• Opposes the Patriot Act
• Deems anti-terrorism legislation an assault on civil liberties
• Sees war on terror as a pretext for American empire-building

Founded in November 2001, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) is a Northampton, Massachusetts-based group brought into existence for the sole purpose of working to overturn the Patriot Act -- on the grounds that it allegedly violates the civil liberties of Americans. 

Having spawned numerous regional and local groups that work under its umbrella, BORDC encourages the political leadership and citizenry of U.S. cities to avoid compliance with federal antiterrorism laws, most notably the Patriot Act.

BORDC provides a detailed, step-by-step blueprint for activists interested in getting their local towns, cities, and even college campuses to publicly declare their opposition to the Patriot Act, and to designate themselves "Civil Liberties Safe Zones." For example, BORDC urges aspiring activists to spread the anti-Patriot Act message via fliers, postcards, booklets, and press releases -- all available from BORDC. It also advises people to call or write to their senators and representatives in Washington. As of late March 2006, the governments of some 397 cities and 8 states had publicly declared their support for this agenda, dubbing themselves "Civil Liberties Safe Zones."

BORDC opposes the Patriot Act's designation of "material support for terror" as a crime, and its use of modern technologies to collect intelligence on potential or suspected terrorists. The group claims that the Patriot Act gives the government unrestricted access to private, personal information about Americans. But in fact, with appropriate warrants, the government already had access to such data before the enactment of the Patriot Act. BORDC also claims that free speech and free association have been infringed upon because the Patriot Act authorizes the government to monitor groups -- mosques and radical political organizations -- suspected of supporting terrorist activities.

BORDC protests the "racial profiling" of North Africans, Middle Easterners, and some Asians, likening it to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The organization has come to the defense of self-described radical attorney Lynne Stewart, convicted in 2005 on, among other counts, providing material support for terrorism. Although BORDC conceded that "Stewart may have erred by disregarding the prohibition against" facilitating communications between her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and Middle Eastern terrorist groups, it insisted "that delivering his message would do no harm." 

To raise funds, BORDC sells buttons, bumper stickers and other itmes bearing anti-Patriot Act slogans from its website. It also sells mock "Get Well" cards promoting the notion that the Bill of Rights is "sick," having been infected by the Patriot Act's allegedly virulent assault on civil liberties. BORDC also sells booklets summarizing what it calls "some of the more egregious provisions" of the Patriot Act.

Most of BORDC's operating funds come from foundations (54 percent) and individual donors (43 percent). The Open Society Institute (OSI) headed by George Soros gave the organization three grants totaling a combined $150,000 between 2004 and 2008. In 2005, the environmentalist C.S. Fund awarded a $25,000 grant to BORDC.

BORDC's principal activists are Irvine Sobelman (co-founder) and Nancy Talanian (co-founder and Director). Ms. Sobelman is a longtime leftist activist involved with groups such as the Greensboro Justice Fund. Ms. Talanian, who is the Editor of the BORDC newsletter, candidly expressed her fierce opposition to the Patriot Act in an April 2004 article lamenting “loss of privacy, a chilling of dissent and other First Amendment rights, and the targeting and mistreatment of people on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnic background.” 

Among BORDC’s national spokesmen is the actor Alec Baldwin. A notable BORDC official is board member Kit Gage. Formerly the Executive Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild, in 2003 Gage replaced Sami al-Arian as President of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom after al-Arian's arrest on a number of terrorism-related charges.

In collaboration with the Center for Constitutional Rights, BORDC has initiated the so-called "Guantanamo Reading Project," a community outreach effort aimed at focusing "attention on the shameful and unlawful detentions at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." BORDC credits the Rosenberg Fund for Children with having developed the idea of this Project. 

BORDC boasts of its connection to radical trade union groups, as well as to a number of leftist organizations devoted to limiting the federal government's efforts to prevent terrorism -- including the American Civil Liberties Union; several Christian, Jewish, and Universalist groups; and branches of the NAACP. A 2003 conference on grassroots organizing against the Patriot Act was co-sponsored by BORDC and the ACLU, and one of the event’s major financial backers was the Ford Foundation.

BORDC was a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter exhorting members of the U.S. Congress "to oppose the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA), also known as 'Patriot [Act] II,'" on grounds that it “would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights.” It endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act (CLRA) of 2004, which was introduced by Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Russell Feingold, Richard Durbin, and Jon Corzine, and Democratic Representatives Howard Berman and William Delahunt. The CLRA was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.