Does a nonpartisan, alternative organization exist?
If it does, it soon won't. The only permanent home of Liberty is in the individual and families. Organizations become attractive to power-hungry psychopaths when they become effective, and those who gravitate to leadership are skewed toward self-serving. Therefore, compromise and decay are right on the heels of success. Faith in a man-made establishment is a slow escalator to a shallow grave.
I agree. It has been unfortunate to see the attacks on individuality when it's the best way to view each other. Group identity has a long history of being evil and rationalizing inhuman or even dehumanizing treatment of out-groups. Liberty being associated with the individual, not a collective, is the peaceful path I believe.
The grand irony of concepts like intersectionality is that when you slice a person enough ways, you end up with an individual. But that leap just hasn't been made it seems and I assume because there is power to be gained by forming and controlling a collective through the seduction of victimhood and grievance.
They still are.
> These days they seem to just repeat hyper-partisan viewpoints ad infintum
Their involvement against broad interpretation of the CFAA in Van Buren v. U.S. doesn't seem hyperpartisan.
Neither does their action in ACLU v. Clearview AI
Neither does Nashville Community Bail Fund v. Gentry
Nor it's involvement in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org
Sure, right now one party is more actively using the power of government against the rights that the ACLU has always defended, which has a lot do with party ideology (which in both parties have shifted over time so that one aligns morr with and one more against ACLU's long-held positions than used to be the case) and a lot to do with control of the executive branch of government (both federally and in states), without which you can't usually take the kind of government actions that the ACLU defends against.
Well, certainly they aren't a friend of the modern right-wing idea that “free speech” is a positive entitlement to compel other private actors to relay your speech, but they remain zealous defenders of the Constitutional right of free speech against encroachment by government, including against bipartisan assaults like the EARN IT Act.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621ACL...
It explicitly says the opposite, but does indicate that they would not be able to legally represent people making such speech if the terms of such representation would restrict the ACLU from criticizing the viewpoint being advanced while defending the right to advance it: "While the ACLU vigorously defends the right to free speech of those who espouse views antithetical to our own, we also reserve our right to condemn those views. Our defense of free speech rests squarely on the proposition that speech deserves defending even if we, or others in the community, find it reprehensible. Accordingly, as a general matter we should be able to simultaneously defend a speaker’s right to speak and condemn their views, and we should seek to preserve that right through ethically appropriate representation agreements. [...] But we generally should not agree to represent people who will not agree to sign an ethically appropriate advance waiver of potential conflicts arising from our condemnation of their views."
Perhaps this is normal in the legal realm?
Yes, informing potential clients of, and conditioning representation on waiver of, a forseeable conflict of interest is generally mandatory for lawyers.
Publicly stating "we do not agree with the language of our clients" does not seem to me to rise anywhere near the level of that to require waiver.
That said, I take you as more informed on the subject than I, so again I thank you for the information.
[1] Just skim their wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...
If you think the ACLU has steered clear of controversy historically, you are not very familiar with their history.
> it really has nothing to do with civil liberties
How so? It is about someone's right to exist as themselves without discrimination and be treated equally to others. The ACLU has been involved in LGBT rights since at least the 70s.
Claiming the right of not being offended by speech, to me, is a litmus test for an anti-civil-rights person/organization. Sure, if someone chooses to call everyone "you pitiful worm" it's their right to not associate with the caller, but they have no right whatsoever, and certainly not any kind of civil right, to be called anything else.
Also your example is unrealistic and distorted - it’s not a useful hypothetical because no one is asking anyone to call them something insulting like that as their public form of address.
The fact that the example is an insult makes it different from “they/them”
What it is, though, even if it's the right thing to recommend, is partisan.
Is identifying someone by a racial slur a civil-rights issue?
Obviously it's not a black-and-white issue, and is complex, but yeah, fundamentally calling someone something they don't want to be called (and I don't mean "your hair is blue / don't tell me my hair is blue") can be a civil rights issue.
Words define our selves. There's a reason jargon is such a big deal in the corporate world - words have power.
Consider this - if it wasn't a civil rights issue, would there be so much discomfort and/or backlash around it? Would it even be a big deal at all if it didn't matter?
Again, I'm not saying it's straightforward - it's not.
But a quick google search says civil rights are "the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality."
So that's pretty complex and broad in and of itself.
There are also tons of issues that are not civil rights that have lots of backlash/noise around them (like healthcare).
In fact, in this case enforcement of any kind (outside of the private contract-based context like the office) would be quite obviously anti-civil-rights, which is a bummer with civil rights - sometimes, they inconvenience other people. Remember that being right and being wrong feels the same way. There are tons of people who would be very offended at you for all kinds of bogus reasons, like that you don't go to church, or are friendly with gay people, or whatever.
So yeah, if ACLU is about civil rights, it should focus on those. If it's going to pontificate that it's good to use certain pronouns, of for everyone to go to church, or whatever, then I'll take my money somewhere else :)
What do you think the ACLU did in the 60s? Not fight segregation where it was legal?
It's the same principle as being a non-religious organization. If the ACLU went around telling people that accepting Jesus as your lord and savior is the most important liberty, I suspect you'd agree that's very strange - even though many devout Christians do hold that position and think it's important.
My belief system makes white supremacy not some other, legitimate belief I oppose, but one that is beyond the pale because it threatens the core of my belief system (universal human rights and equality).
Since the (current) Republican Party is running on white supremacy ...
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-supreme-cou...
If nothing else the fact that you don’t seem to recognize the desire to build a huge wall as one big red authoritarian flag is concerning.
It’s like going on a date with someone who says he’s a nice guy but treats the waitress like shit.
And it’s not only Border Walls it’s Border Patrol / ICE. Which has literally been putting children in cages.
Plus as another poster said it’s not clear that the administration was building this wall in a legal fashion.
But that's only because everything is hyper-partisan these days. Even science. Or facts. Or the idea of an objective reality. It's impossible to be non-political in this kind of political landscape.
And civil liberties have always been political to some extent.
Today they are basically indistinguishable from Huffington Post with a law firm attached.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-short-life-and...
The ACLU had to come to terms with consequences, and harder answers. After defending and enabling a march where people died, the ACLU had to answer whether it was responsible...and it was.
So the organization is a bit different, but I am not so sure that the ACLU could have continued. It had avoided really hard problems, and then had to come to terms with it.
I prefer it this way: it is messy and tricky and also much less likely to be a disaster.
The ACLU may or may not want to support armed demonstrations, but if they want "docket diversity," they'd pragmatically have to loosen that rule, perhaps to "we don't support demonstrations where weapons were fired," or even, "we defend demonstrators in all cases except when they admit to specifically trying to shoot someone," or something like that.
is this true? I can think of at least one recent event in kenosha where people on both "sides" had guns.
Although some elements of antifa are perfectly willing to use projectile weapons. Those are less dangerous than guns, but they aren't nothing.
NFAC [1], Pro-BLM Protestors in Austin [2] and that was after a protestor brandished his AK at an uber driver and the uber driver shot him (so we had armed protestors before that as well).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Fucking_Around_Coalition
[2] https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/protests/austin-prot...
They flatly do not believe that firearm ownership is an individual right, rather that it is a collective right. This used to be plainly displayed on their website, but I'm having troubles finding it now, and perhaps that narrative has been challenged internally as certain chapters of the ACLU (Nevada comes to mind) have begun recognizing it as an individual right.
Moreover, arms rights challenges that could spur ACLU action haven't ever really come to fruition, such as a ban on arms sales to individuals on the no-fly list for example.
In the past they would [1]. I'm not convinced they would do so today.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
[1] http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621ACL...
"the potential effect on marginalized communities; the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values;"
It sounds like maybe they've adjusted their "unwavering commitment to the principle of free speech"
"That’s because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they’re going to be preserved for everyone."