Bill of Rights Defense Committee

[OneBlueSky]

http://bordc.org/

Overview

Founded in November 2001, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) is helping hundreds of communities across the country participate in an ongoing national debate about civil liberties and antiterrorism legislation that threaten liberties, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, Homeland Security Act, and several federal executive orders. As the Northampton (MA) Bill of Rights Defense Committee, we engaged in public education and debate about antiterrorism legislation and the Bill of Rights and worked with the Northampton (MA) city council on a resolution to protect those rights, which the council passed unanimously. We have used our web site to document similar efforts, and to provide information, materials, and assistance to other groups.

Mission

BORDC’s mission is to organize and support an effective, national grassroots movement to restore civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. We provide organizing strategies and technical assistance people can use in their communities to join in a broad, national, nonpartisan debate about the need to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens and non-citizens.

Vision

Throughout U.S. history, and especially in times of war and other stress, the U.S. government has curtailed the rights of foreigners and those who dissent. Twentieth Century examples are COINTELPRO, HUAC, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the Palmer Raids. Lack of public awareness, a climate of fear, and divisive government policies helped preserve COINTELPRO and HUAC for decades.

BORDC believes that this cycle can be broken and the targeting of groups ended by:

- Education to know our rights,
- Staying vigilant to threats to our rights and to the rights of others, and
- Organizing using protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights to defend our rights.

Advisory Board

Lois Ahrens is Executive Director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project.

Michael Avery is President of the National Lawyers Guild and a constitutional law professor at Suffolk Law School.

Lynne Bradley is Director of the American Library Association Office of Government Relations.

David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University of Law and a pro bono attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is author of several books, including Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism.

James X. Dempsey is Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology and coauthor with David Cole of Terrorism and the Constitution.

Chris Finan is President of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Nat Hentoff is a journalist and authority on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. His most recent book, The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance, includes chapters on the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the movement of cities and towns to restore Bill of Rights protections.

Jeanne Herrick-Stare is Senior Analyst on Civil Liberties at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Kate Martin is the Director of the Center for National Security Studies.

Nancy Murray is the Director of the Bill of Rights Education Project of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

William C. Newman is a civil rights attorney and the director of the Western Regional Office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

Stephen Rohde is a constitutional lawyer, author and lecturer and the immediate past president of the ACLU of Southern California. He is the author of American Words of Freedom.

Elaine Scarry is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her most recent book is entitled Who Defended the Country? A New Democracy Forum on Authoritarian versus Democratic Approaches to National Defense on 9/11.

David Sobel is General Counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Chris Townsend, Political Action Director of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), drafted and supported the passage of the first civil liberties resolution to receive the support of a national labor union.

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is Senior Policy Associate at the National Immigration Forum.

Howard Zinn is an historian who has taught history at Boston University and Spellman College. The best-known of his many books is A People’s History of the United States.

http://bordc.org/