Nathaniel Parker, a native of Chicago and a long-time ACLU supporter ripped up a reminder to renew his membership, upon reading in the accompanying Member Newsletter that the social justice organization’s chief focus for the year would be protecting the rights of Syrian immigrants and refugees who were at risk of deportation. When his wife saw the mailing in the recycling bin, she was shocked - they had supported the ACLU as a couple for over 15 years. When she asked him if he’d meant to throw the newsletter and remit envelope away, Nathaniel explained that his recent experience at O’Hare Airport - over an hour at a security checkpoint, having to remove his shoes, belt, ring, and his laptop, and the humiliation of having to be frisked and subjected to an under-the-waistband check, when the x-ray unit detected the metal pins from his knee surgery. “I’m as liberal as the next guy,” he told her, “and I’ve always been willing to sign a check to support anyone’s civil rights, no matter what their ethnicity, but I’ve had it. Air travel used to be something I looked forward to, but that’s all changed, and it’s because of the whole Middle East terror threat. Who’s taking up a collection to get things back to the way they used to be, is what I want to know? Why am I supporting their rights, when my own are being violated?”
Appalled, Isabel Parker reminded her husband that not all Middle Easterners were the same, that the 9/11 hijackers had not been Syrian, at all, and that the ACLU didn’t, as far as she knew, have any plans to fight for the rights of Saudi, Egyptian, or Lebanese refugees. Realizing he’d aimed his anger at the wrong immigrant group, Nathaniel admitted his error in being so hasty, and renewed their ACLU membership online.
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