Daily Kos - Wyoming has just become the only state in the union without a chapter of the ACLU. Linda Burt, the now ex-executive director of the Wyoming ACLU:
“People are asking me, ‘Where am I going to go now? Who’s going to help me?’” Burt said. “And I don’t know where, and I don’t know who. We were the only people who did certain kinds of work.”
She said her office’s closure came as a surprise, and she learned she would be terminated just 10 days in advance. The act was part of a round of nationwide ACLU layoffs that also affected workers in New York, California and Washington, D.C. The national office declined to comment for this article but earlier issued a statement that read, “ACLU will continue to have a presence in [Wyoming] with restructured staffing,” though it is unclear what that will look like. Its New York office will handle Wyoming’s legal intake.
1 comment:
I have been an ACLU member since 1963. The mission of the organization has changed drastically. At one time it was the "go to" place for censorship violations but that faded out as it became more and more involved in the civil rights, feminist and gay rights movement. All of these interests now have large defense and watchdog groups of their own and very few censorship cases come up that target minorities, women or gays. Campus free speech violations usually involve conservative students and are better handled by groups like FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in America). The ACLU will continue to shrink while other groups take over their functions.
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