Why the ACLU is adjusting its approach to “free speech” after Charlottesville

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had sued the city of Charlottesville (VA) to allow the Unite the Right rally to happen downtown. And now, it had happened, and blood had been spilled. The backlash has already spurred other ACLU chapters to declare that they don’t believe free-speech protections apply to events like the one in Charlottesville, and led the ACLU’s national director, Anthony Romero, to declare the group will no longer defend the right to protest when the protesters want to carry guns.

The Charlottesville rally called attention to an important fault line between the ACLU’s traditional vision of justice and the way the progressive grassroots movement sees justice in 2017: a fight over whether the best way to protect the powerless is to stand against the principles that could be used to crush them, or simply to stand on the side of people seeking social equality by whatever means are necessary.