDS movement. Although the organization itself is not in favor of these actions, it believes that such coercion is against the constitution and comparable to the anti-communism laws of the McCarthy era . Boycotts have a long tradition in the USA and have achieved quite a bit - from the Boston Tea Party to the Montgomery bus boycott to the South Africa boycott . That is why one is against the special regulations regarding the Israel boycott. On October 11, ACLU sued the State of Kansas on behalf of a Mennonite math professor who wanted to work on a state educational project but could not sign the statement because she was boycotting products from the Israeli settlements .
financing
The ACLU and the tax-exempt foundation affiliated to the ACLU receive substantial annual donations from various foundations. Major donors are u. a, the Ford , Rockefeller, and Carnegie Foundations .
In October 2004, the ACLU waived US $ 1.15 million donations from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations because they had included a grant agreement that the money would not support “terrorism or other unacceptable activities” should be. The ACLU rejected the clause on the grounds that such a vague phrase would jeopardize civil liberties in a “climate of fear and intimidation”. The ACLU also rejected half a million dollars from the United States government for refusing to verify that ACLU employees were on the terrorism watch list.
See also
literature
- John J. Patrick, Richard M. Pious, Donald A. Ritchie: The Oxford Guide to the United States Government. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-514273-0 , pp. 22-23 (= American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ).
Web links
- Website of the ACLU (English)
- Special Ops Task Force Threatened Government Agents Who Saw Detainee Abuse in Iraq (ACLU, Dec 7, 2004)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Find your local ACLU affiliate. ACLU, accessed January 31, 2017 .
- ↑ ACLU Annual Report 2015. ACLU, accessed January 30, 2017 (English).
- ↑ a b ACLU History. ACLU, accessed January 30, 2017 .
- ↑ Tim Weiner : FBI. The real story of a legendary organization. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-091071-4 , page 94 f.
- ↑ CIA agents threatened terror suspects with a drill. In: Spiegel Online , August 22, 2009.
- ^ Opinion // In America, the Right to Boycott Israel Is Under Threat. This Is Why That's Cause for Concern. Ha-Aretz on October 11, 2017, accessed November 14, 2017.
- ^ Stephanie Strom: ACLU Rejects Foundation Grants Over Terror Language. In: The New York Times , October 19, 2004 (English).