We had our annual staff retreat today, at the beautiful lakeside camp of wonderful and generous supporters. In addition to swimming and snacking and enjoying on each other's company, we took some time to reflect on what we achieved individually and as an organization over the past year. Reflecting back is not something that I generally spend a lot of time on, but as we worked through our lists I was taken by what a good year the ACLU of Maine has had since last summer.
We lead the successful people's veto effort that protected the rights of Mainers to register to vote on election day. We successfully lobbied against dozens of bills that would have made our criminal justice system more punitive and less humane, and we successfully lobbied in a support of a bill (that we co-wrote) that will protect students from bullying. Our legal program fought for gender equality, fair treatment for immigrants, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishments. We taught lessons on the Bill of Rights to hundreds of high school students across the state, and we brought together coalitions of advocates to work towards common goals. We are also helping lead the fight for marriage equality in Maine, and hopefully at next year's retreat we will be able to count among our successes that loving committed couples in Maine have the freedom to marry.
The readers of this blog may be members of the ACLU of Maine, or donors, or just people who are interested in what we are doing. Whoever you are, thank you for all you did to contribute to our successes this past year. I'm already excited for the next one.
