Pressing Pressley

On July 21, Joyce Ferriabough Bolling wrote an opinion piece defending Rep. Ayanna Pressley. Bolling said Pressley’s speech only ”challenged people of all colors and persuasions to be their ‘authentic selves.’ ” Bolling tries to tell us that this “was interpreted by the right as playing the race card.” Bolling says, “Absolutely not so.”

Bolling should actually read the Boston Herald. It isn’t just “the right” who thought Pressley was playing the race card. Many who read her quoted statements came to the same conclusion, including the editorial in the Boston Herald on July 17. It explains that Pressley “demanded conformity and threatened exclusion to any up and coming politician who even entertained the idea of straying from the progressive playbook.” The editorial printed a lengthy Pressley quote from the Netroots Nation conference. “If you’re not prepared to come to the table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice.” The editorial called Pressley’s attitude “pure prejudice based on immutable characteristics.”

That same day, Joe Fitzgerald was also writing about Pressley’s statement.

Fitzgerald’s analysis concluded, “In other words, if you’re black and you can’t pass her litmus test of what to say and believe, then you’re not welcomed at her ‘table.’ She issued the same toxic warning to Muslims, to gays, to anyone representing a targeted demographic, advising them to steer clear of politics if they weren’t committed to acting and voting the way she felt they should.”

It is outrageous that this first year U.S. congresswoman thinks she will dictate what the next generation of representatives will be allowed to say. We used to be taught that real tolerance and the American way was, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Pressley and her ilk want the standard to be, “Say exactly what I tell you to say, or don’t say a word.”

— Antonette Dennis, Revere