American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU brief, English "American Civil Liberties Union ") is a US-based non-governmental organization based in New York City, which has existed since 1920. It is committed to civil rights and, more generally concern of liberalism. A similar organization in Germany is the Humanist Union.
She is committed to ensuring freedom of expression (see First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ) that for the individual's right to privacy, a right to abortion, for the equal rights of homosexuals, against the death penalty and police brutality and also often used for the separation of church and state. The organization has indicated on its website (2006) more than 500,000 members and supporters and supervised annually about 6,000 procedures in court.
History
The ACLU was founded in 1920 as a response to the consequences of the so-called Red Scare - founded - that is the fear of communists, which led to the Palmer Raids. Prominent members of the early period were Jane Addams, John Dewey, the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, or the leader of the Socialist Party, Norman Mattoon Thomas. From the outset, infiltrated and was observing the then Bureau of Investigation the dressing.
The ACLU sat down several times against the banishment of the theory of evolution from the U.S. schools. In 1925, the ACLU sought a teacher who wanted to bring the ban by a specific violation of the law to the test. Local businessmen wanted to achieve publicity for their town, and the teacher John T. Scopes from the ACLU projects could convince. In the first instance, he was convicted despite the support of the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow to a fine. The second instance, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the judgment because the court of first instance had made a mistake: only the jury, not the judge may impose fines. It then came to no more new procedures, and a penalty was never enforced.
Nevertheless, it was the first trial for the first rise of the mass media - dozens of radio stations brought live broadcasts - and through the cross-examination, the prohibition of evolution of ridicule was abandoned (see Scopes trial ).
The case has not made the subject of a Hollywood film ( Inherit the Wind, 1960, inter alia, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March ).
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the ACLU began vehemently against the internment of Japanese-Americans.
In 1954, the ACLU has played an important role in the process vs. Brown. Board of Education of Topeka that led to the prohibition of racial segregation in American schools.
In 1973, the ACLU was the first major political organization that called for the dismissal of U.S. President Richard Nixon because of the Watergate scandal.
In the same year, the organization involved in the process Roe vs.. Wade, who strengthened the rights of American women in the abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the legislation on abortion is an unacceptable intrusion into the privacy of the woman.
In 1977, the ACLU sued the city administration of Skokie, Illinois, to allow neo-Nazi parades and demonstrations - Skokie has a large Jewish population. A federal court refused the city to lift the ban on demonstrations, and this decision was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. The intervention of the ACLU in this case meant that around 15 percent of all members of the ACLU left; in Illinois even stepped out of every five. The Federal Judge Bernard M. Decker described the principle, which followed the ACLU, as follows:
" It is better to those who breed hatred preach to allow you to spew their rhetorical poison than to let in panic and dangerous manner decided by the government, which may see the people and hear ... The ability of American society, defending a hateful to tolerate doctrine, is the best protection we have against the erection of a Nazi -like regime. "
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the ACLU is against an excessive expansion of the police and secret powers which have been set up in particular by the USA PATRIOT Act. The ACLU had sued the NSA and was confirmed by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who explained the interception of the Bush administration to be illegal. In 2009, the ACLU filed a lawsuit to the publication of an undisclosed CIA report that documents the torture practices of the intelligence service of 28 terror suspects.
Financing
The ACLU and the device connected to the ACLU, freed from taxes Foundation receive substantial annual gifts from various foundations, the most important among them those of Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie.
In October 2004, the ACLU gave up donations in the amount of 1.15 million dollars from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation, because they had included a clause in a grant agreement that the money does not support " terrorism or other unacceptable activities " are likely to be. The ACLU rejected the clause on the grounds that such a broad formulation of a " climate of fear and intimidation" Civil Liberties hazardous. The ACLU also rejected half a million dollars from the government of the United States because they refused to verify that ACLU employees were registered on the terrorist watch list.