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Comment by muninn_ | Hacker News Reader

Although I think the American Civil Liberties Union is incredibly valuable and I'm glad they have a lot more money now to fight for the American people, I'm questioning all of this.

Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago? Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people? I haven't seen Google talk about this, or AirBnB offer support to widows of veterans whose spouse commits suicide and has left them with nothing.

I feel for immigrants from war-torn countries, especially having been there myself. Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves. I wish we cared more about homeless people, people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates without any protests from anybody, or veterans who can't pay their VA bills. Idk.

I know this comment will be unpopular, and that's ok. I tend to care more about those who I feel (whether true or not) are being left behind because that's who I am.

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The ACLU has been fighting the good fight for impoverished black people as well. They happen to be in the spotlight at the moment due to the Trump immigration executive order, but it's not as though 100% of the funds raised by YC will go towards fighting the immigration ban. It will support their countless other ongoing legal battles as well.

They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization that is deserving of your donations. I'm personally of the opinion that a charitable act should not be diminished or castigated because one picked this time to donate and not other times.

Put another way, if a guy shows up to volunteer at a soup kitchen, I'm going to thank him for his time, not shout at him, "Where were you when we had the flood of Katrina refugees to feed!"

> They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization

The ACLU is wonderful, no doubt about that. But I think some people do put an asterisk next to the group because of their (obviously somewhat strange) categorization of the protections of the 2nd amendment as outside the scope of American civil liberties.

What? This is a giant [citation needed]

Right here: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment

It's well established that the ACLU refuses to defend the individual civil right to armed self defense.

That all seems pretty clear to me. It's not up to you to interpret the 2nd Amendment for them.

Not to mention that orgs like the NRA have many times more funding than the ACLU and dedicate every action to that one issue.

Or the fact that you're dealing with a organization that has been one of the biggest and best defenders of oppressed groups in recent history and you're cranky that they're not gonna help you own a handgun like most of congress is.

Friend, you're having an argument with yourself. I didn't say anything related to any of that.

You asked for a cite, I linked you one. That's it.

Any time I read "friend" in this context I feel like you can replace it with just about any word someone wouldn't say in any professional context, and it's more true to the intent.

I ain't your friend, pal.

We're in quite a pickle if de-escalating language is interpreted as rude.

Please take this in the manner it was intended: Avoiding an unnecessary argument.

I am cranky that they aren't willing to make simple statements of support for it.

If an organization that was instrumental in protecting your right to a fair and speedy trial, was against opposed to the idea of free speech, I would still condemn that org for holding that specific position, while still recognizing that they have done good in other areas.

I think their reasoning on 2nd amendment work is sound. The NRA and affiliates have ~4x the ACLU's budget to spend on that one single issue, and they have shown themselves to be ruthlessly effective on that front.

But that's not really the point. SSDP and DPA, as specialized, wide-reaching, grassroots organizations, are more effective at drug policy reform, but this doesn't stop the ACLU from recognizing the threats that drug prohibition poses to civil liberties.

Similarly, the fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making statements in favor of advances in the rights guaranteed by the second amendment.

The 2nd amendment has the second largest lobbying organization in the country looking out for it. It doesn't need help from the ACLU.

> the second largest lobbying organization in the country

I don't think the National Association of Realtors has a dog in this race.

[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/lobbying-groups-gop...

The fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making a simple statement in favor of advances in this particular civil liberty.

Their position is not simple, but they have a statement: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment

That's the document to which I was referring initially. And it definitely reads with a contrived voice, in contrast to most other ACLU lit.

There are some aspects where 2A intersects with other rights, where NRA and others are unwilling to go.

One sticking point right now is drugs. Per federal law, any "user of an unlawful substance" is prohibited from firearm ownership, period. This includes anyone in states that legalized marijuana, including medical users. And the feds have been trying to maintain state records for medical marijuana card holders.

NRA, SAF and the rest of the bunch are unwilling to not just do anything about it, but to even speak out at all. I'm a SAF member, and I actually wrote to them about this several times, with no response. Ironically, the only gun rights org that has been consistently speaking out on this is the otherwise extremely right wing GOA.

And recently, both NRA and SAF organizations have enthusiastically endorsed Jeff Sessions, which is a huge middle finger to anyone concerned about this law...

That said, ACLU generally does get involved in cases which are centered on 2A, but involve other rights. So my hope is that they'd get involved in this as well, if a suitable case came up.

I see the ACLU as an organization that isn't blind to all constitutional entitlements, and I don't believe they have any responsibility to be that. I see them as particularly interested in civil rights defense for the powerless against the powerful and untouchable, who are particularly antagonistic at the moment.

Firearms interests have their own highly influential advocacy already from more than one entity, so it puts this argument in the "all lives matter" category of flawed defenses.

And the First Amendment is protected by powerful media litigation teams. Civil liberties don't have asterisks.

A portion of the the First Amendment is protected by media litigators. It's got more than a few important protections that deserve defense. Besides, are you really complaining that there are too many organizations working to protect our civil liberties. Seems an odd complaint. If Second Amendment rights matter to you then, by all means, donate to the NRA or others fighting to protect that right. Doesn't mean the ACLU and others don't do important work as well.

I donate to a state-level 2nd Amendment rights organization, GeorgiaCarry.org, rather than the NRA. Why? Because GeorgiaCarry stands strongly against racial discrimination and is working hard to end Jim Crow era Georgia laws that to this day attempt to thwart non-white citizens voting and asserting their 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment rights. By contrast, the NRA has a consistent record of remaining silent on race issues when they intersect with 2nd Amendment challenges.

The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right. They have stood up for 2A rights in the past, but compared to the NRA and other 2A advocates, they have very limited resources, so they let the NRA / et. al. handle them.

> The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right

To be specific - they disagree with one specific SCOTUS ruling that is less than a decade old (DC v. Heller). They do agree with the pro-gun arguments put forth by US v. Miller.

They have devoted (to my knowledge) no material resources towards fighting DC v. Heller despite their disagreement with it, and they explicitly leave most 2nd Amendment cases to other advocacy groups (namely the NRA) because those are much more well-funded and focused solely on the 2nd Amendment. The ACLU prefers to spend its much smaller and limited budget on cases which aren't really supported by many (if any) other advocacy groups.

This seems to keep coming up, and it's a rather tiresome argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511964

Actually, the NRA themselves didn't want pursue Heller in the SCOTUS. They are not an effective watchdog.

They are, IMHO, far more interested in pursuing their own agenda, which only partially intersects with the right to self defense. More important to them, it seems, is acting as stooges for the GOP. I came to that conclusion after a local election in which the NRA endorsed the GOP candidate, who had a C rating, as I recall, while turning up their noses at his challenger who was an A.

I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.

> I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation.

As I recall, it's because they didn't believe a priori that it was the strongest case. They definitely do support the decision and defend it in subsequent cases. It's not unusual for an advocacy group to pick and choose its legal battles based on what it thinks is most likely to advance its long-term agenda - each case is a legal risk, and with a it's possible to end up losing ground instead of gaining it. There's a lot of strategic calculation that goes into it, which doesn't mean that it's always successful or correct, but it's not unusual or suspicious when it happens.

This is similar to how Rosa Parks was chosen as the figurehead for the legal battles surrounding bus boycotts, even though she was not the first Black woman to refuse to give up her seat (and she wasn't even the one whose case made it to the Supreme Court). She was believed to be the most sympathetic and favorable candidate for challenging the law. (Ultimately, Claudette Colvin's case was the one that was actually upheld by the Supreme Court.)

> I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.

There are a lot of criticisms I could enumerate about the NRA's inconsistency with how it pursues Second Amendment battles, but if you're concerned with the broad right to self-defense, I don't think they apply. I definitely would not say that they oppose clear constitutional protections for gun ownership (such as the Heller outcome) simply to line their own pockets, which is what you are implying.

More specifically, I think the NRA regards the GOP as extremely useful. They actually stooge for the gun manufacturers. If somehow the Republicans and the Democrats flipped sides, the NRA would flip, too. LaPierre and his crew would have to go, but that's business.

The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right.

And that's a problem. It betrays either a gross misunderstanding on their part of the purpose of the Bill of Rights, which is unlikely, or other less transparent motivations, which aren't. There are other civil liberties organizations that don't argue for a state monopoly on the right to self defense. Consider helping them out instead.

It's ridiculous to talk about how misguided, dangerous, or outright evil the government is, only to turn around and argue that they should own all the guns.

I appreciate your concern, but I also think it's misguided to dismiss the ACLU because of this single issue: it's not something they focus resources on. They're not actively campaigning against an individual's rights to bear arms. They're not even vocal about it. Gun rights or anti-gun rights are not what many people think of when they think of gun rights issues. You gotta pick your battles, and find allies where you can.

ACLU doesn't argue that "they should own all the guns". They don't defend the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment, but they don't argue against it, either. So, in effect, they're completely neutral on this.

They're also upfront about this position, so you can't claim that they're misleading you when they take your money.

When you donate money to ACLU, you do so in the knowledge that not go towards defending 2A rights[1]. But this is also the case for EFF, for example. Does that preclude you from donating to EFF, or any other organization? If not, then why do you demand that ACLU does something out of their declared scope.

[1] ACLU does actually defend 2A rights in contexts where they intersect with other rights. For example, they have collaborated with SAF to defend the rights of non-citizens to keep and bear arms - some states explicitly ban non-citizens from their shall-issue carry licensing provisions, or even firearm possession in general.

They don't defend the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment, but they don't argue against it, either

I hear what you're saying, but it's clearly at odds with the position described at https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/heller-decision-and-seco... .

They explicitly interpret 2A as a "collective right," whatever that is. They also state their disagreement with Heller and presumably any number of lower court decisions in line with it.

Organizations like the EFF never claimed to be broad-based "civil liberties unions," so that's why I feel it's appropriate to hold them to different standards.

They interpret 2A as a collective right for the purposes of explaining why they (and note that this specifically refers to the national ACLU organization!) do not step in to defend it.

However, they never argue in court against 2A. Nor do they prohibit their member state organizations from taking a different position - and many do.

Yes, ACLU is a broad "civil liberties" organization. But there's no definitive list of civil liberties, and different people have different opinions on this. The fact that SCOTUS ruled on it doesn't change matters - SCOTUS rules on whether something is a constitutional right or not, not on whether something is a civil right or not. The latter is inherently a subjective assessment.

I am an ardent supporter of the individual right to gun ownership but you can't fault the ACLU for having a slightly different interpretation of 2A while still believing in the right.

And has others have stated, I'd much rather have the ACLU focus on things like 1A, 4A, etc. Leave 2A to the NRA and other 2A-specific advocacy groups.

I'm not so sure of that. It may be that their willingness to look at 2A in a completely different framework, claiming that the meaning of "the people" is different in just this case, will eventually undermine their defense of the rest of the Bill of Rights as well.

Exactly. If they took a view that the right to free speech is a "collective" right, that would completely gut any value they provide.

While I value my second amendment rights I will not allow that to prevent me from supporting the ACLU. I also can't stomach supporting the NRA. It's a challenging position to be in because I do care about my rights but I'm not sure where to turn to support my second amendment rights specifically.

There are a few other groups that aren't as heavy on deep-South cultural baggage (https://www.saf.org/). Whether or not they're sufficiently dissociated is another matter entirely, though.

For what it's worth, CCRKBA - which is essentially to SAF what NRA-ILA is to NRA (involves most the same people, in particular, Alan Gottlieb; but is a political campaigning counterpart to the non-profit) - endorsed Jeff Sessions. And how!

http://www.ccrkba.org/call-your-senators-to-confirm-sessions...

“Senate confirmation of Jeff Sessions as our next Attorney General will bring about much-needed change at the Department of Justice. Instead of promoting or defending schemes that impact law-abiding Americans, his track record shows that he will go after genuine criminals.”

“The nation is in serious need of an attorney general who knows the difference between civil rights and criminal wrongs”

For those who are aware of the track record of Sessions as attorney, the highlighted bit especially is appalling.

This is the problem for me. I want an organization that will fight for my second amendment rights but that also isn't advancing a secondary agenda that I disagree with.

I don't think my city's tax on gun and ammo sales is an effective or constitutional measure and I want to support organizations that will fight that type of measure.

I did not support Obama's "common sense" ban on gun sales to people on the no-fly list because I don't believe the no-fly list itself is constitutional.

I do want to take steps to reduce gun violence in America but my current choices on the political front are either ineffective and/or unconstitutional laws from the left or a complete unwillingness to even try from the right.

I do not support Jeff Sessions for Attorney General because I think the entire bill of rights is valuable and applies to everyone and I don't think he will uphold it effectively.

For the time being, I have compromised by remaining a SAF member, since they haven't formally endorsed Sessions (and they can't, as a 501(c)3), and are not involved in any court cases that do not pertain to gun rights. Meanwhile, I have terminated my CCRKBA membership, and called them and explained why I did so.

That said, it is still a very uneasy compromise, because the person who uttered all the things I consider despicable on behalf of CCRKBA is also the person who is the founder and the most prominent spokesperson of SAF, and my conscience only permits so much ability to distinguish their opinions depending on which "hat" they wear.

My takeaway from all this is that there's no bipartisan gun rights organization in US, and there probably cannot be in the current political climate. Thus, pro-gun liberals have to establish their own, that would be the left-wing counterpart to NRA and SAF.

The good thing is that with all the tumult that the Democratic party is going through right now, with a massive grassroots platform rewrite going on, this is the time to speak up about this sort of thing. Pay attention to new left-wing groups that spring up promising to upend the status quo on the left. Check their platform and issues. If they do speak about gun control (most do), and you see something there that you believe is wrong, get in touch with them, and let them know that 1) you're on their side in general, but 2) you do not agree with them on this, and here's why.

To give a specific example, here's Justice Democrats (essentially an attempt to formally organize a "Sanders wing" of the party):

https://justicedemocrats.com/platform/

If you scroll down, you'll see "Enact common-sense gun regulation" bullet point, and a bunch of stuff underneath. If you find anything disagreeable, email them, with a polite and well-reasoned refutation. I did that, and they actually replied and told me that they're still in the process of hashing the platform out, and are listening to all feedback.

In the meantime, a good way to get left-wing politicians to notice us is via the Liberal Gun Club. It's not a political organization, and it isn't involved in legal fights, so it's not an NRA/SAF replacement. But it is a focal point to assemble forces; and if it has enough members, it can be used as a foundation to build future organizations, and to draw attention in intraparty politics.

Thank you for these resources, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Keep in mind that there are actually many ACLUs - the national body, and a lot of local chapters. The chapters are pretty independent, and occasionally do things that I personally disagree with.

The distinction is frequently omitted, and used to paint the national group with the sins of local ones, and vice-versa.

And that's not the view of the national ACLU, at all. Perhaps they don't place the emphasis on it you'd like to see, but that's quite different than considering the 2nd "outside the scope".

Sure, but "not doing anything to improve the state of 2A" is not the same as "fighting to impose a degraded view of 2A".

The ACLU has nothing to gain by promoting any particular 2A view, because that's the only right that's not universally a political sinkhole.

The inconvenient truth is that all civil rights (that aren't gun rights) have opposition nearly everywhere in America. The only difference is incidentals- if you're in coastal California or urban New England, your subculture wants "hate speech" banned; whereas Arkansas has a more traditional version of obscenity (depictions of sex and promotion of other vices) it wants to eliminate.

So civil rights (in the traditional sense) has no defenders in legislature or society at large. Gun rights, on the other hand, still do in many areas of the country (coastal California and urban New England are the two big exceptions, of course), and as such I can't fault the ACLU's 'default' stance on a right that's not universally contested.

> urban New England are the two big exceptions

Been to Manchester, NH lately?

I probably should have said 'Northeast' rather than 'urban New England' specifically. I mis-remembered; that area encompasses fewer states than I thought it did (and NH is a good counterexample- gun laws there are great, if I remember correctly).

Anyways, in the Northeast, the states with less liberal gun laws (NY/MD/CT/Mass./NJ) also happen to contain most of that area's population, especially in the larger cities like NYC/Boston/Baltimore. NH is good, but it's a very small piece of that region.

That's like castigating someone who volunteers at a soup kitchen for not volunteering at every soup kitchen.

It's more like, in a world with exactly eight soup kitchens, the "soup kitchen support union" specifically excluding one from its support network and issuing a statement that, despite its soup having similar origins and ingredients, doesn't qualify as soup in to today's palette unless consumed collectively by all of society.

I don't see the problem there, when that one particular soup kitchen, for various reasons, has several other support unions which are dedicated exclusively to supporting that soup kitchen, and ignore all the other ones.

It makes perfect sense that the "soup kitchen support union" would then concentrate all their efforts on the other 7 soup kitchens which don't get nearly as much support.

They're not the American Bill of Rights Union. They have a conception of what "civil liberties" amounts to which many sympathize with, and they fight for that.

If you think they do good work in that arena, great!

If you think they do good work in that arena and others do good work elsewhere, hey, you know what? That's still great!

(And if you think they do poor work, or work on the wrong goals or whatever, well, of course that's your prerogative.)

You're stretching the metaphor beyond its breaking point. There's no limit on the number of civil rights organizations out there; the ACLU does not have any exclusive right to sue over certain issues or coordinate other groups, it's just particularly old, effective, and respected.

If you're particularly worried about the 2nd amendment there are organizations (extremely powerful and effective organizations at that) to sue on your behalf.

Hasn't the NRA cornered the market on the 2nd Amendment defenses bigly?

> They happen to be in the spotlight at the moment due to the Trump immigration executive order, but it's not as though 100% of the funds raised by YC will go towards fighting the immigration ban. It will support their countless other ongoing legal battles as well

On that note - do we actually know that the YC funds are generally available to the ACLU? Oftentimes when non-profits receive large donations, the donor specifies the usage of the funds (usually by specifying a general area that the non-profit is working on, or donating to a specific fund)[0]. These restrictions are legally binding.

I'm not opining on the use of funds here - I'm just curious if YC donated to a specific fund in the ACLU.

[0] Those who went to colleges will know this firsthand - the donation solicitations you receive usually give options like "for financial aid", or "for the $BUILDING_NAME construction project"

The amount of money the ACLU would get as a consequence of being accepted into a YC batch is a triviality compared to the amount of money they pull in from direct fundraising. Presumably, the benefit to ACLU of being directly engaged with YC is acceleration of their technical and outreach work, and perhaps improved access to wealthy donors in Silicon Valley.

Equally worth knowing: individual ACLU chapters receive funding from the national ACLU, but are also on the hook for raising some of their own funding.

> The amount of money the ACLU would get as a consequence of being accepted into a YC batch is a triviality compared to the amount of money they pull in from direct fundraising

Yes, I agree . I'm pretty sure the ACLU matched donation offers I saw flying around Twitter yesterday already exceed the amount YC gives to nonprofits.

I'm more just curious if YC specified their intended target with this decision, or if they decided to leave the allocation decisions up to the ACLU. My guess is the latter, because the nonprofits YC normally funds are much younger and smaller, but maybe YC had a specific goal in mind.

> Equally worth knowing: individual ACLU chapters receive funding from the national ACLU, but are also on the hook for raising some of their own funding.

That I did not know - thanks for mentioning this!

You can be cynical about us bringing in the ACLU, but in the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

That's a great quote.

Also, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Another factor is to consider framing: you can view this cynically as "only getting involved when it might impact their bottom line", or more favorably in that "it was bad before, but now it's finally hit their breaking point." I prefer to reduce my cynicism as much as possible, giving people the benefit of the doubt. It's also good for my overall happiness.

In that case, I fully expect to see continued activity on this front even after the next Democratic adminstration and congress continues the Bush-Obama-Trump programs that are (finally) meeting resistance.

I won't hold my breath waiting for that, though. Usually what happens is that when one's favored party regains power the criticism suddenly disappears.

The ACLU is not a partisan group. They've criticized Obama where they felt it appropriate:

https://action.aclu.org/secure/president_obama_deportations

I wasn't calling out the ACLU. I am rather skeptical of the commitment of certain folks who are just now finding their voice.

This is from long experience, at least on the left end of the pond, where the mainstream Democratic partisans attempt to shout down any protest when Democratic politicians do something but encourage it when Republicans do equivalent things.

> I am rather skeptical of the commitment of certain folks who are just now finding their voice.

Who cares. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now".

As with most such sayings their relevance isn't universal.

You should care, as should anyone who is aligned with these protestors' views. That's because if (or when, if history is a guide) the protests subside because "we elected not-Trump/Democrat-X/whatever", the gains will be eroded or erased as Trump's policies are continued by the new "savior."

Well, we're not there now, so the best we can do is do what we can do now, and promise ourselves to do what we can then. Maybe we will, maybe we'll fail, but there's literally nothing we can do about that now, so why let cynicism about a potential future erode our resolve to do what is right now?

It isn't cynicism about a potential future. It's recognition of a pattern that has played out time and again. This isn't new or uncharted territory here.

The problem is that as soon as a democrat gets elected to president, these "supporters" will disappear because it is "their" candidate bombing brown people or attacking your rights.

Yes, Obama did some bad stuff, and organizations like the ACLU and EFF did push back on it — you can Google "ACLU slams Obama" for a few examples — but Trump is shaping up to be way past the norm, so you shouldn't expect just a normal amount of resistance.

The only thing "past the norm" here is that Trump isn't hiding behind "the process" or rhetoric. All of the stuff Trump is doing had been either set up by or done, before, by past administrations. It's just that there hasn't been this level of scrutiny or opposition to it.

No, much of it hasn't been done by past administrations, which is why whenever someone tries to trot out a supposed concrete example, it's usually a wildly different act than the one Trump did that is supposedly similar to, either in substance or relevant context or, most often, both.

You mean like the raid in which a SEAL died that wasn't the same policy and enforcement mechanism that Bush and Obama used?

Some examples fit your description. Not all.

My description is a rebuttal of an "all" claim, and is expressly a "much" not an "all" claim itself. So that not all Trump acts.meet it is acknowledged from the beginning and not relevant to its accuracy or its point.

The things that are receiving the heavy protests, however, are the things that do match it.

You need to stop, just for a second, and not look at this as a Democrat/Republican thing. When you have tens of thousands of people protesting it in countries outside the US (massive protests in London and around the UK yesterday) it's clearly beyond partisan politics and just about the issue. It's not red vs blue and it's certainly not left vs right considering our right is only about as right as your left.

I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and don't view it through that lense. I'm viewing this (support for the ACLU) with a skeptical eye, the same way I'd view a Trump protest started by Hillary campaign staffers.

But where is the response to homelessness in SF right in YC's backyard? This sounds like PR more than anything! Why take advantage of a bad situation?

https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income/

https://blog.ycombinator.com/new-story-yc-s15-crowdfunds-hou...

I like what New Story is doing. I was born in Haiti. But I'm asking about San Francisco. Seems like a lot of companies talk about helping poor countries, but here in America it's a different thing. Living in a different country you would think homelessness is non-existent in America.

I think there is a danger when powerful companies start going all political and throwing money at a problem instead of talking and discussions. You get 2 sides that keep pulling against each other and it becomes a matter of who has the most money!

I am extremely proud to see YC support the ACLU.

Of all of the things I've seen YC do, this is by far the greatest.

This is an entirely legitimate concern.

We're not meant to sit here stroking our chins and purring about the good deeds of our favorite companies. YC has an incredible position in Silicon Valley, built over a decade with the help and influence of people like us.

To whom much is given, much is required. I'm glad YC is helping ACLU out this winter. But ACLU took in more money in 1 day last week than NILC, the National Immigration Law Center, spends in a year. After they get done patting themselves on the back for the ACLU win, they should start figuring out how to help the smaller organizations that don't have ACLU's built-in advantages.

We're not here to feel sympathy for Y Combinator or Sam Altman. Most of us will never meet any of these people and, candidly, can't fathom the amount of financial success and security their position has brought them. More power to them! But they exist to us as abstractions, and rightly so, and any pressure we can bring to bear to more fully enlist them in the cause of shoring up our institutions and the rule of law is legitimate.

Push harder. Thanks for that comment.

Thanks.

I am not comfortable having big companies as the protectors of civil liberties, but I'd rather have them fighting for freedom than against.

I'm not saying that we should be unhappy about this, just that nobody should apologize for putting more pressure on YC. Their karmic debt is enormous.

No argument here, but...

> But ACLU took in more money in 1 day last week than NILC, the National Immigration Law Center, spends in a year.

On the bright side, NILC's national budget went from $5.5MM to $7.5MM in the past few months thanks to increased donations.

I don't think I've ever seen a more egregious case of concern trolling.

Here's a tip for you: Complaining about people taking action because you think they should have taken action is stupid. The ACLU is not a be-all end-all shield for everything you don't like and randomly picking your person moral crusades and demanding answers for why the ACLU isn't your personal army is naive and childish.

The ACLU is getting involved now and people are getting involved with the ACLU are doing so because they believe this administration represents an existential threat to the existence of the United States. They don't think that your personal crusades represent as much of a threat.

I'm sorry if you don't like that, but you are contributing the problem of the left. "You want to make the world better? Fuck you, I think this stuff is more important!" is insanity.

I am disappointed by these kind of comments. Being contrarian just for the sake of it doesn't get us anywhere. We cannot anytime someone does something good ask why something we consider better wasn't previously done.

I don't think he is being contrarian just for the sake of it. He is just using the platform to raise awareness about issues which are serious but don't make the same impact into public discussions and don't get similar levels of support. There is nothing bad in bringing more issues to light, and now seems the perfect time for this when the public appetite is ready for such issues.

I see your point but isn't easy to understand that the reason tech companies and YC try to help the ACLU is because charity begins at home? Preventing engineers from working at these companies because of their national origin affects them more than police violence against black people. There surely are other causes more worthy of support outside the US that he did not mention.

The comment strikes me a concern trolling.

There's plenty of evidence pointing towards liberal opposition to Trump's policies being purely contrarian despite their merit. Will you speak up then? Will you point out the hypocrisy and double-standards?

Yes.

I'm pretty sure such cases will come. But, so far? Which ones would that be? All the meaningful EOs etc that get feedback seem to be quite validly being criticised from a liberal POV. The criticism about the conflicts of interest and inexperience of pending nominations is understandable, even if you probably can disagree reasonably on some.

The pettiest so far seems to be ~5 dems voting against Chao - but that was more about get husband and without consequence.

Asking why things were done in the past is unproductive. Asking why more things aren't being done in the present isn't.

No, asking why things were done in the past is a useful exercise to uncover deficiencies in reasoning, process and other areas which can be acted upon for present and future action.

Your argument is essentially "don't ask why my favored party/people/orgs did bad things, just pay attention to the rhetoric they're using now." It's an incredibly cynical position to take, in my opinion.

Seems pretty easy to resolve this dispute: let's both act in the present and critically consider our past actions. Where's the argument here?

No argument on that specifically. I do take note, and exception, when very vocal supporters of Hillary have a "come to Jesus" moment over Trump's actions. Part of that "critically consider past actions" thing.

It's cyclical to be constantly looking back and holding every group to this impossible standard we've constructed for today that is constantly changing. This is the only argument I ever see from Trump supporters: Clinton or Obama or the Democrats did it/would have done it or worse, so it's all okay and you aren't allowed to complain. Never is the argument presented that what is currently being done is right, because it's indefensible.

Why not talk about what is right and talk about doing that? When we read 'all men are created equal' we don't say 'well, the founding fathers hated women so it's okay for me to' or 'the founding fathers had no good ideas and they are trash' we talk about what parts of their ideas had merit and try to improve upon them and do the right thing /today/, from this moment forward.

What makes you think I support Trump? My criticism comes from the left, not the right. The difference between Hillary and Trump has always been one of style and in some areas depth, not substance. Suddenly Hillary's supporters decide to protest and support anti-Trump action, when the entire Democratic establishment supported the very things that have set Trump up for years without a peep. I'm deeply skeptical and do not trust them. Period.

It is not contrarian. It's a valuable reminder.

A bit of historical context: America was founded in white supremacy. [1] It did better after the Civil War in the Reconstruction [2], and then things got worse again, with Jim Crow [3] in the south and ethnic cleansing everywhere else [4]. The Civil Rights Act [5] marked an era of improvement (sometimes called the Second Reconstruction [6]), but things have recently gotten worse, to the extent that many see us as needing a third Reconstruction [7].

This does not happen mostly through planned racial injustice. It mainly happens through ignorance and a convenient blindness to uncomfortable facts. We help people familiar and dear to us, and ignore the ones who aren't.

I think it's great that Silicon Valley came out strongly in favor of immigrants. They're familiar to us, and we'd be monsters to ignore our neighbors, our co-workers, our ancestors. But muninn_'s right, we have been ignoring some other pretty big injustices. And the ones muninn_ mentioned are groups historically underrepresented in tech. It's no coincidence that we started here.

As we boldly support immigrants, it's a good time to ask, "Oh, who might we have forgotten?" Companies are communities, embedded in a society. This week, we are stepping up to that responsibility. There's nothing wrong with thinking a little about what that really means.

[1] e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reconstruction

[7] https://thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-moral-change-1ad2776df7...

Nice. You should throw in some Pete Wilson to put the current struggle into context.

Please do!

Thank you. You captured the essence of what I meant to say, just written with a bit more eloquence and thought.

> This does not happen mostly through planned racial injustice

Yes, it does, as all your examples that don't address positive change away from the problem clearly indicate.

Sometimes people do plan things, although a lot of the stuff I mention was relatively spontaneous. But what sustains it isn't careful planning. It's most people going along with systems they don't understand, impulses they've never considered.

E.g., the impulse where they protect people like them and people familiar to them before people unfamiliar to them. That very rarely comes from a considered plan of "let's screw over black people". But that's often the effect.

Thank you for your comment. I did not look at it from this angle.

Here are a few efforts from the Y Combinator and broader tech communities that help with those goals.

On veterans, several YC alumni, after working on the healthcare.gov rescue team, went on to help start the US Digital Service (https://www.usds.gov/) and Nava (navahq.com), which are working on the VA backlog. Both organizations are hiring.

Within the broader tech community, companies like Nuna are working on Medicaid and the VA backlog. On policing, DJ Patil--former Greylock Data Scientist and one of the founders of Color, FFS--launched an initiative around police data and criminal justice during his time at the White House: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/dj-patil-criminal-justice/

And, of course, Code for America in SOMA does lots of work with local governments and you can apply to be a Fellow: https://www.codeforamerica.org/

There's a lot more to do, and not all of these efforts are as well-known as they should be. But if you're looking to help, people in tech are working on these problems.

This logic (people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday) doesn't make any sense, and I don't get why it keeps coming up every time something related to Trump's policy comes up.

Because it's a rhetorical tactic, not an argument based on logic. And it's tailored directly towards getting the Left to "sit down and shut up".

Not to speak for the OP, but at least for me, I'm seeing a lot of my friends all of a sudden up in arms over policies that Obama (and Bush, and in some cases earlier than that even) got crickets for.

Admittedly, I'm not trying to compare apples to apples, and I'm the furthest thing from a Trump supporter, and it's absolutely amazing that the media have finally grown into their role of a check and balance against the government, but all too often, that means that they do so with carelessly chosen words that misrepresent the issue, and they act like it's new.

The problem with acting like it's new and giving a pass to handsomer / more liked / partisan presidents of yore is that once Trump is out of office, everyone will start to be complacent again.

Standing up for your rights is the job of the citizenry no matter who is president, and holding our elected officials' collective feet to the fire is what we're supposed to be doing all the time. If it took electing Trump to get people engaged, so be it, but let's not pretend that passing what effectively amounts to law with "a pen and a phone" is Trump's idea, or that people weren't cheering on the last president when he chose to do so, or that it's in any way a good thing to remove the checks and balances branches of the government are supposed to be providing against their co-equal branches.

It also reeks of hypocrisy of the highest order.

When we're done evaluating the motives of individual Internet commenters and ensuring that the evils of hypocritical rhetoric are forever banished from the fair shores of our message boards, can we acknowledge that children with American citizenship and their green card parents are being detained or even deported at our borders, without access to counsel, in flagrant violation of both the law and standing court orders?

I'm on board for the tribunal where we evaluate everything anyone ever wrote in an Internet comment. Twenty lashes for me, I'm sure. I'll submit willingly, if we can put that aside for a year and a half and work on resisting the current threat to the rule of law.

Are they though? I thought Green card holders were not being detained?

Result of a quick Google for "green card holder detained": https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/green-card-holder-detained...

Moreover, it's been reported in several places that Steve Bannon overruled DHS to ensure that green card holders would be impacted by the ban. In addition to being flagrantly unconstitutional, that was an act of distilled cruelty.

People keep bringing up the Obama thing in response to the immigration ban.

Obama suspended visas from Iraq for six months, and gave plenty of warning beforehand so people could prepare.

Trump suspended all immigration from seven countries on a Friday without warning, ordered the detention of people from those countries at the border, prevented them from seeking legal representation, and deported some of them. Including green card holders.

If you don't understand the massive difference between these two things than I don't know what to tell you.

I'm well aware of the difference, which is why I specifically did not reference any particular event for which Obama may have been responsible, except to illustrate that civil rights abuses have been going on for far longer than Trump has been president, and the comparative outcry has been infinitesimal.

Apologies if my deliberate ambiguity was hard to parse.

I have a couple of questions here if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate.

1) Given that what Trump is doing is allowed by law - what circumstances can one imagine in which this kind of travel ban would be okay (since it's legal) or is the law itself a problem?

2) I'm curious about (1) because there are legitimate reasons why Trump's ban is more draconian than Obama's, all of which are rooted in various screw-ups by the previous administration. Those are:

a) Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016)

b) DHS has 40 staff members currently handling 51000 applications for credible threat to life asylum requests. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~2015)

c) Top intelligence officials have named the refugee program as a high risk attack vector (Source: CNN, ~ 2015/2016)

Under those 3 criteria alone, if you are taking over as President and you see this kind of track record from the administration, and you get this advice from the intelligence agencies, would you really be comfortable with the visas issued thus far?

I sort of agree with the principle in theory that if the government has granted someone the right to enter, they ought to be allowed to enter, but that's never really been an airtight thing either. Your final entry is always conditioned upon being interviewed at the airport and getting your passport stamped, and answering various questions - where will you be staying, for how long, etc. etc. I suspect it would have been more principled to have a comprehensive screening process for people when they landed, but that may be an operational nightmare.

Given that there are plenty of PhD students, guest workers, etc. from Iran mostly, who are immensely inconvenienced by this kind of draconian rule, I am not entirely in favor of the policy. At the same time I'm curious as to whether a President is really dutybound to stand by the visas issued by the previous administration when there is proof of this sort of incompetence / error in the process at this magnitude (i.e. nearly ten thousand).

If we grant those legitimate reasons (none of which are quoted in the stated justifications for the EO given to date by the White House, but which are, if true, certainly reasonable grounds for executive action) - If the concern is with visas issued in a given time period, from particular offices, via particular channels, then direct CBP to stop people for additional screening or refusal to enter if they present a visa issued in that time period, from those particular offices, via particular channels. Every US visa has all those details printed on it. You get all the benefits you want - time to rescreen those visa holders whose visas may not have received adequate screening - without causing massive confusion and inconvenience to travelers whose visas don't need to be called into question.

Such action would be fully backed up by the precedent of what Obama did in suspending the Iraqi asylum application process for 6 months in reaction to specific risks that had been highlighted in that process.

>Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016)

No, since 2001, 9500 "terror linked individuals" were given visas. Unfortunately, I can't find any explanation of what "terror linked" means in this context. Each year, the US grants approximately 8-9 million visas. So, in 15 years, across over 100 million issued visas, approximately 10,000 may have been given to individuals who were "terror linked", where that could mean "confirmed terrorist", or it could mean "their uncle once went to a market that we believe is a known terrorist hotspot". Again, there's no explanation, anywhere, of what "terror linked individual" means in this context.

Please stop editorializing.

>Given that what Trump is doing is allowed by law

both the (now fired) AG and several federal courts don't think it's allowed by law.

Trumps entire campaign was predicated on heavily disrupting the status quo. He promised chaos in Washington and now he's delivering on that promise. Obama pushed policies in baby steps to avoid heavily disrupting peoples lives, so of course they were never up in arms over it.

I think that's not an accurate portrayal of their position. They're not saying one should continue doing nothing, they're instead trying to be gatekeepers of virtue. They're saying "You shouldn't get to have good publicity from this when it's convenient for you."

Which is open to a completely different criticism, but is emphatically not saying people should continue doing nothing.

The effect is the same, though.

I don't think the argument is "people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday." I think the argument is "Just because you're doing something today, doesn't mean your organization doesn't have issues, and the fact that you didn't do something yesterday is useful data about your priorities."

The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. I can personally forgive them, but we need to hold these players accountable in the future. If marketing moves is what incentives them, we need to make it impossible to move us without extended action.

Edit: Ya'll are cynical Jedis.

The best time to plant a tree was yesterday, the second best time to plant a tree is today. Being proactive is better than being reactive, but we shouldn't poohoo the value of being at least reactive now and maybe proactive in the future.

> The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. I can personally forgive them, but we need to hold these players accountable in the future. If marketing moves is what incentives them, we need to make it impossible to move us without extended action.

I feel like I hear that line on a daily basis but it doesn't factor in reality.

To stretch the metaphor further (for illustration), if the lot where you'll be planting the tree is being bulldozed today, yesterday is the worst day to plant a tree.

and applying that stretched metaphor back to its original context, we shouldn't support civil liberties if they're a lost cause. but what have we actually achieved with all this metaphor stretching?

The point was that yesterday and/or today isn't always the best choice. In the case of sama/YC, it feels like one knee jerk reaction after another without any connective thought:

"Hey the ACLU is suing Trump ... let's add them as a non-profit in the next batch!"

"Yah that'll show em'!"

I don't agree with most of sama's election related comments and am unabashedly pro-Trump, but I mean this objectively: If you're going to pick a battle at least put some thought into it first.

Otherwise this all just looks a silly excuse to demonstrate YC (and particularly sama's) political biases.

The best time to plant a tree was when they were dropping bombs on them.

The second best time is when it becomes hip and trendy to plant trees, apparently.

I think this is the most pragmatic approach. Quite frankly, these players' intent is irrelevant. It's the results of their actions that matter. However, it is useful to understand the incentives that they respond to, particularly when we have the ability to use those incentives to elicit further good acts in the future.

Many 'activists' seem to think that simply having good intentions and beliefs makes one a 'good' person (and many seem to stop at that point). But as it turns out, a starving person derives no nourishment from your internal happy feelings. I'm glad to see YCombinator understands this very basic fact and is taking action to better society, rather than just sitting around thinking lofty thoughts and feeling good about itself.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Or, in the alternate form: "Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works."

My guess is that up until now, the cause for these events has been hard to quantify and identify. Like your example of people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates. Who do we rally against for that? You could argue that it's caused by automation, outsourcing, globalism, capitalism, local policy, state policy, federal policy, and at least a dozen other things. People don't band together against something that has just happened. Boiling the frog and all that.

Companies are throwing their hat into the ring on this issue because there is a clear and present threat with an immense amount of power. You can point to it and say "look, this is going to cause things that I'm not okay with, and I will stand against it". It's finally cut and dry. Evil exists and it can be fought.

Screw cynicism, that's the easy way to deal with these events.

Exactly.

And those are also issues that everybody agreed are issues; it's the solutions where there was disagreement.

Trump's platform was that bribing corporations to keep jobs in America, loosening environmental regulation and tearing up TPP & NAFTA were the solutions for lost factory jobs.

Clinton's platform was that education, a social safety net and withdrawing from the TPP were the best solutions.

Fighting to build awareness of problems is a lot easier than agreeing on a solution.

You don't even have to go that far; half the people on these boards step over a homeless person to get to work every morning.

>Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people?

Well, I think that's easy to answer. People care more about causes when it affects them personally.

For better or for worse, few of us are strict utilitarian maximizers. I haven't quite settled how I think about it, myself.

> You don't even have to go that far; half the people on these boards step over a homeless person to get to work every morning.

This is a spot on comment.

>half the people on these boards step over a homeless person to get to work every morning.

But don't you think half the people on these boards would also support a vast overhaul of the tax system that prioritizes the military/war over services for the homeless? Currently 60+% of our taxes go towards the military. That's unbelievable. Why not chop that in half and redirect it towards welfare services? Or is that too hard? What possibly can 1 X HN-user do when passing said homeless person? Create a homeless shelter? OR: better to demand the government to stop _squandering_ the thousands in taxes he gives a year and to redirect it to the poor man she/has passes every weekday morning?

I think the issue is more complex than you make it out to be, IMHO.

Come on... The budget for military spending in 2016 was 15-17%.

What you're regurgitating was actually a hoax/misleading meme photo that propagated that number in order to paint Republicans as war mongers. All it took was one Google search to confirm.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/...

Ok, going purely by 2015 numbers, we spend 609.3Billion on Military. Only 16% of the budget, right?

Then how can China (our next biggest competitor) get away with spending only 150-200 Billion? Why are we spending more than three times the amount China is spending on military? How can Russia (our perceived biggest threat right now in the media zeitgeist)...only get by with threatening us with a paltry 66 Billion? Think about that: we as a nation have collectively decided to outmatch Russia by ten fold. This way of spending is out of control, and I'm not sure how else I can get this very simple point across.

I think it's clear to anyone that we could easily assuage some of the real problems of homelessness if we just cut our Military budget in half.

That would still put us ahead of China, far ahead of Russia, _and_ we'd help those who cannot help themselves immensely.

But I know what the response is going to be: "Big Stick" and all that oft-repeated Military-Industrial justification.

I'm sorry but there's no excuse no matter how you slice it, even if my initial numbers are wrong (which I concede) it's still a terrible situation.

The funny thing is assuming as normal using %17 of the national income in wars ... specially since most of them have been a net negative

100% - conservative in US means bugging homeless people to get away, vs liberal in US means letting homeless people rot on the street in peace.

As a Russian saying goes, "it's easy to notice a little chip in someone else's eye, but you won't even notice a log in your own".

Am Russian, so I can tell you that the saying not exclusive to Russian culture, seeing how it is from the Bible.

FWIW that's also a Bible verse, from Matthew 7:5[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_7:5

One of them isn't a hypocrite though.

I think it's pretty easy to see the answer to your question. Black people and cops violence don't hurt their interests. If black people will be killed then the effect on Google/AirBnB/Ycombinator will be low. However seeing that the ban on foreign countries visa (I expect a lot more countries to be added). It would be harder for tech companies that rely basically on technical talent from outside US.

> Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves.

I strongly disagree that this is purely for marketing. As someone working for one of the aforementioned companies, we are all aghast at how quickly this administration has jumped to eroding everything we believe in. These companies' moves are motivated by very real horror at the US going down a dark path.

The worst you could say about these actions is that they are self-interested, as the Muslim ban affects a lot of my coworkers in a very negative way that, say, inner city violence in Chicago does not. But it's definitely not so cynical as to be mere marketing moves.

> "eroding everything we believe in."

> "the Muslim ban"

This sort of exaggeration probably doesn't help anyone.

"This temporary hold on people entering the country from one of 7 countries for 90 days affects a lot of my coworkers"

And then "I don't care about the dozens of black people gunned down every day"

Seems a little selfish no? This is exactly the same mentality that Trump supporters had, just exchange Americans with coworkers and refugees with black people.

Maybe they aren't purely marketing moves, but I just have a hard time with it. Why can't Sergey show solidarity with our black community, who make up a large percentage of Americans, but can show up to protest in person for a temporary restriction on new people entering the US on top of the 120 day restriction that already exists?

You're constructing a strawman. Nobody has said they don't care about black people. The absence of protest attendance or action does not mean people don't care – it may mean they've judged that their talents are best suited to another cause, or that their potential to do good in a different arena is greater.

It is a sad cynical state of affairs when people attempting to do good for one cause are berated for not participating in every other cause under the sun. People have finite resources and differing abilities.

What have you done to combat heroin addiction? What have you done to reduce environmental destruction? What have you done for Jewish causes? What have you done to improve oversight at the FDA? One could play this game forever.

One of those is the direct result of an executive order. There is a clear path to fighting it.

They both are causes people care about.

Because the temporary restriction on new people entering the US affects his company's ability to get lots of cheap labor.

Top tech companies are paying lots of money for world-class talent. It is absolutely not "cheap labor".

I mean, yea, it would be great if tech CEOs started showing up at a Black Lives Matter marches. America's institutional racism is certainly an issue no less deserving of attention and work towards alleviating it.

But the reason for the differential in responses is pretty clear to me: American racism didn't just get instituted with the stroke of a pen last week, nor could it be reversed as easily (or struck down in court). It sucks, but it's a kind of cruelty we're accustomed to (victims, active perpetrators and passive perpetrators alike), and have been living with for centuries. The immigration order, on the other hand, is a newly instituted policy of cruelty, which can potentially be defeated directly with sufficiently urgent action.

> Maybe they aren't purely marketing moves, but I just have a hard time with it.

You have a hard time with companies supporting worthy causes because they don't support enough of them to the extent that you demand them to? That's what's generally known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The difference isn't entirely rational, it's that one is a sudden shock and one is (a horrifying) normal.

When something is new and shocking, immediate extensive resistance can blunt the impact of new policies. That would work in the case of horrifying normal situations too, but there's no universal focal point, and focal points around which people can gather matter a lot. Given the existence of a focal point, it becomes rational to protest since others will join you.

Probably because top SV companies recruit PHDs from the Levant at an order of magnitude more than they recruit from inner city Chicago?

How is this not obvious to the people here on HN? How do the people on here who constantly get holier than thou about demographics in tech not see the obvious machinations? Seriously, look around your office right now and then ask yourself again why top tech companies care more about immigrants than other oppressed groups.

What do you think is more likely, that Google genuinely cares about the immigration of farmers from Libya, or that they have a couple physics PHDs from Iran driving huge amounts of search revenue?

Corporations don't have morality, they have profit motives. YC doesn't give a shit about immigrant rights any more than the unjust deaths of african americans around the US, they care about attracting certain demographics to apply as founders.

> What do you think is more likely, that Google genuinely cares about the immigration of farmers from Libya, or that they have a couple physics PHDs from Iran driving huge amounts of search revenue?

Why not both? If Sergey Brin joining the airport protest is any indication, the leadership genuinely cares about the injustice of the ban - but they're more inclined to act when issues affect them directly.

Nonetheless, Google did support Black Lives Matter, if not quite as loudly. For example, in November 2015, Google.org donated $2 million in grants for racial justice, part of which was supposed to "fund a tech-savvy, grassroots solution to end police violence against communities of color":

http://ellabakercenter.org/in-the-news/googleorg-invests-235...

Also, @google tweeted in support:

https://www.twitter.com/google/status/751174648855928834

> Corporations don't have morality, they have profit motives. YC doesn't give a shit about immigrant rights any more than the unjust deaths of african americans around the US, they care about attracting certain demographics to apply as founders.

I see no evidence this is the case, or that the founders of YC aren't human beings who also make decisions out of legitimate concern for the betterment of the world.

Not trolling, but I don't think those required the same magnitude of capital. Your examples didn't involve going up against the federal government. The ACLU got something like 24 million dollars in the last week, but the Koch brothers pledged to spend $300-400 million in the run-up to the 2018 elections. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/jan/28/koch-political-netw... (Worth noting the Koch network actually disagrees with Trump over the immigration ban https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01...)

When you've convinced people to come to your side and donate money to it, demanding an apology for not coming sooner is a great strategy for revenge, but not a great one for your cause.

From an activist friend:

"Hearing leftists be like "ugh these protesters are so passionate about protesting now but I didn't see them protesting at BLM marches three years ago!" is one of those things that makes me wonder whether the left has been infiltrated by the CIA or whether the death-wish is native."

Given that the leftist death-wish showed up in revolutionary Russia, revolutionary France, and civil war Spain... we should seriously consider that it might be native.

You will always be able to come up with another problem to use in a "where were you all when..." scenario, because any given organization's resources are finite and cannot address all problems.

Further, the ACLU is a civil liberties advocacy organization and is not well-equipped to handle complex socioeconomic issues such as gun violence or homelessness or health care. It is outside the stated mission.

>> Where was the outpouring of funding when...

I'm getting tired of seeing this sentiment. It's popped up constantly over the last few days. Just because people don't protest or support every single cause doesn't take anything away from support of this cause. In fact, people getting outraged enough to get involved for a change may be a good thing for other causes as if people see results they will be more likely to mobilise for other causes in the future.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/ferguson-everytown-usa

https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-response-ferguson

Ferguson and related issues are important and the ACLU did respond in important ways I referenced above.

However, we're now seeing an umbrella of issues targeting an even larger number of groups of people.

Your concern/question is akin to a fallacy of relative privation. Another name for this style of argument is the "not as bad as"-argument.

To answer/satisfy your concern/question is impossible without inaction. The cases you mentioned already happened and are in the past. In essence you are proposing that YC does not act to help solve this current issue, because worse issues happened in the past, and YC did not act then, so it does not deserve to act now (at least, without being accused of hypocrisy and selective outrage). This mode of argumentation results in nothing happening to solve the current issue, just by virtue of there existing past worse issues. I don't think you are really in favor of this.

As for the marketing argument, sure, I can agree this playing a minor role in this decision. But not a major one. There is not much evidence I am aware of, or that you pointed out, signaling that YC does not act in good faith. Though absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence, this alone is not a solid basis for posing that any action that YC takes is purely profit/PR-driven.

Likely, this decision was not instigated out of marketing motives, but like any good decision for a for-profit company: it aligns with marketing motives.

Another angle to look at motives for problem solving: Is the crime of having a less than glamorous motive worse than the outcome of solving the problem? Donating to non-profits makes me feel good. Is this egocentrism worse enough to stop donating?

I know, it is hard to take anything at face value these days.

And asking the question why there is so much support now might not be popular, mainly because the answer is not really pretty.

I do, however, believe that there are some objective reasons for the current wave of support. Some I can think of:

- The events currently unfolding affect a lot more people directly.

- The threat has changed from being systemic but disorganized to intentionally organized. The official stance has shifted as well from being apologetic to "damn fucking right, we're going to eradicate you". (sorry about the language)

- People feel utterly helpless regarding politics in general. They might tell themselves (rightfully or not) that they can talk themselves out of trouble (if they even get into trouble being a good citizen and all). But they feel there's nothing they can personally do to stop DC from messing with their lives, so they put their trust into the hands of organizations like ACLU.

Also, I can personally say, my stance (as a European) went from an amused, uneasy "geez, America, get your shit together" to being actually concerned about western civilization.

Before November 2016 it was easy to be complacent- there was a sense that people with more power than us were doing the right thing to fix any given problem, so our own contribution felt less urgent. We don't have that now.

There's one big difference to note. This defiance from the general public is less about one single issue (immigration) and more about a pattern of general disregard to law that the elected leader has shown. Instead of upholding the law, he's displayed a willingness to bend or even violate it to his own liking. The one thing that sets America apart economically is the predictability and uniform applicability of the rule of law. The moment this certainty disappears, which is what Trump is driving towards, no company can have a meaningful plan or strategy. From backing out of the TPP to violating privacy agreements with the EU, with every whimsical stroke of his pen he's thrusting America towards economic uncertainty.

The ACLU will hold his actions accountable to the law, and backing it is in the best economic and social interests of the US

What answer are you looking for?

So your argument is that if you didn't do what was right before, you shouldn't do what's right now?

The other problems still exist and in my opinion are far worse. My argument is that we should prioritize problems like those over the current outcry.

This is not the only issue people are protesting.

People often support the ACLU because they believe that threats to free speech and free assembly are systemic and have potentially catastrophic future consequences. Doing so does not imply an absence of action in other arenas, and IMO it's dangerous to assume that.

The timing for this is peculiar. I'll give my hypothesis. Liberals didn't care about the Snowden leaks because it was "their guy" in office. This huge revelation that our constitutional rights were being systematically violated didn't register because of cognitive dissonance.

Liberals are finally piecing the puzzle together. The executive branch with dragnet surveillance, infinite military capabilities, the right to detain and torture anyone including US citizens is the recipe for disaster.

As a libertarian I welcome anyone joining the fight for our constitutional rights regardless of what triggers them.

> Liberals didn't care about the Snowden leaks

Yes, lots of them did. In fact, it was liberals that organized around the information in the leaks, liberal groups that sponsors the lawsuits based on the leaks that got at least one program revealed by the leaks ruled to be illegal by the courts, liberals who kept calling for a pardon, and liberal media personalities that reached out to Snowden in Russia and broadcast his views to the positive reception from their liberal audiences.

Quite a lot of liberals criticized Obama throughout his Presidency on national security and civil liberties, and equal rights issues, including Guantanamo (even though the closure was blocked by Congress), surveillance, drone strikes, the treatment of Manning and Snowden, the initial feet dragging on DADT, the administration's failure to intervene as timely as critics on the left would have liked in various state and local law enforcement issues, issues surrounding the DAPL protests, etc.

> Yes, lots of them did.

I'm not disputing that, but my point is there wasn't the current sense of urgency to reign in the executive branch. HN didn't partner with the ACLU and unicorns didn't use the situation as a PR piece.

But what's changed? The president decided to restrict travel and "enhance" screening from muslim countries? Ok.. Yet Obama's drone usage in Islamic countries wasn't good enough to get this response? Or maybe the American citizens Obama decided to assassinate without due process, that didn't raise any eyebrows?

I think my point stands. Obama was so damn charismatic that only he could have pulled that off without major backlash. The vast majority of voting democrats just didn't care about constitutional rights when Obama was in office, and the renewed interest is politically motivated. And for that, I'm thankful to have this clown in office.

"And for that, I'm thankful to have this clown in office."

I wonder if anyone said the same thing about emperor Nero's role in raising the profile of fire safety.

> Liberals didn't care about the Snowden leaks because it was "their guy" in office.

You're painting with a very broad brush there, smokeyj. Plenty of us were either anticipating (but unable to verify) the sorts of things he leaked or on the side of the leak once it happened. Liberal is not equal to `not libertarian`. Perhaps to `not Libertarian`. Notice the capital there. Little-l libertarianism has long been a major part of the liberal perspective, particularly relating to free speech, press, religion, and privacy rights, and due process.

A lot of people believe that we are in the midst of a fascist takeover of the United States government. The most terrifying part is that this can't simply be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, given the actions that have taken place so far.

I don't see how "the current outcry" can possibly be dismissed in this context, or how anything else could be more important.

> The most terrifying part is that this can't simply be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, given the actions that have taken place so far.

Yes it can, and an awful lot of people are doing just that.

The breakdown of the rule of law is probably worse in that it will contain all the aforementioned, and more.

I'm all for doing what's right now, but let's try and address the root of the problem instead of continuing to have partisan, knee-jerk reactions. There's way too many Democrats calling out Trump who have STILL not said a peep about the weapons we funnel into these civil wars or the bombs we drop ourselves, or the rest of the screwed up immigration process, none of which Obama did much to slow down. I began and finished the process of immigration to the US under well-established Democrat presidencies, and all of the things that people are saying is evil on principle about Trump's plan are things I had to go through. My citizenship interview was almost entirely an ignorant interrogation about my religious and reproductive choices. There's a lot of things in my documentation that should be a yellow flag to someone screening immigrants, and none of it got brought up. Only my religion and number of kids. My family members had to return back to our country and retry multiple times because of ridiculous bureaucracy, also fleeing a civil war. But now that Trump does it, we're marching? Great. But when a Democrat gets back into office I'll be pissed if everyone forgets their principles and keeps funneling power to the executive because it suits them at the time.

By your reckoning everybody that was standing by the sidelines should forever do so. Better to turn late than not at all, and YC and immigration policies are quite strongly linked, YC and people being gunned down in the streets less so.

My take on this: I'm glad that the "right thing" to do is the popular thing to do. In the past, there have been trends of conspicuous consumption, bigger as better, etc., to convey social status and desirability. Mainstream culture has been moving in a direction where inconspicuous consumption, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility, and companies have been following.

Whether we do things because it looks good or is right is an interesting question. But to me, it is similar to the question of "are we kind because it makes us feel better? or because its right?".

Although I agree that there's been a frustrating lack of response to those issues, I think at least part of that muted response was a sense that these incidents were an aberration from a general trend of progress.

The reality that many people are waking up to is that social progress is not guaranteed and a passive approach is not enough.

I share your cynicism regarding many of the marketing moves by the companies you mentioned. At the same time, the fact that doing the right thing builds goodwill with a hopefully-majority highlights the importance of making our views and voices heard.

I might wish for a more high-minded motive form these companies. I also wish that it hadn't taken shock events to make the loss of rights feel real for most of America (though to be honest, I'm guilty of this too.)

But I'm excited to see people mobilizing, and will take the good outcomes where I can find them these days. Progress here could require an uneasy coalition.

While I think white bias is still an issue - seems like this is what you're pointing at exclusively, right? - I think a possibly bigger issue here - and the answer you're looking for - is that Obama was a classy face for progressives to look at when these government encroachments (and - in many cases - outright killings) came up.

Now that Trump is the face of this disease, there is no pretense. The face lines up with the actions. This allows everyone to freely mobilize on their issues without feeling like they are stepping on toes. Classy, wingtip toes, that is.

Now, I'm not a Trump hater - I don't think he's Hitler. In fact, I do thank him - he did drop the pretense on his own. But I also am enjoying seeing America radicalized in a way that I hoped would happen with the Snowden disclosures fell.

The ACLU is not an anti-crime organization is why. Nor is the ACLU a pro-immigration organization. They have repeatedly defended racism when it pertains to first amendment protections. Protecting constitutional rights is their mission and they do it very well. Solving gang violence is extremely difficult and there isn't a non-profit out there that has a clearly-defined path to solving it that can be supported with investment.

You're committing the classic fallacy of castigating people for trying to fix a problem when they don't fix all problems.

Would you prefer that the wealthy tech companies didn't donate to the ACLU? That they refused to ever support any good causes?

This is a pernicious idea and should be put to death. Trying to step up and do something should not make you a target. Reserve your wrath for the many billionaires who don't do anything about any issue.

I read an article about this phenomenon a while ago, but I can't find the link. It's essentially the fallacy that trying to fix a problem makes you responsible for it—so if you can't completely fix it, you shouldn't try at all.

Exactly - what motive could OP's comment have other than self-aggrandizement.

Look at me everyone, in the face of something really good happening, I still complain about all our other shortcomings because I am morally superior.

This is a good thing that is happening, get off your high horse.

I agree with you that we should all cast a wider net WRT the charities we pick, but I'll play devils advocate because that's what I do.

There are too many worthy issues. An organization like ycombinator or like its investments (Airbnb, Uber, etc) aren't altruistic by design, but can choose to be when they see fit. That's not bad. Right now it fits because there's either some PR to be gained (like Lyft) or some looming threat to fight (H1B visas and immigration). A tactical move like this is still good for everyone even if its motivation isn't philanthropic. It's a win-win. We should look at it more as a strategic investment for the common good.

"Do Not Listen to What They Say, Look at What They Do" - simply treat it as evidence that yes, really, despite what some people might want, large parts of the society actually do care more about immigrants like the tech industry green card holders who got stuck in the airports than local homeless people or "people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates".

It's obvious that this is the case. It's also obvious that some people are angry at this, they want America to clearly put their interests above the interests of immigrants, and that's part of why they voted for Trump.

I think these are all good questions. I can only answer for myself. The latest spate of racism and bigotry are what finally prompted me to commit to funding the ACLU on a regular basis. Prior to this election season I was more passive in my outlook, especially since neither major political party here in the U.S. aligns with my personal beliefs. Now I realize that was naive, and I don't want to wait, like Martin Niemöller did, to stand with my fellows against injustice and bigotry while we still have a chance to change things for the better.

There wasn't as much money coming in because far fewer people were aware of the problem. But some people here have been banging on about such issues for years. The fact that economics outweighs justice is an unfortunate truth about human psychology.

Meantime, don't worry about it. It's normal to feel disoriented when the crowd stampedes where a few had previously blazed a lonely trail, but that's just how people are. Make the most of all this undirected energy.

Why don't you google "black lives matter ACLU". They have fought data collection about BLM protesters as well as defended people unlawfully detained at protests.

And we have been funding the ACLU individually. I like that YCombinator is now trying to help them as a org.

This comment is unpopular because you're just being a troll.

Edit: I get you are complaining about the recent swell of funding. And YCombinator probably skews immigrant. So I retract my troll comment. But know there are some white devs here who have supported ACLU and BLM. There's no easy answer. Racism is deep in the US (and actually most countries). It's not a zero sum game. Fighting Muslim racism (I know it's a religion) doesn't mean that we forget about other people of color. People have to unlearn the racism that their parents taught them.

Edit2: But black voters didn't turn out to vote for Hillary in support of Mexicans and Muslims. Why should we now help you? Serious question.

In response to your second edit; the vast majority of black voters voted for Hillary, a significantly greater proportion than any other race. Hillary ended up with 88%[1] of the black vote. Furthermore turnout was down across all demographics in 2016.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/e...

But compared to the last few elections they stayed home [1]. It could be voter suppression but they were also down in California.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/the-real-reason-black-voters...

Your link only talks about early voting in South Carolina. I haven't been able to find a source on black voter turnout numbers nationwide in 2016. As I said in my previous comment, voter turnout was down across all demographics[1]. It's very difficult to vote more loyally to the democratic party than black people have over the past two decades or so.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-...

I posted this later[1]. I think overall voter turnout was slightly down. Also, I am not blaming Hillary's loss on specific demographics. Just let's not start fighting with each other. We all need to step up and get in the game for all.

black voter turnout 2016 http://www.phillytrib.com/news/black-voter-turnout-a-look-at...

wide look http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/raw-data-turno...

"Why should we now help you? Serious question."

"We all need to step up and get in the game for all"

You answered your own question.

Look, we're not fighting about some abstract %. Can we agree to fight together? My whole point in this thread was that AA should join the anti-ban movement.

Edit: added not

I may have misunderstood your question.

>But black voters didn't turn out to vote for Hillary in support of Mexicans and Muslims. Why should we now help you?

Seemed like the opposite of coming together. My reading of it is; you're accusing black people of being unsupportive of the democratic candidate, and that consequently black people aren't owed the same unity you seem to be arguing for in later comments.

Sorry, Busy. Black people are Americans. So they can choose to do what they want like the rest of us.

Are you going to come out for us? I'm coming out for you either way.

What makes you think Hillary supported or supports Mexicans or Muslims? I mean, granted she used those groups as a foil to beat up on Trump with but as a rule her past actions (e.g. as Sec. Of State) indicate at best a casual (and in my view cruel) indifference to those communities.

OK. Are you saying Clinton = Trump? All I have to say here is I thought Gore = Bush. But 200k people died. So electing a president gets a little more nuanced.

No, I'm saying the differences, especially on immigration, aren't that great. They're far more alike than not. And to see Hillary supporters suddenly take an active protest-level interest in politics just smacks of partisanship.

Yes, I understand the argument is "so what if they're motivated by partisanship?" That's a facile argument, though, because movements like this require sincere dedication for the goal of the movement. If the partisans' goals aren't aligned with the movement's goals, then the partisans can do more damage than if they simply shut up and sat it out.

I'm still having a hard time.

Hillary never called for a ban on Muslims. Trump has many times. You can argue about the ban being a "muslim ban" or not, but the previous statement is fact.

She's called for doing much worse than banning, under the euphemism of the war on terror. Trump's ban pales in comparison and it's just a terrible bit of partisan hypocrisy to focus on the ban and how important it is to respect Muslims.

OK, again you're saying Clinton = Trump. Or Clinton < Trump. She for sure was a war monger. That concerned me. But she never called for banning muslims.

I feel this is an argument between two people that generally agree but are arguing about some small point.

I'm not 100% sure what all the ACLU does so correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they were a bunch of lawyers? What can they do for Chicago or people shot by police? Who could they sue and for what to fix those problems?

Isn't this like complaining about Habitat for Humanity not doing enough to prevent forest fires?

The profiling and killing of black men by police is most certainly a civil rights issue.

The NYC division of the ACLU has done work on the illegal and racist stop and frisk law that was in place here, for example.

Not exactly. THe ACLU actually does work in the area being discussed [0]. I believe the criticism is that people did not donate for that reason, not that the ACLU doesn't do anything about it; the ACLU does quite a bit.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice

They'd sue the police department. The ACLU sues police departments for violations of civil rights constantly.

>Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago? Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people? I haven't seen Google talk about this, or AirBnB offer support to widows of veterans whose spouse commits suicide and has left them with nothing.

Thank you for your comment. Trump is anti-establishment (sort of: he's reshaping the establishment with his own insiders, I'm not saying he's any less corrupt) and he's anti-globalism. Don't lie to yourself: that's what this is about. The police state and surveillance state abuses are out of control, Obama dropped over 100,000 bombs on 7 countries, we're consistently throwing constitutional and human rights under the bus, Wall Street and the Fed are permitted to loan each other 16 trillion in secret loans and when it was revealed, the worst that happened was a finger wave from Bernie Sanders, 20 trillion in debt and a necessary, impending economic correction due to overspending (in the same exact way if you were spending way more than you earned for years and years, there's no getting away from that)... and I could go on and on. Please give me a break about Trump, he's a deeply flawed character but I'd like people to start being more honest and respectful to the realities we live with as our civil liberties and constitutional rights are consistently eroding as average, humble people are struggling to afford a middle class lifestyle, and it is magnificently disingenuous to pay lip service to the, and let us be honest, mainstream media which is owned by a small group of over-sized corporations, who play Trump out to be the Devil on Earth. But the real problems existed before and without Trump.

This will be entirely unpopular but I really don't care anymore about what being liberal has become. I care about the fact that we have a torture camp in Cuba, about what I mentioned above and more like it. I care about constitutional rights. Equal opportunity. Human rights. World peace. Environmentalism. Nobody in mainstream politics is actually for those things and it's really bothering me. If someone wrote this during the lead-up to Nazi Germany--you'd look back in retrospect and say they were right--I hope that is not the case for me. But I see just a few good people out there: Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, Edward Snowden, etc., who really hang out on the fringes of the mainstream consciousness of political thought in America, only once in a while coming into view for moments at a time.

In what way is Tulsi Gabbard a good person? She's a supporter of Bashar al-Assad.

As far as I have observed, the only thing people consistently respond to is pain. This can be done through the introduction / removal / or threat of pain. It'd be nice if we all empathized more with other people's pain, but that doesn't appear to be the culture that we live in. Maybe there are cultures that do elsewhere, but I am unaware of them.

But I do have a question for you, when the interests of those with influence align with the ignored, why would your initial reaction be a negative one?

Likely because people are emboldened to action when they see themselves in those who are being unjustly treated. It's no secret that Silicon Valley is not terribly representative of black people, veterans, and so on. If this is a fault of the folks at YC, I'd wager it's a fault of many many other people as well--so while I feel it is valuable to point out that issues, I don't think it's constructive at all to point at a good deed and ask, "Why not sooner?"

I don't care whether google, ycombinator, airbnb, etc acted out of their own self-interest or not (for marketing, as you say). I don't think anyone should. I'm not naive enough to think they would act altruistically, all I can hope for is that our interests align at least temporarily and they help.

Perhaps they could've done more in the situations you're describing, but it seems odd to chastise them now that they are. Would you rather they didn't ever help?

Just because ACLU is late along with most of the communities and people in realizing things they could have done better that does not mean we need to question their every future step for the betterment of the society. Along with your positive critique, you can donate to them or any other org. of your choice and make sure your voice is heard. Oh btw ACLU was always active with whatever limited funds they had. . Please try researching on them.

This is absurd. Following this, no one should ever do anything since they could have just done some other thing sooner.

Now maybe I'm wrong and you're a Nobel Peace laureate, but it looks a lot to me like someone claiming to care but only criticizing in an unproductive manner.

"You should have engaged in this other thing earlier" is a bullshit criticism. And then the holier-than-thou nonsense at the end about just caring oh so much. Unbelievable.

Where were you when all these things were happening? Were you asking YCombinator to address these issues? Are they supposed to address every social justice issue by anyone who thinks it should be addressed?

Be glad they're addressing anything, because they're a tech blog that should focus on tech issues, not every social justice issue on the planet, which there are already many blogs and campaigns and donation sites for.

Because it's virtue signalling. Nevermind that Chicago had more murders in 2016 than New York and Los Angeles combined, or that there's a rampant opiate epidemic across wide swaths of the country - this is a cause with visibility among the well heeled coastal elites. Where were these same people when we undermined and bombed the governments of the countries these immigrants are fleeing from?

I thought "virtue signaling" meant loudly expressing sentiments to enhance your perceived moral standing. If you actually put your money where you mouth is, a) is it still virtue signaling, and b) what's wrong with it?

seems like the meaning is shifting from "non-sacrificial action taken solely to signify virtue" with "any action taken in the name of virtues I don't embrace"

Cool. Is Trump's get-rid-of-two-regulations executive order "virtue signaling"?

In tandem with the gag order, though, there's the angle of entirely halting the work of government agencies.

'Virtue signaling' is a criticism of people who put social approval before productive work. Someone who 'virtue signals' isn't opposed to a cause, though they exploit it out of narcissism.

But in this case, the entire point of these EOs is that they are specifically crafted to interfere with gov't agencies, while appearing to cut through red tape. It's red meat for the base, but that's just a bonus.

Accusing someone of "virtue signalling" instantly ends any possibility for reasonable discussion, because it's a stark violation of the Principle of Charity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

On a meta-level, invoking "virtue signalling" is itself a signal that you want to ad-hominem the human subject rather than discuss and resolve the issues.

It is the opposite of rationality, and it's a bit weird that so many People Who Think They Are Rational are into the idea.

I'm avoiding wading into these debates on HN but wanted to thank you for articulating something that has been bugging me as well. This is a point that I wish more people on the internet would stop to consider.

Wrong.

It's entirely irrational to give this level of attention and resource to an issue with such relatively little impact, particularly when noting the contributing events that led up to this issue were largely ignored (and directed by the same presidential candidate many of these organizations openly supported). Virtue signalling is the correct description. This is more about image than substantive change.

Relatively little impact on you perhaps. Many people are impacted, and what particularly scares people is that the order seems deliberately cruel in detaining people who were in transit, has green cards or dual citizenship. There are some 22 million non-citizens in the U.S. and many of them are now very unsure about their future. I bet there are many YC founders among them.

Wrong.

How many are from these 7 countries and do not have a green card? Now how many have been killed in Libya, Syria, or Iraq?

The reason is that there has been progress or at worst stagnation on these issues. Moreover, what is happening now seems to be damaging the process of government itself. Whilst the things you mention are horrible, they are the result of bad government rather than an attack on the idea of government.

The above does ignore the rather obvious 'which issue affects affluent people more?' question.

The tech community/industry thinks that it is a meritocracy, where race (and hence racism) doesn't exist.

The ACLU is always active and protecting our rights, I do get the crying wolf fatigue and impression that a lot of this might seem questionable, but right now I think a lot of people are more motivated as this is not an issue of one specific group being targeted/needing help, but the very idea of democracy in America that is under attack by this administration. It is something they have publicly said (trump and bannon), everyone who believes in the constitution should be very worried at what is going on.

Hopefully we are all wrong and overreacting, but if trump has shown one thing it is that you should take what he says literally, and if you pay attention to what he and bannon have said you should be worried, no matter your political leaning or origin.

And that to me means we can't afford to get cynical on people's motives that are reacting to what is going on. So good on YC for doing this now.

> Where was [...]

In politics, I believe it's important to use the philosophy of "better late than never". Memes take time to diffuse into the population. It is better to encourage more participation in the future by accepting late arrivals. Attacking people that finally decided to participate can easily drive them away.

So because this didn't happen earlier, when you wish it did, it can't be celebrated as a step in the right direction? Progress, by its very nature, takes time and is incremental. By this logic, no one should ever bother with anything like this, because it will just be seen as cynical "marketing."

Also keep in mind that they have to use very little funding to fight innumerable injustices that have already happened and those that will potentially happen. Its incredibly tough as others have said on other fronts, but from a fiscal perspective its amazing they are able to do as much as they have.

The ACLU does what it can, when it can, with the resources it has.

The answer you're looking for is that now the white-middle class is feeling the possibility of impending disaster, so of course now it's an emergency, and the floodgates of funding have opened.

>Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago?

Please stop with the hyperbole about Chicago. Yes, it has a problem, but it's beaten by St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Newark, and Memphis for per 100k murder rate in 2016. Also, while the national per 100k murder rate has been trending upward lately, it is still lower than approximately 1965 to approximately 2007. [0]

0. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/u-s-cities-experienced-...

I think the major difference is this a new, chilling shift of civil liberties enacted by a political administration - whereas the issues surrounding race/homelessness in this country are pre-existing are having an increasing light shown on them.

I agree, but it's not just a vague sense of unease that bothers me. It's actually very real and very concrete.

I am probably in the very far left-wing on this website in many regards, and what I see in a lot of this effusive and reflexive anti-Trumpism, is a lot of dubious and easily rolled-back gains. At climax radical right-wing activity, the GOP can just throw Donald Trump under the bus, and I think this would completely destroy any of the coalitions currently being built up against him, because the agreement on everything else is vague.

A lot of people really and deeply want to believe that the problem is Donald Trump himself, not the entire institution that props him up. I've seen numerous liberals (as opposed to leftists) on the internet openly and effusively embrace John McCain in his fashionable and phony role of maverick, the man who sang "Bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys. It's bewildering.

Another example is the Women's March. A friend of mine mentioned to a fellow protestor how important it was for her to fight for reproductive rights, and this woman's response was that it wasn't even about that, it's mostly just about Trump's disrespect towards women. And if you go on the movement's website, it's true. It doesn't mention planned parenthood or reproductive rights at all. Some people see it as a virtue, I think it is a strategic error.

Moreover, I think everyone on the broad left clearly understood Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" as a dogwhistle for bygone years largely characterized by white supremacy and a vision of the ideal normal nuclear family. The real surprising thing is that a lot of the impassioned, patriotic rallying cries against Trump today, by celebrities who describe themselves as patriots who were proud up until yesterday, are exactly the same: "Make America Great Again". It's just that they pine for the great Obama years instead.

There is almost zero mea-culpa about how it was possible that Trump got elected in the first place, and it's become so important to "stop Trump" that criticizing allies is a huge faux-pas. I don't see this building into a healthy strong movement.

Because although many terrible things occur every day, President Trump/Bannon are the most serious internal threats to the freedoms, safety, and security of Americans since WWII, and perhaps even earlier. Moreover, the threats they pose extend far beyond America's borders. The possibility of autocracy, illiberalism, and kleptocracy are real, and the many donors understand this. Liberal democracy is the foundation of human freedoms. I normally disagree with some prominent positions of the ACLU, but we're in an "all hands on deck" situation. It's different.

My question is, what would you like to see happen? They can't go back in time and donate earlier. Pulling funding now would satisfy the desire for consistency, but doesn't seem like a good outcome.

I think it's less about the immigrant situation in particular, and more about the way the new President is wielding his power blatantly in front of a nation who is _extremely_ divided when it comes to their opinion of him. It's not that those other issues are less or more important, but that they have a much less identifiable perpetrator. A prominent cause is more easily reducible.

It's a cry for someone or some organization to help guide us back to center. The ACLU just happens to be one of the best positioned organizations to fit this situation.

It's sad that less people we're inspired to donate earlier, but IMO the whole "you're just realizing this now?" thing is unproductive.

Every person has a moment when they wake up and decided to step up, usually several. Litigating their decision process after he fact does nothing to help. Just say "thanks and welcome, now let's go wake up some others."

Momentum is important and true or not this kind of stuff serves only as a speedbump.

Not only that but these companies could provide vocational training to adult poor, as well as a conduit to tech education for both poor young blacks as well as poor whites as well as other poor Americans, but that's not sexy. However it is a very big problem for people who earn minimum wage or thereabouts and the unemployed.

If only they got as much enthusiastic and monetary support, we'd be a little more equal amongst ourselves.

While every issue you mentioned is important, the very discussion we're having starts with a base assumption that we live in a society governed by the rule of law. Coupled with the reality that YCombinator is not the Gates Foundation and has a finite amount of money and resources with which to attack problems, helping the ACLU seems to me a brilliant move by YC, to make the largest positive difference possible.

Even if these are marketing moves they'll end up doing some good, which is definitely better than marketing moves which do nothing but market

It's good to be skeptical and this may very well be a good marketing strategy. But at the moment, we're facing an fast-moving onslaught of authoritarianism, and the ACLU is one of the only legal defenses we have against it. If YCombinator, right now, wants to help stop it, I support them in doing so. We can cross other bridges of criticism when we come to them.

I'm completely sympathetic to your point. Part of the problem is that the examples you give were, sadly, not enough of a deviation from the status quo to shock people into large scale action/donation. Trump's actions are, and he/Bannon/et al. also built up an ever increasing antagonism during the election cycle that wants an outlet.

To the credit of Starbucks, who you didn't mention but could be criticised for the same reasons, they did implement a plan to hire 10,000 veterans in 2013 (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229828).

One difference between current events and previous ones is that the current problems run all the way up to the president and Congress, whereas the previous ones did not. I suspect if Obama was the one ordering blacks to be gunned down and Congress was behind him the situation would've changed dramatically.

Back then, we had a attorney general who had an interest in dealing with the problem, under an administration that could help deploy the government to deal with bad actors. That's all changed now, and the populous saw the gap, with the ACLU being well equipped to advocate for the same issues.

The ACLU excels at mounting a legal defense.

I think when bad cops get off, it's because of bad (or absent) legal prosecution.

They can show their intentions by not just stopping with their support of the ACLU. They can move to support other organizations, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Earth Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, National Immigration Law Center, EFF, RAINN, and so many more.

Not to SPLC please. I have no idea what they are thinking with regard to criticism of Salafism.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/maa...

Thanks for the heads up, wasn't aware of that particular case. Surprised to hear about that, they typically have done good work over the decades.

When you say "Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops" - what exactly do you imply by asking that question? That the parties involved are morally compromised such that they should not fund the ACLU and hire immigrants?

Saving democracy isn't Pitchfork; nobody should be looking down on people just because they liked this band before it was cool. Just welcome them to the fan club -- and do what you can to make sure they keep their membership current after this rush of buzz wears off.

Just because somebody or an organization failed to do something charitable in the past is no reason to criticize them for doing it in the future. I see this argument everywhere these days. Business change and their priorities change, just like people.

Hopefully, people are setting up recurring payments that continue to show support for organizations like the ACLU. Then when the next travesty inevitably occurs, they are already supporting the good fight.

> I know this comment will be unpopular, and that's ok.

I would just like to say this kind of bait is agains the guidelines

Of course you know the answer: The ACLU is a political organization.

Edit: Not a peep out of the ACLU when the Obama administration permanently ended the Cuban refugee program and many refugees in Mexico are now being deported back to Cuba because there is no chance of them being accepted in the US. 60 day pause on refugees from seven middle-eastern countries identified and signed into law by the Obama administration? MELTDOWN.

With a stated intent to ban Muslims. Donald Trump and his advisors have gone on record for months stating that their intent is to ban Muslims. Many of his staff have asked publicly if there was a legal way to ban Muslims, and stated that they were seeking a way. This is well-documented in the US mainstream press, with video evidence of Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani stating this in their own words.

The rationale given for banning these Muslim majority countries by Mr. Trump included 9/11. Not a single 9/11 attacker came from these countries. Claiming a material connection is a lie. They claim Obama is responsible for picking them – yet he never banned an entire country in a fit of collective punishment, merely ordered additional monitoring and procedures. Last weekend, valid green cards were cancelled without a documented or individualized reason. This is a vast difference in policy.

People resent Mr. Trump because he lies. He repeatedly lies to Americans. He presents suspect reasoning, misrepresents documented facts, and then claims he didn't in the presence of video evidence. That is a far more critical flaw than any policy error could bring.

Maybe because the ACLU is about American civil liberties.

Then not about seven middle-eastern countries civil liberties?

Dual citizens?

> Not a peep out of the ACLU when the Obama administration permanently ended the Cuban refugee program...

This is an odd complaint. The Obama administration ended Cuba's special, weird immigration status where touching land magically bypassed most of the immigration process. Cuban refugees now have to go through the same process as any other refugee - they have the same rights as any other asylum seeker would.

Nice concern trolling. The answer, as I'm sure you well know since you're arguing in bad faith, is that now is always the right time to do something good (like provide financial assistance to the ACLU). The argument that a good deed shouldn't be done now because it should have been done earlier instead is a ridiculous non sequitur.

> Where was the outpouring of funding [...]

Build the thing that needs funding. Then, seek support and apply.

So...what examples are there of blacks being gunned down and slaughtered? I think you do not know what the words you are using actually mean or you are doing it on purpose - which when you line your comments up with the facts; is very disingenuous.

I get what you're saying, but late is better than never.

This is why people say all lives matter. Because nowadays the black thing is priority. no matter how serious other people's problems are, other people just get ignored because blacks always get attentions.

That is most definitely not why most people say all lives matter. They say all lives matter because it allows them to point at someone saying Black Lives Matter and make a moral judgement about them. Maybe some of the people saying All Lives Matter mean well but the vast majority of those saying it most definitely do not.

> Although I think the American Civil Liberties Union is

Thank you for writing it out.

The OP is impressive in it's length for managing not to tell me anything about the ACLU at all...

> Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops.. You can't compare apples to oranges.

...and this, in a nutshell, is why a lot of people voted for Trump.

100%

I share your sentiment. It seems to me (I'm European) that bashing Trump is just a fancy, hipster thing to do.

I find this sort of thing chilling when Steve Bannon talks about the alt-right being in power for 50 years and has been (pre election) doing 3 small town speeches per week telling people (by my guess including border control, the police, the Sarah Palin supporters of this world) that they are the thin blue line as society falls apart.

Watch: https://youtu.be/7nTd2ZAX_tc

I have no idea how supporting the ACLU or the ACLU's actions this weekend could ever be considered Trump bashing or 'hipster'.

Perhaps it is, to some extent. Unfortunately, it sometimes it takes a direct threat to get people motivated.

But that's human nature. Trump has done an awful lot to raise the ACLU's profile recently and ultimately this will be for a better good.

The ACLU has long been a strong advocate against police abuse (one web link of many: https://action.aclu.org/secure/stop-police-killing-communiti...), and the ACLU is participated in combating opiate abuse that emphasize treatment over jail (example: http://www.aclu-wa.org/story/task-force-issues-ground-breaki...). So while Silicon Valley may be reacting mainly to the executive order, support for the ACLU will help address these issues as well.

One other comment: I'll add that criticism of Trump is not just coming from the "hipster" left. I've noticed, for instance, that the Cato Institute, a very well notable libertarian think tank, is taking a hostile stance towards the Trump EO (https://www.cato.org/). This isn't a surprising stance frankly, but in a nation where politics is often thought of as binary (Cato is sometimes incorrectly generalized in this binary as "right wing"), sometimes the subtle nuances are missed.

Virtue signaling over poor Appalachian Americans or black-on-black violence is not very fashionable.

I also wonder where they were when the Snowdon revelations of of the massive NSA spying campaign under Obama were released.

Black people didn't turn out to support Hillary against the Trump racism against Mexicans and Middle-East countries. Now you complain?

Look people, this is a problem [1]. We all need to stand together and not only for ourselves.

[1] http://www.phillytrib.com/news/black-voter-turnout-a-look-at...

I'm with you 100%.

By coincidence I made a site to direct people to various charities on HN when this post came up - it went nowhere of course.

If you're looking for an option to support other charities w/o feeling like you're actually just buttressing a corporation's branding --> https://helpsavetheusa.com/

Also shameless shill for upvotes --> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13531669

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