(Anaheim, Calif. – 11/25/13) – Last weekend, the Greater LA area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) was excited to host Glenn Greenwald at its 17th-annual banquet. A leading voice in the media on civil liberties, Greenwald delivered an earnest keynote address in which he underscored the value of CAIR's work in safeguarding the constitutional rights of all citizens.
"By allowing [civil rights abuses] to happen to American Muslims now, we allow the civil liberties of all Americans to be degraded and threatened,” Greenwald said in his keynote address. “That’s why I really think that there’s no more patriotic work than the work that CAIR does which is defending the civil liberties of American Muslims, which in reality is tantamount to defending the core constitutional liberties of all Americans and ultimately defending the defining attributes of the United States.”
Greenwald added that “when it comes to organizations that are standing up for these political values, there really are none more effective and more steadfast than CAIR.”
SEE: Glenn Greenwald's speech at CAIR-LA's 17th-annual banquet
An American journalist, political commentator, lawyer, and author, Greenwald covered national security and civil liberties as a columnist for The Guardian from August 2012 to October 2013. He made international headlines earlier this year because he was among the first reporters to expose the National Security Agency’s massive electronic surveillance program through a series of exclusive interviews with Edward Snowden. The former intelligence analyst leaked details of the program to the press in what is now known as one of the most significant leaks in U.S. history.
Greenwald left The Guardian newspaper in October to join a new media venture, backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, with long-time journalist Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill of The Nation.