LETTERS

...We favor decentralization of schools, police, and other social organs, and strong welfare rights groups, tenants groups, and the like, for the same reason that most civil libertarians have traditionally supported union efforts to organize...

...Without such power, all the court victorieson the right to speak, all the successfully defended prosecutions, are relatively inconsequential...

...This holds for theNorth as well as the South...

...It is in this effort at making democracy meaningfulin social as well as political contexts that I thinkthe ACLU and its affiliates should get involved...

...HERMAN SCHWARTZ, Professor of Law State University of New York at Buffalo ROBERT J. CHRISTEN Replies: The purpose of my article was not to speculateabout the central issues of our time...

...I have no argument with the concept of decentralization, but I do believe that Professor Schwartz would do well to remember that gross violationsof human rights generally, and of civil liberties in particular, can and do occur in small, even sociallyhomogeneous communities...

...In short, just as the right to vote for legislativerepresentatives is indispensable to political liberty, so is the right to control the all-important socialinstitutions in ways appropriate to their operation...

...I was simplytrying to say that the ACLU exists for the quite worthy purpose of defending and advancing individual liberties as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights...

...Editor: In Professor Robert J. Christen's Comment on the NYCLU and the Ocean-Hill Brownsville dispute which so sadly shook that organization [DisSENT September–October 1969], he quotes me ascalling for the ACLU "to go beyond the traditionalcivil liberties concerns to work for social and distributive justice" and "meaningful democratic participation...

...To many of us, the central issue of our timesis whether and how the members of a huge industrial society can obtain control over the political, economic, social, and other institutions which dominate their lives...

...I certainly want to see the NYCLU continueits efforts to serve the needs of the entire community, but it should be able to do this without sacrificing due process and other concepts which haveserved as the bedrock of civil liberties...

...indeed, the credibility argument hasbeen raised many times, and in many differentguises, and there is still precious little experienceto validate it...

...Although the quotes are quite accurate, I think a few words may explain my meaning somewhat more than these two phrases...

...withsuch power, the occasions for such repression may be reduced...

...This is not to say that there are no risks involved, but I think they are less than those projected by Mr...

...The risks of losing credibility seemto me especially small for the Union's credibility is neither so fragile nor so tightly tied to neutralityas he argues...