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. In his retired life, Glasser serves as the president of the board of directors of the Drug Policy Alliance. Susan B. Glasser, a staff writer, is the co-author of " The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 ." Her column on life in Washington appears weekly on newyorker.com. Movie review of "Mighty Ira," Directed and Produced by Nico Perrino, Chris Maltby and Aaron Reese . Many schools now drug test students without suspicion as . Western Leaders Privately Say Ukraine Can't Win the War. 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. But it all depends on who has the gas, and how the political winds blow." . Glasser raised the ACLU's annual income from $4 million in 1978 to $45 million in 1999. 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. This kind of inequality is an unavoidable consequence of the current approach to campaign financing. Where did it go? *Negotiated with the acquisition of . Perrino is 31. AsMighty Iragoes to great pains to point out, minorities and the poor tended to have an easier time understanding the ACLUs Skokie decision, because the history of the wealthy using restrictive power against labor, communists, and civil rights activists is so long. The leading social problem in America is the loss of moral coordinates, Buckley says. Glasser then explained why this trend is so dangerous. What monster could agitate, in the courts, to bring about a repeat of such a scene? Skokie seemed to establish the willingness to take an unpopular stand in defense of a principle as another prerequisite for all liberal thinkers of my generation, especially young ones. 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. Thanks for contacting us. Thus, the money he raised was directly proportional to the number of people who supported him. For example, even under Buckley, limits on contributions are permitted. 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. No set of limits can possibly limit everything. Okay, Im guessing the Nazis did not reflect your values., Thats a good guess, Glasser replied, to audience laughter. In an interview with Spiked, the man who was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001 and turned the organization into a national power slammed the organization for abandoning its core principles of defending free speech, asserting that the organization is "intellectually dishonest.". The Supreme Court has rejected that rationale as a constitutional matter. However, we support public financing that would establish a floor of support for candidates to communicate with voters. This is the problem humans have. Limits designed to forestall corruption also give wealthy candidates an unfair advantage. because they bear a strong resemblance to the provisions regulating issue advocacy that have appeared in some recent versions of legislative proposals. Diseo y fabricacin de reactores y equipo cientfico y de laboratorio got blasted fordefending free speech inThe Guardian. This was part of a broader campaign to connect Glassers brand of politics with failure and weakness in the public consciousness, and it worked. 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. Organizations have the right to change. Now Glasser is the subject of a new documentary, Mighty Ira, that celebrates his time at the ACLU and his legacy of protecting free speech. Stern continues to be a principled activist against racism and antisemitism. Ira Glasser Updated Oct. 05, 2020 11:26PM ET / Published Oct. 04, 2020 5:03AM ET N ot too long ago, I was speaking to an audience at a prominent and highly regarded law school. William F. Buckley, Jr., conservative intellectual -- and supporter of drug policy reform -- passed away February 27, 2008. 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. I watchedMighty Irafor two reasons. Instead of chafing at the constraints imposed by the business elite (the two-party "choice") and the liberal elite (never Bernie), he falls back to Bush the younger's "with us or against us" horseshit. He implied the need for means-testing of Social Security payouts. 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. More often than not, a challenger's disadvantage can be overcome onlyby outspending the incumbent. ira glasser political party. It seemed also to embrace art, music, and the power of free inquiry, opposed war, believed in self-determination and universal human rights, sided with unions over bosses, had copies ofCatch-22andThe Autobiography of Malcolm Xsomewhere in the house, and laughed at both Jerry Falwell and the This is your brain on drugs commercial. Suppose, however, that she has a very wealthy individual supporter who doesn't own a newspaper, but who is willing to give her the money to run a full-page ad on behalf of her candidacy. Incumbents also have the franking privilege - they enjoy a large number of free mailings to their constituents. Thank you for inviting me to testify at today's hearing. Similarly, incumbents can make news. The rich, who can hire teams of lawyers and accountants, will always find a way around such laws, and they have. The 99-minute documentary honors Glassers lifelong commitment to strengthening the legal support system for free expression, even when that expression may run counter to majority views. 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. 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. The Source of the Problem - and Its Remedy. The ACLU represented the three defendants. 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. Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. The third time Joe Biden advocated for some form of Social Security benefit cuts came just five years ago while speaking at a . Those insurance bond requirements had been a classic mechanism by which white Southern towns used to ban civil rights demonstrations, Glasser said. 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. It feels like an odd way to open a film about one of the more controversial figures of 20th century America. Liberals who denounce thedecision fail 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. Bush denounces Dukakis as a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but the way the press roasted the Duke as a prototypical liberal weenie foretold bad things. You see a flag burning. 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 ACLU was central to what liberalism meant once, and not just because it had a history of pursuing social justice cases likeBrown v. Board of Education(taking on school segregation) andMapp v. Ohio(helping create the exclusionary rule to protect against abusive prosecutions). I have been involved with this issue for nearly three decades and personally authorized the ACLU's participation in Buckley v. Valeoand also in two important campaign finance cases that immediately preceded Buckley - National Committee on Impeachment v. United Statesand ACLU v. Jennings. Ira Glasser: Would Today's ACLU Defend the Speech Rights of Nazis. Moreover, there has been an increase, rather than a decrease, in inequality. 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. 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. Like this article? Glassers politics were based on the idea that good ideas eventually win out over bad ones, and people will tend to find common ground if they talk enough, preferring to make friends instead of enemies. It also struck down limits on expenditures by candidates, ruling that any limit on spending money to publish ads or brochures would necessarily bar speech. 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. 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. Glasser fears that, by becoming more political and less absolutist when it comes to defending speech, the ACLU might be shrugging off its hard-won legacy. The phrase was values contrary to. 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. Glasser points out that use of all drugs has gone down in countries such as Portugal and Holland where usage is decriminalized. It was all Glasser's idea. Do you want every little town to decide which speech is permitted? Glasser asked. 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. 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. 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. 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