Thread by @realBockmann

I watched @Mighty_Ira_doc last night and was surprised at how much I loved it:
- Americana / NYC / history
- 1st Amendment; I'd thought the ACLU = "bad"
- Ira comes across warmly; friendship with Wm Buckley incredibly poignant
- Powerful: Heather Hyer's mom & Holocaust survivor

https://twitter.com/NicoPerrino/status/1320129043073728513

As a transient, upstate New Yorker, I've grown fond of NYC and appreciate Ira's wistful recollections of Brooklyn

Ira's boyhood love of Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers, an integrated baseball team, must have helped him see "others" as legitimate, preparing him for ACLU

I grew up hearing the ACLU was bad. I don't know about that, but I applaud their defense of the 1st Amendment.

Commitment to 1A itself forces dialog on our most passionately held topics. Like rocket fuel, this polarity has immense energy to propel or destroy.

MLK called his version of this "creative tension"; Civil Rights movement depended on it
- same 1A that enabled his Selma-Montgomery march also enabled Frank Collin's Nazi rallies in Holocaust-survivor Skokie, IL
- Collin defended by Jewish ACLU lawyer!
bit.ly/37IPGa4

I had no idea about Ira's friendship with conservative icon & blue blood William F. Buckley
- history of vigorous debate
- wildly different backgrounds
- mutual respect, warmth, even tenderness
THIS is what we're supposed to be like, folks.

Difference with respect for each other & for 1A illustrated in Heather Hyer's mom, and in 94yo Holocaust survivor Ben Stern
- Heather was run over & killed in Charlottesville, yet her mom powerfully defends 1A: Once we give up the right to free speech, "we may never get it back"

Ben Stern, veteran of Auschwitz, Birkenau & more, still bears his prisoner number on his right forearm
- even at 94, could not stay home when Nazis rallied at Berkeley; he marched and spoke
- to Ira: "I love you. I'm so proud of you." Despite (because?) defending Nazis 1A rights.

To me, the 1st Amendment encapsulates America:
- right to individual expression
- responsibility to the group
- e pluribus unum

We need more like Ira & @Mighty_Ira_doc in these divided times. Thanks for this superb film, @glukianoff and @NicoPerrino

*Birkenau = Auschwitz II