Special Report
ON THE COVER
'Miracle Worker'
Michigan ACLU head grows agency's influence.
Judith Doner Berne
Special to the Jewish News
K
ary Moss was especially busy during the eight
years of the Bush administration.
As executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, the Ann Arbor law-
yer, wife and mother oversaw a significant expansion of
the statewide civil rights organization.
"The abuse of power by the Bush administration was
doing permanent damage to our [legal] system:' Moss
says. "Our membership tripled. They came to us in
droves."
Moss directed the ACLU's response, launching pro-
grams addressing the problems of racial profiling, auto-
matic removal of voters from the election rolls, uniform
standards for the state's public defender system and a
myriad of educational reforms.
High on her list right now is giving Michigan school-
children the right, not just the availability, of an educa-
tion. "Some states have in their constitutions the right to
an education:' she says. "We don't have that in Michigan."
Here, Moss says, "a child can be expelled or suspended
and there's no remedy. That's a problem with huge social
and financial consequences."
Her leadership has propelled the ACLU of Michigan
into a highly select group of affiliates eligible for funding
by the National ACLU.
"Should we reach our fundraising benchmarks over the
next four years, we will get approximately $2.5 million in
total," Moss says.
So far, the grants from the National ACLU covered
transaction costs of their September move to larger
headquarters at 2966 Woodward, two blocks south of
Orchestra Hall, and the hiring of two new staff attorneys
(See related story).
"We are the only civil rights group in the state to have
a full-time lobbyist [former Birmingham school board
trustee Shell Weisberg] working in Lansing': Moss says.
"We started with about 15 employees. At the end of the
expansion, if successful, we'll have 25 and an additional
office in Grand Rapids."
The Way Up
"She's a miracle worker:' says Federal Judge Avern Cohn.
"She's carried the Michigan ACLU to new heights of suc-
cess and importance in the life of the state. The reputa-
tion that the organization has is a personification of her
effectiveness."
Moss, 50, grew up in Southfield; she graduated
Southfield-Lathrup High School and Michigan State
University before moving to New York City to gain a
master's degree in international affairs from Columbia
University and a law degree from the City University of
New York at Queens College.
After working as a staff attorney with the ACLU
Women's Rights Project in New York, she returned to the
Detroit area "to be closer to my family."
It was Moss' grandfather, a Polish immigrant who
Kary Moss: "Often, we want the same things as our
opponents want, but we disagree on how to get there."
worked as a presser at Tip Top Tailors and was a union
organizer, who influenced her civil rights career.
"What stands out most for me — he passed away when
I was a teenager — was his passion for the problems of
the world," she says. "Debates were constant and impas-
sioned. I would sit under the kitchen table when family
gathered around and listen."
She doesn't mind her regular commute to Detroit
from Ann Arbor where she lives with husband, Doug
Baker, a lawyer in the Michigan attorney general's office,
and daughter Jessa, 18, who is taking a year off before
heading to either Kalamazoo College or Smith College
in Massachusetts. They are members of the Ann Arbor
Jewish Cultural Society.
Neither does she mind the constant traveling across the
state to the ACLU of Michigan's nine volunteer-maimed
branches. "I love the people I work with. I love our pas-
sionate members who are smart and thoughtful," says
Moss. "I've gone through many a car."
ACLU Critics
Of course, the ACLU has its detractors, including Oakland
County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.
"I respect her and the organization greatly for their
stated intent and goals — they defend all of our civil lib-
erties," Bouchard says. "But we often find ourselves on the
other side of the fence."
He says the Michigan ACLU "tried time and time again"
to overturn the Sex Offender Registration Act passed in
1994, which Bouchard successfully championed when he
represented the 13th State Senate District in Lansing.
As a former police officer, state senator and now
county sheriff, "My role is to look out for actual victims':
Bouchard says. "The way it plays out in the real world,
they [the ACLU] might not understand."
The Michigan ACLU has also been strongly against
"warrantless" wiretapping, which Bouchard says has been
overblown. "It is still very, very difficult to get wiretaps,"
he says. "If we have the zeal and vigor to go after orga-
nized crime [by wiretapping], why is it wrong to use that
against terrorists?"
"Much of our work has been poorly characterized;'
Moss says, since it's the ACLU's lawsuits that make front-
page headlines. "There are a number of ways we can pro-
tect the Constitution.
Lawsuits can sometimes get us where we want, but not
always. Our goals can also be realized through legislative
advocacy and political influence.
"A big priority," Moss says, "is to build bridges and find
common ground. Often, we want the same things as our
opponents want, but we disagree on how to get there.
"I try to find the way we can unite for the greater good."
"Although we may sometimes have different perspec-
tives on national security issues': says Barbara McQuade,
deputy chief of the National Security Unit of the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Detroit, "Kary can always persuade
me that we have more in common than not."
And Its Defenders
"Kary Moss has provided authentic and strong leadership
to the struggle to preserve the Bill of Rights, at a time
when it has been under the most intense attack it has
seen in over 50 years, says longtime Detroit civil rights
attorney Bill Goodman.
"These have not been easy times to stand up to racial
profiling, warrantless wiretaps and indefinite detention
— all done under the banner of the 'war on terrorism';'
Goodman says. "Kary has been a leader when being so
has required courage and strength. She and the ACLU are
to be congratulated."
"I've known Kary for many years now and have been
a witness to a leadership that she's offered," seconds Alan
E. Schwartz, founder of the Honigman Miller Schwartz &
Cohn law firm in Detroit.
She's done "a remarkable job in a position that is often
very difficult" — protecting the civil liberty rights of
citizens which other interests may appear to override, he
says.
"She's always been firm and strong in her belief that
civil liberties are the cornerstone of our democracy and
our culture Schwartz says. "She has been very important
to her community"
In 1998, Harvard Law School selected Moss as a
'Miracle Worker' on page A20
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