"My problem with what is going on is this. Apparently, and my source is a document (which I think Joanna provided to the list) that states that the four groups organizing for this demonstration- United For Peace, ANSWER, Bay Area United Against War and NION- agreed to not invite any speaker who had publicly criticized any one of these four groups. Is that a misunderstanding on my part?
If I have not misunderstood then I have a problem with that. Basically it means that if you have a criticism of any of these four groups, you are not welcome to speak to "their" anti-war rally. Notice the quotes around the possesive "their", as if they owned the movement." ------------------------------------ Exactly, and the subsequent letter circulated by the coalitions hardly convinced me that this 'rule' was not both wrong in organizational principle - you can't retroactively 'bar' a person for public statements they'd made _before_ the existence of the 'barring' organization! If that were so, then you could 'bar' a lot of people, myself included, since I know I've written something 'bad' about the WWP in the past and had it published in political newspapers. But maybe such arbitrariness is the idea behind this rule.
Further, the explanation offered just looks politically stupid. It mentioned that people "with similiar views" were invited to speak. Well, hell, then why not Lerner? I smell personal dislike and an excess of egoism on the part of all sorts of "constituency owners".
-Brad