Anthony Romero: Guardian of Civil Liberties

What It Takes®

Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2019

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In honor of the 4th of July, we are featuring the foremost champion of civil liberties in America, and a man who embodies the American Dream: Anthony Romero. He tells the inspiring story here of his path from a housing project in New York City to an Ivy League university and eventually to the head of the ACLU, where he has been Executive Director since 2001. Romero also talks about the tremendous growth of the organization during his tenure, the non-partisan philosophy that drives their work, and some of the issues they are most focused on at the moment. And he reveals a powerful personal story about overcoming mistakes in life. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2019

Transcript

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0:00.0	Anthony Romero believes that we are born with a sense of justice.
0:04.7	You go to a post office around Christmas time and you're standing on there to send mom or your
0:09.6	grandkids their presents and if you wait like me to the last minute it's a long
0:13.7	cue in the post office and if someone tries to jump that cue you know what's
0:19.8	going to happen there's going to be a melee an argument saying you can't do that. That ain't right. That's just not fair. That's not just.
0:27.0	Romero is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, otherwise known as the ACLU.
0:35.0	The innate core sense of what is proper, what is fair, what is just, isn't each and every single one of us.
0:43.0	And there are moments like the Muslim ban,
0:45.0	like the family separation issue.
0:48.0	When you tap into that core injustice
0:50.0	that resides in each and every single person,
0:52.0	I don't care who they are politically.
0:54.1	They just say that that's not right.
0:56.1	You can't do that.
0:56.8	You can't just ban Muslims from coming to this country.
0:59.4	That ain't right.
1:00.6	You can't take away kids from parents and deportation proceedings.
1:05.0	And that's exactly when we do our job right.
1:07.4	We're plucking at those core values that's in each and every single fair-minded person,
1:11.9	Republican or Democrat, rural or urban, doesn't matter.
1:16.0	We can get them.
1:17.0	Intrepid guardian of our civil liberties, Anthony Romero, on this 4th of July episode of what it takes.
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