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The American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont is an organization of Vermonters dedicated to the defense of individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as the Vermont Constitution.
While the rest of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the government to act, the Bill of Rights sets limits. It describes what the government may not do. Even a democratically elected government is not permitted to take away from the people their inherent rights to freedom of expression, belief and association, to procedural fairness, to equal treatment before the law, to privacy.
The sole purpose of the ACLU is to protect these rights and to enforce the constitutional limits on government action. Without legal guarantees of individual liberty, even American democracy can revert to acts of tyranny, to a despotism of the majority. The ACLU exists to prevent this from happening, and to fight back when it does.
The ACLU is often asked of a particular case, "Why are you defending that person?" The answer is always the same: "Our only client is the Bill of Rights." In defending a cause or a person, the ACLU defends the civil liberties of all Americans.
We are all vulnerable. No group or person is permanently protected. To let a liberty be violated anywhere is to let that liberty be eroded for everyone. Only by adhering to this fundamental principle, and rejecting the easy path of responding to the passions of the moment, can the ACLU fulfill its mission as guardian of liberty.
When you join the ACLU of Vermont, you are automatically a member of the national ACLU. We are an affiliate of the national ACLU, which has been defending individual freedoms for nearly a century. |
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