The American Civil Liberties Union is the nation’s foremost guardian of liberty. And we are famously nonpartisan. We’ll hold elected officials, Republicans and Democrats, accountable if they’re not properly aligned with freedom for the people and civil rights.
But that principled stance of nonpartisanship doesn’t make us blind or naive about what challenges officeholders present.
Donald Trump told us exactly what kind of president he plans to be, and we believe him. The fact is this: a second Trump administration is a clear and present danger to civil liberties, to communities we serve, and to democracy itself.
At the ACLU of Pennsylvania, we will be ready to take whatever action is necessary to grind the gears of Trump’s anti-civil liberties regime at the state, county, and municipal level.
And we have the record to prove it. We did it during the first Trump administration. A week after his inauguration in 2017, ACLU-PA was at the Philadelphia International Airport, greeting people entering the country from Muslim-majority countries that Trump had banned from entry and going to court on their behalf.
We challenged abusive ICE practices, and when state and local police unlawfully detained people to check their immigration status, we took them to court and won.
In the 2020 election, we led on challenging Trump’s attempt to disenfranchise voters and overturn the will of Pennsylvania’s voters.
My thoughts right now are with the people who are going to be hurt by this administration. Throughout the campaign, Trump and other Republicans clearly made immigrants, transgender people, and people of color a target of their dehumanizing rhetoric. Meanwhile, on immigration, Democrats pivoted harder to the criminalization of immigration and were almost (with a few notable exceptions) totally silent on the rights, dignity, and freedom of trans folks.
Candidates who do not support the values of freedom and civil liberties won elections. We won’t be able to stop every terrible thing that Trump and adherents to Trumpism will do. But we are ready and prepared to defend our civil liberties in Pennsylvania and across the country. It will take all of us working together to slow down the worst impulses of the MAGA movement.
State and local governments have the power to push back when the Trump administration tries to steal away our rights. The ACLU has prepared a playbook called “Firewall For Freedom” with dozens of policy ideas for state and municipal officials. For example, Trump cannot carry out his promise of “mass deportation” of millions of our neighbors without cooperation from state and local law enforcement agencies. And yet there is nothing in law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE. In fact, it’s just the opposite; immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government alone. The Firewall For Freedom contains policy recommendations for how our state and local law enforcement agencies can push back against the Trump administration.
State and local laws can also protect people from discrimination in the workplace, housing, at businesses open to the public, and in education. Pennsylvania has a strong nondiscrimination law, and many municipalities, including Philadelphia, go even further in protecting their residents from unfair treatment based on their identity. The Firewall For Freedom has recommendations to uphold these critical laws to protect people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.
In 1967, while dealing with his disappointment with the legal and political landscape, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., penned «Where do we go from here: community or chaos?» He stated, «Thus, America, with segregationist obstruction and majority indifference, silently nibbled away at a promise of true equality that had come before its time.» Over the last decade, that silent nibble has sounded and felt like a jackhammer breaking our nation’s promise. Dr. King framed this dilemma of shaken trust in institutions and the necessity of faith in democracy as choosing community or chaos.
I choose community.
I believe that love will conquer hateful rhetoric and policies that have prevented far too many people from experiencing life as free and equal members of our society.
Working together, we will confront the challenges of today while preserving the future of our community over chaos.
*Mike Lee, Executive Director, ACLU of PA
