The complicated feelings everyone has about the American Civil Liberties Union often extends to those who work at the American Civil Liberties Union. This is the organization whose name was used as a slur by George H. W. Bush against Michael Dukakis — “a card-carrying member of the ACLU!” he would deride in speeches. For others, that was a badge of honor. But the truth is, it could be both. The ACLU vigorously defends the First Amendment … even when it is trying to be exercised by Nazi, the Westboro Baptist Church and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. But it also represents immigrant kids in cages, women seeking to avail themselves of legal access to abortions, gays trying to marry and countless other liberal causes. But also conservative ones. Because that’s what principles do: They tax our tolerance and test our limits of what we believe. 

But the ACLU is also made up of people, many of them queer or trans, women or racial minorities, first-generation immigrants and religious folks, who are just trying to do the right thing, sometimes when they don’t know for sure what the right thing is.

That’s certainly the biggest takeaway from The Fight, a new documentary available on VOD, which follows a year or so in the life of ACLU lawyers (while occasionally providing longer-term context). We see the real-time challenges of responding to Trumpian venality, the hate-spewing voicemails from critics and the assuring dedication of lawyers who fight the good fight because they feel they have a duty to preserve American values. In that way, the film can seem slightly like an especially rah-rah episode of The West Wing, although that’s pretty much still a compliment.

The problem with this 90-minute journey through jurisprudence is scope. It’s not a full-on history of the ACLU — maybe Ken Burns would need to dedicate a few nights of PBS to the undertaking — and so we only get glimpses of these people, at this time, doing some cases. It plays its politics fairly close to the chest, though of course you sense who the majority would (or would not) vote for. Still, what we do see is enough to get you excited — and scared — for where we are headed as a country. It’s reassuring to know there are some people sincerely working toward making sure there is a future.

— Arnold Wayne Jones