ACLU Chief Speaks Clearly, Makes Sense
By Cory Forsyth
A&F Associate

While deliberating how to vote on the anti-war resolution on last Tuesday's ballot, I decided to see Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), speak, in hopes that she might inspire a decision. I naively expected Strossen, as president of the ACLU, to be a staunch feminist firebrand who would preach to her assembled choir tales of hellfire, brimstone, and civil liberties violations, all the while leaning ever more perilously over her podium. Turns out she's a sweet-seeming, gracious lady who more closely resembles your best friend's young, poised, conservative grandmother than the hairy-armpitted angry feminist I had envisioned. Despite this initial letdown, Strossen gave an exciting, eye-opening talk.

"I'm delighted to be hear to speak about the incredibly important topic of keeping this great country both safe and free," Strossen told the audience, an assembled group of about a hundred and fifty townspeople and students (in a roughly 2:3 ratio) in Edmunds Ballroom last Monday evening, at the outset of her presentation. "It would be tragic if we let the terrorists terorize us into abandoning our freedoms," she continued.

Speaking in measured, calm sentences, Strossen outlined several of the scores of rights-reducing legislation both pending and passed in the year and a half since September 11, 2001.

She briefed us on, among others, the scary, big-brotherish-sounding Total Information Awareness Program, a pending program to combine all possible information from any available source, including private businesses, into a giant government database of information on U.S. citizens. The USA PATRIOT act was another piece of legislation on bad terms with the ACLU. The USA PATRIOT act, "rammed through [the law-making process]" according to Strossen, was passed October 25th of 2001, about six weeks after September 11th of that year, while Congress and the nation were in a panic about terrorism. The act, which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, is a couple dozen pages which give the government numerous new surveillance authority, not at all limited to the extension of governmental wiretapping powers to include wiretapping of electronic sources, such as your computer.

I want to digress a moment here to point out that someone went to entirely too much trouble coming up with a cute acronym for this act, and that I feel that it's rather tacky to put benign, acronymic faces on such important legislation.

At any rate, that act known as PATRIOT 1, has a "sunset" written into it in that it ceases to be law on December 5, 2005. Strossen warned that audience that a PATRIOT 2 act had recently been proposed which would extend PATRIOT 1's effectiveness indefinitely.

Throughout her speech, Strossen stressed to the audience that the ACLU was not simply a liberal organization (as I had believed), pointing out numerous examples of conservative criticism of most of the legislation she brought up. She presented the ACLU as a bipartisan, pro-America organization, saying, "[the ACLU] defends core, traditional American values." She also pointed out that the ACLU is not simply against enacting anti-terrorist legislation. For example, "many of the 9/11 measures were warranted," Strossen said, in that they were "effective with minimal cost to liberties."

Strossen also told her audience that while she is pleased to hear the many audiences she speaks to get rightly upset when they hear of the lengths to which the executive branch has gone of late, she's also dismayed that so many of the educated people she speaks to are unaware of the government's activities. "We have a dearth of coverage of the facts-even the facts!-in the media." Strossen said. "Even the liberal media."

Toward the end of her speech, Strossen praised Southern California for its efforts to combat civil liberties violations. She told us that libraries around Southern California have started issuing warnings to their patrons that their library records may be viewed by government agents and some SoCal libraries are even working to destroy their records as quickly as possible to prevent such occurences.

Strossen, who does not get paid for being president of the ACLU, told us she makes an average of two presentations a day. It's inspiring to have such a dedicated speaker on Pomona's campus.