andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> --- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> > [is it] correct for
> > speakers at an anti-war
> > rally to defend him.
>
> Of course it is, why the hell not? I mean, it might
> not be tactically wise for some reason or other
> (divert attention from the war, etc.), but improper?
> Absurd.
This is not to say there are not limits. Jan & I encountered one 30 years ago. There was a local 'underground" paper for which we wrote a column entitled "The Red Flag." And we happened to be the only people writing for the paper who put our names and telephone number in it. Well, someplace in southern Illinois a state trooper made a fairly routine stop, and whoever it was he stopped shot him. The paper carried an article in effect praising this random (and quite unpolitical) murder, and our telephone began to ring. That was an impossible bind. We weren't about to defend a random murder by some drug dealer (regardless of who the victim was, cop or not a cop) -- but neither were we going to be put in a position of defending cops. We stopped writing the column and dissociated ourselves from the paper.
Carrol
P.S. While that paper had a lot of the '60s random lifestyle leftists, etc. on it, the person who was at its heart and kept it going was really something. While putting out the paper over almost a decade he developed into a seriously expert investigative reporter, some of whose stories the Blommington Pantagraph had to recognize. He was the son of a local Jewish physician (I mention he was Jewish because it entered in to how the father had been treated by the local medical establishment, which didn't affect the father's politics, but did probably affect the son.) Anyhow, in his late 20s he went back to school, graduate from Illinois, and got into the University of Illinois law school with one ofthe highest grades eer scored on the Law School Entrance exams. He then became the first student in the history of the U.of I Law school to graduate with a straight A average, thus becoming the valedictorian. He organized his valedictorian address around what the law looked like to someone who had been in prison. (I've got a copy around someplace, and it is a little jewel.) I understnad that about a third or less of the audience gave him a standing ovation, while two-thirds or more sat in stony silence. The last I heard he was the head of the ACLU office in Denver.
I nver met his mother, but when he was arrested (possession of marijuana) she wrote a blistering letter to the Pantagrph defending her son. I met his father once, when at a later time he (the father) came down to the courthouse to bail his son out (this time in connection with political activity -- though in my estimation at the time a trifle hairbrained type of activity). The father drew out his wallet like a hero in a B western movie draws his six gun: it was an absolutely beautiful motion, almost balletic. :-)