Another addition to the endless annals of COVID bummers
is that we’re amidst a mini cinematic Dark Ages. There’s plenty to watch, of
course, and there’s still a lot of new TV coming out. But movie production is on
hold, and a lot of movies that have already been made are being held up for future
theatrical debuts. It’s even tough to know which movies are being released. No one is going to the theaters to see movies, so
no one is seeing previews. So those of us not regularly searching for this info
are basically in the dark about what is coming out and when.
Thus, you may have no clue what “The Fight” (which just
came out on Amazon Prime) is about. Is it a “Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago”-type
slugfest? It is not. This movie is non-fiction. So is it a real-life boxing
story, or maybe an Iraq War thriller? Nope. This movie is about lawyers. And they
don’t literally fight, at least not physically. Also, it’s not a courtroom
drama. Nor is it a true crime whodunit.
It’s a documentary about the lawyers at the ACLU whose
fight over the past four years has been to resist moves by the Trump
administration that they think violate people’s rights. There have been a lot
of such moves. So there’s been a lot of resisting by the ACLU. But “The Fight” is
focused on four legal battles.
The first is over family separations at the border. Led
by lawyer Lee Gelernt, the ACLU (among others) rushed to respond to the Trump
administration’s policy of separating undocumented children from their parents.
Mothers went months without seeing their daughters. Fathers had their sons
snatched away while they were sleeping. And these events were unfolding so
quickly and so widely that lawyers not only had to scramble to write their
arguments, they also had to call, email, text, call, call, call almost
constantly to get judges to hear emergency arguments.
The second legal battled chronicled in “The Fight” is
over Trump’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Led by
Chase Strangio and Joshua Block, and inspired by the story of 11-year military
service member Brock Strone whose career was threatened by Trump’s ban, the
ACLU argued that Trump’s order was unlawfully discriminatory.
The third fight—fought by Dale Ho, among others—is over
whether Trump could add a citizenship question to the census. Trump et al.
basically said, “C’mon, why not? It’s a simple question. We wanna know. Why can’t
we ask?” However, the Trump administration also let slip their real motive: to
discourage vulnerable people from answering census questions, which would help
redraw electoral maps in Republicans’ favor. According to the ACLU, there is an
easier way to get citizenship data if one really wants it—from the Social
Security Administration. So the ACLU argued that the Trump administration wasn’t
really looking for data; it just wanted a political edge.
The final legal battled in this movie—headed by Brigitte
Amiri—is over whether a detained immigrant has the right to an abortion. In the
case in question, the young woman had been raped and wanted an abortion. But
she was denied access to abortion, with the justification that she did not have
the same legal rights that U.S. citizens have.
As with most important struggles, these ACLU battles are
more guts than glory. They don’t always win. And when they do win, it’s often
some kind of half-victory. And it’s not always for the reasons they thought. And
it’s most often achieved only after scratching, clawing, dragging, limping, and
crawling their way to the finish line.
Still, “The Fight” is gripping and interesting. Most of
us have heard of these cases, but it’s fascinating—and sometimes surprising,
galling, encouraging, or heartbreaking—to learn more about what goes into
trying these cases.
With that said, this documentary could have stood to
avoid some of the more breathless MSNBC-type commentary—not because the
commentary is wrong, but because it makes these legal battles seem more
partisan, and because, believe it or not—like it or not—MSNBC’s reactions to
these case are not shared by everybody.
But while “The Fight” may overindulge in moral grandstanding here and there, and may be an exercise in preaching to the choir, it also teaches valuable lessons about how to enact change. It shows that good work, real impact, true progress is rarely glorious, hardly ever glamorous. Whether it’s legal or political or societal or economic, the front lines aren’t always rallies or T-shirts or Facebook debates with your Aunt Marge—they’re law offices buried under mountains of paper, shelters, soup kitchens, hospitals, and local communities. A good fight isn’t any less good because no one sees it, and it isn’t any less of a fight because it’s slow, incremental, deeply frustrating, and often heartbreaking.
