WASHINGTON–The American Civil Liberties Union today announced a $3.5 million national campaign that includes for the first time paid television advertising and a massive mobilization of its members and supporters in a new nationwide effort to safeguard the freedoms that Attorney General Ashcroft and the Bush Administration have targeted since last year's terrorist attacks.
“Those who ask the American people to choose whether they want to be ‘safe or free’ are presenting a false and dangerous choice,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director. “The real difficult task ahead is to create a new and more powerful balance between two fundamental values — liberty and security. In this way America can be both safe and free.”
The campaign, launched nearly one year to the day after Congress hastily passed the USA PATRIOT Act in response to Sept. 11, represents an unprecedented level of engagement of the ACLU’s resources, leadership and grassroots supporters in the organization’s 80-year history, Romero said.
To kick off the campaign, the ACLU today began airing a 30-second television spot – the group’s first national television advertisement – that graphically illustrates how essential freedoms have been curtailed in the name of security since Sept. 11.
“Look what John Ashcroft is doing to our Constitution,” a voiceover says as the screen shows a pair of hands editing and cutting out portions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. “He’s seized powers for the Bush Administration no president should ever have. The right to investigate you for what you say, to intrude on your privacy, to hold you in jail without charging you with a crime.”
Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said the advertisement is meant to galvanize members and supporters. “There are a growing number of people in America who are frightened and angry about the government’s anti-civil liberties response to the terrorist attacks -- and they are ready to act,” she said.
“We are going to organize them, expand their numbers and put politicians in Washington on notice that the American people want the checks and balances of democracy, not the edicts and decrees of kings.”
The ACLU’s specific policy goals include:
For more information on the ACLU campaign, go to http://www.aclu.org/
CONTACTS: ACLU of Virginia, Kent Willis, Executive Director, (804) 644-8022 Nation ACLU/DC (202) 675-2312, National ACLU/NYC (212) 549-2666
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