Photo by Wesley Law
Last summer, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri helped strike a win for voter rights when a judge ruled that the Ferguson–Florissant School District had been undermining African-American candidates in school board elections. But Jeffrey Mittman, ACLU of Missouri executive director, says the war for civil liberties is far from over.
What is the ACLU’s mission? We’re here to protect our constitutional rights and civil liberties through three means: litigation, legislation, and public education. We will go to court, but first we educate the public and our elected officials. We walk them through the Constitution, through the court cases, but that’s not enough. We also need to educate the public on how to be politically effective.
Do Missourians look to the ACLU for that information? The reputation of the ACLU has been of this lefty liberal or Democratic organization, which we’re not. We never have been, never will be. We probably came out against President [Barack] Obama more than many other organizations on things like Guantánamo and privacy… There’s an awareness that the current political climate could represent a potential crisis or turning point. People say, “Where do we go to find a champion who has been thinking about these issues for 100 years and can do something about them?” I think people look at the ACLU and say, “Oh, this is what you guys do.”
Have you seen evidence of that support? We really have. After 9/11, our national membership doubled. About two weeks after this election, our national office issued a statement that said we have seen a bigger increase in support than even after 9/11. In those first two weeks, $11 million came in. [All state offices share the national proceeds.] We had more than 700 volunteers [in Missouri] overnight immediately following the election.
What are some of the most important issues facing the ACLU? The history of racial injustice. In Missouri, we have 16 years of attorney general vehicle-stop reports that document that you are more likely to be stopped on the road, searched, and arrested if you are a person of color than if you are white. Another statistic: The population of Missouri is about 11 percent African American; the incarcerated population of Missouri about 30 percent African American—a 3-to-1 differential.
Also, the public defender system: We are the worst-funded in the country. People are sitting in jail because they can’t find representation. Nothing’s been done. The legislature has been focused on other matters when these are daily denials of constitutional rights and civil liberties. It’s not enough to bring a court case; we need to educate the public in a way that empowers them to make change.
Two of the reasons we were successful in the Ferguson–Florissant School District case was that we laid out the history of policies that have targeted and disempowered the African-American community: housing policies, schooling policies, employment policies, governmental policies red-lining neighborhoods so that African American families could not get home loans—and how that comes together to build a crisis for a community that has been sidelined. The judge said, “You’re right.” And then we turned to specific Voting Rights Act rules, statutes, and litigation precedent, and we had here with us three lawyers from our national office who are among the foremost experts on the voting rights act in the country. That’s why we were able to prevail.
Constitutional democracy does not work if your vote is suppressed. We look at the incredibly shameful passage of Amendment 6 [Missouri’s voter ID requirement]. This false claim that there needs to be protection for the voting system when everybody knows that out of billions of votes cast, there’s maybe 84 examples of voter impersonation. It’s a lie, pure and simple. The denial of voting is fundamental.
