The American Civil Liberties Union's membership spiked after President Donald Trump's election, prompting The New York Times Magazine to ask if the organization could become the left's equivalent of the National Rifle Association.
In his 2016 book, "Engines of Liberty: How Citizen Movements Succeed," ACLU national legal director David Cole quotes former NRA president David Keene, who once said: "The power of the National Rifle Association doesn't come from money, which doesn't mean we don't have to spend money, because we do. But it comes from votes. It comes from the people."
Keene also said that politicians can raise funds from a number of places, "but if you tell a politician you've got 8,000 members in his district, he's willing to think about things other than money."
The ACLU is "obviously different," Cole added. "They're a single-issue group, and we cover the whole waterfront. Their yearly budget is around $300 million. Ours is bigger this year, but generally it's been around $130 million."
Since Trump assumed office, the ACLU's membership increased from 400,000 to 1.85 million, its online donations jumped from between $3 to 5 million per year to just under $120 million, and it has taken 170 "Trump-related legal actions."
Dennis Burke, a one-time aide to former Arizona Democratic Senator Dennis DeConcini, agreed. "I don't think [politicians] care about the contributions they get from the NRA," he told Cole.
"They care about the piles of mail, these nasty calls and people picketing their state offices. Politicians are risk-averse."
Cole said that what the NRA has, "which the rest of us should understand and try to emulate, is that when they put out the bat signal, their members respond," and the reason why is that "they have something tangible they are afraid they'll lose: their guns."
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