Home » About » Newsletters » August 1997
A Farewell to the Organization but not to the Fight: Executive Director's Goodbye
By Robyn E. Blumner
It is with great sorrow that I write this final column as your executive director. My eight years as the director of this organization have been exciting and professionally fulfilling. It is only that I have been given a golden opportunity that I now leave the ACLU.
On September 15, I begin my career in journalism with the St. Petersburg Times, one of the finest newspapers in the country. I will be writing a regular Sunday opinion column and I will sit on the paper's editorial board. The St. Petersburg Times has an extraordinary legacy of commitment to civil liberties and civil rights. Its founder, Nelson Poynter, has been memorialized by the ACLU of Florida in its annual Nelson Poynter Award Dinner, where we give recognition to a Floridian who, like Nelson Poynter, devoted his or her life to the principles of the Bill of Rights.
I see my work with the St. Petersburg Times as a continuation of the work I have done here. My articles will regularly deal with constitutional issues and I will be an outspoken defender of the principles of liberty our Constitution embodies. Hopefully, with my pieces distributed by the ScrippsHoward news service, my defense of the Bill of Rights will reach beyond Florida's borders.
The good news is that a great replacement has been found. Howard Simon, who has served as executive director of the ACLU of Michigan for the past 23 years, will be taking over the helm on October 1. Howard is a renowned advocate for civil liberties and is a leader among ACLU executive directors. He will bring exceptional vision and experience to the ACLU of Florida, and I know the organization will flourish under his leadership.
Looking back over the past eight years, I am pleased to see how significantly the ACLU of Florida has grown. We have gone from a paltry foundation budget of $35,000 to a budget of over $400,000. Our staffing compliment has more than doubled as has our legislative and litigative activity. Last year volunteer attorneys across the state donated more than a million dollars in pro bono time to our ongoing litigation. Today, the professionalism and effectiveness of the ACLU of Florida staff and its governing board is unmatched in the organization's history.
But I am proudest of our many successes over the years. Among our countless civil liberties victories, we stopped the censorship of rap group 2 Live Crew's music by former Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro, we ended the persecution of the Santaria faith in Hialeah, and we suspended public school bible readings in Nassau County. We've handled hundreds of smaller matters where citizens would have been powerless against an abusive government had it not been for our intervention. And although recently we lost a couple of significant civil liberties fightslosing in an attempt to establish a right to doctorassisted suicide and adoption by gay and lesbian parentswe gave it our best effort and raised serious doubts about the propriety of current state policies in the mind of the public.
As those of us in the civil liberties business know, no win is ever permanent and neither is any loss. We will fight another day to win every individual a right to death with dignity and every gay and lesbian Floridian the right to parent a child in need. Next time, I'm sure, with better results. Historically, we have stood for what is just, and what is right, at times of mass hysteria and ignorance. Then we wait for the rest of society to catch up to our insights and understanding.
There will never be another organization in this nation as important to our freedom as the ACLU. It has been my honor to serve within it for most of my professional life. And no matter where I go from here, the cause of liberty the ACLU serves will always hold my heart and, more importantly, my intellect.
