A message from ACLU of Arkansas Executive Director Rita Sklar (11/10/06)
ANTHONY ROMERO SPEAKS AT ANNUAL BANQUET: On November 8, 2006, national ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero spoke to an enthusiastic group of more than 200 ACLU members at the ACLU of Arkansas annual banquet in Little Rock. We honored State Representative Joyce Elliott as Civil Libertarian of the Year for her outstanding and courageous efforts to protect and promote civil liberties at the legislature. State Sen. Hank Wilkins IV of Pine Bluff, the head of the Black Legislative Caucus, presented the award. Sen. Wilkins sponsored a racial profiling bill that the ACLU of Arkansas helped to get passed.
We also honored OUTGOING 14-year board member Carolyn Izard with a Distinguished Service award for her dedication to the ACLU, her hard and consistent work to make the ACLU of Arkansas stronger and better. Carolyn is also one of a handful of people who have lobbied and otherwise engaged publicly to fight for a woman's right to choose for many years. Dr. Jerry Edwards and spouse Ann Osborne, owners of the only abortion clinic left in Arkansas, presented the award.
Anthony talked about issues of national concern and what the ACLU was doing about it, including:
- the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and our lawsuit against then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which asserts that the problem was not an isolated local one, but one that reaches to the very top of the chain of command;
- the illegal detentions at Guantanamo, in which we have filed Freedom of Information requests to open to the public the operations at the secretive detention center;
- the Military Commissions Act that passed recently, that guts the right of habeas corpus—the right that protects someone from being thrown in prison and never heard from again—an Act we worked to defeat, and will now strive to overturn.
Anthony also talked about the effect the recent elections might have on our work, and speculated that there was some hope for change, for restoring the rule of law and ending the Administration's increasing abuse of power, for getting more disclosure and accountability from the Administration. He cautioned, though, that it should not be taken for granted, and depended on the will of the new majority party to make these changes.