Civil Liberties

Darcy Burner and Sal Munglia from ACLU Washington will be on a panel about the attack on our civil liberties. Burner, a congressional candidate from Washington's 8th District, has been outspoken lately on the Bush Administration's attacks on our Constitutional rights, the FISA controversy and the Patriot Act. The panel will be moderated by Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign.

About our panelists:

• Darcy Burner is running for Congress in Washington's 8th Congressional District. She has spoken out about the attack on our civil liberties and is making this an issue in her campaign. Watch her speak on the FISA bill.
• Salvador A. Mungia is a partner in the Tacoma office of the law firm of Gordon, Thomas, Honeywell. He graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1984 with honors. He has been a cooperating attorney with the ACLU-W since 1986 and served on the Board of Directors of the Washington State ACLU from 1987 to 1992. As an ACLU cooperating attorney, he has litigated prisoner right and first amendment cases. In November of 2002, he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Guillen v. Pierce County, a case involving Congress' authority under the spending and commerce clauses. He has taught constitutional law and judicial processes as an adjunt professor at Pacific Lutheran University. Mr. Mungia served as a Commissioner on the Tacoma Human Rights Commission from 1990 to 1996.

• Bill Moyer is the Executive Director and co-founded the Backbone Campaign in 2003. The Backbone Campaign's organizing during the 2004 Democratic Party caucuses in Washington State resulted in nearly verbatim adoption of Backbone Campaign civil liberties language in the King County and Washington State party platforms. They followed that by sending two activists to the DNC Platform Hearings in Hollywood, Florida with a couple frequent flyer tickets, a pile of Backbone Platform documents, and beer money. Those activists got written up in The Nation magazine for instigating a minor uprising when party rank and file delegateswere pitted against the overly cautious leadership who insisted on weaker civil liberties language.