Levi Strauss | Abdi Soltani

the ACLU has taken on some of the big

issues related to freedom of speech and

equal treatment under the law

I’m Abdi Soltani I serve as the

executive director at the ACLU of

Northern California the basic principle

of the ACLU is that every person who

resides in the United States is

protected under the Constitution and the

Bill of Rights and our civil rights laws

and that person may be a very unpopular

person it might be a person that I would

personally you know not want to

associate with but we still believe that

we should protect that basic right that

each person has to their bodily

integrity to their ability to express

themselves to having due process under

the law so that they cannot be

incarcerated or have their property

taken unjustly those principles are the

principles that the ACLU stands for when

the ACLU was founded actually there were

no times that the Supreme Court or the

courts had ruled in favor of our free

speech rights and the laws that are you

know in the Constitution or the Bill of

Rights were never challenged they were

never tested so back in the 1920s when

we were started just a simple act of

leafleting on a street corner that we

take for granted today was not something

that you could count on having but

there’s one thing that all of these

issues have in common is that it’s when

young people stand up for their rights

is when we can fight with you for your

rights if young people do not bring

these issues to the attention of the

ACLU or their local media or of other

young people it never becomes an issue

that we can work with you on when I was

a college student I was part of a group

of students that was active supporting

community campaign against a toxic waste

incinerator in California’s Central

Valley and I was lucky enough to go on a

victory celebration that the community

organized when they won their campaign

and I remember seeing especially the

women of that community who had led this

effort and realized that

you’ll change happens when people work

together towards a common goal up to

that point I always thought I should

become the best expert that I can be the

best advocate for other people and being

there as a part of that victory

celebration I realized that social

change is not done when people do it for

other people it happens when people

achieve it together change is something

that I think is kind of neutral you can

change in a good direction or you can

change in a bad direction you can change

laws to expand opportunity or you can

change laws to restrict opportunity

change for changes sake is not something

that we really get behind and if

anything I think that the ACLU is being

kind of anti change we want to really

emphasize protecting the rights that

were written into the Bill of Rights and

the Constitution and we don’t think

things like constitutions should be

changed lightly I really look at

outcomes and where I see really vast

inequalities and outcome I’m not

persuaded that there was a true equality

of opportunity I don’t think that we can

legislate outcomes or that we need to

prescribe outcomes but I think outcomes

are a great measure of opportunity to me

social justice 2.0 is different than

social justice whether we called it 1.0

or

didn’t have a point o at all I think

there are a few things that are changing

society fundamentally and they’re

changing the way we do our work the

first is just access to information

there’s vastly more access to

information now than there was in a

previous jeanration the second is who

can create information and who and how

can stories be told I think that the

phenomenon that comes into the internet

now makes it vastly different in terms

of the stories that are told and how

they’re broadcast I think the change

we’re going through now is very similar

to the change from before the printing

press to after the printing press I

think it’s similar to the change from

before the Telegraph to the telephone

and I think we’re in a similar period of

change and that’s going to dramatically

change the way in which any social

justice organization is going to do its

work I think that all of us in this

program that are the pioneers for social

justice through the Levi Strauss

foundation adhere to a model of

leadership where our job is to

facilitate the participation of others

in addition to providing the guidance

and the insight that each of us can

provide

we’re not neutral just as conveners we

provide our ideas we provide our

insights and the five of us together are

going to learn a lot share a lot and

through that build hopefully some new

models of practice that we can benefit

from and share with others

you