By Bacardi Jackson, Executive Director, ACLU of Florida

This month, as we mark 60 years since the Voting Rights Act and 70 years since the formation of one major force of resistance in Florida - our very own ACLU of Florida - I am reminded that none of this happened by accident. Freedom was never given. It was demanded, strategized, marched for, and won with intention, sacrifice, and vision.

This work is not abstract for me. It’s what I was raised to do. My mother was an anti-apartheid activist and principal organizer of the 1967 Pentagon demonstration and continues to be a fierce advocate who has taught me that courage means speaking up even when your voice shakes, and that silence in the face of injustice is complicity. My father was one of the architects of the children’s march in Birmingham and the voting rights movement in Selma – precursors to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was a strategist whose vision turned protest into policy. He understood that power concedes nothing without the courage of foot soldiers, and he believed in the transformative force of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

From him, I learned that voting is not the end, it’s the beginning. That the ballot is not just a right, but a responsibility. And that behind every movement are the minds that imagine a better world and the feet that march toward it.

That legacy shapes how I lead today. At the ACLU of Florida, we carry the memory of those who came before us, even as we fight the battles of now. We are confronting coordinated attacks on the right to vote, the erasure of Black history in our schools, and government policies rooted in cruelty and control by any means.

But we are not afraid. Because we know where we come from and what we’ve already overcome.

We are descendants of organizers and truth-tellers. Of bridge-crossers and ballot defenders. Of elders who strategized with precision and marched with purpose. We are here because they dared to fight, and now it is our turn to carry that torch forward.

So as we reflect on this moment - 70 years of defending civil liberties in Florida and 60 years since the Voting Rights Act - we recommit ourselves to the work. We protect what they built. We grow what they dreamed. And we make sure the next generation inherits more rights, not fewer than we’ve had.

Because we are the frontline of resistance.

In solidarity and struggle,

Bacardi Jackson
Executive Director, ACLU of Florida