Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD)

History

In 1960, the National Committee to Abolish HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee) was founded by activist Frank Wilkinson who was imprisoned for a year for contempt of Congress after he refused to testify to the committee. ²

In the late 1960s, it became the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL) with a broader focus, including repealing the 1968 Anti-riot Act and repealing the Emergency Detention Act, Title II of the Internal Security Subversive Activities Control Board. ³

In 1975, the HUAC was abolished. ⁴

In 2007, NCARL merged with First Amendment Foundation and the name was changed to the Defending Dissent Foundation (DDF). ⁵ DDF focused on the right to dissent through public education and direct lobbying to support First Amendment rights. ⁶

In 2015, the Defending Dissent Foundation merged with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and became Defending Rights & Dissent (DRAD), ⁷ with common goals to fight government surveillance of individuals and groups and to defend the right to protest. ⁸

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) was founded in 2001 in Northampton, Massachusetts to fight the Patriot Act which was passed after the terrorist attacks of September 11th to expand the government’s surveillance capabilities. BORDC became a national organization and provided support for local activism against the PATRIOT Act. It continued to expand its focus to include activism against other federal bureaucracies to prohibit or limit their rights to surveillance. ⁷

DRAD’s activities include educating the public on their civil rights through presentations and online forums, encouraging grassroots organizing, and campaigning and communicating with local and federal governments for change. ¹

In June 2025, DRAD participated in organizing or supporting protests branded under the “#NoKings” banner, a national day of demonstrations positioned as a defense of democratic norms against Donald Trump. These events were part of a larger mobilization involving over 70 Democratic Party affiliates and allied organizations across at least 19 U.S. states and multiple international locations, according to publicly available event listings on Mobilize.us, a Democratic Party-aligned organizing platform. ^{9 10}

Programs

Investigate the FBI is a national campaign asking Congress to investigate the FBI for allegedly spying on activists, activist groups, and protesters. ¹¹

The Walls of Resistance program includes encouraging people to work with their communities to pass local legislation that prohibits local law enforcement from discriminatory profiling, investigating social media accounts, undercover infiltration or spying on activist groups, restricting protests, and over-policing. ¹² DRAD has developed templates for sample ordinances, guides, and toolkits to support local grassroots campaigns. ¹³

The Defend the Right to Protest program includes fighting against bills that limit the right to protest, endorsing legislation that protects that right, and publishing articles when this right is perceived to be violated. DRAD provides an anti-protest legislation toolkit online to encourage campaigns on a local level. ¹⁴

Campaigns

In March 2023, Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD) participated in the campaign to drop the domestic terrorism charges against the “Stop Cop City” protestors. ¹⁵ EAarlier in March of that year, several of these protestors were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism as peaceful protests became violent at the site of the new police and fire training facility in Atlanta, Georgia, branded “cop city” by its antagonists. ¹⁶

As of March 2023, DRAD was also campaigning to end Section 702 which was set to come up for renewal by Congress later in 2023. DRAD was encouraging individuals to send a message to their representatives. ¹⁷ Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows warrantless surveillance of communications to and from a foreign target. Protestors of Section 702 claim that this allows surveillance of any U.S. citizen who communicates with the foreign target. ¹⁸

DRAD led a campaign to have the sentence of Daniel Hale, a former intelligence analyst who leaked classified information to the press, commuted, encouraging individuals to sign on to a letter to President Biden. ¹⁹ Hale had pleaded guilty to retaining and sharing with a reporter classified national defense information pertaining to drone strikes. ²⁰

In April 2022, DRAD filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Defense, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency under the Freedom of Information Act seeking to compel the agencies to produce records related to the U.S. drone program associated with the investigation of Hale’s whistleblowing. ²¹

Financials

According to its 2023 990 form, Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD) reported a revenue of $1,379,891, expenses of $1,198,452, and total assets of $1,919,641. ²²

Funding

DRAD’s 2019 and 2020 donors include left-of-center organizations Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, NEO Philanthropy, Proteus Fund, Schwab Charitable Fund, Spectemur Agendo, Tides Center, and Tides Foundation. ²³

Foundation partners listed on the group’s website include Craigslist Charitable Fund, CS Fund, and Common Counsel Foundation. ²⁴

Leadership

Sue Udry is the executive director of Defending Rights and Dissent. She was previously the executive director of Bill of Rights Defense Committee and continued after the merger and creation of Defending Rights & Dissent. Previously she was the grassroots lobbying coordinator for United for Peace and Justice. ²⁵

Shannon Al-Wakeel is the co-president of the board of directors. They also work as an attorney for Stanford Law School and is the is executive director of the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law. She was previously the founder and executive director of Muslim Justice League in 2014. She also worked as Kaufman Fellow for the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s Immigrants Protection Project, the state policy director for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and worked for the Northeastern Law School’s Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration. ²⁶

Sascha Meinrath is the co-president of the board of directors. He has been Palmer chair in telecommunications at Penn State since 2015 and director of X-Lab, a Penn State-funded think tank that focuses on technologies and public policy since 2014. He serves as a board member for the Brave New Software Foundation which is focused on keeping the internet open and decentralized, ²⁷ Acorn Active Media Foundation which develops software for activists, ²⁸ and Fourth Amendment Advisory Committee which is a project of the Demand Progress Education Fund. ²⁹ He is also a member of the advisory council for Whistleblower Aid. Previously he was vice president of the New America Foundation. He was elected as an Ashoka Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship in 2012. ^{30 31}

Shahid Buttar is a board member and the former executive director of BORDC. ³² In 2022, he ran for election to the U.S. House as a Democrat to represent California and lost. ³³ His platform included defunding the police, demilitarizing the country, dismantling mass surveillance, the Green New Deal, and government-provided health care for all. ³⁴