The American Civil Liberties Union College Freedom Tour stopped in Madison Tuesday at the Wisconsin Union Theater for a political forum. The ACLU is visiting eight college campuses this fall, encouraging students to become attentive to issues involving personal freedoms and shared civil liberties.
The all-day event in Madison offered an introduction to what the ACLU stands for. In the morning, ACLU hosted two activists for non-violent protest from different generations. One of the speakers, John Tinker, told students of his high school days in 1969 when he got in trouble for wearing a black armband to protest the Vietnam War. When Tinker was asked to remove the armband and refused, he was suspended, and he eventually appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
The other speaker, Bretton Barber, recalled for students the day last year when he was told to turn a t-shirt depicting President George W. Bush as an international terrorist inside out at his Michigan high school.
Workshops were available for both high school and college students throughout the remainder of the day as part of ACLU of Wisconsin’s first statewide student convention.
The events culminated with a political forum mediated by political satirist and writer Barry Crimmins and a concert featuring DJ Kuttin Kandi, Hip-Hop artist Mystic and Milwaukee-based band Black Elephant.
The political forum, an event used to showcase ACLU’s commitment to civil rights and hopefully increase ACLU membership, was comprised of two young adults that were ticketed by police at a rave in Racine, and their lawyers.
The rave in question was a publicized fundraiser for a theater held during October of last year. Twenty-five Racine police officers and four federal marshals entered the dance hall at about 12:30 a.m. and issued 442 citations priced at $968 each to those present for being participants at a disorderly house.
Daniel Kushner, a DJ scheduled to play that night, and Jessica Brown, a raver just there to have a good time, both had their fines dropped with the help of Guenther and ACLU Legal Director Micabil Diaz.
“The good thing about the incident is that we got the city to admit that these activities are not illegal,” Diaz said, adding that youth activities are often targets of the law.
Before he introduced the participants of the forum, Crimmins criticized the current presidential administration for fifteen minutes, calling some republicans fascists, comparing Bush to Mussolini and calling the current situation in Iraq a quagmire.
UW sophomore and ACLU member Amanda Leipold was very happy with results of the forum.
“I thought the panel was great,” Leipold said. “Especially because the issue was local. ACLU is about representing kids so they can have a voice.”
She added that it is critical for ACLU to maintain a nonpartisan stance in its policymaking, which she feels it currently does.
Conversely, UW Junior Michael Gatzlaff believes ACLU has some agenda-setting tendencies.
“Liberal moderators and liberal agenda setting may result in liberal policies,” Gatzlaff said. “The moment the ACLU becomes partisan, it loses its legitimacy, in my mind anyway.”
Even though the ACLU assistance to the Racine ravers did not take sides politically, Gatzlaff mentioned that perhaps ACLU adopts cases due to left-wing political motivation in other cases.
“It’s not the case that matters sometimes, it’s why they took them up,” Gatzlaff said.
