Monday, July 9, 2012

We Apologize

Easy to apologize now that they helped Jeffries win three to one.  Old riddle: How do Democrats organize a firing squad?   In a circle, of course ------JMB
  
Dear MoveOn member,
 
Last month, you received an email from MoveOn about Councilman Charles Barron, a candidate for Congress in your district. It was offensive and inflammatory—and we shouldn't have sent it.
 
On behalf of the MoveOn staff, I apologize to you and to the Brooklyn community.

The email was all too reminiscent of the kind of attacks that have been used by our opponents to divide progressives over and over again—white folks from African Americans, Jews from non-Jews, recent immigrants from descendants of immigrants, etc.

MoveOn is a community of 7 million of us from every corner of our country. There are MoveOn members of every race, religion, and color. We aspire to bring folks together to fight for racial and economic justice and democracy—with respect for everyone. This email did the opposite.

After the email was sent, we couldn't undo the harm it had done. But we wanted to do our best to avoid doing any more damage. So we didn't say anything further about Councilman Barron for the duration of the race, limiting our involvement to communicating the positive reasons that MoveOn members in the district chose to endorse Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries back in April.

We can't take back our actions. But we can do better going forward to make sure that we are uniting, not dividing, our shared communities.
 
Again, our sincerest apologies. And if you have any thoughts you'd like to share with us about the email or about how MoveOn can be a constructive force in local races and issues in the future, please don't hesitate to email me at justin_ruben@moveon.org.

Thank you for all you do.

Justin Ruben
Executive Director
MoveOn.org Political Action
 

1 comment:

NYC Educator said...

We're sorry for accidentally firing the warning shot through the back of your head. Will do our best to aim lower next time. Please forgive us, and feel free to suggest how we can improve our services in the future.