----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
At 7:15 AM -0500 2/14/03, Nathan Newman wrote:
> >Lerner shouldn't get his _three_ minutes _unless_ he takes back his
>>charge of anti-Semitism _publicly_.
>
>Which illustrates Lerners point. Other groups can routinely charge mass
>movement leaders with being racists, sexists, homophobes and so on, and
they
>are not forced to publicly recant their charges in order to participate or
>speak at events.
-There is no precedent of a public figure accusing an anti-war -coalition of coalitions of racism, sexism, homophobia, or whatever -publicly _in the manner that Lerner did_ -- including organizing a -protest and publishing a WSJ op-ed against it -- _on the eve_ of an -important anti-war protest who then gets invited by the coalition of -coalitions to speak for 15 minutes, longer than any other speaker.
Jesse Jackson mounted a whole Presidential campaign in 1984 partly on that basis and unions in major strikes have been declared racist or sexist and thus not worth supporting. I've seen environmental struggles dismissed as too white and irrelevant. And I could keep the list going.
I don't even think there's anything necessarily wrong, since sometimes the issue being ignored is as important as the issue being advocated. But Lerner is hardly unprecedented.
-- Nathan