Maybe Amnesty isn’t even the right word, but I can’t think of anything better right at this moment.

The point of this post is: there have been a lot of people involved in RaceFail.  A LOT.  Some of them failed and failed hard, some of them wandered in cluelessly and then proceeded to fail, and some people came in with good intentions but ended up failing for some for a myriad of reasons.  I feel like several people who fit into that last group have probably been lumped in with the first and second.  Not because of the OMG ORC HORDE, but because, in a discussion of this nature where emotions run high and you just don’t know a lot of the people who wade in, it’s easy to peg someone as clueless or harmful when they’re not, or when they’re not trying to be, or when, in a less tension-filled situation, everyone may have been able to communicate better.

I see this happen a lot.  I assign no particular blame to any one group or person, because it’s not anyone’s fault. It is, sadly, natural, given the state of things.

But I think it’s important to speak up when one sees something like this happen. Not to chide others for not knowing a person as you do, but to at least be on record as saying: “I think this person is all right.  When we have distance and have made something good of this situation, please re-evaluate how you feel about them. I think they’re worth it.”

There’s more than one person I need to say this about as regards RaceFail, but right now I can only think of one: rozk.  I haven’t known rozk long, but from our private conversations and her posts, I believe she’s one of the good ones.  I don’t see the problems others have had with her (as in, I don’t interpret what she’s had to say the same way), but I also recognize that, because I have an existing friendship with her, I might not.  Still, as I said above, I hope people who consider her one of the “bad guys” will reconsider later on.

As I said, there are more people.  I will add them in the comments as I think of them.  But I’m inviting anyone who reads this to do so as well.  Name names!  But in service of saying, “This person is worth re-consideration.”

Rules:

1. I prefer people use the names most folks know them by when commenting (obviously if people know you by your LJ handle or nickname and you wanna use that, I have no issue).  The whole point of this is you speaking up for people you know, but that’s hard to do when you’re being anonymous.
   • If you really, truly feel like you need to be anonymous to the world, then please put your name or identifying name in the email field (then add @anon.com).  No one sees that but me.  I may nor may not publish your comment, but it has a better chance if there’s some identifier attached.
2. I’m going to be as agressive about trolls and bullshit as I can on this thread.
3. If someone mentions a person you really don’t like, I ask that you, just here, refrain from getting into an argument about them. You may still feel the way you feel in a few months, you may feel differently.
4. When you comment, speak from your heart.  Opinions are welcome.

ETA: I will not post anon comments from people whose IPs match known proxies. Be a troll elsewhere, cowards.

ETA 2: Will also not post comments from a certain branch of the LA public library that is near the office of a certain LA lawyer that I have banned from this blog. Do you not realize that WordPress auto-logs IPs?  Well, you do now.