No Battle Stays Won

We bring legal cases in state and federal court to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of people in Maine, and to help shape the development of the law. During my time at the ACLU of Maine, I’ve represented artists, immigrants, journalists, pregnant women, protesters, students, whistleblowers, and worshippers. 

I’ve been with the ACLU of Maine for fourteen years. After Bowdoin, I went to graduate school in English at the University of Florida, and then I went to law school at Boston College Law School (with a number of other Bowdoin graduates, including Nick Nowak ’94 and Meredith Leary ’96). I returned to Maine to clerk on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court for the Honorable Susan Calkins, and I then briefly worked for a law firm in Boston. From my first year of law school, I knew that I wanted to do public interest work, so working at the ACLU was (and is) a dream job.

Because of its emphasis on the common good, I think Bowdoin attracts people who are politically engaged, curious about the world around them, and interested in trying to make a difference—for some, as a career, and for others as active members of their community. That was true of abolitionists in the nineteenth century, civil rights advocates and environmentalists in the twentieth century, and it continues to be true today. My wife, Alisha Goldblatt ’95, is a middle school English teacher and for her, making a difference means inspiring her students to be critical thinkers and to have compassion. For my brother, Greg Heiden ’97, it means working to protect consumers. For friends like Liz Sheehan ’96 and Christina Minicucci ’96, it means running for local office. 

We work on both national and local issues. Here in Maine, we have been trying to shrink the size of the criminal justice system, and we have been fighting to ensure that people have access to abortion care regardless of where they live or how much money they make. When I first started in 2004, much of our national work involved responding to the post-9/11 assault on civil liberties, particularly general surveillance of ordinary communications and targeted surveillance of Muslims and anti-war activists. We’ve been revisiting that work recently, as well as focusing on oversight and accountability for Customs and Border Protection, our nation’s largest law-enforcement agency. There is a saying at the ACLU that no battle stays won. Most people assumed, for example, that the right to access contraception was a settled legal question, but now we are seeing new efforts to limit even that.

Technology can enhance our basic human rights just as surely as it can threaten them.  

The ACLU has experienced incredible growth in response to the current political climate—new members and new staff, to respond to the new (and not-so-new) challenges our country is facing. Our Maine office was four people when I started, and now we are twelve. In addition to litigators, we have a public policy team that works on legislative issues, communications professionals who help tell our clients’ stories, and development and operations staff that keep things running smoothly. In our legal department, we have a researcher—an anthropologist by training—who helps deepen our understanding of the problems we are approaching.

The ACLU’s fifty-three state affiliates are a key tool for achieving the organization’s goals. No other advocacy organization has such a broad state-level presence to complement their national organization, and we try to make the most of it. Sometimes, that takes the form of co-counseling with lawyers in our national legal projects, as in our challenge to a Maine law that makes it a crime for advanced-practice clinicians (advanced-practice registered nurses, for example) to perform an abortion. Or, it might mean taking action on the same topic on the same day all across the country, as in our public document requests about the implementation of the Muslim travel ban. If you are a member of the ACLU, you are also a member of your state ACLU affiliate. Our members are an important source of political power across the country, including here in Maine.

If you are interested in entering the nonprofit advocacy world, you’ve probably already thought about what issues motivate you, but it is just as important to think about how you like to spend your day. You are forgoing the chance to make more money in order to do things that are rewarding in different ways. So, you owe it to yourself to think about what you find rewarding: do you like talking to people? arguing with people? would you rather spend your days alone in your office researching and writing? There are public interest advocacy jobs for every type of person, but nobody can tell you what type of person you are.

I can’t put into words how heartening it has been over the past couple of years to see people of all ages showing up for rallies and protests. Those events take place in physical spaces, but the planning and organizing of them often takes place in cyberspace, using social media platforms. Technology can enhance our basic human rights just as surely as it can threaten them.  

Many of my clients have experienced true pain in their lives: addiction, homelessness, frequent interaction with the criminal justice system. And, many of them are smart and creative and compassionate, like my Bowdoin classmates. The education and opportunity that Bowdoin gave to us allows us to make choices about the work we do and the concerns that shape our day—choices that many of my clients have never had. I feel incredibly fortunate that I get to spend my days doing work that is consistent with my values. I have never for one second regretted my decision to be a public interest lawyer.

This story first appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of Bowdoin Magazine. Manage your subscription and see other stories here.