Can the ACLU become the NRA for the left?

In the 15 months that followed the election, the A.C.L.U.’s membership went from 400,000 to 1.84 million. Online donations in the years before averaged between $3 and $5 million annually. Since then, it has raised just shy of $120 million. “Until Trump,” Romero told me, “most of our support came from people who have been with us since we challenged Nixon. Now we’re kind of cool. Cool’s not a word generally associated with us.”

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In the latest string of celebrity fund-raisers, for instance, Radiohead announced that anyone who makes a $10 donation to the A.C.L.U. will be entered into a lottery to hang out with the band and get V.I.P. tickets to a show. Back in March 2017, Tom Hanks, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin were among the hosts for a Facebook Live telethon that raised more than half a million dollars and was nominated for an Emmy. That same spring, Zedd, a German house DJ, organized a benefit at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Gelernt was one of a handful of A.C.L.U. representatives who addressed thousands of fans between acts. “I went on after Imagine Dragons,” he told me. “It was insane. I put on sunglasses and went out there and started talking, and I couldn’t see anything. Then I go backstage, and these musicians who are practically my kids’ age are partying and asking what we’re doing to resist Trump. I was like, ‘Well, there’s an en banc hearing in the Fourth Circuit coming up.’ ”

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A big chunk of the money that the A.C.L.U. has raised has gone toward hiring more lawyers, both in the national office and throughout its network of 54 affiliates.

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