From: "Joseph One" <joseph_one@hotmail.com> Subject: Response to Mayor Dean and the FSM letter signers Submitted to "the Berkeley Daily Planet": December 12, 2000 To the editor: Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean sadly demeans herself, churning nonsense about protesters violating the "free speech" rights of 'poor, besieged' Benjamin Netanyahu--as well as falsely claiming that the protesters object to "controversial figures." (We object to mass human rights violators.) As we said in the '90's, "Puh-lease!" Netanyahu has more "free speech" than all the protesters combined. In case it has escaped the Mayor's notice, Netanyahu--an omnipresent figure on American TV, with plenty of U.S. financial and media support--gets to speak all the time. You could hardly avoid hearing him. For those who felt so traumatized about missing Netanyahu's PR speech, you can catch him almost any week, on any American TV set near you. And yet, in the U.S. major media, the dissent of even large nonviolent protests is only featured when protesters engage in bold civic actions that "make news." Netanyahu's cancellation made the protest "news." Netanyahu would have never allowed any dissidents in the auditorium the free speech to morally challenge his involvement in Israel's internationally condemned mass human rights violations. In fact, Netanyahu led a state whose very policies deny the free speech of those it oppresses. But Dean is not alone in defending the freedom of a mass human rights violator to carry on without inconvenient interruptions. I guess, over the years, the FSM signers of the Dec 7th letter to the Berkeley Daily Planet have become staid and forgotten a few things about the lopsidedness of power and dissent. In such lopsidedness, the protest against Netanyahu actually constituted a strike *for* free speech. Only the peaceful disruption (in the tradition of sit-ins) brought some national attention to the moral issue of Israel's oppression of Palestinians. This *increased* free speech to voices typically censored by the American media. Mario Savio, an incisive and charismatic leader of the FSM, championed the free speech rights of those without institutional or state power to speak truth *to* power. Savio didn't champion the free speech rights *of* power: power by its very nature already has this right. Savio also proclaimed that we must throw our bodies on the gears of state power when it becomes heinously oppressive--and in a way, that's what the protesters did. We know what Netanyahu stands for: he stands for state oppression. No business-as-usual for him. There is no true "free speech" without the opportunity to critically challenge power; and meaningfully none, when the major media is politically controlled and dissent is barred access. Then, there is only power's propaganda. By unthinkingly criticizing the protesters as attacking "free speech," Mayor Dean and the FSM letter writers subvert the very foundation of "free speech": speaking truth to power. Joseph Anderson, Netanyahu protester, Berkeley resident
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