The American Civil Liberties Union has tried for a long time to ride the political fence, insisting that their efforts are aimed at protecting the civil rights of all Americans, regardless of partisan concerns. No one necessarily bought into that facade of neutrality before the 2016 election, but now the ACLU isn’t even bothering to pretend that they are an apolitical organization. This weekend, they put on a training event at the University of Miami, encouraging liberals all over the country to hit the streets and protest the Trump administration.
The event was broadcast to locations in every state, and ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told the AP that 200,000 people had signed up to attend thousands of sponsored gatherings around the U.S.
The Miami event was organized as a town hall and it was designed to instruct attendees about their rights as protesters, said Romero. He told the AP that the ACLU was concerned about a few key issues, including immigration, the First Amendment, LGBT rights, and abortion.
“We will bring all the lawsuits necessary to defend these rights,” Romero said. “We’ll do the work in the courts. You do the work in the streets. People are motivated. They want to be engaged.”
The ACLU gets a lot of the same false credibility afforded to groups like CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The media treats them like a non-partisan organization that is as close to an undisputed source as you can find. When they quote someone from the Alliance Defending Freedom or the Center for Immigration Studies, they always make sure and tell you these are “conservative” groups. But when they talk about the ACLU, no such description is included.
It’s a total sham, of course. The ACLU has been one of the left’s most potent weapons, and it’s precisely because of this fake mask of neutrality that they have become so powerful. Now, hoping to ride a wave of enthusiastic liberalism to a new dawn of wealth, the ACLU – which is really nothing more than a law firm when you get right down to it – is tossing that mask aside. They’re embracing the anti-Trump movement, and they’re counting on the media to protect their “non-partisan” reputation in the meantime.
It’s time to stop treating the ACLU like the ultimate defenders of the Constitution and start treating them like the abject defenders of the liberal agenda that they are.
