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In support of re-election of Sue Errington as State Rep.

Sue Errington has a long history of public service, including board membership on various environmental, public policy, health, outreach, and womens organizations. She was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 2012, and previously served four years as an Indiana state senator.

I have found Sue Errington very responsive to my concerns for the children of this state, no matter how busy she was.

Childrens health initiatives, on which she collaborated, that were enacted into law included:

When Indiana privatized its welfare system, many people were initially denied necessary medical care and nutrition coverage. Sue Errington brought this to the attention of her colleagues, the governorand FSSA, and assisted constituents in navigating the system for resolution. When services for autism were not being reimbursed, and Riley, and St. Vincentsand private providers dropped autistic children on Medicaid, Sue took letters that my colleagues and I had written and used them to get action from the State Medicaid Department. Care was restored for these most vulnerable children.

For many years I have known Representative Errington as a person who genuinely cares about her constituents and the issues confronting their lives. She is a woman of integrity, who has dedicated her life to public service, and works hard for all of us in this community.

Anne Eliades

Muncie

Recently, a car drove slowly past our house, while the driver yelled, white lives matter.Weve overheard our neighbors talking (loudly) about the importance of white lives.I suspect both of these moments were prompted by our Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter yard signs.

First, of course white lives matter.Im white and I matter to myself and a small group of lovely people.Most of my family is white and I love most of them.I also love Jane Austen, the supergroup Yes, and the show Letterkenny all super white.

I feel a topsy-turvy quality with this demand that I stand up for white lives. I dont see the president, despite his support from white lives folks, standing up for those lives. He mocks soldiers who died in war dont those lives matter?He ignores the bounty that Russia placed on (often white) U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He "downplays"the dangers of COVID-19 dont those lives deserve protecting?He sues to end the Affordable Care Act, which gives healthcare to millions of whites.He sends teargassing troops against mostly white protestors; some of those white protestors have been killed.He ignores climate change, the biggest threat to white lives.

Police violence and systemic racism are part of our society; this breaks my heart and calls me to respond.Instead of being angry at my choices, consider who you support.If you support the president:why not value Black lives, and also: do you truly value white lives?

Jennifer Rice-Snow

Muncie

That Kevin Wingate ("Protesters are playing into Trump's hands") calls Trump the law and order" man aiding "local authorities in their efforts to stop the violence" is ironic, given Trumps corruption, fraud, adultery on an Olympian scale as well as his legitimizing right-wing violence through silence.

About those left-wing groups Wingate faults for street violence: Examine the pantheon of Trumps right-wing groups, fine people, in protests from Charlottesville to Kenosha Proud Boys, an anti-immigrant group;QAnon, a conspiracy-peddling group; Alt-Right; Boogaloo Boys; neo-Nazis; white supremacists; white Nationalists,all believing in racial superiority and brutal force governance.

I oppose the growing fascist authoritarianism of the Trump administration, mirroring that of Vlad and Xi. Perhaps Trumps fixation on and hate for a free press and the anti-fascists (Antifa) lies therein. Democracies die one law at a time. The Hatch Act, flouted by this administration, is one such law. Mussolini, a fascist, said, If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices. Let us not allow our democracy to be plucked by Trump.

Finally, my contempt for Trump isnt only his divisiveness and failure to demonstrate moral leadership, which are Olympian, but his serial lying and ignorance of geography, history, government, science, religion, the Constitution and more. He is unable even to read statements written for him: Yo-se-mites towering se-coy-as (Yosemites towering sequoias). Did you know that the 1917 flu ended WWII?

I welcome peaceful BLM demonstrations.Its time that police brutality against Black people be called out, dismantled.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 rages!

Julia K. Gouveia

Muncie

Letters to the Public Letter Box should be emailed to letters@muncie.gannett.com. You must include your name, address and a telephone number for verification. Letters that cannot be verified will not be used.

By submitting a letter, the writer grants The Star Press the right to publish, distribute, archive or use it in print, online or other format. Letters must be 250 words or fewer and will be edited for length, grammar, accuracy and clarity. Letters containing private solicitations; unfair criticism of private individuals, businesses or organizations; poetry or inappropriate language will not be used. Letters of more than 250 words may be rejected. In general, publication of letters from the same writer will be limited to once a quarter.

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Letters to the editor, Oct. 4 - The Star Press

White Noise opens with an awkward Halloween party attended by a collection of alt-right personalities, hosted by Lucian Wintrichbest known for his brief stint as a White House correspondent for the far-right blog Gateway Punditin Washington, D.C. Theres a knock at the door; Wintrich hops up from the couch, brimming with excitement as Lauren Southern, the renowned Canadian anti-immigration activist, makes an appearance. The two embrace. Southern is wearing a black cape, pale makeup, and cheesy plastic vampire teeth. Im the IRS, she quips.

Its an oddly human moment for a group of characters that are almost exclusively portrayed as a sinister monolith: The superabundance of documentaries, investigative articles, books and internet shorts on the alt-right that have materialized in the years since Donald Trumps rise to power are, as a general rule, sensationalist and partisan affairs. Conventional treatments of the coalition of activists, commentators, writers and internet personalities tend to paint the predominantly internet-based movement as an ominous cult of evil with enormousand ever-increasinginfluence in the American political arena.

But White Noise takes a different approach. The new documentary features 27-year-old Atlantic filmmaker Daniel Lombroso following a handful of the alt-rights most notorious figures for the better part of four years, providing an intimate portrait of a collection of lost, desperately unhappy young menand, to a lesser extent, womensearching for meaning in a fringe ideology. While most of the mainstream coverage of the alt-right spends little, if any, actual time with its adherentsprevious documentaries like Age of Rage give the significant majority of airtime to anti-fascist activists and Southern Poverty Law Center intellectualsLombroso seeks to understand the alt-right as it is; made up of real people rather than a faceless force of darkness.

Viewers gain not just a richer understanding of the profound ugliness of the movements devotes but also of the conditions responsible for producing such ugliness: a sense of loneliness in an age of interconnected mass culture, and a yearning for community in an increasingly atomistic world. Acolytes of the alt-right are often portrayed as larger-than-life supervillains; White Noise reveals them to be broken, deeply isolated individuals.

Besides Lauren Southern, Pizzagate promulgator Mike Cernovich and white supremacist Richard Spencer are the main subjects of the documentary, although other major figures make tangential appearances. The three prominent personalities each represent a different subgenre of the alt-right: Spencer stands in for the dyed-in-the-wool white nationalists, Cernovich for the Trumpist conspiracy theorists, and Southern the hard-right grifters. All three have taken on outsize roles in our political discourse; but in Lombrosos documentary they become more visibly human.

What is notable about the film, then,is less its explosively disturbing momentsthe Nazi salutes in Washington, D.C., on the heels of Trumps victory, the deadly chaos of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesvillebut rather the dreary routine of the piteous lives lived in the empty spaces in between them.

In White Noise, Spencer is not the leader of a neo-fascist insurgency on the brink of conquering America, but a divorced outcast who, at the age of 42, has moved back in with his mother. One sees Spencer lurching from one failure to another, a man perpetually frustrated by his inability to be loved by a world that has rejected him. For every Charlottesville, there are 100 speeches given to mostly empty rooms, events canceled at the last minute by venues horrified by Spencers ideology, and profanity-laden public humiliations at the hands of strangers.

2018 has been one of the hardest years of my life, he tells Lombroso. Ive had a failed marriage, multiple lawsuits, I cant raise money the way that I had been, Im being treated like a terrorist. Ive never been put through this s**t. And its just awful.

Spencers desperation is a consistent fact of life for the documentarys cast of characters. Cernovich, also divorced, is revealed to be living off of his ex-wifes paycheck. (Its pretty alpha, he argues, to get paid alimony by a woman.) Like Spencer, Cernovich has been made out to be a cunning political savant by mainstream commentatorsdescribed as someone to reckon with whose influence reach[es] the highest seats of power by the SPLCbut he leads something of a dismal, bleak existence: Im not someone who likes myself particularly much, he confesses at one point. Im not somebody who wakes up and thinks, I really like me. I really like this person.

Southern, for her part, seems to be increasingly uncomfortable with the ideology she publicly promotes as the film wears on, visibly cringing when her then-boyfriend informs her that his primary motivation for raising a family is the fact that us Europeans, we have responsibility to reproduce, and awkwardly dodging alt-right provocateur Gavin Mcinness drunk sexual advances. (Southern was 23 at the time; Mcinnes was 48, and married with three children).

In this way, the documentary is about more than the alt-right; its an examination of the ugly underbelly of our technological age. Its characters are, after all, all creatures of the internet, and their followers are disproportionately composed of isolated young people searching for a sense of belonging in an online ecosystem of forums, YouTube channels and message boards. As an especially disturbing phenomenon, the alt-right is unique; but as a manifestation of the widespread inclination to find purpose in a political community, its merely one particularly vile manifestation of a universally felt impulse.

Above all else, White Noise is a sort of unsympathetic eulogy for a dying movement; a portrait of a cohort whose brief moment is decidedly over. Over the four-year span of the film, we see its peak as well as its sorry declinewhile watching its proponents attempt to reconcile themselves to a country far less receptive to their ambitions than they had once hoped.

Nate Hochman (@njhochman) is an ISI summer fellow for The Dispatch.

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The Alt-Right's Last Gasps - The Dispatch

Conspiracy theorists, alt-right memers and prominent white nationalistshave frequently appeared at properties owned by President Trump, where they've hosted gatherings, mingled with officials and spent money, according to research obtained by Salon.

Trump properties are well-documented hot spots for MAGA-world luminaries and hangers-on, particularly Trump International Hotel in Washington, where the lobby is frequently a blur of lobbyists, administration officials, lawmakers, corporate leaders and foreign dignitaries the physical embodiment of the president's numerous conflicts of interest.

But in a sense those properties are also real-world iterations of the president's Twitter feed, a running scroll of the same groups. Both are also sprinkled to varying degrees with influential right-wing extremists and internet trolls(Diamond and Silk kicked off their 2019 "Chit Chat Live" tour at Trump Hotel D.C.), someof whomnow are now moving into legitimate electoral politics under the auspices of the Republican Partyin various states, including Oregon, Colorado,Georgia and Trump's new home state of Florida.

And though Trump fandomis little more thanan ironic lark toyoungfringe-right adherents, who see themselves as more pure, edgy and extreme, those places draw an older generation that hasinfluence, but might be looking for someone who knows better how to wield it today.

"Trump properties are the place to be if you're an elected Republican looking to dip your toe in alt-right waters. So no one should be surprised that once-mainstream Republicans and the NRCC are now backing the very QAnon supporters and fringe factions they've mingled with for years,"said Kyle Morse, an American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson.

The more high-profile of these patron-extremists include:

Trump properties are a particularly popular draw for the Fuentes-led Groyper movement, a loose affiliation of far-right and alt-right nationalists who peddle racist and anti-Semitic tropes while mocking mainstream conservatives including some less radical white nationalists as phonies.

As with most things born in the nether regions of the internet, the origins of the Groyper movement are not easy to understand. Its name is drawn from aspecificPepe the Frog pose, in which the alt-right cartoon mascot rests his chin on his interlinked hands.

Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremis, described the movement in a 2019 interview.

"What they're trying to do, there's this whole grouping who refer to themselves as the dissident right, they want to move the Overton window," said Mayo, referring to the shifting spectrum of acceptable ideological and political discourse. "They want to make racism and anti-Semitism mainstream."

Trump made waves this January when he retweeted a clip of Michelle Malkin, the self-described "mommy"ofthe Groyper movement, complaining about online censorship. Trump added his own caption, thanking her:

"The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events. Thank you Michelle!"

That Malkin clip was produced by Fuentes' internet show, America First.

"Donald Trump is watching America First Clips," Fuentestweeted.

Fuentes has attended events at Trump International in Washington,including with friend and fellowGroyper Megan Harris, and both appeared there during the conservative gathering CPAC this year, as documented in a since-deleted Instagram post. The two were joined at CPAC by musician and Groyper Ricky Rebel, who shared a number of pictures from Trump International on his Instagram story.

Fuentes, like several other fringe-right personalities, has also patronized Trump National Doral, the president's golf resort near Miami, where he appeared in an Instagram photo with alt-right internet personality Baked Alaska(Tim Gionet).

Gionet, a former BuzzFeed writer who later got Trump's face tattooed on his arm, has shared Instagram posts from Trump properties three times in the last year: at Doral National, and the Trump International hotels in Las Vegas and Washington. The last ofthoseincluded a photograph of a burger and fries, captioned, "imagine eatin this good."

Three summers ago,Gionet joined Fuentes at the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where he was billed as a scheduled speaker alongside leading white supremacist Richard Spencer. He has tweeted the "14 Words" (a well-known neo-Nazi phrase) and, in since-deleted tweets, shared videos of friends saying that "Hitler did nothing wrong." He's also posted images of people in gas chambers.

In March 2019, Gionet attempted to distance himself from the alt-right, denouncing it as hateful and violent. Following the mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, he posted a video in which he apologized for his contributions to the culture, but a few months later was caught spewing Islamophobia at an ICE protest. He subsequentlylinked up with the Groyper movement and deleted his apologies.

Other fringe-right associates of Gionet have spent time and money at Trump properties.

One of the more well-known names is alt-right personality, Pizzagate truther and noted misogynist Mike Cernovich, whom Gionet engaged in multiple projects. Cernovich hasspent considerable time at Trump properties.

Gionet once spent Christmas with blogger Chuck Johnson, the aforementioned "most hated man on the internet," who reportedly had a hand in vetting Trump Cabinet picks during the transition(working with Facebook's Peter Thiel) and may have acted as aninadvertent conduit betweenWikiLeaks founder Julian AssangeandDonald Trump Jr.

In January 2017, Johnson posted on Facebook that he was "building algorithms to ID all the illegal immigrants for the deportation squads." HuffPost quoted a source claiming to have seen Johnson discussing that same project with "a whole bunch of really important people" at the Trump hotel in D.C. Former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh has said that Johnson asked to be connected with senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller so he could pitch a "way to identify every illegal alien in the country."

In 2018, Johnson was also spotted at Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

Then there's the Posobiec, who while not exactly a Groyper is a fringe conspiracy theorist withanti-Semitic views whom Trump has retweeted a number of times. Posobiec and his wife met Brexit architect Nigel Farage at the Trump Hotel in Washingtonin February, 2017, and have spent both Christmas and New Year'sholidays there.

In July 2019, Posobiec joined QAnon acolyte Tracy Beanz, MAGA alt-right memesmith Carpe Donktum and former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sandersfor a conservative conference called AMPFest, held at Trump National Doral. Documents obtained by the Washington Post showed that the Florida property's revenues were "in steep decline" at the time.

Posobiec spread the debunked conspiracy theory that the Las Vegas mass shooter was affiliated with ISIS, but was challenged for credit by right-wing provocateur, Islamophobe and Trumppatron Laura Loomer. The two seemed to smooththings over beforeAMPFest 2019, where Loomer appeared alongside Posobiec.

Loomer is currently running as a Republican congressional candidate in Florida's 21st district home to Donald Trump's private Palm Beach clubMar-a-Lago, where she appeared at a 2019 winter gala that featuredTrump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka and guest of honor Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Just a few days after that, Trump tweeted his support for Loomer's candidacy. And since the 21st is officially his district of residence, he will have the chance to vote for her should she appear on the ballot in November. (Her chances of winning are not strong: Incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat, was re-elected without opposition in 2018.)

On March 3, Loomer was back at Trump International inD.C.

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Trump's properties: A playground for white nationalists, Groypers and other far-right loons - Salon

Photo: Getty Images/fStop

In many ways, Alya Stewarts motherhood led her to the white-supremacy movement. When Stewart had her first child in 2003, she was a pro-gay-rights feminist in her early 20s who followed a vegan diet and studied midwifery, according to a new book called Sisters in Hate. But after getting her masters degree in womens spirituality, her politics began to shift. Journalist Seyward Darby writes about how Stewart converted to Mormonism, had more kids, and began posting about how men should be the dominant breadwinners and women should focus on family life. When feminists criticized her philosophy, she decided stay-at-home mothers werent welcome in the womens rights movement and that it demonized white men, like her husband.

She gravitated toward the alt-right corners of the internet places that embraced her increasingly traditional lifestyle. And by 2017, her blog and YouTube channel interspersed spelt cookie recipes and and videos of her kids in the garden with racist screeds about the refugee crisis and musings on how good mothers should dress modestly, speak softly, and avoid urban accents. But she didnt want to be labeled a white supremacist, and Stewart used motherhood to obscure her racist beliefs.

In proudly showing off her life, Ayla demanded to know one thing, writes Darby, if all she wanted was safety, prosperity, and health for her family and nation, how could she be considered hateful?

Sisters in Hate tells the story of Stewart and two other women who were at some point involved in racist hate groups: Corinna Olsen, a former neo-Nazi who disavowed the movement and converted to Islam, and Lana Lokteff, a prominent white supremacist whose online TV and radio shows were banned from YouTube in 2019. Darby writes about how each character was drawn to white supremacy for different reasons a sense of belonging (Olsen), creed (Stewart), power (Lokteff) and she intersperses their stories with historical and psychological context to explain why women have always been a valuable part of American hate movements.

The Cut spoke with Darby, a self-described feminist from the South, about how femininity and motherhood are some of the far rights greatest weapons.

You lay out ample evidence that white women are a key demographic in hate movements. Why is white nationalism most often associated with men?

To be fair, men are often the group leaders and certainly the people committing violence. And so I completely understand why you would want to focus on those very visible and often very harmful manifestations of hate. But while women might not be the ones leading conferences, they are helping build the infrastructure of these movements.

Women have been deeply instrumental in everything from the KKK to the Nazis to the resistance of civil rights. And yet they have been repeatedly written out of the history of bigotry. I think theres a benevolent sexism there, where people make assumptions about women having an inherent goodness, or an inherent fragility or vulnerability, and assume they couldnt possibly be the bad actors. There was this myth after World War II of the apolitical German woman who was trapped in the country and had to go along with the Holocaust. Women who were seen as meek and matronly and feminine quite literally got away with murder. At the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, we saw a lot of images of white men in white polo shirts, but behind the scenes, a woman was kind of the chief organizer online. You could argue that work is just as important as walking up to the front line, carrying a tiki torch.

Why are women so valuable to white nationalism? Lokteff, one of the women in your book, said When women get involved a movement becomes a serious threat and A soft woman saying hard things can create repercussions throughout society. What does she mean?

There are a couple of layers to that. The most basic biological one is that white nationalism is a deeply pro-natal movement. The whole narrative is that white America is under threat and you should have as many white children as you can. Nazis gave women medals based on how many children they had. (Stewart became notorious in mainstream media after tweeting about a white baby challenge.) But the much more outward facing layer is that women are seen as bridges who can communicate with the mainstream. There are some who say the vilest things imaginable. But there are a lot who say, We just want to love our heritage. We just want to love our children. Look at me, Im just a nice white woman trying to live her life. What could be so bad about that?

And you describe in the book how motherhood and children are weaponized. For example, in one online post, Stewart included an image of her toddler-age daughter wearing a frog costume an homage to Pepe the Frog, who has become an alt-right mascot. Can you say more about how this works?

Women like Ayla who really showcase their children are ready-made for the Instagram era in a way. Its like, Heres what we made for dinner, here are my children raking the yard. Look at my blissful life. I think theyre daring critics of white nationalism to say something critical so they can retort: Are you saying that my children are dangerous little Hitlers in the making?

Theres an obvious pernicious PR slant to showing off how normal they are. Theres some people that are going to be kind of seduced by that idea and think, You havent said any racial slurs, you havent promoted violence. This cant possibly be bad! When its convenient to them, these women wear their motherhood status as a shield. Theyre saying, Its not that I hate Black people, I just want the best for my own children. So I want to live in an all-white community or homeschool my kids. Its manipulative.

Its also an incredibly effective recruitment tactic.

The women in these movements are appealing to other white women who might have the same kind of thoughts, impulses, and instincts. Im sure you know women who would probably say I would send my kids to public schools if the public schools were better. From there, the conversation can become more racially overt, right?

I wanted to find these points of familiarity where the things that women were saying and doing on the far right actually sounded a lot like people I know. Theres a tendency to think of white nationalists as crazy or to other them. But plenty of people who are educated and financially comfortable can find a place in this space. And women are very important in drawing new believers in.

The way women draw in new members is often less aggressive than men. You write about how they might invite someone over for wine, or use community picnics and Bible studies groups as scouting grounds.

A sociologist named Kathleen Blee wrote about how when it comes to radicalization, shes most worried about spaces that might not seem vulnerable or risky in some way. So, for example, communities around anti-vaccination or homeschooling, where people come together around some shared beliefs usually having to do with autonomy of an individual or family that, if taken to the extreme, can lead to a way of seeing the world thats racist and exclusive.

As a parent, there are a number of spaces where youre going to be talking about the well-being of your children. That is of course a natural impulse and good parenting. But a good parent should also be thinking about the ways in which their desire to protect their children can lead to things like opportunity hoarding, or a kind of exclusionary way of seeing people who are not like you.

Can you talk about the relationship between tradlife short for the traditional lifestyle of wifely submissiveness and the white-supremacist movement?

I think that women in this space kind of go back to the idea of motherhood as cherished and unassailable. White-nationalist women are saying motherhood doesnt have to be sullied by the muck of feminism, the workplace, and multiculturalism. You can just focus on being a cherished, hardworking, domestic goddess. In the white-nationalist movement, children, just like women, are kind of supposed to inspire this instinct to protect by all means necessary. Its very much playing on this idea that they are the most vulnerable to social upheaval.

This kind of thinking sounds similar to arguments Phyllis Schlafly and other conservative women used to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70s.

Theres a lot of similarity. Schlafly defined privilege as being a wife and a mother. She felt threatened by people with less privilege gaining power, and wanted to fend off forces like feminism, which was deeply tied up in the civil-rights movement. The racism of her campaign was less overt but the coded language of the campaign was to say, We dont want to disrupt the order of things.

Similarly, in todays hate movements, women talk about fighting for the status quo and have this nostalgic idea of what it means to be a housewife. But the difference is they dont want to be seen as the stodgy Phyllis Schlaflys restoring the world to this Rockwellian idea of America. They consider themselves rebels and countercultural because they define the mainstream as feminist and multicultural. Theres definitely a cognitive dissonance there.

Your book has been published at a time when police brutality against Black people has spurred mass protests and a focus on anti-racism. What value is there to learning about white womens roles in a hateful movement?

I hope that the book shows how there is a spectrum of bigotry that even women who are liberals and feminists fall into. Im also a pretty pessimistic person, so while people are talking about race in a constructive way and theres the potential for profound change, I also think there will be a backlash. The far right is already using the Black Lives Matter movement as a way to appeal to white peoples fears and grievances about a changing future. I think white nationalists definitely see an opening to recruit white women who feel like I was told Youre the oppressor and I couldnt handle that.

We should be attentive to the ways in which people on the alt-right see potential for their tentacles to touch somebody. Where is this happening? Can we see whos vulnerable to it? History shows that moments of upheaval and change inspire hope but can also inspire some people to feel hate.

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How White Nationalists Weaponize Motherhood - The Cut

This summer there arent any superhero movies coming out (theyve all been postponed), but there is one film this season that features real-life heroes. The filmmaking team behind the riveting political doc Weiner Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg and Eli B. Despres have made the documentary The Fight, which follows a group of crusading American Civil Liberties Union lawyers as they defend some of the bedrock protections under attack from the Trump administration.

This lively and fast-paced doc opens with a rapid-fire split-screen montage that introduces the ACLUs 100-year history of defending civil liberties and introduces four specific cases of the hundreds the organization has brought against the Trump administration, regarding immigrants rights, reproductive rights, voting rights and LGBTQ rights. The filmmakers, as well as editors Kim Roberts and Greg Finton (Despres also edited) do a Herculean job of weaving together a comprehensive patchwork narrative, as the ACLU jabs and parries with the administration and the courts on each issue.

The four cases are Garza v. Hargan, in which a teenage refugee was denied access to an abortion by the Office of Refugee Resettlement; Stone v. Trump, the controversial transgender military ban; Department of Commerce v. New York, about the citizenship question on the 2020 Census; and Ms. L. v. ICE, an asylum-seekers family separation lawsuit.

The filmmakers also sketch humane portraits of each cases tireless lawyers, who are almost constantly in motion. Immigration rights lawyer Lee Gelernt seems to run entirely on Diet Coke, adrenaline and many, many phone chargers; Dale Ho, director of the ACLUs voting rights project, is a charming, smiley man whom we get to see practice his remarks for the Supreme Court over and over; Brigitte Amiri, a dedicated and passionate defender of Roe v. Wade, writes briefs at midnight and enjoys well-earned train wine after a win; and Chase Strangio, a dedicated working parent, taking on the transgender military ban with Josh Block.

Its the fight that keeps them going: the hateful invective sent their way via postcards, emails, Facebook messages and voicemails only fans the flames of the fire that drives them.

Although The Fight is jam-packed with ups, downs, wins, losses, injunctions, stays, hearings and Trump speeches, the film is remarkably detailed and careful, and in fact, it reckons with the ACLUs dedication to defending civil liberties for all, not just the people we agree with. Theyve defended far-right and alt-right groups, radical Muslims and Nazis from Skokie, Ill. But their defense of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., where Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Fields Jr., weighs heavy on many in the organization, who try to understand if there are limits to defending free speech, at least for them.

In this film, and in life, it often feels like the lawyers of the organization are the only ones standing in the way of the Trump administrations policies, many capriciously intended not only to strip human rights but to bully and intimidate the American public. They are the real heroes of this era, battling in court after court, armed with tote bags of documents, caffeine and a deeply unwavering and humanitarian sense of justice. But as Ho put it so frankly, lawyers and courts arent going to change the world; people are. And its up to us to do it.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

The Fight'

Rated: PG-13, for strong language, thematic material and brief violence.

Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes

Playing: Available July 31 on digital and VOD

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'The Fight' review: The ACLU defends against Trump - Los Angeles Times