Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Carol Rose, Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. The conversation was uplifting, and so, I wanted to share it. These are hard times – uplifting is good.
After the Civil Rights Legislation was passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Legislation in 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. spent time in isolation to think and write. He completed his fourth and final book, Where Do We Go From Here in 1967. The subtitle of the book was: Chaos or Community? King wrote that attaining community and avoiding chaos would require equitable distribution of wealth, shared sacrifices, and a social movement that united rather than divided.
Executive Director Rose began our conversation by saying, “The ACLU will always choose community…we have made community over chaos our mantra.”
In 2025, the first year of President Trump’s second term, the ACLU filed 13 lawsuits challenging the administration’s unlawful actions and brazen efforts to expand executive power. The ACLU won cases that freed Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University PhD student who was abducted in front of her apartment by masked federal agents and detained in Louisiana for 45 days; a suit to restore federal grants for scientists who lost their funding during an arbitrary ideological purge of grants related to diversity, equity, or LGBTQ+; winning due process for immigrant detainees across New England after ICE tried to illegally deny them, and holding ICE accountable for using deadly force.
Most of us know about the ACLU bringing cases to court, but the ACLU is an asset in our community beyond court cases. Our Mass ACLU has a hotline (888-567-ACLU) and in 2025, it fielded more than 2,700 requests for legal help. It trained 5,071 people across Massachusetts in “Know Your Rights” workshops. It signed up 2,089 new volunteers — an increase of 50%. ACLU volunteers do vital work – everything from making posters and staffing tables at rallies to educating friends and neighbors about state legislative proposals to helping knock on doors as part of the ACLU voter education campaign, and submitted 60 statements of testimony on legislative proposals
Through these efforts, the ACLU helps build and strengthen community and arm us against the chaos. We are blessed with so many who believe in community. Folks who plan our rallies and those who inform us about them. We have a plethora of local papers including the Sandisfield Times, Stockbridge Updates, the Egremont News, New Marlborough 5-Town News, the Otis Observer, and more. Our small-town newspapers run like a backbone through our South County towns, bringing news and information as well as bringing us together. Send them a check or give them a pat on the back – we are all working for you.
A final word from Rose, “Hope is a political act. Even in these hard times, I am resolutely hopeful.” Why? Because “we are showing up for our democracy and for each other.” In the American President, Andrew Shepherd says, “I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU…this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights…” So, Shepherd asks, why aren’t you? Call the ACLU to volunteer, to support or to ask for support because they are here for us. These are difficult times. The ACLU is working to make them a bit easier.
