HungryBlues

Hungry Blues Has MOVED

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For more on the site migration see this page on hungryblues.net.

By The Content of Their Character

The email, below, is the last communication I have received to date from James E Prince III concerning his demands that I remove comments posted here by one of my readers. The back story is in the post immediately preceding this one.

From: James E. Prince III <jprince at neshobademocrat dot com>
To: Benjamin Greenberg <minorjive at gmail dot com>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 9:56 AM
Subject: Re: FalseAndDefamatory


Mr. Greenberg:

The 5th Circuit is so far upholding the rights of bloggers like you to defame and slander, I am advised, although that does not prevent one from attempting to set new legal precedent. So at least for now you win on that count. But still, you are knowingly publishing false and defamatory statements, contradicting your own pledge on your website.

Is this the new liberalism, to knowingly harm another human being for sheer entertainment and attention?

I have in good faith asked you to remove statements by “Suzy Sharino” that are false and defamatory and clearly a very personal attack by a former disgruntled employee posing as a woman. No such person has ever worked for me nor do I know “her.”

Of all my experiences with The Philadelphia Coalition and the successful prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen, I am shocked most at how threatened you and the other ultraliberals are by conservatives who are willing to speak out on matters such as the civil rights murders in Neshoba County. Rather than join us at the table, you resort to smear campaigns to discredit.

Surprisingly, the resistance has not come from within Neshoba County or Mississippi. The resistance has come from the liberal left. (That’s the book in me.)

Even the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists have not stooped to the level that you have with personal attacks. Comment all you want on my written record and the facts. But let’s not resort to personal attacks.

From the outset what motivated me most in organizing the Coalition was justice along with peace and reconciliation that I have come to realize flows only from a regenerated heart. People like you make reconciliation difficult to achieve with your divisiveness and petty blog practices that serve no useful purpose other than to tear down. But in a Google age, you rule.

You are committing murder with the tongue and are no better than the band of thugs who took the lives of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.

You are a disgrace to your father’s name.

Sincerely,

Jim Prince

--
James E. Prince III
Editor and Publisher
The Neshoba Democrat
P.O. Box 30
Philadelphia, MS 39350
601-656-4000
FAX 601-656-6379
jprince at neshobademocrat dot com

Update on James Prince's Legal Threats Against Me

Early last month I posted an exchange of emails between myself and James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat and co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition.

Last February, a person who identifies herself as Suzy Sharino, and who claims to be a former reporter for Prince, left a comment on HungryBlues, which enraged Mr. Prince. Sharino's comment was made in response to this post. There and elsewhere (more), I am critical of Prince and the Philadelphia Coalition, which has charged itself with "establishing a perpetual structure that will foster racial harmony and reconciliation" in Neshoba County, MS.

Prince claimed that Sharino's comments are false and defamatory. For that reason, Prince demanded that I remove them from my blog. Prince was unclear in those initial emails, which specific statements by Sharino were false and defamatory; instead, he insisted I remove the entirety of Sharino's comment and made vague threats about contacting his lawyer.

In my last email message to Prince, I explained that neither bloggers nor their ISPs are liable for comments left by third parties, like Suzy Sharino. I concluded by saying:

If you have a specific request to make of me, please make it with the appropriate rationale, so I can consider it. Be advised, however, that since the statements that you mention were made be [sic] a third party, retractions are purely a matter of my discretion. Your threats have no sway with me. You are of course welcome to make a comment on my blog to rebut any of Suzy Sharino's statements.

That was on June 4 in the afternoon. That evening, Prince wrote to me again, making specific denials by asserting that:

Among other things, my grandfather was never in the Citizens Counsel, I certainly didn’t embezzle funds from the Coalition and give them to Haley Barbour and I have never sexually harassed an employee.

Prince also denied that anyone named Suzy Sharino ever worked for him. He made an insinuation about Sharino's real identity and then amplified his previous legal threats:

You may smugly hide hide behind the “third party” assertion but it’s my reputation and I believe that I will ultimately prevail in having this post removed if we have to go all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

I can’t print statements in my newspapers that are knowingly false without consequences. I would not mind making a point with someone as arrogant as you and who clearly possesses such a reckless disregard for the truth. The First Amendment is not a license to mount a slanderous attack on anyone as you have allowed.

I did not respond to this, but on on June 5, Prince sent me two separate email messages that included what he believed to be evidence that he did not sexually harass a former employee, as Sharino had claimed. I did not consider Prince's evidence to be conclusive. To avoid acting or speaking impulsively, however, I took no further action and did not respond to Prince.

Having heard nothing further from me, Prince wrote to me again on June 16, saying that he is backing down from his legal threats for now. He then launched into a vicious attack, saying, among other things that I am "no better than the band of thugs who took the lives of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney."

I did not want to respond to Prince in kind, so again I remained silent.

I have at this point decided on two courses of action.

1. The one allegation by Suzy Sharino that Prince addressed substantively was that Prince sexually harassed a former employee. Therefore, as a courtesy, I am deleting that portion Suzy Sharino's comment.
2. I am publishing in its entirety Prince's last message to me. I believe it will say more than I ever can about the character of James E. Prince III.

Photographing

DSCN3591.jpg, originally uploaded by BenTG.

I wish I had more time to write these days. Or maybe it's not so much a matter of time as it is a matter of psychic space and mental energy.

When I'm not at my job, a lot of the energy that I might have put into new blog posts has instead been poured into shooting photos and working on them in Photoshop.

I did not expect such broad enthusiasm about the photos I put up at the Haley House Bakery Cafe (thanks again, Lolita). It bowled me over to have strangers come up to me and ask to buy prints. But really what surprised me most was how moving it was to see large 11 x 14 prints of my photographs hanging on the wall. I had never made large-size prints before, and I had never displayed my work publicly.

When people started asking me about my background in photography, I found myself explaining that I first learned the basics from my father. I  remembered standing with him, out in our large, suburban backyard, former marshlands turned bedroom communities for state workers like himself.

He was showing me how to work the Pentax 35mm I had received for my bar-mitzvah. He was explaining f-stops, shutter speed, depth of field.

Even as a small child, I stood under the red incandescent bulb in his basement darkroom, the latent image coming clear in the tray of developer.

Call it my new obsession. Call it research.

I've got another show coming up in August. The first one was about Katrina. I think this one will be about the American flag.

The Atrios and Luskin Story

Bloggers and blog readers who have been around a few years will get the allusion I made in my previous post.

For those unfamiliar, here's the short version.

Also see Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment and Director, The Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

More info at EFF and Chilling Effects.

Shades of Atrios and Luskin

James E. Prince III, Editor and Publisher of the Mississippi newspaper and online news source, the Neshoba Democrat, wrote an email message to me last night, at 11:19 p.m., which referenced this HungryBlues entry, which I posted last July, and said:

Mr. Greenberg:

The post by Jonathan David Jackson is false and defamatory and I ask that you remove it immediately.

Jim Prince

--
James E. Prince III
Editor and Publisher
The Neshoba Democrat
    P.O. Box 30
Philadelphia, MS 39350
601-656-4000
FAX 601-656-6379
[email protected]

Confused by this request, I wrote the following message back to Mr. Prince:

Dear Mr. Prince,

What part of Jonathan David Jackson's comment on my blog do you consider false and defamatory? Here is what he wrote, in full, in response to the post you reference:

    I love the clear, careful reasoning as you build this case against a closet (or not so closet) bigot and expose the true complexity of these issues. I also admire the primary source documents that you post on the site. This essay is definitely one of your most insightful.

    Posted by: Jonathan David Jackson | Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 05:15 PM

Ben Greenberg

This morning James E.  Prince III replied with a clarification and a threat of legal action:

I’m speaking of the comments below apparently by Suzy Sharino then. It’s actually difficult to tell who made these slanderous comments. But they need to be gone. I don’t think either one of us wants to get my lawyers involved.

Jim Prince

Earlier this afternoon, I answered with this email:

Dear Mr. Prince,

I am surprised that you, as editor and publisher of a newspaper, would write an demand letter that is so vague. I would have assumed that you know the mechanics of demanding retractions for specific statements.

It would be less surprising to me, perhaps, if you are unaware that neither bloggers nor their ISPs are libel [sic] for comments left by third parties, such as Suzy Sharino.

If you have a specific request to make of me, please make it with the appropriate rationale, so I can consider it. Be advised, however, that since the statements that you mention were made be [sic] a third party, retractions are purely a matter of my discretion. Your threats have no sway with me. You are of course welcome to make a comment  on my blog to rebut any of Suzy Sharino's statements.

Ben Greenberg

flickr

DSCN2208.JPG, originally uploaded by BenTG.

You may have noticed that I've been posting photos to HungryBlues via flickr.

You'll see now that I finally got around to adding that cool flickr flash thingy in the sidebar.

Last week, I went to the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle--thus the Space Needle photo, above. You can find more Seattle photos here. I'll be adding more photos from my trip soon.

In A Blur

DSCN2164, originally uploaded by BenTG.

I started my new job at Physicians for Human Rights the Monday before last (March 6). By the end of my first day, it was decided that I should join other staff in DC on Sunday the 12th to be there for PHR's Health Action Aids Summit. PHR brought doctors, nurses, public health professionals and medical and public health students to DC to meet with members of Congress about putting money into stopping the brain drain of health professionals, and into building health systems, in developing countries—primarily in Africa—that suffer from the AIDS pandemic.

I went to the two days of events on Monday and Tuesday as part of the PHR communications team. Among my duties was to act as staff photographer. On Monday night, after a day of keynote speakers, trainings, and a Congressional briefing, I got lost trying to go to the restaurant where everyone was supposed to gather.

The weather in DC on Sunday and Monday was unseasonably warm, in the 70s. It was a beautiful night. While I walked around second guessing myself about how to get to the restaurant I stopped to take some pictures.

On other fronts, we've started getting back some of the proofs for the special issue of Dollars & Sense, on the Gulf Coast region since Katrina. The magazine should be in print by the end of this month.

I'm getting more settled in my job, and I'm almost done with my work on the d&s issue. Maybe I'll get back to a little more blogging...

My New Job And Other Recent Developments

After a long job search, I finally accepted a job offer on Wednesday.

On March 6, I will start working as Web Community Coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights. After over a year of job hunting, it is great to finally have a full-time job, and it is a dream come true to have an internet communications and organizing job for a human rights organization like PHR.

After my first two weeks at PHR, they will be sending me to Seattle to attend the N-TEN Nonprofit Technology Conference. This will be a cool opportunity to learn from and to network with colleagues in what is still a very new field—and to have some fun in a great city.

For the rest of this month, I'll be finishing my work as guest editor for the March/April issue of Dollars & Sense, devoted to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi since Katrina. We have some exciting interviews with and great articles by local local activists, as well as pieces by other authors, including myself. I'm in the middle of writing my longish article about my travels on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at the end of January. I spent six days in Mississippi and two days in New Orleans. I interviewed numerous storm survivors and learned a lot about the situations of some of the Gulf Coast African American communities. I've been posting some excerpts from my interviews on the Dollars & Sense blog. The magazine should be available by the end of March.

Dollars & Sense is in the process of overhauling its website. The new site is up and running and is a big improvement over what we had before. Watch for web exclusives and multimedia content in the near future. In the meantime, you should check out the online material from the Jan/Feb issue. I highly recommend former d&s intern Rebecca Parish's interview with Lani Guinier and longtime D&S Collective member John Miller's What's Good for Wal-Mart . . .

It's All Back

Typepad, the hosting service for this blog, was having some problems after some routine maintenance last night. As a result the last few days of my posts disappeared for most of the day today. Sorry for the confusion if you followed a link over here and did not find what you were looking for. Everything is all better now.