Some news, friends: today’s my last day at the ACLU. And now that I’m leaving, I can spill the inside details of this organization’s devious plot to shred the Constitution and destroy America.
A thread:
A thread:
First off, my team at the Criminal Law Reform Project had the gall to challenge law enforcement agencies to convict *less* than 25% of the entire world’s prison population, and do it while *not* killing minorities or violating half the Founders' Bill of Rights. Unfair!
Even worse, we often worked hand in glove *with* those agencies to hammer out settlements that everyone agreed would bring more fairness to the system while saving taxpayer money and *increasing* safety. A transparent attempt at political cover.
This extends to the National Prison Project, who, uninvited, protected everyone’s public health by not allowing COVID to kill detainees & guards inside jails, prisons & ICE detention, thereby preventing it from spreading to you. Nanny staters, the lot of them.
And did you know that the Capital Punishment Project has quietly driven down support for the death penalty, even ending it some states? This despite the death penalty’s spotless record of never killing the innocent and always being applied in a totally race-neutral fashion!
BTW, we didn’t even stop at lawsuits. With our co-conspirators in the political advocacy dep’t, we trusted voters to choose leaders who didn’t read the pre-approved tough-on-crime script. And those candidates started winning! This is the election fraud story no one is covering.
Speaking of elections, the Voting Rights Project is a feckless group you’ve probably never heard of. Their efforts to expand the franchise and defend the VRA & Reconstruction Amendments in the face of rising authoritarianism & Jim Crow 2.0 is just so 1965. And 1982. And 2006…
In fact, remember when VRP embarrassed hardworking Trump officials for ever-so-slightly fudging the origins of the Census citizenship question in order to scare immigrants? Then used the VRA as cover? Then got caught? Then convinced SCOTUS this was somehow a problem? Gross.
Speaking of SCOTUS, the LGBT/HIV Project teamed with notorious leftist Neil Gorsuch to cave to trans folks' insane demand to...live & work free of discrimination..just like the rest of us. And they won’t quit—now they’re in courts nationwide trying to make states do the same.
Meanwhile, the angry feminists in our Reproductive Freedom Project are trying to *restore* the constitutional right to privacy & *prevent* criminalizing pregnancy post-Dobbs—and they're winning. Imagine pouring all this work into an issue only 70% of Americans support.
The Immigrants' Rights Project is also traveling the world (probably on a private jet) *reuniting* children & parents separated by Trump. The Women’s Rights Project is doing the same in the domestic child welfare space. What part of family values don’t they understand?
While we're on borders, the National Security Project is *still* complaining about the light human rights abuses at Guantanamo, 20 years later. But if history has proven anything, it’s that everyone now supports endless war & torture, instead of investing at home. Vindication!
On free speech, obviously the ACLU leads the intolerant left & its efforts to block the not-at-all tired, never-tried-before banning of books & objective history. Yet there is nothing more American than letting government bureaucrats decide what we read and think.
Another universally beloved institution the ACLU is unfairly demonizing: banks. The Racial Justice Program continues to stop gigantic financial institutions from profiting off discrimination--even if its only based on your skin color. But who's looking out for Wall St?
Want more fringe advocacy? The Disability Rights Project will not stop enforcing the ADA (signed by bleeding heart Richard Nixon), even during a pandemic that targeted pre-existing conditions. But only a mere 60 million people Americans identify as disabled. Do the math.
Lastly, if the National office weren’t bad enough, our splinter cell state affiliates deal with all these issues & more simultaneously, infiltrating state courts & legislatures with their unseemly grassroots advocacy. When they said all politics is local, they didn’t mean yours.
And all of this is amplified by a Comms & Digital propaganda apparatus that stubbornly pushes out stories of love & solidarity when they are well aware that only hate sells.
The scariest part of all: this is just the tip of the iceberg. I couldn’t even catalogue all the disastrous work going on over there. And they're not stopping any time soon.
In the end, it’s just inherently suspicious when brilliant, dedicated, attractive people take pay cuts & sleep deprivation to protect those who can’t protect themselves, giving life to the Constitution in the process. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
(PS, I get it. For some of y'all, this is cringe. And I get it, the ACLU makes mistakes, some huge. So do I. But it's made of real and wonderful humans, and it was home for five years. So I choose admiration & dissent simultaneously. Just like we do for America.)
(Next stop: Legal & Advocacy Director at Maryland Legal Aid. Still in the fight, just on another front. Stick with me and I'll do the same.)
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