Working for the American Civil Liberties Union is serious business. We carry a heavy burden. Our slogan, after all, is “Because freedom can’t protect itself.” So it is understandable that in a time of Constitutional erosion, the ACLU is known for its furrowed brows and press releases that “Decry!” “Condemn!” and “Object!”

But there is a lighter side to the ACLU. We are happy people and we like to laugh — even at ourselves. I wanted others to see the well-rounded reality of the ACLU, which is why I made a video that highlights our sense of humor. Hopefully it shows us as more hip to pop culture, though it certainly doesn’t diminish the fact we are a serious and dedicated bunch when it comes to our issues.

My idea was to spoof Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segment on NBC’s Tonight Show. There, Leno stops tourists at Universal Studios and asks them grade-school civics questions. The tourists, who represent typical Americans, give glaringly wrong answers and the results are sometimes hilarious. I often thought ACLU staffers would ruin Leno’s comedy bit. They’d know all the right answers. But what would happen if I did “Jaywalking” in reverse? Maybe it’s funny to see clueless tourists try to decipher politics and the Supreme Court, but what do ACLU types know about pop culture and American Idol? I had my theory when I set up a camera and lights at this year’s ACLU Membership Conference in Washington, D.C. But there were plenty of surprises.

I want to thank all the ACLU staff and members who participated. Everyone had a lot of fun, even if it meant poking a little fun at themselves. The conference covered many weighty issues and our priorities were clear: in attendance were three U.S. Supreme Court justices and no American Idols. But my hope is this little video also proves that we know how to have a good time. Yes, we at the ACLU actually enjoy living in these United States — which is why we work so hard to protect its freedom.

Producing a short video that captures the many voices of the ACLU at this year’s membership conference wasn’t a simple task. It’s what I imagine the old cliché “herding cats” must be like — nearly impossible and all over the place. Our ACLU members are more than happy to share their thoughts: proudly, defiantly, loudly and often in rambling form.

So how do you make one coherent compilation of a million different opinions?

The answer is to shoot first (video that is) and edit later. Ruthlessly edit. This is in everyone’s best interest. The members look better for it, and viewers get to enjoy a pithier, more succinct smorgasbord of commentary. Still, there are so many topics and even more to say. Where do I begin in compiling the “Voices of the ACLU?” At the start. I was curious about our members’ first time: The first time they head about or experienced the ACLU. Often, as many do, they heard about us in a negative or stereotypical light. It was interesting to see how some looked past the stereotype and became part of an ACLU that spoke to them. Now, as “card-carrying” members, these folks who look like anyone in middle America debunk the ACLU stereotype every day.

I was also curious about what draws our members to the ACLU. And for fun, I wondered how they would respond if they could only pick two rights in the Constitution to live under. I organized the video in sections, where you see a series of members answer the same question. What impressed me most about the 2008 Membership Conference was the incredible number of young people (teens and 20s) who attended. There was even a caravan of buses filled with youth that made the trek to Washington, D.C., from Florida.

One of my favorite interviews was with an 18-year-old who just graduated from high school. He told me that he came from a very conservative, Christian family in Florida (not what you’d expect as the typical ACLU membership base). The young man said his parents often spoke ill of the ACLU. But he couldn’t pass up a trip to see the nation’s Capitol and to see for himself what the ACLU was really about. He worried that his devout Catholic faith and belief in Jesus (“J.C. all the way!” he shouted into my camera) would make him an outcast among ACLU members. But he experienced just the opposite. He was excited to learn the ACLU even has a Freedom of Religion and Belief Project. This young man left the conference energized that he could be a part of a group that promises to respect and protect everyone’s rights. He said it showed him what America is supposed to be about. A real-life lesson he was able to learn at the ACLU membership conference, between visits to the monuments and museums of our nation’s founding.

Perhaps the answer to the impossible task of capturing the many voices of the ACLU is listening to this young man. He says it all.

One of the most important things that stood out for me during the three-day ACLU membership conference last week was the exuberance of the youth attendees. Wherever I turned, I saw eager young individuals who were excited by the prospect of meeting and hearing ACLU staff, and enhancing their own knowledge about social justice issues.

I met an inspiring 14-year-old attending a panel discussion of young people fighting for social justice. She was invigorated by the conversation, despite having traveled to Washington, D.C., by bus from Tallahassee, Florida. At a panel on human rights, the young audience members were not only able to grasp complicated civil liberties issues, but then ask challenging questions as well.

I firmly believe that with our encouragement and support, young people will take up the many struggles that urgently need their fervor and enthusiasm. As one of the presenters on the youth panel pleaded, we need to take the efforts and endeavors of our young activists seriously. With all of the challenges facing civil liberties today, an energized “army” of determined and young activists that are nurtured and guided by some of our most experienced advocates could do much needed social change.

How do we do this?

We encourage young people to think beyond the box, to question daily injustices, and arm them with the knowledge they need so that they can make meaningful change. We can introduce them to other activists who have fought for civil liberties, whether they are on the ground or were in the trenches. We talk clearly and candidly about various struggles and brainstorm with young people to help them move forward. And we must encourage their youthful activism, as we join them in the struggle for civil liberties.

href="http://aclu.org/safefree/detention/34764res20080403.html#nevin">David
Nevin is a criminal defense attorney who was in
Guantánamo Bay last week
for the arraignment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Nevin is the first civilian attorney to speak to Mohammed. (The first attorney to ever speak with Mohammed is Prescott
Prince, Mohammed’s military-appointed JAG lawyer.) In this video,
recorded at the ACLU
Membership Conference, Nevin gives his thoughts on the circumstances of Mohammed’s refusal of legal representation, and the system of “justice” being meted out by the href="http://www.aclu.org/mca">Military Commissions Act.

We’ll have more video and podcasts from the Membership Conference in the coming days.

I’ve been in the Action Center’s podcast booth for a lot of the conference, so I’m a little out of the loop when it comes to what’s actually going on. I occasionally hear wild applause coming from the direction of the ballroom, so I know something cool is happening.

But thankfully, sometimes the cool comes to me: I just interviewed an amazing young woman named Jessica Yee, who stopped by to record a podcast with us. Jessica’s the founder of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network in Toronto, and she’s posted a blog from the conference. You can check out her post on the Shameless blog, and we’ll have Jessica’s podcast posted here later this week.

And today is Lobby Day, where bus-loads of ACLU members will storm Capitol Hill for meetings with their representatives and senators. At the last membership conference in 2006, I tagged along with the California delegation, led by the incomparable Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. It was a blast — and an education — to talk with representatives from Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Brian Bilbray’s (R-Calif.) offices about immigration issues and the Soledad Cross, and to hear Tim’s wise counsel on how to handle discussions with people who disagree with our point of view. Being on Capitol Hill for a even a few hours is a great experience; I wish I were with the ACLU’ers who are headed there right now.

Last night’s ACLU Membership Conference gala titled “Celebrating Liberty” — stepped it up a notch, from just plain inspiring to outright rousing. Although Ozomatli concluded the night by whipping the gathering into a frenzy, for me the greatest thrill was witnessing the innovative philanthropist and political activist George Soros speak about his personal history and convictions.

Soros has given away over $6 billion during the past three decades, and is founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute. Although Soros’ philanthropic efforts have focused primarily on promoting democratic governance and human rights in Central and Eastern Europe, he has increasingly supported reform within the United States over the past decade — including the work of the ACLU.

Last night, Soros discussed the American public’s shifting outlook on the civil liberties onslaught that followed 9/11, stating that, “The country has come to its senses.” He described the aftershocks of 9/11 in psychological terms, saying that the U.S. government’s response to the attacks took advantage of our “fear of death”. He later elaborated, “The War on Terror exploited a combination of the War on Drugs and the fear of death.”

Soros has been one of the key figures in the movement to reform our nation’s catastrophic drug policies and to end the failed “War on Drugs.” During his talk, Soros stated plainly, “The War on Drugs is one of the most repressive aspects in American life.”

Soros also discussed the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. He commented on the irony that while one of the purposes for attacking Iraq was to demonstrate the United States’ “unquestioned dominance in the world,” it has achieved the exact opposite result. (The parallel to the wars on drugs and terror is striking — while they are supposedly intended to eradicate drugs and terror, they have also served to accomplish the exact opposite.)

Soros concluded by touching on the energy and hunger of today’s youth to work for socioeconomic justice and political reform, stating that it is “important to give young people the opportunity to fight for their principles.”

Until we reign in our nation’s counterproductive wars on abstract concepts such as drugs and terror, our youth will have no shortage of principled causes with which to grapple. The question is — will young people take the opportunity? Only time will tell, but judging from the numerous, fervent contingents of youth participating in this conference, I can’t help but be instilled with budding confidence.

Ariel Dorfman, Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist and human rights activist on the vital role of art and artists in the fight for civil liberties:

Hopefully by now you’ve listened to Kal Penn and Alex Gibney’s podcasts from the 2008 Membership Conference. Even more is on the way.

From Sunday, we’ve added podcasts by Salon blogger and author Glenn Greenwald and Adaora Udoji, co-host of the new WNYC program The Takeaway. Glenn talks about his switch from litigating to writing, FISA, the abuse of executive power, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the government from extending any benefits to same-sex couples. Adaora talks about the 2008 presidential race, covering Hurricane Katrina, and looking ahead to the next presidency.

Today was even more action-packed, with an array of notable ACLU clients, journalists and artists. Student activist Evie Farnsworth talks about her efforts to expand her local school board’s non-discrimination policy to include sexual orientation and gender identity. School custodian Janet Caldero talks about her discrimination case against the New York City Board of Education.

In his podcast, Levon “Bo” Jones talks about his exoneration after being on death row for 14 years. And Peter Gilbert, director of At the Death House Door, talks about the film’s subject, Reverend Carroll Pickett, who presided over 90 executions as the death row chaplain in Texas’s Huntsville prison. Watch this blog for a podcast with Rev. Pickett tomorrow.

On May 1, 2008, a man woke up in Raleigh Central Prison, then completing his 16th year in prison for a murder he did not commit, having spent nearly 14 of those years on death row. Yesterday, that same man was driving with his sister from Sanderson, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C. Once he arrived in D.C., he had the pleasure of getting lost in our nation’s capital, thanks to unreliable internet directions. That man was Levon “Bo” Jones, the 129th innocent man to be released from death row since 1973. Bo was released through the work of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, and he was driving to D.C. to join us at our Membership Conference.

Getting lost in D.C. — amid the seat of our government, our elected representatives, our highest courts, and so many organizations fighting for their respective constituencies — is a frustrating but familiar experience for people from other places. But it got me thinking about some of our freedoms — our freedom to travel, to have relationships with people of our choosing, to worship or not worship the god or gods we choose, and to speak out and seek redress when we see injustice. When an innocent person is executed or incarcerated, he loses all of these cherished freedoms in an instant. It is a miscarriage of justice.

As Mark Rabil, assistant capital defender in North Carolina, said at the death-penalty panel this morning, the death penalty is a relic of lynching, and a shamefully racist history in our country. But I believe that the sentiments of those of us at the membership conference, notwithstanding the continuing scourge of racism, now carry the day. As we do, most Americans believe that there must be a way for the innocent to be free and for all of us to be safe. That brings me back to Bo’s case.

In his interview for an ACLU podcast today, Bo said he did not believe that it was the false accusations of the only witness against him which led to his wrongful death sentence and incarceration. No. Bo believes that it was the “system” that led to this travesty. I agree.

The system is broken when innocent people are incarcerated, and we are all less safe because the guilty remain free to commit other crimes. The system is broken when we spend millions of dollars to prop up and maintain the failed government program known as capital punishment — money that could be spent to make our criminal justice system much more reliable.

If the states with capital punishment had placed a tenth of the resources they spend on maintaining capital punishment on quality indigent defense systems — guaranteeing everyone, not just the rich, quality defense counsel — wrongful convictions could be reduced to a minimum. If, in the last 30 years, we had spent a quarter of the energy we have spent on maintaining this failed death-sentence experiment on improving fairness in discovery rules, witness identification procedures, and interrogation methods, the everyday horror stories of wrongful convictions would now be a thing of the past. And more of the guilty would be locked up, making us safer.

Bo’s case is yet another reminder that we can be safe and free — of the possibility of a truly just criminal justice system. It is now our job to make that possibility a reality.

Bo Jones’ podcast will be available on this blog tomorrow.

Speaking of bipartisan reporter shield legislation that would help preserve a free press as the heat wave continued in Washington today, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) reminded the ACLU membership conference, reporters from around the country and everyone watching C-SPAN that there is actually a chill in the air across our country, a chill that could be diminished if the Senate would pass his bi-partisan compromise reporter shield bill, the Free Flow of Information Act. A similar bill passed the House by an overwhelming vote, securing a veto-proof bill. The ACLU applauded his efforts and, of course, urged him to push even harder for a strong federal shield law.

During the panel entitled, “The War on Terror: An Exchange About Censorship, Surveillance and Guantanamo,” Senator Specter remarked “They call it a chilling effect,” discussing the Bush administration’s tough tactics in dealing with investigative reporters. “I call it a freezing effect.”

Senator Specter stated that his reporter shield bill has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and is “ready for action.” Senator Specter not only told conference participants that there is overwhelming support for the bill; he spoke of how he has worked diligently to address a couple of important sticking points.

The first issue is in regard to defining and balancing when the government should be able to invoke national security interests and throw reporters in jail if they refuse to give up their right to protect their sources, a source’s right to be protected and the public’s right to know.

The second issue focuses on defining who is a journalist or reporter. Senator Specter believes his compromise bill addresses these issues in a balanced, considered approach, an approach that — while it is not as strong as the ACLU would like or as weak as the administration would like — is a “compromise.”

Senator Specter acknowledged that no one is going to be completely satisfied with any bill that would actually have a shot at passing–that’s what the compromise is about, finding common ground and balancing all interests. He also promised to continue to work diligently to get the Senate bill passed this Congress.

His words were underscored by those of two highly respected, award-winning journalists.

Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter Jim Risen said for years he didn’t think a shield law was necessary, but today revealed “I believe that’s changed.” Risen, in noting that NYT reporters have been jailed in Zimbabwe and in China in recent years, asked, “What are we saying about our society if we’ve joined the ranks of Zimbabwe and China?” Risen also questioned whether the US government is enabling dictators around the world by jailing American reporters, and by example, indicating that is an acceptable practice here.

Former USA Today reporter Toni Locy, who is
facing fines and jail time for refusing to reveal her sources on several post 9/11 stories , offered that she believes journalism, or what is left of it, will be destroyed out of fear of retribution for investigating government programs and keeping the government accountable.

You can help. Send a letter to your Senator asking him or her to support the reporters’ shield bill.

Senator Specter and the panel of journalists also commented on other topics including rendition and the need for the Supreme Court to review executive privilege. Another informative and inspiring panel.