Tuesday, November 19, 2013
American Civil Liberties Union
The ACLU was founded in the 1920’s when anti-Communist sentiment was very common in America. It was created to help protect people who were being deported and persecuted due to their perceived political views. Now the ACLU has expanded to protecting a wider range of human rights including the rights of people of color, women, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people, prisoners, and people with disabilities. They attempt to protect these people’s rights by “working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.” This is their website, which is where I got my information and it seems to be a very professional and informative.
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The goal of this NGO is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country". These rights include First Amendment rights (freedom of speech, association and assembly, press, and religion), and rights to equal protection under law, due process, and privacy. The ACLU has defended these rights for some controversial groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and a Nazi group, doing so because they believe that when the government threatens the rights of these groups, they threaten the rights of everyone else in the country. It was created in response to the Palmer Raids after WWI and has since been involved with several major Supreme Court decisions involving human rights, such as the Scopes Trial of 1925, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade.
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