A Year’s Work
Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube-nocookie.com.
A day after Donald Trump was elected president, the ACLU tweeted, “Should President-elect Donald Trump attempt to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we'll see him in court.” We kept to our promise, suing the Trump administration 54 times in his first 42 weeks in office...while keeping our supporters educated and engaged on social media along the way.
Fast forward to the first Friday of the Trump administration, the president issued a travel ban by executive order. ACLU and partner organizations filed a lawsuit, and protests cropped up at airports across the country. That Saturday, Americans were glued to social media tracking the latest developments in this fast-moving story. And most likely, they were following ACLU’s social media feeds.
That day, we brought live coverage from the airports and the courthouse. We provided Know Your Rights information to those who had loved ones detained. We helped build momentum for more protests. We thanked some of the new donors who contributed millions of dollars direct from social media. Our new supporters shared in our first victory against the worst impulses of the new administration.
By the end of the day, ACLU’s social media followers more than doubled, and a video announcing ACLU’s victory was viewed by more than 15 million people.
Throughout the year ACLU has had many fights to take on: Immigrants’ rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, LGBT rights, health care, and net neutrality are just some of the liberties that have been under attack. And Americans are anxious to find out what is happening and what they can do about it. That’s where the ACLU comes in.
We engage an audience of more than 3.5 million people across Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter through blogs, photos, and videos, as well as the occasionally snarky tweet.
By implementing a strategy that is part education, part activism, part news aggregation, the ACLU’s social media has proved a vital source for those fighting for a country that lives up to its promise of equality and justice for all.
