This op-ed was originally published in Tampa Bay Times.

I have joined the board of the ACLU of Florida.

When first asked, I declined, wary of recent discord. But I was encouraged to stand for election and help right the ship. Two months in, I feel good about my decision, especially after spending quality time with staff at a Saturday gathering in Miami.

The American Civil Liberties Union is a controversial group, no question. But controversy is something I know something about from having led the opinion pages of two major Florida newspapers. I signed on because the ACLU’s core values — fighting government abuse and defending civil liberties, including the freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy, due process, voting, and equal protection — are at my core, too.

No matter your politics, the ACLU has probably annoyed you. For when it comes to defending people’s rights, it’s an equal-opportunity fighter, even if it means, as one former director said, “defending my enemy.”

I’m not a fan of the NRA, but I’m proud that the ACLU represented the National Rifle Association in a case decided last week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involved a New York regulator who tried to coerce banks to blacklist the organization. By successfully defending the NRA, the ACLU reinforced everyone’s First Amendment protections against vengeful government leaders.

Perhaps most famously, 47 years ago, the ACLU defended the free-speech rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., where hundreds of Holocaust survivors lived. If government can squelch speech it finds offensive, it can prevent any speech it dislikes.

This week, ACLU-Florida went to court to fight Florida’s new book-ban law. Consider: if you want a book banned and the school district refuses, you can appeal to Tallahassee. But if you don’t want a book banned, you get no appeal. Talk about viewpoint discrimination.

Our lawyers also are fighting Florida’s “Stop Woke” law, which restricts how college professors can discuss systemic racism and sex is crimination for fear students might be made uncomfortable. History is full of uncomfortable truths. The danger of government censorship is one of them.

We are also fighting a new anti-immigrant law that says only citizens, not legal residents, can register people to vote. The law keeps Spanish-speaking residents from participating in voter registration drives.

And we’re fighting the new law that defines street protests as riots and lets participants be charged with felonies. I’m reminded of the civil rights protesters who walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, only to be beaten with billy clubs and sprayed with tear gas. If that were to happen in Florida today, those freedom marchers would become convicted felons.

In the last year, the Florida ACLU has faced internal disruption and reorganization. The national organization dismissed the state board. There’s a lawsuit, so I can’t say more. But from where I sit, the reboot has revitalized the organization.

At our Miami gathering, I saw an energized staff engaged in a noble mission. We’ve also hired a dynamic new executive director familiar to many South Florida residents: Bacardi Jackson, a seasoned litigator who graduated from Stanford University and Yale Law School, and spent the past four years at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She is the right leader at the right time.

Jackson takes the torch from the legendary Howard Simon, who served as executive director for more than two decades before retiring in 2018 and returning as interim director last August.

I am joined on the new 14-member board by doctors, lawyers, professors and administrators with a diversity of viewpoints who stand ready to support our executive director in defending your rights.

I tell you all this because it’s a discouraging time in our country. People on both sides of the aisle believe our democracy is threatened and no one is working the halls of government for us. But you should know that ACLU staffers are there, trying to advance your rights.

The ACLU is a nonpartisan, public policy membership organization supported by grants and donations. I hope you will join me in supporting the ACLU-Florida. It’s a righteous cause.

Rosemary Goudreau O’Hara is a board member for the ACLU of Florida, and the former opinion page editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel and The Tampa Tribune. She lives in Dunedin.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has promised to pursue even more extreme anti-immigrant policies if he wins a second term. These policies would disregard fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law to devastate immigrant communities and erode freedoms for all Americans.

The ACLU is prepared to hold our executive branch to account. Just this week, we announced that we’ll challenge the Biden administration’s executive actions to illegally restrict people’s right to seek asylum – just as we previously challenged Trump’s actions. If Trump is reelected, we will continue to push to protect people and their rights against unlawful overreach. Learn more in our breakdown:

Trump On Immigration

The Facts: If reelected, Trump has promised to use totalitarian tactics to carry out the largest mass detention and deportation program in the nation’s history. Experience from smaller-scale detention sweeps shows that his proposed policies will lead to people being stopped, arrested, or detained simply because they “look foreign,” and his program will necessarily entail numerous other legal violations as well. Trump and his supporters also seek to dismantle our asylum system – creating more chaos at the border — and attack families by ending birthright citizenship and depriving undocumented children of their right to a public education. Trump has also vowed to reinstate family separation at the border – a cruel policy the ACLU blocked during his presidency.

Why It Matters: While many of the immigration policies we saw during Trump’s presidency were halted or delayed through litigation, the immigration policies we’ll likely see during a second Trump administration are far crueler, more extreme, and more fundamentally damaging to core rights and freedoms than any in living memory. If Trump is reelected, his plan to deport millions of people a year and severely restrict legal immigration will violate key legal protections – including our right to due process – and make xenophobia and racism the touchstones of American immigration policy. Simply put, these policies would harm all of us by tearing apart immigrant families, communities, and the fabric of American society.

How We Got Here: There’s no doubt that a second Trump administration will pick up and expand the anti-immigrant campaign it began in 2016. During his first term, the Trump administration instituted a Muslim ban, tried to deport Dreamers and others with temporary legal protection, separated families seeking asylum, and fought to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Our Roadmap: Through coordinated action at all levels and branches of government, we’re prepared to fight the Trump administration’s attack on immigrant rights. We’ll call on legislators to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from conducting mass deportations and pass measures to begin shrinking the ICE detention machine. We’ll also work with states and localities to build a civil rights firewall to protect residents to the full extent possible and ensure that a Trump administration can’t hijack state resources to carry out its draconian policies. And, if Trump sends a bill to Congress that effectively ends asylum, we’re prepared to mobilize our supporters nationwide to stop it because we know that a strong majority of voters support the U.S. asylum system.

In addition to working for policy change at every government level, we’re prepared to litigate cases to protect people’s rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as other legal provisions, against the mass deportation program. We’ll use the full power of the Fourteenth Amendment and Supreme Court precedent to protect birthright citizenship and ensure immigrant children have equal access to education. Lastly, should a second Trump administration try to bring back family separation at the border, we’ll take them to court for violating our settlement agreement.

What Our Experts Say: “These policies have no place in a democracy that protects or respects civil liberties and the rule of law. From the courts to the halls of Congress, we will use every tool at our disposal, including litigation, to defend the rights of immigrants and protect all members of our communities from the widespread damage these policies would cause.” – Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project

“Xenophobia and racism would become the touchstones of American immigration policy under a second Trump administration, if he is re-elected. That’s why we must begin mobilizing with local and state governments now to protect communities nationwide from extreme anti-immigrant policies.” – Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs at the ACLU

What You Can Do Today: ICE detention is known for abuse, pervasive medical neglect, and complete disregard for the dignity of people in its custody. Needlessly locking up people seeking a better life does nothing to make our communities safer. Take action now: Tell your congress member to support cuts for ICE detention capacity.

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