i think that most reasonable people don't need someone to tell them that these extremist views represent their group. secondly I don't think sharpton has ever said something as contreversial as advocating killing someone. so that's neither here nor there. the most contreversial thing al sharpton will say is someone needs to lose their job. now when he says don imus should lose his job, do you think black people should speak up for don imus. again al sharpton is a media creation, and people tend to focus on him, I don't know why. but i'm sure rush limbaugh says things all the time on his show that you wouldn't agree with, but the difference is i wouldn't assume you agree with it.
So you keep adding conditions why this one instance is different from all others.... He doesn't purport to speak for White people. I don't fall into the group that he claims to be speaking for. Claiming that Rush speaks for me would be like me claiming that Cesar Chavez speaks for you (I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you aren't a migrant farm worker, here). If Republicans want to disown Limbaugh, I'm down with that. If he really doesn't speak for a specific consituancy of the Republican party. It would generally make people think better of them. At this point I do believe that Limbaugh speaks for a core group that he claims to speak for.
Well then, let’s try NOW. National Organization of Women. When Patricia Ireland was president of NOW, plenty of women felt it appropriate to speak out and say that NOW doesn't represent their views. How are you going to disqualify them from being relevant?
Here's a guy who happens to be Black and is doing some incredible things in the Bay Area that should be copied across the country, regardless of one's race. Just a great read. Thought I'd attempt to cheer things up a bit. Enjoy... Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007 Bring Eco-Power to the People By Bryan Walsh Annie Schumake stands outside her one-story house in the depressed city of Richmond, Calif., just north of Oakland, and watches her electric meter slow to a crawl, stop and then begin to tick backward. Schumake's solar panel, just installed on her roof and partly financed with low-cost loans from the city, is supplying free power and more. The panel was put in by a team of local workers trained by area nonprofit groups that prepare unemployed Richmondites for jobs in the burgeoning green building field. "I'm happy because I'm saving money," says Schumake. "But I'm also saving the planet, and that's the major one." Van Jones, the dynamo promoting the project, breaks into a wide smile of his own. "Power by the people, for the people," says Jones. "This is the vision of the future right here." A few years ago, the Oakland-based human-rights activist came to a realization. If the U.S. accelerated the transition to a cleaner economy, millions of jobs in green construction and alternative energy could be created. Those jobs--call them green collar--were exactly what unemployed residents of cities like Oakland needed. Environmental activists and inner-city minorities--two groups often segregated by race and class--had a common interest, and it could help extend the coalition against climate change beyond hard-core greenies. "Polar bears, Priuses and Ph.D.s aren't going to do it alone," says Jones, 39. "Everything our friends in the eco-élite do will vanish unless we find a way to expand green jobs to the rest of the economy." You couldn't create a better advocate for the green-collar movement than Jones. A Yale-educated lawyer who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, the magnetic Jones moves easily between worlds, at home preaching to inner-city high school students or mixing with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But everywhere Jones goes, he repeats a simple message. "Give the work that most needs to be done to the people who most need the work," he says, and solve two pressing problems--pollution and poverty--at once. For the environmental movement, embracing Jones' message means recasting global warming not just as an existential threat but as an enormous economic opportunity. It's a narrative that is particularly resonant with low-income workers who are likely to bear the short-term economic burden of cutting carbon only if they believe there will be a personal payoff for them in the long run. Says Jones: "They need to see green in their pockets." It may be a while before many of them do. Jones successfully lobbied for a $250,000 pilot program, the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, but tepid public support elsewhere has kept green employment from taking off. Still, the promise is real. A study by the Cleantech Network, which tracks green investment, found that for every $100 million in green venture capital, 250,000 new jobs could be created. To speed that transition, Jones and Majora Carter of the Sustainable South Bronx in New York City recently launched Green for All, a campaign to secure $1 billion in government funding to train a quarter-million workers in green fields. "We're looking for an environmental Marshall Plan for the 21st century," says Carter. Jones has even greater ambitions, believing the green-collar movement can reshape politics in the U.S. by breaking down old barriers on the left and the right. A few hours after helping Schumake get her solar panels, Jones traveled across the bay to San Francisco's ornate city hall, where his organization received the first-ever environmental grant from the Full Circle Fund, a Bay Area philanthropic network. Jones had the tough task of following Al Gore, who had delivered the keynote speech, but he still brought the house down. "When we bring together the best of the business community and the best of the tech community and the best of the racial-justice community, we'll get the coalition we always wanted." Even better, he adds, "we'll get the country we always wanted." In his vision, that means the map won't be divided between red and blue, but will be all green. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1686811,00.html D&D. Attempt Civility! Impeach Bush for Holding Hands with an Idiot.
I'm not continuing this argument. I don't even know who this woman is and what women spoke out against what I have no idea she said, further proving the point that al sharpton is a media creation. I think we can agree on one thing, al sharpton gets way more press than most of these people. race is a hot button issue and its easy for the media to make something out him he's not.
