FORUM: ACLU Fights for Who’s Rights? |
According to its Web site, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the country's foremost advocate of individual rights. In our society, there is a constant struggle between two counterbalancing forces. The first force is that the majority of people through their democratically elected representatives govern the country. The second counterbalancing force is that the power of the majority must be limited to insure the rights of individuals. In every era our government has tried to expand its authority at the expense of individual rights. The stated purpose of the ACLU is to stand up for the rights of individuals, and to ensure that our Bill of Rights (amendments to the U.S. Constitution that are intended to protect individual rights) are not eroded.
In theory, the mission statement of the ACLU sounds like a perfectly reasonable document that most people would not have a problem supporting philosophically. But in practice, the ACLU's activities are often controversial, and they have gored sacred cows of both liberal and conservative partisans. For example, many Civil Rights activists were more than a little upset in 1997 when the ACLU sued the city of Pittsburgh, and its mayor, on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan to ensure the Klan's right to peaceable assembly. And more than a few conservative Moral Majority members continue to be exasperated by the ACLU's strong on-going support of a woman's right to choose abortion (late term or otherwise) to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
At the April Forum we have a representative from the Arizona ACLU Chapter explain what the ACLU stands for, how it picks and chooses which hot conflicts to get involved in, and what it has actually done to support individual rights causes. Also, depending on the questions and comments from the audience, it is likely that certain hot topic national and local rights issues will be discussed. At the local level, rights issues such as tighter smoking bans, the curtailing of "adult businesses", prisoner abuse (think Tent City), and the rights of the homeless are examples of the sorts of topics that might come up. This Forum may be a bit controversial at times, but it definitely should be stimulating! We hope to see you there.
The new home for the Forum is the Pyle Adult Recreation Center in Tempe. The center is located at the SW corner of the intersection of Rural Road and Southern. The Rural and Southern intersection is just two blocks North of the Rural Road exit off the 60 Freeway and a couple miles South of the Scottsdale Road exit off the 202 Freeway. The Pyle Adult Center building is just West of the Tempe Library and Historical Center building and is close to Southern. The location of the Post-Forum De-briefing is a private room in the "Uptown Brewery" only about three blocks away. Admission to the Forum is FREE.