ACLU director warns of free speech erosion, privacy threats in Georgia

Correction 6:48 a.m. The story is being corrected to reflect Andrea Young’s correct age. She is 70 years old, whereas the story previously said 60. Attendance at the church was 75 people, according to the group that organized the event, Women’s Voices of Glynn County. The story previously said four dozen people were there.

BRUNSWICK — The Trump administration has transformed efforts to ensure that all Americans have equal access to opportunities and resources to realize their human potential into a form of discrimination, a prominent civil rights activist said Saturday. 

“We have a current administration that equates equity and inclusion with discrimination,” the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, Andrea Young, told an audience of 75, mostly older, people gathered at the St. Andrews Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Brunswick, in an event hosted by Women’s Voices of Glynn County.

Since inclusivity is “Georgia’s business model,” Young said, the state is poised to be especially harmed by the administration’s daily assault on immigrant rights and crackdown on so-called DEI and affirmative action standards in the state’s university system.

Young, the oldest child of famed civil rights activist, diplomat, and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, said the current administration has eroded — partly through the use of executive orders that bypass the legislative branch of government — the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. 

That corrosion, she said, was the reason she was speaking at the church, not at the College of Coastal Georgia, as originally scheduled.

To appear and deliver her remarks at the college, she said she was asked to sign a document promising she would not say anything “political.” That pledge would have meant, “I basically could not have given any remarks.” 

“These are perilous times,” she said.

The college issued no statement on the change of location of Young’s speech in Brunswick.

‘Coin of the realm’

With the chill on free, especially political, speech, the Thomasville-born Young said that helping ensure the right to vote, especially for those Georgians residing in Republican-dominated precincts across the state, was crucial for the ACLU of Georgia. 

“The right to vote is the coin of the realm. We have to be able to participate in our electoral process,” said the 70-year-old graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania who earned her law degree at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington.

Owing partly to the ACLU’s lobbying and educational efforts, the Georgia General Assembly, for the first time since 2016, did not during its recent session pass a bill making it harder for eligible voters to cast ballots. With midterm elections next year, her organization’s efforts to safeguard voting rights would accelerate, aided by hundreds of volunteers across the state, she said. 

“I cannot express how important the elections, both the primaries and the general election in 2026, will be. It will determine so much about how Georgia is governed, and the decisions that Georgia makes in terms of the well-being of our citizens.”

Resource for the ‘objectors’

Young said she and her Atlanta-based staff of 23, with their finite resources, have, like many Georgians, discussed how best to make a difference in this time of tumult and fast-paced change. 

“We came together as a staff, and said, ‘What can we do in this moment to really have an impact? What are our resources? What skills do we have?’” she recalled.

One answer, she said, was to explore ways to protect citizens’ privacy as social media companies, among others, vacuum up vast amounts of face, fingerprint, voice and other personal data without restraint.  

Another was to help ensure that the rights of those across Georgia who conduct peaceful protests are protected, as such protests, a form of constitutionally protected speech, also increasingly come under threat. 

One outcome was the decision to train 300 legal observers who can be deployed to observe and document demonstrations — a monitoring function she said benefits both demonstrators and law enforcement agencies.

While details and circumstances have varied, the mission of the ACLU of Georgia has changed little since the nonprofit, national civil rights organization was founded 105 years ago, eventually expanding to include affiliates in all 50 U.S. states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Said Young:

“We really want to be a resource to people who want to call attention to the fact that they object — that they object to the cruelty. They object to the abuse of power. They object to the violations of constitutional rights. We’re a long time to the next national election, but we can make our voices heard now.”