The Trial Of The Chicago Seven

Those were the days

Aaron Sorkin writes highly entertaining “message” movies. The Trial Of The Chicago Seven is a timely and spirited cri de coeur about civil disobedience. It represents in a courtroom the two sides of America that are, as in those days, at loggerheads today. That is, the democratically-minded citizenry who takes seriously their first amendment rights and the idea of the US as a righteous democracy (what some aspiring fascists today consider “the far left”), versus the authoritarians in power and the racists who love them. The parallels between the tensions in Chicago in the late sixties and today’s protests are many, but the differences are what smarts.
Until the grisly murder of George Floyd galvanized a large swath of the American public to protest peacefully, liberals could pine for the sixties, when American civic mobilization was at its best. Until the Million Woman March and the shocking array of murders of Black citizens by the police, it seemed that our nation had forgotten its right to protest and preferred to get fat and lazy and watch TV, which is why are stuck with a nazi wannabe TV clown running for re-election.

Back in the day, the protests against the Vietnam war had leaders, and they were characters. Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) was a character, Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) was a character, attorney…