The ANNOTICO Report

Grant Crowell, a satire cartoonist, a Jew with a small part Potawatomi
Indian, was the victim of Ward Chamberlain “Me-First Amendment” not the
“First Amendment” hypocritical actions, and the target of Chamberlain's
suggesting that Crowell "dismemberment" would be a good thing, because he
had the nerve to express views that differed from Chamberlain.

Crowell is fully aware of Chamberlain's treatment of Italian Americans at
the University of Colorado,
and in Denver regarding Columbus, and is sympathetic to Italian Americans.

He wonders why the ACLU is willing to fight for Nazi's Right to March in
Skokie, But Not for Italian Americans Marching on Columbus Day, A Federal
Holiday!!!!

Nazis Yes.! Italian Americans No!! ???  Do you see something wrong with
this picture???

Thanks to Dominic Tassone. Mobilito.com

The problem with academic “free-dumbs” (freedoms)

Free Speech is NOT a One-Way Street!

Colorado University Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill rallied for the
?ring of a student cartoonist, and now demands that EWC students support
his own rights to free speech while he still denies it to others.

By Grant Crowell (originally appearing in HawaiiReporter.com)

As a former student cartoonist for two college newspapers (including the
University of Colorado-Boulder), and twice defended by the ACLU for free
speech activities, I was naturally interested in the national debate around
Professor Ward Churchill, whose statements towards the 9/11 victims
garnered national news coverage, and has apparently interested the University of Eastern
Washington’s own Native American Student Association to bring him to their
campus, for what has been hailed as a free speech rally and a “public
symposium on civil liberties.”

For the uninitiated, the origin of the controversy and debate stems from Churchill’s 2001
essay and later book, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.”
In the essay, Churchill characterized the September 11th attacks as
“rational military reaction” to a long history of U.S. abuses and
exploitations abroad. He also asserted that World Trade Center workers
weren’t innocent victims, but rather “technocrats of empire.” He described
the white-collar, corporate workers killed in the attack as “Little
Eichmanns,” an allusion to Nazi Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann – a
soundbite that echoed throughout the country and argued about from both
mass media and political blogs everywhere.

But it wasn’t Churchill’s comments in his essay which have fueled my
personal indignation – it was how he prattled afterward in a televised
event from the CU Boulder campus, demanding that others defend his academic
freedom, his First Amendment rights.

My own experience with Dr. Churchill a decade ago proved that he had no
real interest in free speech for others, and would actively campaign
against it for the very students he now expects support from – if he
thought it would suit his own self interest.

Fall 1994. I was a college student and editorial cartoon columnist for the
Ka Leo O Hawai‘i – the newspaper at the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa campus
in Honolulu. Like many academic environments, we had our share of “sacred
cows” – issues and individuals considered to elicit such a
volatile reaction by local activists groups and ultra-radical (and
narrow-minded) professors that oftentimes they were ignored or actively
avoided, lest a demonstration appear outside our newspaper building (or on
some tempestuous occasions– people storming into the building and stealing
papers from bins.)

At this same time, Ward Churchill was being ?own in by the UH student
senate for a paid speaking engagement on his then-latest book, Fantasies of
the Master Race: Racism in the University.

Coincidentally, the student newspaper had just published a cartoon of mine
that caused outrage among ultra left-wing activists: I had depicted one of
Ward Churchill’s close colleagues on our campus, Professor Haunani K.
Trask, the University’s Hawaii Studies Director, reading an excerpt from
her recently published poetry book, entitled “Racist White Woman,” who described in lurid
detail her fantasy of punching, kni?ng, mutilating and ultimately murdering
a white colleague she despised.

Churchill arrived, as planned, and began his speech. Shortly thereafter, Churchill’s speaking
engagement suddenly changed from what was publicized as a book discussion
and open forum into a public protest rally led by Trask and Churchill, both
of them blaring into microphones over my
“racist cartoon” and demanding my ?ring from the newspaper and expulsion
from the university.

During Churchill’s speaking time at the event, this man – a man who had
never met me and refused to do so before and during the event – included in
his speech a reference to me as “vermin,” and shared aloud a story of an
unnamed Nazi cartoonist who was tried at the WWII Nuremburg trials,
executed, dismembered and then cremated. Churchill’s ended this story with
his own personal comment of, “Now, I’m not saying that should happen to
Grant, but it would be a good thing.”

(Of course, the cartoonist story was a factually incorrect statement, but liked so much for its
incendiary nature that even his colleague Trask could not resist repeating
it herself, but also followed with a threat that one of her 300-lb. students was “coming very
close to punching me in the mouth.”)

It’s highly ironic that a man with such “extreme” opinions – even which can easily be perceived
as advocating violence toward individuals – cannot himself be tolerant of
other’s opinions, whether they be extreme or even “mainstream.”

Instead, Churchill prefers to pull the “Hate Speech” card – say somebody
else’s speech is offensive to your (assumed) ethnicity, gender, political
status, etc., and effectively shut them up. After all, if they hate it, you
can’t debate it. (And in the case of Italian American students who were stopped
by Churchill for exercising their own free speech rights by having a public
Columbus parade in Denver last year, “If he detests it then you can’t
express it.”)

As a Jew with a very small part Potawatomi Indian, I realize that the First
Amendment protects all of us, even of us who fail to understand that the
First Amendment is supposed to apply to everyone.
But what EWU students and others who are rallying for this same cause
should realize is that Churchill is not a man who stands for their own
academic freedom, the First Amendment, free speech, or anything of the kind.

My experience has shown that he ultimately aspires to be a demagogue, where
criticism on him or his cronies would ultimately be considered “genocidal
hate speech” with serious repercussions.

Yet Churchill’s mistreatment of me, his scholarly abuse and hypocrisy, make
me no less fervent a supporter of his free speech rights.

I can support the ACLU for protecting Churchill’s rights the same way they
protected the Nazis’ rights to march in Skokie, because real free speech
means being able to separate the principle from the person.

And yes, unlike the farce that has become the Ward Churchill Academic
Freedom Bandwagon, I do consider myself a real free speech advocate. I
don’t demand other’s freedoms be protected if I am
not as equally willing and fervent to ?rst stand up for the rights of
people who’s opinions I strongly disagree with, even if it means being
disparaged by my members of my own community for it.

We need a lot more people like that on a college campuses, and not just those do it when its in their
personal comfort zone. Churchill needs to get it through his skull that
it’s called the “First Amendment,” not the “Me-First Amendment.”

I never expected Ward Churchill to apologize to any of the family members
who had their loved ones murdered on 9/11 by Islamo-fascists, and I don’t
expect him to apologize for being a freespeech hypocrite.

Free speech is not a one-way street where Churchill can clog up the whole
lane with his SUV-sized ego. If your ego is so big and intolerant that it
cannot bear the expression of others you personally ?nd offensive, then
perhaps its time for people like myself to come out like here, sharp minds
and pens blazing. Maybe it’s time for others to draw a few satirical
cartoons, and pop the bloated academic egos.

Al Franken said it best…“Satire is a fundamentally-protected, First
Amendment right. Even when the object of the satire doesn’t get it.”

Ward Churchill, do you get it now?

Also check out C-Span’s web site at cspan.org, type “Ward Churchill” into
the Video Search box, and hear him tell students why they don’t deserve the
same free speech rights as himself.

This Editorial has been sponsored by the organization “Cartoonists Push
Back,” whose members are committed to REAL free speech.

(We kindly ask Mr. Churchill to not steal the above artwork and sell it
elsewhere.)

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