ACLU American Civil Liberties Union
Self-portrait
For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been our nation’s guardian of liberty, working in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
Whether it’s achieving full equality for LGBT people, establishing new privacy protections for our digital age of widespread government surveillance, ending mass incarceration, or preserving the right to vote or the right to have an abortion, the ACLU takes up the toughest civil liberties cases and issues to defend all people from government abuse and overreach.
With more than 1 million members, activists, and supporters, the ACLU is a nationwide organization that fights tirelessly in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., to safeguard everyone’s rights.
The ACLU is nonprofit and nonpartisan. We do not receive any government funding. Member dues as well as contributions and grants from private foundations and individuals pay for the work we do. (https://www.aclu.org/about-aclu)
Description
The American Civil Liberties Union is a private, non-profit, unaffiliated organization dedicated to the defense of civil rights and liberties in the United States. It was founded in 1920 by the activists Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Walter Nelles, Morris Ernst, Albert DeSilver, Arthur Garfield Hays, Jane Addams, Felix Frankfurter and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. It is currently presided by Susan H. Herman and has over half a million collaborators in 50 states of the US, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. From its beginning, the ACLU has played a fundamental part in the struggles for civil rights and liberties in the United States across the XX and XXI centuries, starting with defending freedom of speech and association, to defending the rights of racial minorities, immigrants, trade unions and different political activists.
The ACLU’s work includes legal counselling and defense, active lobbying in the United States Congress through its legislative office in Washington, as well as state-level governments across the country. The ACLU’s presence in open cases goes over 2000 annually in the United States. Additionally, the ACLU distinguishes itself by raising awareness of issues concerning attacks on civil rights and liberties they are actively defending. They have close to a million followers on social media and over a million activists online. Currently, the ACLU is working on fighting against the death penalty, supporting criminal prosecution law reform, the rights of people with disabilities, freedom of speech, support for people with HIV, human and immigrant rights, privacy in technology, same-sex marriage and adoption rights, abortion rights, support for anti-discrimination policies against women, minority rights, LGBT rights, support for secularism and opposition against the introduction of creationist doctrines in public education, prisoner and incarceration rights and opposition against post-9/11 anti terrorism legislation.
The ACLU is not funded through state government assistance, but through its member’s collaborations and private donations. Legally, the ACLU is divided into two non-profit organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation. Together, their annual budget exceeds 137 million dollars.
Links
Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160415000000*/https://www.aclu.org/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
