From: esterling@igc.apc.org (Eric Sterling)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Legalizer blacklisted by US Educ S
Date: 19 Dec 92 02:52:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1484000078:000:3802
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!esterling    Dec 18 18:52:00 1992


The Washington Post Page A 18 Thursday, December 17, 1992

Picture:  LAMAR ALEXANDER Caption "...sought to bar 'radical
views'"

Headline:
WORKSHOP
ON VIOLENCE
GETS STORMY

Federal Officials Try To Drop 2 Panelists

By Marcia Slacum Greene Washington Post Staff Writer

     A workshop on violence at the annual Drug-Free Schools and
Communities conference turned into a stormy confrontation
yesterday after U.S. Department of Education officials tried
unsuccessfully to remove two people from the panel, citing the
"radical" views of one and the "rude" behavior of the other.

     Alicia Coro, direct of school improvement programs for the
Department of Education, said Education Secretary Lamar Alexander
had requested that Eric E. Sterling, president of the nonprofit
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, not be allowed to speak
because the department had received calls objecting to Sterling's
support for the legalization of drugs.  The department sponsored
the conference.
     "The secretary was concerned that we had someone with such
radical views speaking at a conference on drug-free schools," Coro
said.
     In addition, Coro said she thought it would be inappropriate
for panelist Rufus Johnson, a 26-year old, inactive Chicago gang
member, to speak because he had been "rude" to the staff at the
Sheraton Washington Hotel, where the conference was being held.
Coro asked panel moderator Beverly Coleman-Miller, a physician and
president of the BCM Group, which advocates treating violence as a
public health problem, to take both men off the panel.
     But when Coleman-Miller presented the panel to several
hundred people in a hotel ballroom, she brought Johnson and
Sterling with her.  She said that the panel came to discuss how
violence dominates society and that rejecting some of its members
would have been another form of violence.
     After introductions, Coro asked Johnson to apologize to the
hotel staff and explain his behavior, and she stressed that the
Department of Education in no way advocates use of illegal drugs.
She also invited members of the audience to question Sterling.
     As other panelists defended Johnson and Sterling, members of
the audience at first looked on in disbelief.  Many assumed the
controversy was being staged to demonstrate how quickly conflicts
can develop.
     But when Bill Hayne, of Portland, Ore., realized that no one
was acting, he went to a microphone and apologized to Johnson for
Coro's comments.  "You don't confront and embarrass anyone of any
background in front of an audience of hundreds of people," Hayne
said later in an interview.  "My legs started trembling when I
realized it was real, and I had to say something."
     Johnson explained that he had argued with members of the
hotel staff when they would not accept his plane ticket or
conference registration material as identification.  He said he
had forgotten his wallet and was not allowed to enter his room
until after the staff verified his identity with friends in Ohio.
     "I'm still angry about how I was treated,"  Johnson said.
"They even had security to follow me when I went to register for
the conference."
     Lynne Ross, managing director for the hotel, said Johnson had
a letter indicating that is room was to be billed to the
conference but the hotel computer could not immediately verify
that information.
     Sterling, a former counsel to the U.S. House of
Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary, said he supports
regulation and control of illegal drugs through the legalization
of drugs but does not support selling drug to juveniles.
     "This is petty," he said.  "I'm not some wild, bomb- throwing
person.  They never bothered to find out who I was.  ...My group
has worked several years to find solutions to violence."
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs