American Civil Liberties Union:

Send your Letter to the Editor

To create and send your letter, just follow these easy steps:

-- Use your Zip Code to find publications in your region.
-- Choose which newspaper will receive your Letter via email.
-- Compose your Letter -- in your own words -- and click Send.

Tips for writing a letter to the editor:

Make it your own -- If you're using the talking points, be sure to change or add to it so it’s YOUR letter. Papers are not likely to publish a letter that has been sent in by multiple people.

Keep it short -- Most papers have a 150 to 250 word limit and readers are more likely to focus on short, to-the-point letters than long wordy ones. Also, be sure to include your daytime and evening phone numbers at the end of your letter. Many newspapers will call you back to confirm that you are the author of your letter and will not print it without this information!

Step 1 - Select a Recipient

Select the newspaper you want to write below, and we'll open a window for you to write your letter to the editor.

Step 2 - Write your message

Subject:

Your Letter:

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Phone

Click on a point to add it to the letter.

• Several convicted terrorists have been prosecuted and successfully incarcerated in high-security federal prisons -- including Colorado's Supermax facility -- without posing any risk to the public's safety, including Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik convicted in the first World Trade Center attacks.

• Our justice system, although not perfect, is the best in the world. It is fully capable of handling sensitive national security issues without compromising fundamental rights.

• The federal prison system has proven time and again that it is capable of holding convicted terrorists. Some of the convicted terrorists in federal prisons include Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik convicted in the first World Trade Center attacks and Richard Reid, known as the 'shoe bomber.'

• Dangerous criminals who have committed horrible crimes are locked up in prisons all over this country every day and nobody wages campaigns objecting to that. This is clearly a politically motivated fear-mongering effort from those who wish to perpetuate the Bush administration's failed illegal detention policies.

• It was the Bush administration's detention and torture policies that made us less safe and more reviled by the Muslim world. Former President Bush's torture and detention policies certainly radicalized many individuals across the Muslim world, and President Obama's executive orders are a first step to defusing that hatred and giving us an America we can be proud of again.

• Guantánamo and the sham military commissions are more likely to produce terrorists – both those detained in Guantánamo and elsewhere – than adherence to the rule of law and a return to American values.

• The Pentagon’s own reports on detainees who have returned to the battlefield are unreliable and false according to its own data and prior reports, sometimes including duplicate names, names of people who never at Guantánamo and people who have never left their homelands.