Battle for the ACLU

This powerful civil liberties organization is in crisis, and impassioned supporters of its mission want change now. It’s up to the national leadership to listen — and to resign.

By Nat Hentoff

The most serious crisis in the history of the American Civil Liberties Union was caused by the decision of its leadership in 1977 to defend the First Amendment right of an American Nazi organization to march in Skokie, Ill., where many Jews, including Holocaust survivors, lived. Adhering to its basic principle cost the ACLU about 30,000 members. The Illinois Supreme Court eventually upheld the ACLU's action, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review that ruling.

(Illustration by Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY)

In the direct line of fire for months was David Goldberger, then legal and legislative director of the ACLU of Illinois. I was covering the case, and whenever I or others called him, Goldberger didn't acknowledge his identity until the caller identified himself or herself.

"I got thousands of angry calls," Goldberger, a professor of constitutional and First Amendment law at Ohio State University's law school, recently told me. "I had to screen those calls."

Goldberger still litigates cases for the ACLU as a volunteer lawyer, but he has become involved in another crisis of the organization involving its fundamental principles: He has joined ACLU members, donors, former staffers and board members, as well as civil liberties activists, supporting a website called SavetheACLU.org. The board of the South Carolina ACLU has also signed on. All are opponents of the present leadership — Executive Director Anthony Romero and President Nadine Strossen.

ACLU's critical mission

The signers' Mission Statement for SavetheACLU.org emphasizes: "We believe ... the ACLU is especially important now during a time of grave and systematic attacks on civil liberties by the national government. But an ACLU compromised by its repeated failures to practice what it preaches will be unable to resist these attacks for long."

Since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has been resisting and litigating against overreaching government, but never before has there been an administration so convinced that national security overrides individual liberties — while armed with an unprecedented range of surveillance technology.

If this widening internal battle over its principles continues to grow, the ACLU's credibility among the citizenry at large will diminish as the war on terrorism continues indefinitely. The greatest cost will be to all of us, not only civil libertarians, in successive administrations controlled by either political party.

Particularly providing momentum to this rebellion was the decision of Romero's longtime predecessor as executive director, Ira Glasser, to become a leader of the opposition after initially remaining silent. In "Why I Join," on the website, Glasser speaks of the ACLU leadership's "loss of ... candor and its commitment to honesty and its growing intolerance for dissent and free speech within its own ranks. Such intolerance cannot be contained ... (and can change) the instincts and reflexes that drive the ACLU's mission." As Save the ACLU's Mission Statement says, "These breaches of principle include the ACLU's approval of grant agreements that restrict speech and associational rights; efforts by management to impose gag rules on staff and to subject staff to e-mail surveillance; a proposal to bar ACLU board members from publicly criticizing the ACLU; and informal campaigns to purge ACLU of its internal critics."

These incursions on ACLU employees' civil liberties have silenced public dissent by them, as documented in an e-mail last Dec. 20 to the ACLU national board by an "employee rights" group in the national office, including lawyers and projects staff, protesting these management practices. It was sent anonymously, the group wrote, because "the fear of reprisal for speaking out ... is heavy, palpable and widespread."

Meanwhile, a counter website, VoicesfortheACLU.org, has been launched in support of the ACLU leadership and is backed by the executive directors of 18 state affiliates and six senior ACLU staff members. Yet this site does not erase any of the specific charges against the leadership.

Among the increasing number of other internal critics dedicated to the principles of the ACLU is Rosemary Armington. She and her husband, David, have for decades been major donors to the organization. In a statement on the website addressed to Strossen, she writes, "The ACLU needs to lead by example. Regrettably, over the past several years the examples have reflected breaches of fundamental ACLU principles, followed by withdrawals after public disclosures and superficial admissions of 'mistakes' — but without anyone held accountable."

In the website's "Current Controversies" category, David Kennison, of the national board as well as the South Carolina board, presents a resolution adopted by that state's board in June, which he amplifies: "The ACLU (National) Board is considering a policy proposal that would deprive board members of the long-standing rights to obtain tapes of board meetings and could require that all meeting tapes be erased after approval of minutes. ... Why is the ACLU leadership anxious to deny board members their traditional access to meeting tapes? Why does the leadership want to erase our history?"

Fighting to keep its voice

Public expressions of this resolve to save the ACLU from its leadership, including a largely complicit national board of directors, are simultaneously an inspirational and poignant embodiment of the very spirit of the ACLU.

The ACLU is indeed more needed than ever.

The executive director and president of the ACLU could make a lasting contribution to saving the Constitution by resigning their posts. As Goldberger told The New York Times, "It's clear that the organization's leadership has let it drift away from its core principles, and without those principles, it has no value."

Nat Hentoff is a former member of the ACLU's national board and, before that, the New York board. He is an authority on free speech issues.