From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: "Card-Carrying Member of the ACLU" (Speech by Ira Glasser)(8)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 06:10:23 GMT

"Card-Carrying Member of the ACLU" (Speech by Ira Glasser)(8)

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    "The fact is, is that he [Bush] has said, "I am *not* a
    card-carrying member of the ACLU; I am for the people."

    *Which* people?  *Which* people?

    The Japanese Americans, who were incarcerated because of their
    race?

    The millions of American workers, who were repressed and
    suppressed because they wanted to organize?

    [...]"
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==================================================================
      Speech by Ira Glasser (ACLU national director), before the
        National Press Club, Washington, DC.  October 6, 1988.

    [I use *'s for *strong* emphasis, and ~ for ~lighter~ emphasis]
      [also, commas are sometimes used to indicate pauses, etc.]
==================================================================

You would *never know*, that we spend 95% of our time handling more
voting-rights cases in the South than any other organization.

You would *never know*, that spend most of our time doing more
sex-discrimination cases than any other organization in the country.

You would *never know*, that we spend the bulk of our time defending the
free-speech rights and the religious-freedom rights, and the privacy
rights of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of
ordinary Americans, whose rights are violated every day by local
government officials and by their employers.

You would never know, because he never looked at the six thousand
cases we handle, or the hundreds of bills we lobby on, and made *any*
kind of an attempt to accurately portray what it is that the ACLU
does, but he did say that opposed most of it.


[continued:]


Now, of course, we're =used= to that kind of criticism from people
like Jerry Falwell. And from people like Jerry Falwell all throughout
our history. Falwell =likes= to say we're anti-Christian. Just a week
or two ago he said, "The ACLU is anti-Christian. Christians," he said,
pretending to speak for them, "Christians think about the ACLU the way
Jews think about the American Nazis."

Now, I expect that from Jerry Falwell, but I do *not* expect that --
and Americans ought not to expect it -- from a candidate for the
presidency, from a major party in this country. I do *not* expect that
kind of nonsense to be heard from a major candidate.

If he is against all of those rights, if he is in =fact= against most
of what the ACLU does, then he is against most of the Bill of Rights,
and he has aligned himself with the darkest forces in America, which
from time to time arise to repress those rights.

The fact is, is that he has said, "I am *not* a card-carrying member of
the ACLU; I am for the people."

*Which* people?    *Which* people?

The Japanese Americans, who were incarcerated because of their race?

The millions of American workers, who were repressed and suppressed
because they wanted to organize?

The Blacks, and other people of color in this society, who for so long
suffered, and suffer still, from discrimination?

*Fifty* percent of our population, women, who were relegated to
second-class citizenship for so long?

The hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens who are chewed up by
countless public officials every day in this society, and whose only
recourse is the ACLU?

*Which* people?  *Which* people is he for?  -- if he's =for= *those*
people, then he is for the ACLU; and if he is against those people, it
is he, and not we, who are out of the mainstream.


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