Your Take: What Are You Going To Do For A Christmas Tree This Year?

2nd Wi-fi Plan On Way To City/ Exclusive Penteledata Wants To Cover Parts Of
Wilkes-barre With Its Wireless Service.

Sunday, December 04, 2005 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Page: 4B 





This letter is in response to Bob Neal's recent attack on the American
Civil Liberties Union in the Times Leader. I am a proud member of the ACLU and
Mr. Neal's understanding of the organization is clearly flawed. The
organization was not founded by a single individual trying to create a
"church." It was founded by Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, and Albert
DeSilver with a mission to preserve all of the protections afforded citizens
under the Bill of Rights and associated amendments. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The ACLU's mission is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; * Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly.
Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict
separation of church and state. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 * Your right to equal protection under the law -- equal treatment
regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 * Your right to due process -- fair treatment by the government whenever
the loss of your liberty or property is at stake. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 * Your right to privacy -- freedom from unwarranted government intrusion
into your personal and private affairs. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 We need the ACLU to keep our partisan government in check. In today's world
where our government sanctions torture, holds individuals in Guantanamo Bay
indefinitely without any form of due process, where our vice president "outs"
a CIA operative because her husband disagrees with administration policies and
where a citizen can be arrested at a political rally for simply wearing an
opposition T-shirt, we need an organization to uphold our nation's basic
principles. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Sure the ACLU was founded by a group of activists, but so were the women's
suffrage movement, the civil rights movement and our founding fathers
themselves. The ability to be an activist is part of being an American. The
organization seeks to challenge government when it uses its power to undermine
our individual rights. Its primary focus is to make challenge to any
bureaucratic action that goes against the rights we have all been given as
individual American citizens. The organization takes these matters to our
legal system and allows the judiciary to decide if our government has
overstepped its bounds and has broken the rights we have as citizens under the
Bill of Rights. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Mr. Neal states that "church" organizations need to separate themselves
from the ACLU and that "after that is accomplished, perhaps other
organizations will be able to contribute to society in the way that their
founders intended." If you read the Bill of Rights and what the founding
fathers of our nation intended, the ACLU is an organization that seeks to
maintain the wisdom of what our founding fathers truly intended and what makes
America great. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
Stephen Robert Cheskiewicz Shavertown

Aclu Not Trying To Create `church,' But To Protect Our Rights