Hey, I'm Emerson, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, focused specifically on First Amendment speech protection. As you know, our team has been busy since Inauguration Day, taking 27 legal actions to defend attacks on our right to free speech.

Today, I'd like to take a step back and reflect on why I am in this fight for free speech and why this moment in our history is so critical. I hope you'll read to the end, but if you're in a hurry, will you consider donating now to support our work to defend our rights against ongoing attacks? The ACLU relies on your ongoing support to fight these battles.

Before I came to the ACLU, I was an international human rights lawyer working on free speech issues all over Sub-Saharan Africa. I saw firsthand what happens to a society – and to those who are trying to push for change – when the government has unlimited authority to regulate what kinds of ideas can be shared. That's why our First Amendment right to free speech is so important, and why I'm so committed to defending that right.

From day one, it's been clear that the Trump administration and its allies are determined to undermine our constitutionally protected First Amendment rights, but our team at the ACLU is fighting back every step of the way:

• We sued on behalf of our clients Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Dr. Badar Khan Suri, who were detained and threatened with deportation in response to their speech on campus, and we won their freedom.
• We represented four arts organizations in their challenge to the National Endowment for the Arts' (NEA) policy that denied grants to any artist who "promote[s] gender ideology." By winning this suit, we protected artistic expression from a government that wants to pick and choose what viewpoints can be expressed.
• We published an open letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that we the people would not accept government threats to our freedom of speech. After almost 500 actors, directors, journalists, and musicians and tens of thousands of ACLU supporters signed our letter in solidarity, the network announced that Jimmy Kimmel will return to the air.

And, ACLU Supporter, we're just getting started.

I'll leave you with this. For me, the right to free speech comes down to a core belief in human equality: No matter where we are from or what our circumstances are, we have the core right to hold and express our beliefs. It is my greatest honor to uphold and defend this right each and every day at the ACLU.

There will undoubtedly be more battles ahead to defend free speech, and we're not going to stop fighting. But we cannot do this without you. So, if you believe in defending the rights and liberties of people nationwide from any and all attacks, please consider making a donation to the ACLU today. We simply cannot keep this vital work going without your support.

In solidarity,

Emerson Sykes
Pronouns: He, Him, His
Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project