Event: Public Talk
Speaker: Shenna Bellows, Executive Director, Maine Civil Liberties Union
Photo attached.
Sponsor: Downeast Humanists and Freethinkers
Date: Saturday, June 10, 2006
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Ellsworth Unitarian-Universalist Church
Contact: 565-3302
Why the Separation of Religion and Government Is Important to All of Us
Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, will speak on a topic that is of critical interest to every American who values the founding tradition of this country in the freedom of religion. The right of each and every American to practice his or her own religion or no religion at all is among the most fundamental of freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Freedom of religion flourishes only if the government leaves it alone.
From its very beginning, ours has been a nation that was settled by people escaping religious intolerance and persecution and seeking religious liberty. This has been a defining value of our country, pursued by generations of immigrants for nearly three centuries before we became an independent nation and in the two centuries since, and embodied in the Bill of Rights in the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Shenna will talk about the importance in our own day of this founding tradition.
Shenna Bellows has just celebrated her first anniversary as Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. She returned home to Maine, where she grew up, after spending two years as a National Field Organizer at the ACLU Legislative Office in D.C. In D.C., Shenna was a leader in post-9/11 issues, developing a field program around the Patriot Act, as well as working to defeat several constitutional amendments that would have undermined the criminal justice system, freedom of speech, and GLBT rights.
Prior to joining the ACLU family, Shenna served as Program Associate at Community IMPACT! in Nashville, TN, launching neighborhood-based, youth-centered programming in economically and racially diverse neighborhoods. She also served in the Peace Corps in La Arena de Chitre, Panama, where she facilitated the development and execution of a micro-credit lending program for artisan groups. From 1997 – 1999 Bellows worked as a researcher and recruiter for Economists Incorporated, a privately held economic consulting firm specializing in microeconomic analysis in antitrust, regulatory and legal contexts in Washington, DC.
Shenna is active in the Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition, the Women’s Leadership Action Coalition, and is on the founding board of the Christian Policy Institute.
She graduated magna cum laude from Middlebury College in Vermont with a degree in International Politics and Economics.
The Maine Civil Liberties Union (MCLU) was founded in 1968 with the purpose to advance and preserve civil liberties of Maine people through litigation, advocacy, public education and lobbying.
The MCLU follows these basic principles: the right of free expression; the right to dissent; the right to religious freedom; the right to equal treatment for all people; the right to fair play in encounters with government; and the right to be let alone, to be secure from interference in private matters.
The MCLU is the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).