Ira Glasser is a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union and a lifelong defender of every citizen's right to free speech. Directors Nico Perrino, Chris Maltby, Aaron Reese Starring Mighty Iragoes shows scenes from Charlottesville and the death of Heather Heyer, which serves as the obvious bookend tale to Skokie. "One was a law banning anybody from marching in uniform. Maher laughed and said, Hes not talking about that., Glasser then said, more seriously, If youre hiring a lawyer to defend the First Amendment, you want to have a reasonable assumption that he likes the First Amendment. Thus, the owner of a newspaper could openly campaign for one candidate in the pages of his publication, but a wealthy individual could not provide equivalent support to the other candidate to allow him to respond. Shows likeCrossfirewere framed as earnest debates, where someone from the right (Pat Buchanan?) The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The spirit of Glasser and Stern's friendship, and their message that difference of opinion does not preclude understanding and. The ACLU receives no funding from the federal government. The HBO host then targeted what he sees as the problem. [2] He earned a graduate degree in mathematics from Ohio State University. Some supporters of expenditure limits believed that the purpose of campaign finance reform was not only to reduce corruption, but to enhance fair elections by giving all candidates equal access to the voters. Many other organizations, including the National Organization for Women, anti-tax groups, anti-abortion groups and others have been similarly cited - some for doing nothing more than publishing the voting records of members of Congress on the issues that concerned them. Reformers have been willing to tolerate these inequalities and the gross violations of free speech resulting from campaign finance laws because they thought it was important to lower the cost of election campaigns, reduce the influence of special interests and make the electoral system more accessible to challengers. He argues that partisanship has diminished the ACLU, dragging it leftward to the point of no longer defending those whose speech doesnt reflect their values.. Indeed, inequalities that unfairly benefit incumbents over challengers are built into laws that impose contribution limits. Susan Griffin. The central goal in talking and working with people who you dont agree with, notes Glasser, is to persuade them that there is a common interest between us.. One of the most telling scenes inMighty Irashows Buckley on TV, teeing off on the ACLU over Skokie. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Missouri woman cant watch her fathers execution, judge rules, ACLU pushes for court order over abysmal conditions in LA County Jail, The ACLUs latest step to becoming just another progressive scold at civil liberties expense, Arkansas cant ban treatment for transgender kids, appeals court rules. The shorthand outlines of that episode are known on Twitter, but the deeply thought-out reasons for the ACLUs actions back then belong to a pre-Internet era. Do you want every little town to decide which speech is permitted? Glasser asked. Over the years he and Buckley have . Its a generation that also saw the essentiality of free speech in fighting for racial justice, Perrino says. ), Hosea Williams from marching on Martin Luther King Day, Back To Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now, arresting 100,000 people in a single year, Patrick Lawrence: The Return of Non-Alignment, Sy Hersh: US Bombed Nord Stream to Prolong Ukraine Proxy War, The Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment, Chris Hedges: The Trump-Russia Saga and the Death Spiral of American Journalism, China Report Excoriates 'US Hegemony', War Crimes, CIA Coups 400 Foreign Interventions, Matt Taibbi: Twitter FilesGEC, New Knowledge, and State-Sponsored Blacklists. Terms Of Use, is no social justice movement in America that has ever not needed the First Amendment to initiate its movement for justice, to sustain its movement to justice, to help its movement survive," he says. We should insist that required campaign finance reports be filed in a uniform format on tape or disk so that they can be posted on the Internet and available to all interested individuals at once. Although the ACLU had protected civil liberties generally through litigation, Glasser expanded the focus of the ACLU's activities through lobbying and public education programs.[4]. The ACLU thought this sort of expenditure limitation was a clear violation of the First Amendment, and had no relationship to the legitimate purpose of reducing corruption. The ACLU has always believed that public disclosure of large campaign contributions, with the exceptions noted in Buckley, is the best check on corruption or the appearance of corruption in this area. "[Former Rep.] John Lewis said that without free speech and the right to dissent, the Civil Rights movement would have been a bird without wings. Alvin Fine, former Emanu-El rabbi, backed civil liberties, Home repair project? Diseo y fabricacin de reactores y equipo cientfico y de laboratorio If you give the government the power to stop the right-wing marching in the street, Glasser says, they will acquire the power to decide who they think is dangerous enough to stop.. Some of the report . Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. t206 walter johnson portrait; family jealous of my success Mighty Ira: Directed by Chris Maltby, Nico Perrino, Aaron Reese. Glasser was obsessed with the Dodgers as a kid, becoming a fan at the age of 9, in 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the team. Newspaper publishers could support Clark's opponent without limit, but Clark was prohibited from spending money to buy an ad in order to respond. No set of limits can possibly limit everything. took on someone from the left (Michael Kinsley? He got his start as an examiner in BuckleysFiring Lineshow, and could be heard introducing the premise of a debate between Glasser and Buckley: Resolved: the ACLU is full of baloney. It wasnt an accident that when CNN went looking for someone to play the liberal on its phony debate show, they picked someone with the correct pedigree (Cranbrook, Harvard, Oxford,The Washington Post) instead of a Flatbush type like Glasser. In the early 1960s, Glasser taught mathematics at Queens College (CUNY) and Sarah Lawrence College. Tune in. But a candidate of more modest means is prohibited from accepting more than $1000 from a wealthy supporter. Ira Glasser, 'Social justice requires free speech' FAN 329.4 Ira Glasser: "speech restrictions are like poison gas: They seem like a good weapon when you have the gas and a detested enemy is in your sights. One candidate gets an entire newspaper's support every day, while the other is denied even one page once during the campaign. Produced by Perrino and two of his FIRE colleagues, Chris Maltby and Aaron Reese, the film was released in October on the occasion of the ACLU centennial, and is now streaming on multiple platforms. The letter made no mention of the election and indeed the ACLU has never supported or opposed any candidate for elective office and is strictly nonpartisan. In October, Glasser spoke with. The ACLU is a nationwide, non-profit organization consisting of nearly 300,000 members dedicated to protecting the principles of freedom and liberty set forth in the Bill of Rights. Consider this hypothetical. the christ hospital human resources. ", https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/chrt.fm/track/35917C/d2h6a3ly6ooodw.cloudfront.net/reasontv_audio_8088607.mp3. Everybody says I believe in free speech, BUT. Ira Jeffrey Glass (/ a r /; born March 3, 1959) is an American public radio personality. The Supreme Court ultimately and properly struck down that aspect of the law in Buckley v. Valeo. Thats why we created Mighty Ira to tell the story of one man and a fading generation.. Thank you for the opportunity to present these views. Glasser, a down-to-earth liberal Jew from Brooklyn, made numerous appearances on Firing Line, the political debate show hosted by the aristocratic conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., and . After pausing to make a confused expression, he continued, In other words, before theyre gonna defend your free speech, they want to see what you say.. I love you, the 96-year-old Stern says. Responding against the resolution are Ira Glasser, ACLU executive director; Nadine Strossen, ACLU president; Leon Botstein, president of Bard College; and Barry Lynn, executive director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Theres a scene at the beginning ofMighty Ira,an elegant and thought-provoking documentary about longtime ACLU director Ira Glasser, where the movies eponymous hero walks along the grounds of Ebbets Field Apartments, home of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. You couldnt have one without the other, they argue. Everybodys in favor of free speech, as long as its theirs., Everybody has an exception, he explained. They have the ability to get themselves covered on television and in newspapers. So you were a head of this organization for 25 years, almost, from 1978 into this century, Maher began. It is this demand that is driving the need for the supply of money. This does not advance the goal of equality. I can make the same argument: that Ira's vote for Biden (which he admitted to) was a vote for drone-bombing Syrian children. But, the former head of the ACLU has been criticizing the political activities of the organization and cites the Georgia Ad. ", NEXT: Democrats Have a Massive To-Do List If Joe Biden Wins. This worsened the inequality of campaign financing. You dont like that. At the core of this reform was the imposition of limits on campaign contributions and expenditures. Although dicta in some of the opinions gave hope to both sides, the holdings themselves in Shrink left the law basically where it was before. "[3] At the end of Glasser's directorship the ACLU maintained staffed offices in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico; when he became director in 1978, only about half of the states had staffed offices. Mighty Ira. No, thats the government! he insisted. As a young person helping to read off test questions as my single mother prepared for the LSATs, I had a vague idea of it as a school of thought that believed strongly in the law and due process, and was concerned with protecting the rights of people without means or clout. This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. Moreover, there has been an increase, rather than a decrease, in inequality. However, it violated a federal campaign finance law, which effectively barred expenditures for such ads on the grounds that they might influence the upcoming presidential election by criticizing President Nixon and applauding one of his possible opponents, Senator McGovern. We need to get off that road now. If you grant the village of Skokie the right to ban hate speech, or require insurance bonds, or prevent anyone in a military uniform from marching, the constitutional edifice comes down and every town in the country will soon be making its own rules.

Dea Spanos Berberian Husband, Steve Richards Parkdean, Articles I