DETROIT — Rana Elmir began her career in the field of journalism with the hopes of telling the important stories that the media had ignored, particularly surrounding her own community. 

But after graduating from Wayne State University, her career took a different path than she had imagined. 

“I was reporting on things like rodeos, education board meetings, and gang shootings,” she said. “I felt like I was always just counting the bodies and not doing something bigger than myself, like I wasn’t part of the solution.” 

Elmir: “When the feds knock at your door you should be frightened, so it’s very important that we continue to be there for the Arab and Muslim communities.” PHOTO: Nick Meyer/TAAN

One such story involved covering a trial of a 16-year-old gang member in California who was forced to shoot blindly into a group of rival members as part of an initiation mission. The boy was sentenced in excess of 300 years in prison for his crime as a juvenile. 

The despair and hopelessness of the situation and others like it led Elmir to come back home to Michigan in search of a career in the non-profit communications sector.

One of her professors at Wayne State, local columnist Jack Lessenberry, suggested she apply with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan for a position as Communications Director at their Detroit office. 

Elmir, 28, who has worked with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan and the now-defunct Arab American Journal newspaper, jumped on the opportunity and was hired into America’s most prominent civil liberties watchdog organization in May 2006, one that she feels proud to represent and to continue working as part of the solution to the problems the country faces. 

She was particularly impressed by the work the ACLU did post-9/11. 

“For me, it really exemplifies who we are as an institution and why we’re important to the Arab and Muslim communities,” she said. 

“For the ACLU being able to come out at a time in which there was this call for unity in the country, as in ‘You’re either with us or against us’ and for us to still hold onto our principles to say, ‘Wait one moment, enacting these policies (such as the PATRIOT Act, wiretapping, etc.) makes us less American’ was important,” she said. 

Following the 9/11 attacks, the FBI sent out letters to immigrant Muslim men asking them to come in for voluntary interviews, but as Elmir said, when the FBI comes knocking, it doesn’t seem like a voluntary event to participants. The ACLU organized attorneys throughout southeast Michigan to make sure each Muslim interviewee could have an attorney with him for such visits. 

“When the feds knock at your door you should be frightened, so it’s very important that we continue to be there for the Arab and Muslim communities,” she said.

The ACLU has adopted a motto of “Safe and Free,” meaning that Americans shouldn’t have to give up freedoms in exchange for security. The idea was also applied in lawsuits following the attacks with the goal of upholding the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution and protecting the rights of Arab Americans and American Muslims who were the targets of suspicions and grave legal injustices following the attacks. 

Elmir, herself a Lebanese American Muslim living in Dearborn, said the ACLU’s position was in stark contrast to a higher-up at one of the media publications she worked at following the 9/11 attacks. 

“He told me that I was hired so that if another terrorist attack happened, they would have someone on the inside,” she said. 

“It didn’t feel good to know at the time that they were painting me with these broad strokes.” 

The ACLU found itself in another unique position in 2011, however, when they filed a legal brief on behalf of extremist Qur’an burning supervisor and pastor Terry Jones’ right to free speech. Jones was barred from visiting the Islamic Center of America and held on a $1 “peace bond” by the19th District Court in Dearborn before being released and barred from the center for three years. 

Elmir agreed with the ACLU’s decision to back Jones’ right to free speech and said that most of the Arab and Muslim community agreed in feedback she received, although some others did not. 

“I think you can vehemently disagree with someone and still speak out on his right to free speech,” she said. “I think it was beautiful that many people understood that you combat hate speech with more speech and not with censorship, so I was proud of the ACLU and the community’s response to that situation.” 

The ACLU of Michigan has a staff of about 21 people along with numerous lawyers offering pro-bono (voluntary) work for the organization. ACLU offices are in Detroit, Lansing, and Grand Rapids. 

The staff consists of attorneys,  lobbyists, field organizers and more. 

At any given time, Elmir says that the organization in Michigan has about 50 cases on the docket such as lawsuits or letters they’ve sent attempting to prevent abuses of power or violations of the Bill of Rights. They also keep an eye on new bills passing through the state legislature and discuss ways to rally support for or against them depending on how they may affect civil liberties. Widespread economic inequalities are also leading to a host of new problems on the civil liberties front, Elmir said.

Elmir’s daily duties include discussing cases and new threats to justice at staff meetings while also working one-on-one with attorneys before drafting and sending press releases to media as well as “action alerts” to the many thousands of ACLU members in Michigan. 

“I think everything I’ve learned in school and my practical experience through newspapers helped me learn how to give reporters exactly what they’re looking for,” she said. 

While her own situation in journalism wasn’t quite what she was hoping for, Elmir strongly encourages others to enter the field.

“I encourage all young people to pursue careers in journalism especially as Arabs and Muslims; we are marginalized in the medium and we need to frame our own story,” she said, adding that PR and communications careers are also important. 

For now, however, Elmir is content with her current job as an important voice in the fight to preserve and restore America’s rapidly-deteriorating civil liberties. 

“I’m in a unique position working at the ACLU, I recognize that part of our role is to continue to fight even when people throw their hands up and say, ‘I give up, it’s too much.'””The ACLU never thinks it’s too much and we’ll always be there, continuing to fight.” 

For more information on the ACLU of Michigan, visit www.aclumich.org.