A series of email snafus by Champaign County ACLU representatives has exposed a rather unsavory face of the civil liberties organization that we generally expect to act in the interests of the public. Champaign County ACLU president Carol Leff attempted to send an email to the 17 member ACLU Steering Committee, but accidentally sent it to the ~700 member West Urbana Neighborhood Association (WUNA). Then ACLU Steering Committee member (and past ACLU president) Esther Patt issued a response, again unknowingly including the entire WUNA listserve as a recipient.
The fiasco began on October 25th, when I emailed Carol Leff seeking information about the ACLU’s stance on the new speech restrictions for Urbana public meetings. On September 14th Mayor Diane Marlin had invented new rules which allowed her to interrupt and mute members of the public who made utterances critical of public officials, or anything that she considered a “negative comment” (article here). The Urbana City Council then officially passed Marlin’s new rules on October 12th (article here). Council member Bill Brown, who is also on the Champaign County ACLU Steering Committee, had commented that the ACLU did not see a problem with the speech restrictions, and he even supported Marlin’s new ordinance (article here).
The new meeting rules appear to be almost entirely a response to the numerous civil liberties violations being exposed by Urbana residents meeting after meeting. The City’s creative denials of police complaints, the violent arrest of Aleyah Lewis and the City’s propaganda surrounding that incident, the unlawful denial of police records, and an illegal fee-charging scheme for public records, are just some of the issues that Marlin wished to adjudicate with her mute button (which she has now done numerous times).
After exchanging emails with Leff for less than a week, I still had no meaningful explanation for who at the ACLU may have examined the new rules and what, if anything, they had to say about it. Leff tried to send me a link to some irrelevant ACLU case and it seemed that she wasn’t really grasping the basic concepts. It began to appear that no one from the ACLU had actually reviewed what Urbana was doing and there was little indication that anyone cared.
Then Leff mistakenly sent a rant to the entire WUNA neighborhood which, in addition to demonstrating that the Champaign ACLU appears to be almost entirely useless, contained a number of false claims. Apparently the Champaign ACLU isn’t allowed to do or say anything unless first directed by “Chicago”. Leff claimed that she’d spent “weeks” explaining this to me, and also claimed that I was trying to convince the ACLU to take action – both claims are lies, as evidenced by my email exchanges with Leff.
ACLU Steering Committee member Esther Patt jumped in just 19 minutes later, both informing Leff that she’d accidentally emailed the WUNA list, and repeating Leff’s error in the same motion. Then Patt went on to criticize me for submitting a human rights complaint against the City of Urbana. Patt parades herself as a human rights activist, so it isn’t at all clear why she would endeavor to belittle someone for submitting a human rights complaint.
Patt claimed that Urbana’s Human Rights Ordinance “cannot be enforced against a unit of government”, which is patently wrong. This point was clearly demonstrated in the Human Relations Commission hearing on November 10th (article here), in which I participated as the complainant. Before the hearing, Patt sent me another email claiming “your case will be dismissed on a procedural point.” Again, Patt was wrong, and I find it very disturbing that she represented knowledge of the outcome of the hearing before it happened.
Patt then claimed I’d submitted “either 60 of the 80 or 80 of the 100 FOIA requests to the city so far in 2020.” This doesn’t even make sense since, at that point in time, Urbana had processed about 600 FOIA requests in 2020. I may be responsible for a couple dozen of those 600.
Neither Carol Leff nor Esther Patt ever responded to me, but as this was all being broadcast to an email list composed of hundreds of people, another WUNA resident, Sarah Nixon, chimed in. She didn’t understand why the ACLU would not be interested in such a clear-cut case of government unlawfully restricting speech. Nixon wrote:
“I’m glad Carol posted to the WUNA list. This is a relevant and intriguing subject, well deserving of a WUNA thread.
I would like to raise my hand, and ask, how can the Champaign County ACLU chapter *not* take a stand vis-a-vis our local government’s move to suppress free speech at public meetings?
What is the ACLU legal director’s stated basis for not taking up this issue?
This violation of our Urbana residents’ first amendment rights falls clearly within ACLU policy, and calls, at minimum, for the ACLU to issue a formal position statement and rationale.
Thanks,
Sarah Nixon”
Apparently, such a reasonable and sensible communication directed toward the Champaign County ACLU leadership simply could not be tolerated, and Esther Patt decided to respond with what I can only describe as a spew of blather and venom.
“This issue with the ACLU is the same as the issue with WUNA. Speaking only for myself: no volunteer in any organization owes you anything. No organization owes you anything. If you actually paid dues and don’t like that an organization is working tirelessly on numerous fronts but one of them isn’t YOUR issue, don’t renew your membership.
The sense of entitlement of some people on this list is truly amazing. If people or organizations do work, you seem to think you have the right to direct their work. You don’t. And it’s not “the job” of ACLU to address every civil liberties offense or the job of the Tenant Union to address every offense against tenants or the job of the Food Bank to make sure every person has food. We all do the best and most that we can do. If others are disappointed, so be it. I turned 65 last month, have lived here for 47 years and am sick to death of all the demanding people who think they are entitled to whatever they want from whomever they choose.”
“Sarah, the point isn’t just that I’m tired or that ACLU members think your issue has no merit. It’s just that to you it’s a big issue because it’s your issue; but it’s actually a very small issue in the context of ALL of the civil liberties issue that do not get addressed by ACLU — or by me or by you.
Why post anything at all back to the list? Why not accept the fact that everyone doesn’t always jump on board whenever you care about an issue?
Esther Patt”
I’m afraid I have to disagree with Patt’s assessment. The ACLU Foundation is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and they enjoy the associated tax-exempt status. Legally, they need to act as a charitable organization and if it appears that they are acting more like a political organization, then they’ve misclassified themselves. So, while Patt may be right that the ACLU doesn’t owe any one person anything, they do owe the general public.
This is just a chunk of the contempt and incompetence that the Champaign County ACLU appears to have for residents in the Champaign Urbana area who express civil liberties concerns. It isn’t even clear to me why the group exists. Their greatest function appears to be keeping a very minimalist website, and infrequently speaking at public meetings and events to deliver bland cookie-cutter messages.
I cannot decipher what meaningful function the local ACLU serves. Former president and current ACLU Steering Committee member Bill Brown supported Mayor Marlin’s illegal speech restrictions. Brown, along with another Steering Committee member Esther Patt and the current president, Carol Leff, all either made supportive statements or expressed something between indifference and contempt for notions that the speech restrictions were a bad thing.
Though they are entirely aware of it, the Champaign County ACLU has taken no action, and issued no statement, on the illegal public records fee-charging scheme setup by the City of Urbana, which has been well documented on Check CU and several other news sites for months.
I also recall that the ACLU did not think that the violent arrest of Urbana resident Aleyah Lewis was worthy of action on their part. However, they did show up to the June 1st demonstration to take photos of themselves for the Champaign County ACLU Facebook page.
To me, it is rather obvious: the Champaign County ACLU has all of the habits and traits of “controlled opposition”. Controlled opposition is a tactic wherein the established powers attempt to create or take control of what appears to be an opposing group. The public is given the impression that the observable corruption of the group in power is being handled by a highly visible opposition group.
A tangible example is when Urbana City Council member Maryalice Wu voted in favor of Urbana’s speech restrictions, and she said that if there some issue with the new rules, the ACLU would surely take action. Wu was voting in favor of corruption, and in the same motion assigning authority to the opposition of her choosing, which we all now know, is not trustworthy or competent. This is why an argument to authority should be avoided in an honest discussion.
Because the purpose of a controlled opposition group is not to oppose, but just to appear that they are opposing, they will invest mostly in advertisings and public relations efforts, rather than meaningful action. The public will either take no action themselves, or they will actually be tricked into spending time and resources supporting the controlled opposition.
Sometimes controlled opposition is not a physical group, but an idea or concept that is presented to give the appearance of a counterforce. A recent example is the notion of the 10 Shared Principles which were adopted by the City of Urbana on September 17th. The Principles espouse values like “transparency” and citizens’ “voice”, but at the same time that Urbana was adopting these principles, the City has been working contrary to those values.
The lawsuit against Mayor Marlin and the Urbana City Council alleging illegal speech restrictions and Illinois Open Meetings Act violations is an affront to the controlled opposition established in Champaign County. I believe that is probably why, as I type this article, previous naysayer Esther Patt appears to be frantically trying to learn more about the claims in the lawsuit.
Maybe if we actually had honest conversations about problems instead of playing political and power games and practicing tribalism, things would be better for the residents of Urbana, instead of just better for the small group of people in power and their friends.
I’ll leave a full copy of the email thread that prompted this article below (I cutout the bulky email footers and just left the actual content intact). If you want to learn something revealing about the Champaign County ACLU and its leadership, you may want to read it in its entirety.
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana
Click for full six page PDF:
