Statement of ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW YORK -- Even though civil rights giant Dr. Martin Luther King has been gone for close to four decades, his vision and his legacy remain as vibrant and as important as during his lifetime. We at the American Civil Liberties Union work every day to live up to the promise of his work and his philosophy.

For 83 years, we have labored and fought to preserve and realize the ideals of equal rights, individual liberty and the notion of government constrained by internal checks, public accountability and democratic principles.

Yet, the struggle everywhere for Dr. King's dream of social justice continues, and significant challenges are still ahead. While Dr. King's work has certainly seen groundbreaking success in the four decades since it began, our laws, our society and our government still retain shortcomings that need to be addressed.

As Dr. King himself said, "All progress is precarious." But, in King's famous "I have a Dream Speech" he also said, "Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark, desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of us."

Precariousness aside, it is incumbent upon us as the keepers of King's legacy to continue the struggle for civil rights and equal opportunity, and do so for all Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender or nation of origin.

When Dr. King became the reluctant leader of the Montgomery Boycott, he did so in a part of America where law and morality had become perverted under the pall of centuries-old institutional racism. Jim Crow was ascendant and political violence -- motivated by hate and fear -- was an everyday tragedy.

When the ACLU opened its doors in 1920, it faced similar challenges nationwide. As mentioned, Jim Crow laws were ubiquitous in the South; peaceful critics of World War I and the White House languished in prison; sexual discrimination was a given (suffrage would only come to women that year); anti-immigrant sentiment was high; Jews, Catholics and other religious minorities were second-class citizens, and gays, lesbians, the poor, prisoners and mental patients were thought deviant and undeserving of any legal protections.

Yet, the ACLU, like Dr. King's movement, flourished rather than faltered. Slowly, throughout this century, the promises of our founding documents have become more than slogans shouted or lip service paid. Principles of equality under the law, tolerance for minority and unpopular viewpoints, open and accountable government and freedoms in faith, association and the press are all tangible as we enter this new century.

Accordingly, it is instructive to look forward at the work we have cut out for us.

Racial, ethnic, national origin and religious profiling continues to be a top issue in the civil rights struggle, especially in the post-9/11 era. As many of the gains made in popular opinion against the practice have dissolved in response to the 9/11 attacks, official willingness to abide and use these tactics has increased.

Since 9/11, not only have we seen no measures to end more traditional racial profiling -- directed primarily at African-Americans and Latinos on the nation's highways and in its cities - but America has seen an explosion of federal and state national security initiatives that rely on immutable characteristics to determine who gets investigated and how.

For instance, while a coalition of advocates including the ACLU were able to get the Homeland Security Department to backpedal on one provision of the special registration immigrant tracking system, its other provisions were promptly supplemented by a new infrastructure, called the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology. In addition to concerns about effectiveness, the US Visit program retains the same sort of discriminatory potential as special registration by allowing agents to assign immigrants more strenuous reporting requirements on a case-by-case basis.

It also looks likely that Congress will consider groundbreaking legislation this year that would go a long way toward ending racial profiling in America. In addition to defining racial profiling and making it illegal, the bill would provide victims with legal recourse, would mandate crucial data collection programs to identify and prevent discriminatory policing, would permit the Attorney General to withhold funds from non-compliant departments and would provide funding to help pay for its mandates.

Tentatively called the End Racial Profiling Act of 2004, it deserves all our support.

As with all of these civil rights issues, I urge you to visit /racialjustice/racialprofiling/15795res20021210.html to find out what you can do to help.

Still other civil rights struggles -- including efforts to improve our electoral system, eliminate inequality in education and prevent further erosion of equal opportunity programs in the workplace and our nation's institutions of higher learning -- remain unresolved and demand our attention.

As we confront these challenges, we must always remember that even though the struggle to move forward is daunting, the consequences of moving backward are unacceptable. In America, we cannot abide laws or policies that treat people differently based on their skin color, ethnicity, immigration status, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation. And, if the specifics of how to stop such discrimination are controversial, the desired end result surely should not be.