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Daily Cal chastises Dean for being partisan at Free Speech Rally
The 40th anniversary of the Free Speech movement occurred in the beginning of October 2004. There were a number of memorial events involving people discussing their experiences during that time, and speakers such as Alexander Cockburn and also many lesser knowns giving opinions. At a large Sproul rally recreating the situation where math Grad student Jack Weinberg was arrested and thousands of regular students surrounded the police car, Howard Dean, Tony Serra of the ACLU, and many FSM participants spoke from a platform on a police car
This is an interesting interpretation of the event. The chancellor spoke about his dinner with Henry Kissinger, and 'political correctness' on campuses.
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http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=16473
Editorial: FSM Should Mean Free Speech for All
While the motivation behind last week�s Free Speech Movement events was commendable, the fact that the keynote speaker used the celebration as a springboard to further his political leanings is disheartening.
In using his speech as a platform for bashing our current president, former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean cheapened the message of the Free Speech Movement and presented a partisan call to arms, rather than what event planners had anticipated, an unbiased rally for freedom of speech.
Although the Free Speech Movement has gained a reputation as a leftist movement, it is more of a forum for the exchange of all ideas�be they popular or extreme, liberal, conservative or anarchist. Dean did not embody this kind of free exchange in his speech; indeed, he may have marginalized event attendees who hold differing political views from those he espoused.
Event organizers and attendees have expressed concern with the way Dean brought partisan politics and ideology into his speech, and we join them in expressing our disappointment with the way he chose to express himself on Friday.
While many people in the campus community may dislike the policies of the current administration, last week�s Free Speech events were intended to celebrate freedom of expression for everyone, not only those with whom we agree. As a largely liberal campus, we must not suppress others� unpopular or misunderstood ideas, especially not in the very month that we celebrate 40 years of free speech on this campus.
To carry on the magnificent tradition of the Free Speech Movement, we must let every idea be heard. An open mic on Sproul Plaza last week could have been one such venue for the discourse and sharing of ideas; barring this, at least the keynote speaker should have kept political ideology out of his speech.
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http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=16473
Editorial: FSM Should Mean Free Speech for All
While the motivation behind last week�s Free Speech Movement events was commendable, the fact that the keynote speaker used the celebration as a springboard to further his political leanings is disheartening.
In using his speech as a platform for bashing our current president, former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean cheapened the message of the Free Speech Movement and presented a partisan call to arms, rather than what event planners had anticipated, an unbiased rally for freedom of speech.
Although the Free Speech Movement has gained a reputation as a leftist movement, it is more of a forum for the exchange of all ideas�be they popular or extreme, liberal, conservative or anarchist. Dean did not embody this kind of free exchange in his speech; indeed, he may have marginalized event attendees who hold differing political views from those he espoused.
Event organizers and attendees have expressed concern with the way Dean brought partisan politics and ideology into his speech, and we join them in expressing our disappointment with the way he chose to express himself on Friday.
While many people in the campus community may dislike the policies of the current administration, last week�s Free Speech events were intended to celebrate freedom of expression for everyone, not only those with whom we agree. As a largely liberal campus, we must not suppress others� unpopular or misunderstood ideas, especially not in the very month that we celebrate 40 years of free speech on this campus.
To carry on the magnificent tradition of the Free Speech Movement, we must let every idea be heard. An open mic on Sproul Plaza last week could have been one such venue for the discourse and sharing of ideas; barring this, at least the keynote speaker should have kept political ideology out of his speech.
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Michael Rossman was the 60 yr old guy with a straw hat with feathers stuck in it. Personally, I don't know what they wanted out of Dean. He and the leading democrats are sort of on a program right now.
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The San Francisco Chronicle�s Saturday story about the Free Speech Movement�s 40th anniversary commemoration includes a significant mistake. In a picture captioned, �Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is surrounded by well-wishers after his speech,� I am shown hugging Dean and whispering in his ear. I was actually saying, �You sure are a selfish, egocentric, self-centered S.O.B.!� My remark was justified, because Dean completely violated advance agreements about his speech.
Dean was scheduled to speak for 10 minutes and was required by campus rules to be non-partisan in his appeal for students to vote. Instead, he spoke for 23 minutes and delivered a passionate pitch for Kerry against Bush. By doing so, Dean eclipsed the rest of our program, and turned a commemoration of the FSM into an episode of self-promotion and partisan politics.
Michael Rossman
Free Speech Movement event coordinator
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The San Francisco Chronicle�s Saturday story about the Free Speech Movement�s 40th anniversary commemoration includes a significant mistake. In a picture captioned, �Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is surrounded by well-wishers after his speech,� I am shown hugging Dean and whispering in his ear. I was actually saying, �You sure are a selfish, egocentric, self-centered S.O.B.!� My remark was justified, because Dean completely violated advance agreements about his speech.
Dean was scheduled to speak for 10 minutes and was required by campus rules to be non-partisan in his appeal for students to vote. Instead, he spoke for 23 minutes and delivered a passionate pitch for Kerry against Bush. By doing so, Dean eclipsed the rest of our program, and turned a commemoration of the FSM into an episode of self-promotion and partisan politics.
Michael Rossman
Free Speech Movement event coordinator
If there WAS a prior agreement as to what topic Dean would speak about, then Dean is at fault. If there was no such agreement, then the organizers of the event should not have invited a politican to speak close to election time if they expected a non-partisan speech.
The greatest likelihood is that there was something in between these two extremes --- that there was a misunderstanding about whether there was or was not such an agreement. For example, imagine an exchange like this.......
A: "We would like you to come but don't want you to give a political speech"
B: "You want me to submit what I am going to say for approval?"
A: "No".
Here A is likely to think that B has agreed to the specified conditions and B that he or she has refused.
Michael, you claim you had an agreement from Howard. That was a firm, clear, unamiguous agreement? Or was your understanding based upon implied but not expressed consent? Politicans are "slippery", goes with the job description. Howard is bright enough to have possibly let you blithely assume he had agreed when he hadn't.
It would be nice to get Dean's version about whether he had agreed as to his topic.
The greatest likelihood is that there was something in between these two extremes --- that there was a misunderstanding about whether there was or was not such an agreement. For example, imagine an exchange like this.......
A: "We would like you to come but don't want you to give a political speech"
B: "You want me to submit what I am going to say for approval?"
A: "No".
Here A is likely to think that B has agreed to the specified conditions and B that he or she has refused.
Michael, you claim you had an agreement from Howard. That was a firm, clear, unamiguous agreement? Or was your understanding based upon implied but not expressed consent? Politicans are "slippery", goes with the job description. Howard is bright enough to have possibly let you blithely assume he had agreed when he hadn't.
It would be nice to get Dean's version about whether he had agreed as to his topic.
One may agree or disgaree with electoral politics but the FSM was never non-partisan. In recent years arguments about the FSM have been used to justify bringing controversial conservative speakers to the Berkeley campus; in the case of Hitchens it was a group that supposedly represents the former FSM that paid for him to come to the UCB campus. Even if the FSM had only been about giving controversial speakers the right to speak on campus, that is not what those using its name are doing now. Many "liberal" speakers speak on the Berkeley campus under the FSM name but the FSM never brings radical Islamists, Communists or others who are not either center-left or right-wing to the campus. Instead you get the FSM name being used when David Irving (a neonazi) tried to speak and the FSM name has come to mean a Fox News styled version of ballanced where the far-far-right are supposedly ballanced by waffling middle of the road liberals. While the effect is partially to paint conservatives as crazy (since the crazy left is ignored but the crazy right isnt) it also helps to shift a perception of the political center to the right (hence Howard Dean being potrayed as "far left" by the mainstream media even though while he opposed the start of the Iraq war he proposed sending more soldiers if he was elected)
The sad part about this is that those using the FSM name today and claiming non-partisanship are ignoring the FSM in Berkeley's actual history. It was radical not center-left and while some conservative groups did sign on to some of its early statements, what its best know for has nothing to do with wishy-washy ideals of having Iraq War supporters, neoNazis and supporters of Japaneese Internment feel like Berkeley is a welcoming environment.
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We have an autocracy which runs this university. It's managed. We asked the following: if President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?" That's the answer! Now, I ask you to consider: if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I'll tell you something: the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw material[s] that don't mean to have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
-Mario Savio
The sad part about this is that those using the FSM name today and claiming non-partisanship are ignoring the FSM in Berkeley's actual history. It was radical not center-left and while some conservative groups did sign on to some of its early statements, what its best know for has nothing to do with wishy-washy ideals of having Iraq War supporters, neoNazis and supporters of Japaneese Internment feel like Berkeley is a welcoming environment.
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We have an autocracy which runs this university. It's managed. We asked the following: if President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?" That's the answer! Now, I ask you to consider: if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I'll tell you something: the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw material[s] that don't mean to have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
-Mario Savio
All "radical" efforts that are organized within status quo structures, such as universities, are doomed to take the middle road eventually. Why invite any political figure? They are all liars, primarily concerned with advancing their own political interests. A much more powerful spokesperson for free speech -- and one even better known -- would have been Michael Moore. I can think of others (although most of the people who inspire me have gone way beyond armchair politics and ceremonial words); but at least Michael Moore would have been entertaining. The left and the right are both cardboard cutouts, characters in an endless soap opera the purpose of which is to brainwash gullible people into thinking that their interests will be served by voting for a candidate standing for one set of party principles or the other. Are FSM-ers so "radical" that they ("even tacitly") support the electoral system, knowing what most people already know -- that the difference between "left" and "right" is barely discernable? It used to be said that the choice came down to Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum. Now the choice is between Mr. Skull and Mr. Bones.
Broaden your perspective. Go to: http://www.dontjustvote.com/
Broaden your perspective. Go to: http://www.dontjustvote.com/
This is so disgusting! I don't support the Democrats (who simply exist to protect the "left" flank of the ruling corporate aristocracy), and I don't care for Dean. But how difficult is it for these phony fascist "liberals" to understand that "free speech" means "free speech"! It's not free speech if speakers are required to agree in advance to keep "political ideology out of his speech".
That lying fascist pigs like Michael Rossman invoke the name of the Free Speech Movement while trying to organize carefully choreographed and censored events that are explicitly designed to quell dissent and channel political discourse into carefully controlled, censored, and politically emasculated rituals is truly disgusting.
Who do you really think you are fooling, Michael Rossman?
And as to "Mike's" statement regarding "If there WAS a prior agreement as to what topic Dean would speak about"... Bullshit! If there WAS a prior agreement, that was directly counterposed to any honest notion of free speech and was in itself a betrayal of democratic principles.
"Free speech" means "free speech", you assholes! Why do "liberal" beansprout fascists have so much difficulty understanding this! Free speech means say whatever the hell you want, and if the fascist Michael Rossman has a problem with that, he can go fuck himself! I am so sick of arrogant, elitist, "liberal" beansprout fascists who think they have the right to control what we say or think!
That lying fascist pigs like Michael Rossman invoke the name of the Free Speech Movement while trying to organize carefully choreographed and censored events that are explicitly designed to quell dissent and channel political discourse into carefully controlled, censored, and politically emasculated rituals is truly disgusting.
Who do you really think you are fooling, Michael Rossman?
And as to "Mike's" statement regarding "If there WAS a prior agreement as to what topic Dean would speak about"... Bullshit! If there WAS a prior agreement, that was directly counterposed to any honest notion of free speech and was in itself a betrayal of democratic principles.
"Free speech" means "free speech", you assholes! Why do "liberal" beansprout fascists have so much difficulty understanding this! Free speech means say whatever the hell you want, and if the fascist Michael Rossman has a problem with that, he can go fuck himself! I am so sick of arrogant, elitist, "liberal" beansprout fascists who think they have the right to control what we say or think!
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