Abner Mikva: There has to be a fierce pride in the heart of every American who sees the number of students who come here to the seat of their government to buttonhole their elected officials and tell them what they want them to do.

What is democracy if it's not that?

[applause].

Participant: Abner Mikva was one of the most impressive politicians I've ever covered in every way.

He had a remarkable ability to get along with people who were quite different.

Participant: He believed that government can be a real force for good in people's lives.

He had seen it in his own life.

Participant: He always stood by his principles no matter what the issue was.

Abner: Thanks to you, no knife, no gun law has passed this year.

Participant: Here you had this guy who was just not afraid to call the NRA the criminals' lobby.

Participant: Abner and Zoe just simply believed that young people are citizens, let's let them act now.

Participant: The Mikva Challenge embodies everything Abner Mikva was all about, young people doing service and helping their communities.

Obama: Abner Mikva was consistently ahead of his time, but not just on gun legislation, his position on civil rights.

Time and time again what you see is somebody who, not only knows what the right thing is, but has the courage in his convictions to say, "You know what, this is a fight worth fighting even if I don't think I'm going to win."

♪ Participant: I think AM's childhood had a big effect on his politics later in life.

He grew up in Milwaukee in a family that was destitute for much of Ab's early childhood in the 1930s.

Abner: My parents were immigrants.

They had immigrated from the Ukraine during World War I.

My father was very much influenced by the revolutionary forces that were then going on in Russia, and so he came over to this country with strong anarchist and atheistic tendencies.

Participant: In 1929, his father lost his job, was unemployed for maybe six years.

Participant: Abner had a tough relationship with his father.

His father was bitter and wasn't happy with the adjustment to a new country.

Participant: Some part of him was very disappointed in his father's response to how hard that life was.

That his father was not nice to his mother, that his father wasn't particularly nice to the kids.

Participant: Growing up, we were influenced most by two things.

One, the depression, and the second was the coming of World War II, and both of us enlisted.

Ab enlisted in the Air Force, became a navigator.

Participant: By the time he got out, the GI bill had been passed.

Reporter: The GI bill of rights is an American way to make it easier for each man to take his place once again in the community and get some of those things for which you went to war; a job, a business, a education.

Participant: The GI bill gave a free ride to military veterans to college, so that is the way Ab got to go to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and it made all the difference in the world.

Participant: His lifelong faith in government to improve people's lives I think really directly stems from the difficulties he faced in childhood, and then it was reinforced by personal experience in his young adult life because of government contribution.

He was able to change his fate really.

Abner: I met my wife, she was going to Chicago and I met her on a blind date, and if I wanted to marry her, I would agree to move to Chicago.

Reporter: Chicago, colossus of the Midwest clings it's concrete towers into the blue Illinois sky, a mighty metropolis of finance, transport, and trade.

Abner: It was 1948 and Adlai Stevenson was running for governor and Paul Douglas was running for the Senate, and they both seemed like really attractive candidates.

One night on the way home from law school, I passed the 8th Ward, regular Democratic headquarters, and I went in, I said, "I'd like to volunteer for Stevenson and Douglas."

The quintessential of Chicago ward committeeman took the cigar out of his mouth and said, "Who sent you?"

I said, "Nobody sent me."

He put the cigar back, and said, "We don't want nobody nobody sent."

♪ Participant: In the early '50s, Hyde Park was a particularly vibrant place.

A number of European immigrants settled in Hyde Park and young people who came from the war with very different experiences and who had very strong feelings about equality, democracy had managed to defeat the fascist for the world.

Our belief in the fact that the society could be made better through government work was enormously important to us.

We developed the independent voters of Illinois, something called IVI, and the idea was to run in the state representative race, and the logical candidate was a young 30-year-old Abner Mikva.

He himself had already been active in places like the ACLU.

He already had a reputation as a lawyer on freedom of speech issues, so he was a logical contender, but the trick was to make it happen.

Abner: I had two things going for me.

I had been involved in the local IVI song, and I was the only one that had ever been to Springfield.

Now Springfield was considered the Wild West as far as the civilized world was concerned.

Participant: He was elected with no help, in fact, opposition from the Democratic Party Organization, but he then went to Springfield where he was a very effective legislator.

Participant: Ab had many rare qualities, but one of the rare political qualities was that he was a passionate liberal on the one hand, but he was also a pragmatist on the other hand, and so in Springfield, he developed close personal relationships with a number of Republicans.

Abner: That little group of us combined with some other independence from downstate and independent Republicans from Chicago were able to sometimes make the difference and we got through a lot of reforms.

Participant: Ab was 30 when he got to the legislature.

He had an outsized impact on that body on issues of civil rights, and political reform, and kinds of things that people didn't fight for as readily in the 1950s.

♪ Participant: Ab was known almost immediately in the state legislature after he was elected in 1956 for his leadership on civil rights issues.

In fact, the first bill he introduced was an open housing bill to deal with discrimination in housing which was getting very, very bad.

Ab throughout his career was a leader when it came to civil rights issues.

When Martin Luther King came to Chicago for a summer campaign in summer of 1966, and Mayor Daley, who was very unhappy at a meeting in city hall with the head of the urban league in Chicago invited Ab Mikva to be part of that meeting.

Participant: Politically, Daley had no use for him at all and that didn't deter Abner.

Abner knew that a reform was necessary in Chicago and fought that battle.

Abner: I encouraged his ire.

He wanted to build an airport in the Lake and I was opposed to that.

He wanted to help US steel put a new steel mill in a lake and I opposed that.

Participant: I think the recent Abner stood out for all of us as a beacon for somebody to follow.

He constantly was willing to take on the system.

Abner was a thoughtful, rational, reasonable person in doing it in those days.

The democratic machine was very much operated in terms of local politics like a totalitarian system.

Daley: As long as I'm mayor, no one will be stepped on and no one has to be stepped on.

[applause].

That goes for you too.

Participant: The chairman of the party was Richard J Daley and the mayor of the city was Richard J Daley.

The city had roughly 40,000 employees, but because of the machine's power to elect people, the chairman of the party also had almost total control over all the other governments in Cook County.

As the person who controlled the governments, Daley also controlled hiring and firing, which was the heart of the strength of the machine.

Abner: I couldn't believe that the patronage system existed as broadly as it did.

The idea of all these city services being distributed on a pertinent system, which continued to be the biggest argument I had with the Daley machine.

Participant: Daley ran the system the same way from the top.

If your ward didn't deliver, then Daley's response would be, "Fine, you're going to lose many jobs and we'll give them to some other wards."

I have the committee even tell me, "When a person calls our office; if there was a hole in the street, if the water main was leaking, if your nephew needed a job, we have the polling sheets right there, we never voted, and if they weren't on the list, we just hang up on them."

It got to the point where you simply might as well not run for office if you weren't going to be slated.

You had to build your own organization from scratch to compete with basically a paid workforce.

Participant: It's hard to remember back then what a difficult struggle that was and the fact that Ab was willing to take on the machine was very, very important to me.

It wasn't exactly a straight path for career advancement for someone who wanted to be in politics in the Chicago area, but that didn't matter to him.

Reporter: The hottest primary battle in the Chicago area is being waged right here in the second congressional district, where state representative Abner Mikva is attempting to unseat incumbent congressman, Barrett O'Hara.

Barrett O'Hara: Always nice to see you all and I appreciate the opportunity for even a politician to say a couple of words on the eve of an election.

Thank you very much.

Abner: Berrett O'Hara, who was then 84 years old, he's a good Liberal Democrat, and he was the last Spanish-American war veteran in the Congress.

Participant: Maybe Mr. Mikva would like to comment on that.

Abner: When I first announced my candidacy, I said very clearly in my opening statement that I did not think that our physical ages was an issue in the campaign.

I think the age of our ideas is an issue.

The machine was opposed to me and he won.

When they asked him how he felt, he said he felt like when he climbed San Juan Hill.

Two years later, my ambition hadn't abated at all.

The district was changing and he was two years older.

At that point, Mayor Daley, who was very much a pragmatist decided that I would probably win anyway.

When I went to see him to tell him I was running, he said, "Good, we're going to stay neutral."

Participant: Ab won the Democratic primary in 1968 and in a district that was so heavily Democratic, that essentially ensured his victory in the general election.

♪ [crowd cheering] Abner: With George my governor as the president of the United States, we wouldn't have to have to stop those that attacked us in the streets of Chicago.

[crowd cheering] Abner: By the time '68 rolled around, the divisions about the war were front and center on everything in this country.

It was my single most important issue.

I would say the South Vietnam, but you'd better start talking and talking earnestly in these private negotiations with both the Viet Cong because we are running out of time.

Participant: Unlike the wars that have followed, we had a real draft.

People were being taken into the armed forces for something that they affirmatively opposed.

Participant: I was a child of the '60s and most of the political establishment was the enemy.

There were very few people in elected office at the national level who were in favor of the things that my peers were in favor of; ending the war, ending discrimination, environmental issues, he stood for all the right issues, the issues that we cared about.

Participant: Nine Republicans and nine Democrats yesterday announced the formation of a committee for a vote on the war.

Our proposition is very simple that our troops will be out by a set date and that beyond that period, there will be no further monies appropriated for Southeast Asia wartime experience.

[applause] We want our boys out of Vietnam, period!

[applause] Participant: In 1971 during the Vietnam War, there was a movement to lower the voting age to 18.

A lot of people felt that if you were old enough to fight, you were old enough to vote.

Ted Kennedy took the lead in promoting an amendment lowering the voting age to 18.

He recruited a very young, still relatively inexperienced congressman, Ab Mikva, to be a key house floor manager.

Participant: This change will be an amendment to the United States Constitution which says that the right to vote in any election shall not be denied to anyone who has reached at least the age of 18.

Participant: Sure enough, they were successful in passing an amendment which lower the voting age to 18.

Participant: Abner's greatest impact was encouraging young people to seek politics and political action as the way to change things in the country.

Participant: When is there going to be some will to do it?

Could it be that government and big business is the same thing?

We found that his background-- I was just intrigued by the campaign itself and the new politics that he was developing because no one really ran campaigns like that before of just volunteers, and especially young people, and really trusting all the young people who were involved in the campaign, leading the campaign, and organizing it.

Participant: Ab believed in young people.

He wasn't pandering just for a youth vote, it was because Ab saw a lot of talent, certainly enthusiasm, enormous energy in volunteer support.

♪ Participant: I was living in South Shore and I just moved to Chicago.

I walked into the office and I volunteered to work in his campaign.

That was in 1968.

Participant: I was a freshman at Northwestern University in 1974, and I was registering for a class, and there was Ab.

He was so friendly, and warm, and engaging, and smart.

He was looking for volunteers, so I immediately signed up to work with him.

Participant: I was in high school in '72 and I was a senior.

I actually organized all the high schools in the district and became the first high school coordinator at [unintelligible 00:16:42] Participant: Ab brought to it the opposite of the machine system.

He had young people or volunteers who went door to door to find out who was likely to vote for Abner, and followed up and be sure they got them to the polls on election day.

Participant: He had an appreciation for organizing, so his campaigns always devote a lot of resources to the organizing effort.

We had an advantage that most campaigns don't have and that is we had a candidate who people believed in and people wanted to work for.

Participant: Abner was a spectacular mentor.

He understood talent, but he attracted talent of all different kinds and helped everybody find and do their best work.

Participant: Ab and Zoe just simply believed that young people are citizens, let's let them act now and give them the chance to really experience the excitement of the political process.

That was the need about the Mikva Challenge is it's predicated on that same belief.

Participant: When Ab and Zoe were about to move back to Chicago from Washington in the late 1990s, some of the former congressional staff people wanted to create a nonprofit to honor both Zoe and Ab's outstanding public life.

Abner: They were talking about setting up an intern series or lecture series, and Zoe jumped in and she said, "That's not what we want to be remembered by.

We want to be remembered about getting people involved in politics and in government just the way we got caught up at a young age."

Participant: Thank you.

Grab a seat.

Participant: Thank you guys so much for being here.

Let's jump right into training.

This is our phone/canvassing script.

This is how you approach voters whether at the door or at the phone.

Participant: Ab and Zoe Mikva invented a new field of civic education called action civics.

Participant: One of the things that Zoe and Abner really noticed was that often you had white middle class to upper-class youth that were very exposed to civics to campaign into elections, but you didn't see too many youth of color and you definitely didn't see students from low-income communities.

We train our youth around civil discourse, around working across differences.

Participant: Since you've canvassed before, what motivates you?

Participant: We all know there's a long history of corruption in the city of Chicago, especially in the mayor position.

Participant: They both felt that if we started our programming in high school, if we captured youth earlier than college and helped to develop their civic identity, it cannot only change their lives, but it can hopefully change the course of the way politics happens in the United States.

Participant: Do you want me to be the person that opens the door, and then you go, and then we can switch?

Participant: Yes, that'd be good.

Participant: Okay, are you aware of the election in three days on February 26th?

Participant: Yes.

Participant: Mikva Challenge gave me the power to use my voice and also they gave me the power to help unite with other people so we can collaborate together, and use our own ideas, and voices to share to the world what we are passionate about and what we want to see change.

This way, okay.

So who's the first house?

Participant: The first house that we're going to 2128 May Street.

[knocking] Participant: Mikva Challenge comes in and says, "You're powerful, you have a voice, and you know things, we're going to help you share your talents, and expertise, and voice with the world," which is a much power effective strategy to make politics and government seem relevant and important to their lives.

♪ Participant: When you're running every two years, you want to see a lot of people and you want a lot of people to see you.

Abner: As a candidate, I always used to say that this is the most important election ever, and if my name was on the ballot, it certainly was to me.

Participant: We walked the precinct and the race for you and we appreciate that you supported us here tonight.

Participant: Abner was very smart and very strategic.

[applause] Which is why our campaigns would put together and organize the way they were.

Abner: I have to say that as I see you sitting all here, I think that some school board members are in for a lively spring.

[applause] Participant: There are a lot of people who are great on the stand and give a good speech who have a message, and Abner was great at that.

He was a sensational campaigner, but he was a legislator and he liked to legislate, he knew how.

He liked people and when he got to Congress, he knew what he was doing.

Abner: It just seems to me that we would be sending out a wrong signal to repeal this without some kind of movement on their part.

I was so excited about this notion of trading ideas with other people, and compromising, and working out how you get your bill to pass, and how you support other people and their bills to pass.

I considered the legislative process the most fascinating human experience I've ever had.

Participant: Mikva had a reputation for being one of those liberal block that you could work with.

Participant: It's happened only about four or five times in the Middle East.

Abner: Yes, but would we put that kind of pressure on South Korea?

Participant: Yes we certainly would.

Participant: He mastered the art of legislation.

He had shrewd instincts.

He had a remarkable ability to get along with people who were quite different, people who Ab can work with very comfortably even when they disagreed.

He was a realist.

If it was a half loaf versus no loaf, he'd take it.

He'd try to get a full loaf.

Abner: I move that the committee to now order, as amended, the bill HR1.

This is final passage on the bill.

Participant: People think, well, if you compromise, that means you don't have any principles, you're selling out, and that's not the way it works in a large society like ours.

We ought to be able to find a way to compromise our differences especially on the important issues of what kind of health care should we have, what should be our foreign policy.

It's on those issues were people of principle can disagree without being disagreeable and find a common ground that allows the country to move forward.

Abner: When I ran Congress and got elected, any of the issues that I didn't go along with I always let it to be known that the mayor was not happy.

Participant: The only thing that the Democratic machine responded to was beating them in election, actual power, which Abner did, but they responded ultimately by taking a district away from him.

Abner: As far as the mayor was concerned when it was time for reapportionment, mysteriously my seat got divided into three parts.

Participant: He thought for a while about it and he looked at what was happening way up north, and he decided that he was going to take a crazy chance, and he was going to move up north, and he was going to run for Congress there.

Participant: He picked a very difficult district to go to.

Suburban voters tend not to be fond of city politicians, so that was the first challenge.

Also, it was a district, but circa 1972 and '74 was really much more of a moderate Republican district.

Participant: We ran the numbers and he said, "It has possibility, although a Democrat hadn't been elected in a century, let's go and give it a try."

We packed our bags and became known as the carpetbaggers who had moved to the north suburbs.

Abner: Though there's no question that those issues on welfare and on the safety net, that's where my stock in trade on the south side, just it didn't fit the North Shore, except that the white plight had already started, and an awful lot of South Shore had moved up Evanston.

So when I came up north, a lot of my constituents had preceded me.

♪ Participant: I first met Abner Mikva in 1972 when Ab was beginning to organize his campaign in the 10th District.

He was someone who was tenacious enough to stand up to the machine and press me from the very beginning.

Abner: For the last three years in the House of Representatives, I have tried to ask the right questions and tried to find the right answers to some of our most pressing problems.

An approach to law and order that didn't ravage the bill of rights, a way to end the war in Southeast Asia.

Participant: We really had a great organization.

It was just absolutely incredible.

A lot of students, a lot of young people were excited about this because this was the place you could go to fight against the war to support civil rights.

We brought people out.

They were excited for the first time about a candidate that could represent them.

[applause] We lost.

♪ It was a Republican landslide with Nixon winning.

Abner: The late Adelaide Stevenson I think said it very eloquently when he said about losing that it hurts too much to laugh and you're too old to cry, and that's the way I feel tonight, but most of all, I feel that I have just had the richest and warmest personal experience that any candidate or any person could ever have working with all of you.

Participant: One of the things I remember most about the election night, which was just a horrible evening, he was so calm, and collected, and he was basically saying it's okay.

All of us are, "No, it's not okay.

This is the worst thing in the world.

We all worked like crazy.

You are the person that has to be here and we got this guy we consider second rate."

He said, "No, this is great.

We set it up, we'll come back."

♪ A year later, he calls me up and says, "Ready to go?"

and I said, "I've been waiting for the phone call."

We started calling people and boy, they came back right away, "What can I do to help?"

We've just had Watergate, instead of having a Republican landslide looking at us, we're looking at a problem where the Republican Party is in big trouble.

Participant: When Abner came back to Congress, it was the working class.

They were determined to totally shake up congressional system and he was putting ways and means.

The committee took up tax bill, Ford was president, and they shaped it into quite a liberal tax bill.

Mikva from the very beginning would talk to Republicans and say, "what can we agree on here?"

Participant: It was amazing to me that he had so many relationships all across the aisle, Republicans and Democrats because as a young idealistic kid, I couldn't understand how he could be so friendly with some of these people.

That's one of the first things I learned working for him is how you get along with people you disagree with.

Participant: From day one, he knew the issues and he knew the politics.

As a junior member on the committee, Ab Mikva was a major player.

Abner: We still have an embargo on certain Russian skins.

The skins can't come in and therefore, American foreign workers aren't allowed to make the code.Let's try get a bill ready to see if we can undo it.

Participant: Working for Ab, we thought was working for the best person in the House of Representatives.

Participant: It never felt like he was doing anything for a political reason.

He always did it for a principled reason.

He believed in gun control, and so every term of Congress was a bill to ban the manufacturing and distribution of handguns.

Something that today would be laughed at, but was obviously the impression.

Reporter: Fresh attempts are made each year to introduce undesirable firearms legislation.

Registration will not keep guns out of the hands of lawless, and undesirable person.

Abner: I just found out for the first time that it was legal to carry a loaded gun down the street in Chicago and I thought that was outrageous, so I put in a bill.

A professor at the university called me up and said, "Oh, Ab, don't do this, it'll ruin your career."

I said, "What are you talking about?

This is a nothing bill, it may not pass, but who's paying the attention."

He said, "You'll see."

Participant: That was the beginning of his attempt for the next 25 years, both in Springfield and then in Congress.

Ab Mikva became the leader, both in the house and the Senate, for gun control.

Abner: That time, the assault rifles hadn't yet come into life, but the handguns were my opposition.

I kept trying to say, but a hunter doesn't go hunting with a handgun.

Participant: I proposed that we declare handguns like machine guns, and poison gas, and a few other weapons for mayhem to make them totally illegal as to the manufacturer, or the possession, and the sale, except as to law enforcement officials, and I think we need a national law to do this.

Participant: You also know that the people who were most afflicted, who were most hurt, who were most harmed by gun violence in America were the poor, the dispossessed, the minority communities that Abner cared so much about.

Abner: Any national gun law, no matter how innocent in appearance presupposes a still further growth and a centralized computerized gun control bureaucracy in Washington DC.

Participant: Ab Mikva, in their view, was enemy number one.

The NRA really went after Ab in each of his campaigns trying to defeat him.

Abner: Even members who agreed with me, and there were a lot of them who agreed with me, said they couldn't co-sponsored a bill or vote for it because of pressure from the National Rifle Association back home.

Participant: A lot of us were looking for something to really believe in and really organize around, and here you had this guy who was just not afraid to call the NRA the criminals' lobby.

Participant: I loved his battles on behalf of gun control.

He referred to the NRA as the fastest mimeograph machine in the West, which shows you how far back this fight goes.

Participant: He knew it wasn't a winning political issue for the Democratic caucus in the house, but it was an important issue.

It was important to raise the issue and he did it all the time.

[crowd chanting] Participant: Growing up, I witnessed a lot of injustice in my community.

The Mikva Challenge actually empowered me to do something about these issues.

Abner would always say that is the Mikva Challenge mission.

She is the Mikva Challenge, she is the change that the Mikva Challenge is looking for.

Participant: A lot of youth would pick up a gun because they didn't feel respected.

If we can give students respect in a different way, if we can get them engaged, I actually think it would be a cure for a lot of the violence we see in the city.

Participant: The more stories that are told, I feel like they say it's at least one person.

There was this boy that I knew.

He had a big heart and was so loving.

That what was my brother Malcolm H Havis.

He lost his life due to the senseless act of gun violence in Chicago.

[applause] I was only nine years old when I lost my brother.

A lot of the memories that we had, I don't remember them because I was only nine, and so the only this is I know that my brother is gone.

Today we are here because we want our voices to be heard.

We want graduations, diplomas, proms.

We want them even at home and we do matter and we are important.

Thank you so much.

[applause] ♪ Abner: In '75, in the middle of a 10-year term, Richard J Daley decided it'd be a good idea to reapportion.

♪ Democrats controlled the legislature and Dan Walker was a Democratic governor.

Lo and behold, my new district that I just won in '74 so painfully, he proposed to cut up so that my district would run through my front bedroom and after DuPage County, which was then very Republican.

Participant: That was much more personal, at least for mom and dad, who were in the statehouse, people he'd served with were going to tow the machine line and support this remap.

Abner: Then I have to fight it in the legislature.

The Republicans were opposed to it.

We got enough of the Independent Democrats to oppose it so that we were able to defeat it.

Participant: I remember one evening I was driving him to a campaign event, and he said, "Henry, you know what the most important characteristic of a legislator is?"

I said, "No, what is that, Ab."

He said, "Gutt.

If you're not willing to cast a vote the way you think the vote ought to come out, then you shouldn't be in this business."

♪ Participant: In 1976 when I was a student at Northwestern, I volunteered.

We were really engaged in this idea of registering students, and actually, we turned Northwestern into a pretty good number of votes.

Participant: There's no question that students elected him.

Reporter: You may have thought the American election was over two weeks ago Wednesday, but Abner Mikva didn't.

Reporter: The final results came out today.

The winner is Abner Mikva by 201 vote.

Participant: I just was amazed by how methodical, and efficient, and numbers-based, and no-nonsense those campaigns were.

Participant: Ab won three straight victories in the 10th Congressional District of Illinois each time by less than 1%.

♪ Zoe Mikva: It's not easy living your life as Mrs. Abner.

When I lived in Chicago and he lived in Washington and we saw each other on weekends, that was perfect for my point of view.

[laughter] Abner: I was perfectly miserable, but she thought I was perfectly well.

Participant: Mostly, we were as kids are, oblivious to our parents, and then we would be out for breakfast and people was like, "Oh, can I talk to you?"

It'd be both a little annoying and surprising and wow.

I guess people think he's interesting and want to talk to him.

Participant: Hi, how are you?

Participant: Great.

Participant: Nice to talk to you.

Bye.Bye-bye.

Have a good breakfast.

Participant: Good morning, Mr. Mikva.

Participant: Hi, how are you?

Participant: Remember when we met on the plane?

Participant: Oh, we're from the same district.

Participant: If we went into a deli anywhere in the 10th District, I would have to escort him out or we would never leave.

Participant: It becomes terribly important that you get reelected.

We all worry about getting clocked in the next election.

They worry about being in the wrong side of an unpopular issue or being too out front on some controversial subject.

Participant: She didn't love to campaign.

She did it because she knew that it was important.

She didn't mind the one-on-one and talking to people about his work in Congress, but the standing and waving at the 4th of July parade and all of that I don't think she loved.

His original intent was he was going to be an accountant, and she told him that that didn't interest her to marry an accountant.

Zoe: He said, "Would it be all right if I became a lawyer?"

and I said, "Yes, that would be all right."

Participant: He grew up very poor, so he also felt this need to take care financially of his family and she always made it clear that taking care of your conscience and the things you feel you need to do is far more important.

♪ Participant: While he had the public-facing work, she was always involved in civic life, and advocacy, and teaching in schools, and making difference behind the scene.

Participant: She was always the person he went to for advice and she was always his conscience.

Participant: My family joined KAM Isaiah Israel and High Park really because they wanted to be a part of the social justice committee.

That was likely the first time that they were officially a part of the Jewish community.

Abner: My father thought that religion was opiated at the masses, and so I never had any formal religious training of any kind.

My grandfather would stick me into the synagogue sometimes.

Participant: I think that my father's Jewish identity was just reinforced what he already had in terms of a deep commitment to repairing the world, public service, the life of the community.

Participant: Ab's relationship with a large Jewish constituency in his congressional district was put to the supreme test early in 1978.

Reporter: For more than a year, the Nazis have been trying to mrch in Skokie.

57.8% of the population of Skokie is Jewish, many of them survivors of Nazi death camps.

[singing] Participant: When the Nazis proposed that they wanted to mrch in Skokie, it presented my father with a very difficult decision.

He was a lifelong committed advocate of free speech, but this was about more than free speech.

This was about the Nazi efforts to retraumatize these Holocaust survivors who lived in Skokie.

Reporter: The village of Skokie passed three ordinances that would make it next to impossible for the Nazis to hold their demonstration.

Participant: Part of his law practice was first amendment representing the Playboy club and he was a lifelong member of the ACLU.

Abner: I was also political enough to know that this was going to be a very big political issue in Skokie and elsewhere and it was.

Participant: Death to the Nazis, death, death, death.

Abner: I tried it out on Zoe, she said, it's simple to stand up for free speech and even the Nazis are entitled to march.

Participant: He also felt the tension of what does it mean to represent your district?

Participant: I wouldn't dare them to come in front of my store.

I don't care what's going to happen to me.

I'm not responsible to myself and there are thousands like me.

Abner: I sort of sat on the fence, I was for the marchers one day, and four the Holocaust victims the next day.

Reporter: The ACLU defended the Nazis and lost 30% of its Illinois membership.

Participant: The question is what is the power of government to pick and choose among speakers in the marketplace of ideas?

Participant: He ultimately decided to support the village's decision to try to deny the permit.

Participant: He just kept going back to how traumatic it was going to be for the many survivors of the Holocaust who lived there.

Reporter: Federal judge Bernard Decker struck down three separate village ordinances.

It was the last in a series of judicial decisions and barring appeal removes the final obstacle to the march.

Abner: I'm not sure that my role there was constructive because frankly, I was troubled by this tension, but I was very much at the center of it.

Participant: I think it really was one of those struggles you have when you have competing values and you have to choose one, and you're not going to be happy with the decision because you're ultimately having to sacrifice the other.

He wasn't happy with his decision and many of the people on which he built common cause around a variety of progressive issues, of course, were mad at him about this.

Participant: Ab weathered the storm of the Nazi controversy and was often running again for Congress in 1978.

Participant: He asked me to come back and manage the '78 campaign.

Everybody worked their heart out to get him elected, and this time we thought we were getting the margin up a little bit.

We thought maybe we'll get our way to a safe seat, and then it was only a few months later when he was appointed to the court.

Participant: For so many of us that were on the staff, and then the volunteers who were there every election, there were a lot of different feelings.

There were people who initially were sad, some even angry like, "How could he leave us?"

Participant: Ab was a political realist.

He saw that he had a very narrow window to get to the court if he could.

Abner: Outside of being a legislator is you're always running from one crisis to another.

You never have time to really think through your answers, to the questions that are being presented.

I was tired of running every two years.

Participant: Here he's appointed to the bench, it should be a slam dunk.

He's a brilliant lawyer, he's got all the respect in Congress, including from the Republicans.

In fact, the members of the committee were the most upset that he was appointed to the judiciary because they were going to lose him from ways and means because he was the guy who could get things done with both sides together.

Abner: All my friends in the Senate were teasing me that maybe they'd vote against me just to build up some conservative credentials and we'd laugh, and I thought it'd be a piece of cake.

♪ Participant: The NRA went all out nationally to try to defeat the nomination.

They spent, at the time, a record amount of money over a million dollars, which back in 1979 was a lot of money, especially to defeat a judicial nomination.

Abner: The National Rifle Association just was vehement.

They were determined to, not even so much to block me but to teach all my colleagues in the Congress that if you oppose the NRA, you better not try to go anywhere else, we'll fight you.

The Senator from Mississippi, Thad Cochran called me and he said, "Ab, I don't know what you're being told, but right now, the voting committee is eight to seven and I am the eighth vote, and if you think I'm comfortable being the only Republican voting for a liberal anti-gun judge, you're crazy.

Get your ass back here and start finding out what's going on."

Participant: The power of the NRA, we were just a little [crosstalk] These senators that were his friends were going to not vote for confirmation because they were so afraid of the NRA.

Abner: Ted Kennedy started to work his magic and I finally did get out of committee with a two or three-vote margin, and I won a Senate vote 58 to 31.

Participant: This was one of the first NRA campaigns against a judicial nomination and they really wanted to make an example of Mikva.

They wanted to get the message across that if you stood up to the gun lobby, they'll crush you.

Abner: By the time I came on the bench, there were only two of us who had been appointed within the last 10 years that had come out of the Congress of the United States.

The legislative process is basically a big piece of what judges are reviewing.

Judges are supposed to try to carry out the will of the legislature and sometimes that's hard to find Reporter: A big victory tonight for gay rights supporters and a major defeat for the Pentagon.

A federal appeals court ruled that the federal ban on homosexuals in the military is unconstitutional.

Participant: When Ab struck down the ban on gays in the military, that was very controversial.

As an example, the honorary of Abner's courage and foresight is his prescience.

Reporter: The appeals court said the Navy must reinstate a midshipman who was denied graduation in 1987 solely because he acknowledged he is gay.

The three-judge panel also ordered the Navy to commission 29-year-old Joseph Stephen as an officer.

Participant: Ab wrote the majority three-judge decision, a line that he was especially proud of was "The hallmark in America is that we judge people on what they do, not on who they are."

Participant: My father was very proud of the decision in Stephen V. Aspen.

I think that over time, it became clear how important it was.

Participant: When Ab wrote the Stephen decision, he was proud of it because it was one of the very early federal rulings that was in support of gay rights.

Participant: Our father was very much a product of his time.

He evolved on a number of issues, he evolved significantly on what it meant to empower women, and he evolved also significantly on LGBTQ issues.

He definitely listened to the people around him and changed as the world changed.

Participant: It was visionary to understand that in order for our democracy to strive and to be healthier than it is now, you need to have all of those different types of representations at the table.

Participant: Okay, so we called like 15 different high schools and we talked to administrators, they say we have someone over the freshmen connection, and we talk to them, but they don't know nothing about social and emotional learning in the freshman connection.

That's why we want to know who's in charge of that.

Participant: We partner with Mikva Challenged to run the Student Advisory Council.

Participant: It sounds like you're proposing putting together best practices for what teachers should be doing during freshman connection time with students, is that what you're saying?

Participant: The CPS to an advisory council meet with Dr. Janice Jackson on a quarterly basis to present their recommendations and what research have they found, what actions they want to take.

Participant: What would it look like for a district to have their deans, and their security, and coaches be trained in social-emotional learning?

Participant: Mikva Challenge, it really gives us a voice in our schools.

I feel like when we talk to Dr. Jackson, I think those policies will actually be enforced and Mikva would actually have changed some things in schools today.

Participant: What skills do we need the student to strengthen on actually?

Participant: These students continue to impress me time and time again.

They are talking about women's rights, they are talking about LGBT issues, they are talking about supporting others.

They don't come here just to put something on their resume for Participant: That is really what Ab is most proud of.

He said to me that the most important thing that he and his wife, Zoes, ever did was to help start the Mikva Challenge.

♪ Bill Clinton: Good afternoon.

I am delighted to announce that Chief Judge Abner Mikva of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will become the new White House counsel effective October 1st.

Participant: Bill Clinton chose Mikva to be his counsel because he needed some adult supervision and Ab was brought in to provide that.

Abner: Like most presidents, including Roosevelt, Johnson, they saw the constitution is an obstacle course that they had to get around trying to overcome restrictions and restraints that the constitution put on presidential power.

Participant: I actually tried to talk him out of it, but he'd already made up his mind.

You can stay a judge forever.

Reporter: Tonight, accusations about the White House old and new.

Abner: That was the one place where I felt I came in at the wrong age.

I'd go home at seven, eight o'clock at night, throw myself in the bed.

They were up scheduling meetings till midnight.

Larry King: Are you glad you gave up a federal lifetime judgeship for this job?

Abner: I like my clients very much, Larry and I'm happy to be where I am.

Larry King: You don't miss the bench.

Abner: No, not yet.

Participant: He's a very, very hard worker, but even for him, it was brutal.

Abner: He's just not aware of how significant it is to be the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Participant: He had mixed success.

He clashed actually a lot with Hillary Clinton, and the only miscalculation that Abner made was having served on that US Court of Appeals with Judge Starr.

He thought Ken Starr would be fair.

Participant: Ken Starr was the independent counsel whose investigation led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the House of Representatives.

Participant: Abner later deeply regretted that advice and he thought that Ken Starr had been taken over by a bunch of political hitman from the Federalist Society and Republican operatives, and was anything but fair.

Participant: After Ab left the White House in 1995, he returned to Chicago and taught law at the University of Chicago where he became a good friend and colleague of another law professor, Barack Obama.

♪ Abner: When I was chief judge of the Court of Appeals in Washington, I told my then Harvard clerk to tell Barack I'd like to interview with him to see if he would clerk for me.

He had just been elected president of Harvard Law Review.

Obama: I told him at that stage, "Look, I'm flattered, but I'm not sure I'm going to clerk.

I want to go back and do civil rights law and work in the community."

Abner: It was a good clerkship, I would get about 500, 600 applications a year, and I was a little bit surprised.

It turns out that he didn't even want to interview with me.

Obama: What he told me later was that he wasn't sure whether I knew what I was passing up.

Abner: I left Washington, came back to Chicago, and I was teaching the same time he was, and he was just a wonderful colleague.

We would have lunch and breakfast.

Obama: When I was thinking about running for the State Senate, he was one of the first people I talked to to seek advice.

He was very encouraging.

He said, "Look, politics isn't for everybody, but for somebody like you, Barack, who wants to make an impact and has a pretty good moral compass, I think you should give it a shot."

Abner: I was absolutely astounded when I first met him and how bright he was, what complete political skills he had, the depth of intellect, the depth of interest, the ability to listen.

Obama: At each stage in my career, I would always make sure to check-in and get his thoughts and his advice.

He never steered me wrong.

Participant: When Barack went to the State Senate, Ab really counseled him on the legislative process down there on how to operate as a progressive, as a reformer.

I think that Ab's long history had an influence on Barack as to how he could move forward.

He thought of Mikva as almost a father figure to him in politics.

Participant: Certainly Abner encouraged then to Senator Obama to seriously think about running for president.

Abner had no doubt in his own mind, having dealt with them both, that given the times and given the conditions that Obama was a stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton.

Obama: Ab went on to devote his life to public service.

Reform the Illinois Criminal Code, defended free speech and consumer rights.

In 1993 he struck down the Pentagon's ban on gays in the military.

He was overturned on that one, but history proved him right, and he inspired the next generation, including me.

[applause] Abner: That's the most exciting day of my life.

I can't imagine anything that could have been better.

[applause] ♪ Participant: Once my father has moved into hospice, we brought my mother.

My mother's cognitive abilities were already severely impaired.

She was already in a wheelchair.

We rolled her chair up next to him and tried to explain to her what was going on.

To him, he was in and out of it, but they did have this final moment together.

♪ Participant: We always laughed that he must have heard the doctor say that he was going to live for another week and he said, "Not on your life, I'm out of here."

He controlled them even at the end.

His life till two weeks before he died was full, and vital, and relevant, and involved.

He was ready.

Participant: Ab was the full story.

I think for those of us who knew him personally, he still provides inspiration, and through the stories that we'll continue to tell, hopefully, the next generation, democracy's next generation will be inspired by what he stood for.

Participant: Today, I'm a Mikva Challenge board member.

At the Mikva Challenge, we help young people like we were in high school to realize that they are somebody, that they do have a voice and a place in our democracy.

Because of the whole Mikva Challenge, so many of us, we can dream bigger and reach higher than we thought that we could when we were born into our original circumstances.

That's all because we can now be somebody who Abner Mikva sent.

Participant: These young people are going to continue to make a difference, and every one of them who makes a difference will be part of Abner Mikva's legacy.

m Participant: Literally, thousands of young people now are going to know that somebody did send them.

I love that.

♪