They also sensitized us to the unintended effects of campaign finance reforms. However, we support public financing that would establish a floor of support for candidates to communicate with voters. final four 2022 euroleague tickets. He is the host and producer of the radio and television series This American Life and has participated in other NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation.His work in radio and television has won him awards, such as the Edward R. Murrow Award for . This was theWest Wingera, which depicted politics as a gang of sanctimonious upper-class pseudo-intellectuals rescuing humanity by huffing their own farts and coming up with genius ideas like slashing Social Security to protect FDRs legacy. The fact that a generation of Obama and Biden officials had their worldviews shaped by that asswipe atrocity of a soap opera (as did media figures like Lawrence ODonnell and longstandingVoxbuddy movie Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias) should tell you everything you need to know about what happened to liberalism during those years. Because the work of Glasser and his cohorts occurred largely before the internet age, Their ideas, their writings and their lifes work are harder to discover, Perrino says. "When people say they want to ban hate speech, what they mean is they want to ban speech that they hate . The road we have been traveling - the road of limits on contributions and expenditures - is full of constitutional landmines and is inherently unfair. 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. Glasser is best known for his leadership of the ACLU after the organizations much-pilloried decision to represent neo-Nazis who wanted to march in a suburb of Chicago called Skokie, Illinois. At the time, in 2017, Perrino was a couple of . The spirit of Glasser and Stern's friendship, and their message that difference of opinion does not preclude understanding and. It was replaced by a marketing campaign that before long saw almost complete reversals on everything from war to deficits to surveillance to financial bailouts leaving America in such a weird place politically that Donald Trump, famous until then solely as a rich pig who fired people for fun, could successfully paint his Democratic challenger as a tool of the wealthy. The discussion ended up being an exercise in mutual puzzlement. One candidate gets an entire newspaper's support every day, while the other is denied even one page once during the campaign. Glasser won the argument then, narrowly, overcoming significant opposition within his own organization. ), but this WWE-style format always had the conservative on the attack while the liberal was always retreating and apologizing. The former head of the American Civil Liberties Union has ripped the group for no longer defending all free speech claiming it now cherry-picks cases that fit a new "progressive" agenda. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Bill Clinton supposedly changed all of this. Its imperative for us to know the history that led Ira and his colleagues to take their positions and stake out their values, he adds. This was the joke of the eighties sitcomFamily Ties, which lampooned American liberalisms assumption that it had a hegemonic grip on bothyouth and cool. Not only were liberals over-educated dolts who loosed child killers on the world, they were wimps. I've written before about the newish movie " Mighty Ira ", a documentary about former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) head Ira Glasser and his involvement in civil-liberties litigation in the 1970s (see my posts here and here ). Glasser later explained, The ACLU has become, not totally but theyve become more of a political, partisan, what they call progressive organization.. The ACLU defended the Nazis' right to march and won the case on First Amendment grounds, but at a high cost: 30,000 members quit the organization in protest. 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. His life was the subject of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira. 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.. Other voices in the film include acclaimed public-interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson (founder of the Equal Justice Initiative), Michael Meyers (leader of the New York Civil Rights Coalition), the aforementioned Siegel (former NYCLU lawyer) and many others with hands-on experience in linking, and fighting for, the civil rights of all Americans as the principle under which they are legally united. Inequalities are thus created in the name of equality, unfair advantages are institutionalized in the name of fairness and some forms of political speech are protected while other forms are criminalized. Skokie was home to thousands of Jews, including many survivors of the Holocaust, to whom the mere idea of Nazis walking past their door evoked not only the terrors of the camps, but the shame and regret of inaction as Hitlers party ascended in Germany. In a statement relevant to the political tensions of today, Perrino adds, Its a generation that also knew it had to engage their ideological opponents in debate, to speak across lines of difference, in order to win their values something Ira did repeatedly with his sparring partner and friend, William F. Buckley Jr.. Nonetheless, the Federal Election Commission, which was created in 1974 by FECA, tried to cite the ACLU for violating the law during the 1980s because we criticized President Reagan in direct mail fundraising solicitations to our own members! Lee Camp: How Corporate America Supports Racism, Hatred & Exploitation (in New & Fun Ways! They have not - and cannot - prevent corruption and they necessarily enhance inequality and therefore make elections more unfair. You see a flag burning. The organization held a unique place in American society, Kennedy told him, dedicated to neither right nor left, but to defending the root ideas that held us together. Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. In 1967, Glasser joined the New York Civil Liberties Union as associate director. Ira Jeffrey Glass (/ a r /; born March 3, 1959) is an American public radio personality. 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. But a candidate of more modest means is prohibited from accepting more than $1000 from a wealthy supporter. Main Menu. The reality is that Skokie could have and probably would have ended in much the same way, had Collin chosen to march. The documentary includes 99-year-old Berkeley resident Ben Stern, a Holocaust survivor who, in the late 1970s, tirelessly contested the ACLUs position on the Skokie case. At a time of deep political polarization, Mighty Ira also shows that our ideological differences do not have to make us enemies of one another. They just produced a couple of years ago new guidelines for their lawyers to use when deciding what free speech cases to take, the ex-ACLU man explained. His life was the subject of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira (his nickname). It was a stalwart defender of free speech and civil liberties. 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. But the problem is there isnt any other ACLU., And if there isnt somebody whos prepared to defend what you say [Glasser pointed at Maher], and prepared to defend what the Nazis say, Glasser warned, then the government gets to decide who can speak.. While he defended the right for an organization to change, he warned, But the problem is, there isnt any other ACLU.. The HBO host continued, Can I show a quote from the current head [of the ACLU] , Anthony Romero, he said I reject that we need an entrance exam on civil liberties to establish the bona fides needed to work here., What? Maher wondered aloud. The honor roll included Senator George McGovern. The two narratives are eerily similar. Glasser then explained why this trend is so dangerous. 10.14.2020 5:39 PM. Glasser and Stern met in person for the first time Wednesday. It is time for a new approach. That Charlottesville ended in bloodshed while Skokie did not is blamed on bad policing, the one moment in the movie where Glasser seems to be copping out. 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. I am very aware always have been that Ive been able to really enjoy free speech especially here on HBO, and at ABC before they fired me, he quipped. Fearful of government reprisal based on the government's threatening letter from the previous case, the Timesrefused to publish the ad. Actually, most of the speech we defended didnt reflect our values. Mary Lou McDonald's Sinn Fin fielded 42 candidates in Saturday's election, and won 37 seats. All qualified candidates, including minor party candidates, could be given an adequate franking privilege during the campaign. Constructing such a system of public financing will be a complicated task. By Matt Taibbi "Mighty Ira," a documentary about legendary former ACLU chief Ira Glasser, is simultaneously inspiring and unnerving. Limits designed to forestall corruption also give wealthy candidates an unfair advantage. Moreover, there has been an increase, rather than a decrease, in inequality. The episode ended up looking like a powerful affirmation of constitutional principle, helping explain why Robert Kennedy as Glasser notes, hardly a man of the left a guy who had worked for Joe McCarthy and wiretapped people had urged Glasser to join the ACLU in the first place. I can make the same argument: that Ira's vote for Biden (which he admitted to) was a vote for drone-bombing Syrian children. "The purging of the media ecosphere on the right creates even more potential for . The ACLU has become more of a political partisan, what they call progressive organization, he said. Modern elite politics believes, as Perrino puts it, that all that is good and noble has been decided, a new version of theEnd Of Historydelusion that assumes problems are simple binary choices best decided by the push of a button, and has no interest in the idea that things have to be worked out through struggle and debate, over time. They swarmed over Mike Dukakis, a Kinsley-esque monotone nerd who looked like a dink in a tank and wouldnt defend his wife when Bernard Shaw invited America to fantasize about her rape and murder on national TV. Perrino is 31. What happened to the Glasser-style liberalism we grew up with? As his generation retires from the barricades, Ira reminisces on his life at the forefront of defending the rights of all Americans. Burt Neuborne & Erwin Chemerinsky, "No, Ron DeSantis' battle with Disney isn't just political grandstanding," San Francisco Chronicle (May 2) (excerpt): We think the Supreme Court was wrong in Citizens United when it granted full free speech rights to corporations like Disney. [2] Counterpoint, $16.95 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-64009-410-9Essayist and poet Griffin (The Book of the Courtesans) offers an elegant guide to the art of writing. got blasted fordefending free speech inThe Guardian. There is a requirement now for ACLU lawyers that before they take a case defending someones free speech, they have to make sure that the speech doesnt offend or threaten other civil liberties values, he told Bill Maher on Friday. More often than not, a challenger's disadvantage can be overcome onlyby outspending the incumbent. Once he won in court, the Nazi leader Collin decided not to march in Skokie, and was eventually humiliated first by a giant counter-demonstration in Chicago, then by a child molestation charge that landed him in prison. Buckley is dead, but his politics are enjoying a posthumous rebrand, while Glasser has been forced to watch his ideas recast as regressive and racist. In 1978, Limits have been in place for nearly 30 years, but the problems limits were designed to solve remain, and new problems have been created. jessamine county busted mugshots; are sycamore trees toxic to dogs; ira glasser political party. 's former culture editor. Instead ofNorma Rae, Silkwood,andThe China Syndrome, Hollywoods idea of liberalism wasThe American President, made by the Meathead himself, in conjunction with the monstrous aristocratic bore, Aaron Sorkin. But when Ramsey Clark ran for the U.S. Senate, he voluntarily decided to limit individual contributions to his campaign to $100, and in fact, the average contribution he received was not much more than $20. Glasser raised the ACLU's annual income from $4 million in 1978 to $45 million in 1999. It was all Glasser's idea. Ira Glasser: And this turned out to be my political life in a way that totally fulfilled, I mean totally in an unimaginably terrific way, all of those dreams and ambitions and desires that couldn't be articulated when I was 15 and 16 and 18 and 19, and that no adult could give a vocational shape to because and partly these organizations used to . Its changing. Actually, most of the speech we defended didnt reflect our values. Moreover, they inevitably lead to curbs on speech that everyone agrees should be protected by the First Amendment. An incumbent has enormous visibility by virtue of the very office he or she holds. ira glasser political party. Forget factories, coal mines, and courthouses. In 1977, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) went to court to defend the rights of American Nazis to march through the streets of Skokie, Illinois, home to many Holocaust survivors. 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. He describes driving past as the baseball cathedral was torn down in 1960 and seizing up with horror, an experience like losing a parent., Now, nothing is left but a plaque in the ground where home plate once sat, and he cant process the idea that there might be washing machines doing somebodys dirty laundry on the ground where Robinson once stole home. He loves it. Ira Glasser is well-known (indeed, fabled) in civil liberties circles as the long-time (1978-2001) Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) during the period of its biggest growth spurt and most potent influence on the protection of freedom of speech and other civil . However, Clinton won by hurling overboard most of the meaningful principles of liberalism. Glasser, who was born in 1938, currently serves on the advisory board for FIRE, which produced the film. Nico Perrino was only 26 when he met two giants in the history of the American Civil Liberties Union: Ira Glasser, its executive director from 1978 to 2001, and Norman Siegel, the leader of the New York Civil Liberties Union from 1985 to 2000. There's a scene at the beginning of Mighty Ira, an elegant and thought-provoking documentary about longtime ACLU director Ira Glasser, where the movie's eponymous hero walks along the grounds of Ebbets Field Apartments, home of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. took on someone from the left (Michael Kinsley? And then theres Nazis and flags which are concrete, Maher detailed. Or knows about it, Maher added, to audience applause. The HBO host then targeted what he sees as the problem. Rupert Murdoch owns the New York Postand decides to use his newspaper to campaign for the election of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to the U.S. Senate. Limits have proven to be a bogus reform. And while incumbents in the House of Representatives outspent challengers by 1.5 to 1 in 1976, they outspent challengers by 4 to 1 in 1992. The appropriate response to the disparities in the ability of different groups and individuals to communicate their political views to voters during an election campaign is to expand, not limit, the resources available for political advocacy. Or if youre for womens equality you see Playboy magazine, and you dont like that., Glasser continued: People used to say to me, Isnt it hard to defend free speech when so few people in this country are in favor of it? And my response was always, No, thats wrong. From his work with the American Civil Rights movement and later on with the American Civil Liberties Union he perceived, quite rightly in my view, that liberation movements cannot effectively operate without freedom of speech. 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. Ira is one of America's unsung champions of civil rights and liberties. Glasser doesnt hide behind technicalities, either, noting that the myriad tricks localities in and around Chicago used to make the speech debate appear to have moved into the private arena, amounted to the same First Amendment obstruction. The events in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 have deeply affected my generations view of free speech, Perrino says in a statement about his new film, Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story.. One, I saw an interesting review of it called The Disintegration of the ACLU, by James Kirchick inTablet,who called it an elegy to a world that no longer exists, when personal affinity wasnt contingent upon ideological affinity. The other was thatIinterviewed Thomas Frank the other day, after the author ofThe People, No! Western Leaders Privately Say Ukraine Can't Win the War. The third time Joe Biden advocated for some form of Social Security benefit cuts came just five years ago while speaking at a . 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. Stern continues to be a principled activist against racism and antisemitism. Ira Glasser is a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union and a lifelong defender of every citizen's right to free speech. 3. Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser on Why You Can't Ban Hate Speech - YouTube 0:00 / 16:52 #1595 Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser on Why You Can't Ban Hate Speech 640,741 views Jan 15, 2021 21K. Thanks for contacting us. The old-school liberalism Glasser represents believed in that model of constant engagement and constant dialogue, which is probably what RFK was talking about when he said the ACLU defended the root ideas of the country. Meanwhile, three of the top seven TV shows in 1975 were liberal dramas likeAll in the Family,which cast Archie Bunker as the recalcitrant bigot-with-a-heart who had to be gently introduced to positive social changes by comic irritants Sally Struthers and Rob Meathead Reiner. The need for civilized restraints has met with encouragement for people who want to parade in Skokie with their Nazi banners The ostensible aims of the ACLU are admirable it is a national pity that it has now become, to use Sunday suited ramblings, a bunch of baloney.. The incredibly high cost of television ads, which can consume more than half of a candidate's budget, creates an insatiable demand for money. Glassers amiability, sense of humor, and sincere dedication to principle end up impressing even his political opponents, who may not change their minds, but at least become convinced that people who disagree may become friends. The Election of 1896. He is the subject of the 2020 documentary "Mighty Ira", available now on streaming video. Ira Glasser, former executive director of the ACLU, wrote at Huffington Post that critics "have failed to appreciate what a great ruling it was for the First Amendment, and what a huge victory it was for freedom of speech and against government censorship." Its a generation that also saw the essentiality of free speech in fighting for racial justice, Perrino says. He believes what he says will convince you. One of the most telling scenes inMighty Irashows Buckley on TV, teeing off on the ACLU over Skokie.
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