Home » About » Newsletters » December 1999
Help us Stay on the Cutting Edge
By Howard Simon, Executive Director, December 1999
Next year we will take note of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union.
We will, undoubtedly, take note of the hostile circumstances in which a handful of civic leaders saw the need for a civil liberties union to challenge both the abuses of governmental power and the "tyranny of the majority". We will remember the first "Red scare" and the hostility towards our nation's immigrants, and we will note the culture of racial segregation and the brutality inflicted on those who threatened the system of racial separation.
We will remember other periods in our history and other episodes in which the civil liberties union, sometimes courageously and sometimes timidly and imperfectly, defended human rights - the "internment" of 120,000 Japanese Americans, McCarthyism and the second "Red scare" following World War II, and the structure of inequality for women that was reinforced by both convention and law.
It's easy to look back at these episodes and express outrage. It's easy to look back with scorn at the social conventions and attitudes about race and the limited role of women that shaped our laws and institutions - until the civil rights revolution of the 1960's. Even former President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II an act of "racism and war hysteria" when he signed legislation in 1983 to compensate the survivors of the internment program.
It's easy to be a civil libertarian in hindsight. What's hard part is to gather the courage to be a civil libertarian today - to be on the "cutting edge."
A few months ago, the Mayor of Miami and some members of the City Commission declared that a popular Cuban band, Los Van Van, on a national tour in this country, could not perform in Miami. The officials used local radio to incite the community, suggesting that the Band are agents of the Castro regime. Later, they acknowledged that under the First Amendment they could not prevent the performance, but claimed it would be insensitive for the performance to take place in Miami, "the heart of the exile community."
Thanks to the vigilance of the ACLU, the performance took place in Miami as scheduled.
This was not the first time the appearance of Cuban nationals had been obstructed in Miami, and it was not the first instance in which officials used the power of their office to try to ban an event that might create a crack in the wall and, even symbolically, represents dissent from the orthodox view regarding U.S. policies toward Cuba and Castro.
It is because of situations like this that many years ago I joined the ACLU. I wanted to be part of a movement that has the courage to confront prevailing orthodoxy and argues that toleration of opinions with which we may disagree or even hate is, nevertheless, essential for democracy and for the protection of the rights of everyone.
And now, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to consider the constitutionality of Florida's stubborn insistence on the use of the electric chair as the mandated punishment for the most serious crimes.
The debate in Florida seems to be only about whether to retire "old Sparky" and shift to executions by lethal injection. But the ACLU has been questioning whether we should be in the business of state-sanctioned executions, not how to execute convicted criminals. We need to remind the public that too frequently death sentences are imposed on those who received the worst legal representation, not necessarily those who commit the worst crimes; that sometimes those who are convicted and sentenced to death are found years later to be innocent. And, too frequently, the decision to impose a death sentence is infected by impermissible considerations of race - the race of the victim as well as the killer.
On a different front, the Florida ACLU is playing a leading role in the defense of public education. Politicians are exploiting the frustration that many parents have with the quality of education their children are receiving. Politicians are enlisting that frustration in the service of an old agenda - vouchers that divert tax dollars to parochial schools. "No child should be trapped in a failing school," they intone. And, of course, that is true.
But vouchers, which steer families to parochial schools, are the core of some politician's school reform program. It is the duty of the state to ensure that there are no failing schools, and we must resist policies that assault cherished fundamental principles that prohibit government aid to sectarian institutions and threaten the public schools that most families depend on.
Decades from now, history will look back and applaud those who addressed these injustices. But, as I said, it's easy to be a civil libertarian in hindsight. The hard part is to be a civil libertarian today.
Thank you for your participation, your membership, and your year-end tax deductible gifts that sustain our organization and maintain our aggressive legal, legislative and public outreach programs.
Your gifts will ensure that we stay on the cutting edge.
