Key Wiki is an excellent resource for all communist/leftist people and organizations. Started by Trevor Loudon in NZ. A good FRiend told me about it. The bit below is just a small part of the entry about the ACLU.
https://www.keywiki.org/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
History of the American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a long and both controversial and troubled history since its founding about the time of World War One.
Over the decades, the national ACLU, and some of its major state/local affiliates, have been active supporters of the Communist Party USA CPUSA and other anti-American communist groups under the guise of “free speech” and “freedom of association.” The fact that top CPUSA members were often leaders of the ACLU, especially as “Officers” or members of the “Board of Directors”, helped to explain the various political shifts of that organization from the political center to the far-left. The purge of one key CPUSA member in the 1940’s, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, helped to expose the deep penetration of that organization by the CPUSA, and led to the resignation of other covert CPUSA members and sympathizers. This action opened up a wide debate within the ACLU and even the legal field that continued on for decades until a radical & guilt-ridden-liberal dominated group apologized for the purge of communists. Template:CITATIONS.
While many local, state and even the national office of the ACLU were made up of sincere liberal believers in the Constitution, and defended many controversial, if not outright loathsome individuals and organizations regarding “free speech” and “free association”, the communists and their sympathizers used the “First Amendment” to undermine the internal security of the United States time after time (which will be detailed as this site is built).
One will find that national ACLU lawyers and their arguments on internal security laws, paralleled almost to the word the position of many CPUSA fronts including the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee/House Internal Security Committee (NCAHUAC/HISC)which later became the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL); the congressionally identified CPUSA front, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG); and the NLG-off-shoot, the even-more-dangerous Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), as well as the strictly CPUSA legal front, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC), originally known as the National Emergency Civil Liberties Union (NECLU).
Other CPUSA fronts that often had ACLU support were the Citizens Committee for Civil Liberties (CCCL); the Civil Rights Congress (CRC); the International Labor Defense (ILD); the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties (NFCL); the National Negro Congress (NNC); the National Committee to Defeat the Mundt Bill; the National Committee to Defeat the McCarren Act; and the National Assembly for Democratic Rights (NADR), among a host of lesser CP operations.[1].
Founded on and survived on Marxist totalitarian principles. ACLU has always been richly funded. Wiki makes it sound like they are supported by a local grassroots base but, just like extreme Left politics of today, they have always found support among the super rich.
I have never really understood the motivation of the money class. Is it guilt? Is it hopes that they will receive a seat at the table or at least be given a pass? Is it desire for control? The money class could have learned from Lenin and Hitler; apparently they didn't.
In the post WWII era the organization attracted many civil libertarians - for example Alan Dershowitz; he now says, loosely quoted, the ACLU has abandoned their libertarian ideals in favor of power. --- Things never really change.