Crossposted from STOP THE ACLUÂ
Via Save The ACLU:
The ACLU Board is considering adopting a policy proposal that would deprive board members of long-standing rights to obtain tapes of board meetings and could require that all meeting tapes be erased after approval of minutes. This proposal has received less attention than a recently withdrawn proposal to prohibit board members from criticizing the ACLU, but it poses a much greater threat to honest and open governance.
Why is the ACLU leadership anxious to deny board members their traditional access to meeting tapes? Why does the leadership want to erase our history?
Erasing tapes means erasing evidence. Erasing tapes or simply refusing to disseminate them to the board means that statements and decisions made at meetings can be misrepresented fairly easily. Without tapes, disputes over what was said or done can not be definitively resolved.
So first the ACLU leadership tries to silence the speech of their own board members that are critical of their decisions. Now they want to destroy any evidence that might reveal their hypocrisies further. This brought to mind the huge internal conflict from the ACLU shredding documents over the repeated objections of its records manager and in conflict with its longstanding policies on the preservation and disposal of records. Proposals and decisions like these definitely add fuel to the argument that the ACLU’s actions are not consistent with its public positions. Imagine how the ACLU would scream if the government suggested any of these things.
One thing is for sure. Actions like these bring up one question in many people’s minds. What is the ACLU trying to hide? It could be the internal conflict going on. It could be their hypocrisy that keeps getting revealed. It could be something much more. If the proposal passes we may never know. But the fact that these suggestions were proposed to begin with tells us more than enough about the ACLU’s hypocrisy and true attitude on free speech, honesty, and transparency.
As David F. Kennison, ACLU of SC Board of Directors, writes at Save The ACLU:
If these provisions are adopted, they will go a long way toward ending what is left of transparent governance at the ACLU.
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Comments: 17
Who We Are, What We Want and Why
We are a broad group of longtime ACLU loyalists– members, donors, supporters and activists, including former staff and members of the national or affiliate boards. We are listed at the conclusion of this statement. Many of us have been steadfast ACLU supporters and activists for decades. We do not take this step lightly.
We believe strongly in the ACLU and believe the ACLU is especially important now during a time of grave and systemic attacks on civil liberties by the national government. But an ACLU compromised by its repeated failures to practice what it preaches will be unable to resist these attacks for long. Our credibility and effectiveness depend upon our consistency of principle.
We come together now, reluctantly but resolutely, not to injure the ACLU but to restore its integrity, and its consistency of principle and remedy its failure to apply to itself core civil liberties principles that it insists everyone else observe. The failure to practice what we preach– until publicly embarrassed– has already done grievous injury to the ACLU and ultimately threatens its historic mission.
We applaud the ACLU's recent fundraising successes , but they cannot compensate for or justify persistent breaches of principle or the abandonment of honesty when those breaches are revealed. The ACLU now stands exposed, and widely ridiculed, for repeatedly acting in contempt of its own core principles, and for chilling and even attempting to prohibit dissent within its own ranks.
Over the past three years, these breaches of principle include the ACLU's approval of grant agreements that restrict speech and associational rights; efforts by management to impose gag rules on staff and to subject staff to email surveillance; a proposal to bar ACLU board members from publicly criticizing the ACLU; and informal campaigns to purge the ACLU of its internal critics.
All of these breaches, as well as others, violate the ACLU's historic commitment to free speech. We take little comfort from the fact that some were reversed after bad publicity and donor complaints.
We reject the claim that the ACLU is injured not by its unprincipled, anti-libertarian actions, but by those who disclosed or criticized them. Repeated breaches of principle by the ACLU leadership have been fundamental and cannot simply be attributed to isolated lapses in judgment: they reflect basic disrespect for the values that the ACLU was created to defend.
This has gone on for so long, and has become so pervasive, that we now believe that only a change in leadership will preserve the ACLU and insure its future as the nation's leading civil liberties group.
We call upon responsible members of the national board and the entire ACLU family to recognize and remedy this crisis before it is too late.
http://www.savetheaclu.org/?page_id=4
I also think that the ACLU is doing more than protecting NAMBLA's (Noth American Man-Boy Love Association) civil rights. NAMBLA is promoting sex with children, and illegal act, and is providing pedophiles with strategies to avoid detection and arrest. I believe the ACLU is afraid its members will question its advocacy role which goes beyond the protection of civil rights.
ACLU supporters should take a hard look at the recent activities of the organization (I agree that it has had an admirable record of protecting civil rights in the past) before thay rush to the defense of today's ACLU
There is more than the ACLU's defense of NAMBLA behind my earlier comment. They actively oppose prosecution of, or even identification of adults who have sex with children in a variety of so called "civil liberties" legal actions in multiple jurisdictions.
Thanks for the support, Randy.
"I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal".