> It's not a question of legality, but of tactics. To deny a very prominent
> anti-war lefty like Lerner the chance to speak at an anti-war rally is
> lunacy. Perhaps ANSWER cares more about controlling the anti-war movement
> than it does about building the broadest anti-war movement possible?
WHY are people talking about the Lerner business as an example of ANSWER "controlling the anti-war movement" when [A] ANSWER is one of four coalitions staging the Feb. 16 event in San Francisco, [B] ANSWER has presumably not somehow staged some kind of coup d'etat within NION, UFPJ, or the Bay Area Coalition, [C] so far as I can tell ANSWER had no direct involvement with the Lerner business at all (the 'joint statement' says that it was a UFPJ representative who informed Lerner that he would not be invited), and [D] the joint statement by the four coalitions explicitly states that no organization has a 'veto' over the speakers?
This whole thing is quite analogous to what happened yesterday with that Holland Tunnel thread. People have canned responses and they bring them out and use them on ANSWER regardless of the facts of the particular case. I wrote that 'direct action is good' and Chuck0, who, to be fair, was writing early in the morning (although it's an hour earlier HERE), said 'see, Paulsen says direct action is bad.' In similar fashion, Corn and Berubé write that ANSWER vetoed Lerner; the other three sponsoring coalitions join in a statement saying that this is false; and people come along and say "Yes, but it's still a bad thing that ANSWER vetoed Lerner." For heaven's sake, who is more credible? UFPJ in San Francisco? Or Corn and Berubé? I know that Corn is a professional journalist and works for Fox News, and Berubé is a university professor and is therefore is presumed to be objective, but let's not let ourselves get overly impressed by credentials!
LP