Full Statement of Columbia Students Who Occupied the Stage

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=100&ItemID=11146

In the aftermath of the protest on the night of October 4 against Jim Gilchrist and the racist Minutemen at Roone Arledge auditorium, we want to state clearly: We are proud to send the message to the country that racist and fascist groups are not welcome at Columbia or in New York City.

As Chicanos and Latinos, alongside African Americans and progressive people of other nationalities, we took it as our responsibility to give voice to the undocumented immigrant families who live in fear at terrorist vigilante groups like the Minutemen. Armed patrols by these groups force more and more people desperate for work to find even more hazardous ways into the United States. Over 3,000 people-including hundreds of children-have died in the desert. Their blood is on the hands of Gilchrist and his thugs.

Fascist scapegoating is not up for academic discussion. Like Hitler in pre-Nazi Germany, Gilchrist and the Minutemen attempt to demonize foreign-born poor people, blaming "illegals" for society's problems. His group doesn't present reasoned debate. It spouts racism and hatred, aiming to divide people against one another.

Regardless of how Gilchrist tries to sanitize his message for national audiences, more candid moments tell the real story. Gilchrist is a member of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which is now notorious for referring to Mexicans as "savages." Speaking about Mexicans and Central American immigrants, Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox once said, "They have no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your daughter and they are evil people."

This vile racism translates directly into violence on the ground. "It should be legal to kill illegals," said one Minutemen volunteer. "Just shoot 'em on sight. That's my immigration policy recommendation." It is no wonder that neo-Nazi organizations like the National Alliance praise the Minuteman Project in their publications, and have members signing up for Minutemen militias.

We are sure that if the Nazi party held a public meeting on campus, Jewish groups would be there to challenge them-so would we. We are sure that if the Ku Klux Klan held a public meeting on campus, African American groups would be there to challenge them-so would we. The Minutemen are no different.

[sweetheart]

1. yes, the civil war is still not over

eom

[Bluzmann57]

2. BRAVO BRAVO!!!!!!

What a great statement by some commited young people. If any minutemen want to challenge me, I'm here and I ain't going anywhere. In the words of your fuckin' leader, "Bring it on." Thank you to the people who made this statement.

[KoKo]

3. Columbia Students deserve our "look see" ...thanks for this Post! n/t

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. way to go columbia!

[DocSavage]

5. You will

of course also support anyone that act the same way if Chavez or the leader of the PLO speaks there. I mean, you are advocating that free speech or hate speech is defined by the listener.

The guarantee of free speech is not to protect every day speech, it is to protect speech that you do not agree with. It is a very slippery slope you walk if you support what the people at Columbia did while expecting your point of view to be heard uninterrupted.

[Jim Lane]

6. The Columbia students' statement is disingenuous.

They boldly proclaim their determination to "challenge" the Minutemen. Of course, the real issue is not whether they should have presented their own point of view, but whether they should have tried to prevent Gilchrist from presenting his.

It's interesting that their press release quotes Gilchrist and another Minutemen leader. The students don't mind if this "vile racism" is disseminated, as long as they're the ones doing the disseminating. They want to be the sole conduit through which their adversaries' views are transmitted to the public.

If the Minutemen really are such nutjobs, then the best way to undercut their support is to let them state their views. They'll expose themselves as racists. Instead, they're now being portrayed as the victims of leftist oppression. These self-righteous thought police at Columbia have done the Minutemen a big favor.

[pampango]

7. Sorry, but if you may have no right to post to this board.

If I disagreed with your position on immigration and the Minutemen, I would have the right, I'm sure you will concede, to occupy the keyboard from which you speak, so that the good people at DU would not be subjected to your pro-immigration, anti-American working class drivel.

Dang, I meant to throw in a "communist" and "racist against working class blacks" accusations in the above paragraph, but I am still perfecting my "holier than thou" writing techniques.

My son starts college next year. I hope he has the chance to be exposed to ideas from many sources from the far left to the far right. Part of the college experience is hearing points of view that your father never exposed you to. If he only is exposed to the left or the right or the center in college, he will have missed a wonderful opportunity for growth.

[Binka]

8. Jesus Fucking Christ

Why would you as a Dem want your child to hear ANYTHING the far right has to say? Their words are poison to the soul. I would consider it abuse to allow my children exposure to that DRIVEL and you call it "a wonderful opportunity for growth". Enjoy your stay on DU I will not be hearing anymore of your INSANITY as you are on ignore. Jesus Fucking Christ!

[pampango]

9. I do appreciate that you simply put me on ignore. You have every right

to ignore me, if you so desire. Your implied consent that I still have the right to speak at DU is much appreciated and admired. If only some people at Columbia would do the same.

My son has grown up in a small town in Ohio. Though we have traveled quite a bit, I trust that he will learn that there are all kinds of people in the world with all kinds of wisdom and prejudices. I trust him enough to believe that he will develop the ability to distinguish between the hate mongers and those that have legitimate points of view which he should consider.

I will not decide at that point whom he listens to, as I have while he was much younger, and whom he chooses to believe. He will be an adult. He will have every right to choose whom he wants to listen to and whom he wants to ignore, as you have done.

[buddysmellgood]

26. That's your choice. I might agree, I might not. You don't choose for me.

That's America. Or it was.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

10. I thought the purpose of education was to be exposed

to a variety of ideas and opinions, including disgusting opinions. If I had not hear the vilest far right opinions while in college, I probably would not be so determined in my political views. However, I would not want to silence those opinions that are different than mine.

Sure the Minutemen are a disgusting group, but once we start deciding which speech is acceptable and which isn't, we become just as bad as those 'far right fascists' we criticize. Free speech is just that - whether we like the speech or not. There are many other ways the students at Columbia could have protested the speech; rushing the stage was not one of them.

[UTUSN]

11. So when the wingnuts stormed the elections office in FL in 2000

Thuggery is Repuke-fascists storming the elections office in Florida in 2000. Thuggery is Repuke-fascists standing outside of Vice President GORE's residence screaming, "GET OUT OF CHEENEE'S HOUSE!" Thuggery is Repuke-fascists doing-I-forget-what in the Tennessee statehouse. Thuggery is the Minutemen snapping cameras in the faces of people as they go in and out from their workplace. Thuggery is the Minutemen "patrolling" the border.

Every time the ACLU has defended Nazis and KKK-ers, using Black and Jewish lawyers, those racist pigs have LAUGHED. ACLU filed on LIMBOsevic's side. O.K., I'm FOR the ACLU, but ...

More quotes from the students' statement:
*******QUOTE*******

.... This is not an issue of free speech. The Minutemen were able to reserve a hall at our university and had the protection of campus security and the NYPD-all to espouse their hate speech. We along with hundreds of others expressed our right to speak and protest.


Over the last 50 years, throughout the Civil Rights movement and the women's rights movement, ultra-right wing groups have routinely used violence, lynchings, armed assaults and bombings against oppressed people. Yet when we organize to oppose them to express our contempt for their violence, we are criticized for inhibiting the free speech of the ones who perpetrate violence. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

And from the Southern Poverty Law Center, here's their champion, Lou DOBBS:


*******QUOTE*******
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=589

Broken Record
Lou Dobbs' daily 'Broken Borders' CNN segment has focused on immigration for years.

But there's one issue Dobbs just won't take on.

By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok

.... For more than two years now, Dobbs has served up a populist approach to immigration on nightly segments of his newscast entitled "Broken Borders." He has relentlessly covered the issue, although hardly from a traditional news perspective -- Dobbs favors clamping down on illegal immigration, and his "reporting" never fails to make that clear. He has covered the same issues, and the same anti-immigration leaders, time after time after time. In recent months, Dobbs has run countless upbeat reports on the "citizen border patrols" that have sprung up around the country since last April's Minuteman Project, a paramilitary effort to seal the Arizona border.

But there's one thing Lou Dobbs won't do. No matter what others report about the movement, Dobbs has failed to present mounting and persistent evidence of anti-Hispanic racism in anti-immigration groups and citizen border patrols. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

[genie_weenie]

12. There are some ideas I don't want anyone to hear because

the dumb listeners may use those words to do something vile.

[pampango]

13. Certainly are some dumbies out there - the usual bell curve distribution

of intelligence and all that. And some of those dumbies undoubtedly do vile things.

I'm trying to craft a Constitutional Amendment that would allow those of us (I'm including all who post and read DU, of course) with IQ's in the top, let's say, 80% (actual percentage is subject to negotiation) to listen to whomever we wish. We are smart enough to be able to tell the hate mongers and racists from those people who have opinions that we either agree with or can learn something from.

The lowest 20% would be allowed to listen to speakers that have been cleared by me (or someone with a political view similar to mine). I hope such an amendment would reduce the propensity of the dumbies to do vile things.

[Make7]

15. There ought to be a law against dumb listeners doing vile things.

Non-dumb listeners would of course be exempt from such a law because when they do something vile there is certainly solid reasoning behind their actions.

I propose such a law because it is much easier to get a law enacted than to pass a new Constitutional Amendment.

Food for thought....

:) Make7

[pampango]

16. I forgot that non-dumb listeners can do vile things.

However, while an anti-dumbie listener law might be easier to enact, what happens if the dumbies take over one day, and pass a law restricting all of us to only listening to dumbie-approved speakers. I think I prefer the slower, but longer lasting, Constitutional amendment route.
:wow:

[genie_weenie]

19. I agree in principle but differ in that all approved messages

must go through me and only me. It's not that I know better it's because I should do it because I know better. And banners made from Sheets would be outlawed unless I approve of it, of course.

This is acceptable to everyone because I am the long awaited Philosopher-King "prophesied" by Plato...

[pampango]

20. Who appointed you Philosopher-King?

That is the problem with the whole idea of restricting freedom of speech to politically acceptable groups and individuals. Who appoints the Philosopher-King that decides who may speak and who may not? (I mean after you are gone, of course;)

You realize that there are those on this thread that are contemplating establishing a country without a Philosopher-King, in which everyone would have the right to speak regardless of their political point of view. These fools think (this will make you laugh, PK) that free discussion of ideas (without prior approval of a PK, mind you) will result in recognition of good ideas and the rejection of the bad ideas, after a full hearing of both sides.

I know it will never happen. And if it ever does, it will never last.

[genie_weenie]

31. Through careful manipulation of the Scam called Voting

I was able to convince the plebes who toil for their Rulers that they (the plebes) actually run the country. Then citing my deep piety I dazzled them with some sloppy diction which made them feel I was one of them.

Of course, full discussion of ideas is an insidiously evil idea, for you see once people begin to see and think for themselves they get all this non-sense in their heads and it clutters my message of oneness.

It is in those dark and troubled time that it is necessary for me to use force, the threat of force or fraud to get them thinking properly again, which is to say not thinking but listening and emoting to my superior pontiffications.

So in conclusion it is right and proper for me to limit free speech because when those who aren't listening to me speak freely their ideas are wrong, inherently evil or vile and should be supressed some my non-evil oneway of thinking can prevail.

Thank You.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Those students were a bunch of thugs.

How dare they violate the civil rights of people working to destroy the civil rights of others?



Don't they go to college to learn how to sit quietly and listen?



They should learn their place.



If they've got something to complain about, they should do something constructive.

[Jim Lane]

17. Bush would agree with your reasoning in support of the students

You imply that it's OK to "violate the civil rights of people working to destroy the civil rights of others". That, of course, is precisely the logic behind the Military Commissions Act (the "torture bill").

I disagree with you and Bush. I believe that we should indeed respect and protect everyone's civil rights. That includes respecting and protecting the civil rights of people working to destroy the civil rights of others.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. Oh quit pulling my leg.

[pampango]

22. I think that Mr. Lane has struck upon a bit of wisdom there.

I don't believe that depriving someone of their constitutional rights in order to prevent them from taking away yours is not "pulling my leg." I believe that it is the same spin that a certain DC resident tries to use on a regular basis.

If you are going to say "You have to be like them in order to beat them" so be it. If you share his strategy, just have a different goal, all I can wish is that you don't fall in love with the tactic because it will destroy your goal.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. You think so?

I don't.

Because nobody's civil rights are being violated, and nobody's calling for civil rights to be violated.

But I think everybody here already knows that.

Saying that these protestors violated the rights of the Minutemen is like saying Rosa Parks violated the rights of the bus driver.

[pampango]

24. The Rosa Parks and the bus driver analogy is one I'll have to think about

for a while. It is kind of catchy to include Rosa Parks int the conversation. Certainly seems to give your position more weight, even if I don't see the connection. Was she interfering with the bus drivers constitutional right to drive or to have blacks ride in the back? Which clause is that in?

If you don't think that rushing the stage while someone is speaking does not effectively deny them the right to free speech, you are entitled to your opinion. At least, we seem to agree that the Minutemen have a right to free speech. We only disagree as to whether it was denied to them in the current incident.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. How were the minutemen denied free speech?

Answer: they weren't.

[buddysmellgood]

27. Please explain

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. Explain it to me...

how the Minutemen's rights are violated because of somebody elses protests?

[buddysmellgood]

33. The question becomes, Where do you draw the line? At what point do your

actions inhibit the rights of others. How would you feel if the College Repuklicans stormed the stage and made it impossible for anyone to hear your point of view?

[pampango]

30. In Bornaginhooligan's analysis disrupting a speaker by rushing the stage

and holding up signs, in no way infringes on anyone's right of free speech. The positive that I take from his point of view is his acknowledgment that the Minutemen did have a right to speak that evening, he just differs with some of us as to the definition of accommodating free speech.

I only hope that Bornaginhooligan is not the organizer at Clarence Brown's next campaign stop here in Ohio. I would much rather hear Mr. Brown speaking without the RWers on the stage waving signs, even though from his point of view they have the right to do that. I would prefer that the RWers wait there turn to speak and I will stay and listen to them, if I want to - NOT.

[aikoaiko]

18. Are these the students who occupied the stage? they didn't say so.

That who statement is just them dodging responsibility. I'd have a lot more respect for them if they admitted they stormed the stage to stop the presentation and accept responsiblity for their actions instead of framing the issue as challenging racists.

I am proud of them for protesting outside and making comment during the QA/comment section of the presentation, but storming the stage and preventing the presentation from occuring is embarassing. I would demand the students be consequated if it were college republicans disrupting a progressive speaker.

If this was, as I understand it, a university sanctioned event by a recognized university student group (college repugs), then they shouldn't have stopped the presentation.

[Jcrowley]

29. Do not flip over the table of the moneychangers

just dialogue with them, lest ye be branded a radical.

Reliance on theory, in other words, is destructive to ethics, because it interferes with our ability to deal effectively with evil. Bonhoeffer asks us to consider six strategies, six postures people often strike or adopt when attempting to deal with real ethical situations involving evil and vicious people. Any of these postures or orientations could employ principles, laws, or duties from ethical theory. But, in the end, it makes little difference what principles they invoke. The ethical postures themselves are what make responsible action impossible. A resort to the dictates of reason, for example, demands that we be fair to all the details, facts, and people involved in any concrete moral situation (Ethics, p.67). The reasonable person acts like a court of law, trying to be just to both sides of any dispute. In doing so, he or she ignores all questions of character, since all people are equal before the law, and it makes no difference who does what to whom. Thus, whenever it is in the interest of an evil person to tell the truth, the person of reason must reward him for doing so. The person of reason is helpless to do otherwise, and in the end is rejected by all, the good and the evil, and achieves nothing.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bonhoeff.htm

Props to DrDebug

[pampango]

32. Cliff notes please.

Does this mean that good people have to be evil to defeat evil so that they can be good again?

You do make it tough to argue with this, since it includes a condemnation of the use of principles, ethical postures and reason. If I can't use any of those in the discussion, I guess you win.

If we have to abandon all of those in order to fight evil, what exactly do we have left after the fight? And what if there is more "evil" to battle after that? Does abandonment of principles, ethical postures and reason become a permanent condition until a perfect world is finally achieved?

It must be simpler than that. It is late. I can't figure this out. See you tomorrow.

[Jcrowley]

34. Not a matter

of good and evil as it is in comic book caricatures nor a matter of "winning." I often wonder in discussions on this topic how many have known first-hand violence. I wonder how many have seen the man at the door with a gun.

It is easy for the people living in the country that is doing the invading and occupying to say that all wars are bad and that war is terrible and that they are opposed to war.

The people in Iraq would rather risk war than submit, because they value freedom more than they do peace. Peace as slaves is not attractive to them.

Would there be much opposition to the invasion of Iraq in this country if it had been relatively quick and bloodless and the Iraqis had merely rolled over and submitted to the US?

"And so the war came, with its lies, murder, ruin, and corruption. Yet how many of those now opposed to this horrific military action are prepared to pay the actual cost of ending it: i.e., relinquishing the guarantee of cheap oil and the lifestyle it sustains? The number is doubtless very small. The large remainder should perhaps be seen as the true "Bush base." For while they may oppose his tactical incompetence in this instance, they share, wittingly or unwittingly, his strategic goal. With this basic common cause between the elite and the majority, the wars for oil will go on – no matter who sits in the White House"

-Chris Floyd

[pampango]

35. We may agree more than I thought at first.

I lived for four years in the Philippines during the dictatorship of Marcos in the 1970's. While the "man with a gun" didn't show up at my door, I knew plenty of people who did receive such visits. While Marcos' eventual overthrow was relatively peaceful, Filipinos who had been deprived of their rights, the "peace of slaves", for years were willing to use any means to become free.

"The people in Iraq would rather risk war than submit, because they value freedom more than they do peace. Peace as slaves is not attractive to them." I don't know you, so I am not sure where you are coming from with this.

"The people in Iraq would rather risk war than submit" (to Saddam or to the US?) "because they value freedom more than they do peace. Peace as slaves is not attractive to them." The latest polls taken in Iraq that I have seen show that a majority of Iraqis are still glad to be rid of Saddam, in spite of the horrendous violence that has followed his removal, and believe that the war is worth it. Having lived under a dictator (admittedly Marcos was not quite as brutal as Saddam), I understand their willingness to sacrifice for their freedom.

These polls also show that they want the US to leave (within a year, if not right away), that they have little support for the "insurgents" that kill so many of them, and that they don't want the US to have permanent military bases.

As I said, I may be taking your statement in exactly the wrong way, in which case I apologize. If you are saying that the Minutemen should be opposed in any way possible, because of the repression that is or could become associated with their cause, then I understand where you are coming from, though I still believe that they have to given the right to speak without limitation.