ACLU by the Numbers, Part I

The ACLU online team has put together an index to show how important the ACLU has been over its 90 years of defending the Constitution — and how many challenges we still have in front of us. We'll be posting more of these factoids for the rest of the year:

Number of online messages ACLU activists sent to Congress and the Obama administration in 2009: 1,208,466

Number of students in the Pittsburgh school district that will finally receive comprehensive sex education after pressure from the ACLU to stop teaching an abstinence-only curriculum: 28,000 students in 66 schools

Year the ACLU first defended reproductive freedom: 1928

Number of schools where the ACLU has intervened after school officials tried to ban or treat gay-straight alliance clubs differently from other school clubs in the last five years: 36

Number of those schools that succeeded in banning or discriminating against gay-straight alliance clubs: 0

Miles of documents about the Bush torture program obtained through the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits: 20.5

Number of victims of the Bush torture program who have had their day in court: 0

Percent of our 2010 budget that the ACLU stands to lose as a result of losing our largest individual donor due to financial circumstances: 25

Number of days you have left to make a year-end donation to the ACLU: 3

We hope you'll join us in defending our freedoms for the coming year. Donate today!