This is Mike Clark-Madison’s letter to the City Council, responding to Council Member Danny Thomas’ demand that he be removed from the Library Commission. The only omissions are chronological details which have since changed.
Aug. 24, 2001
Mayor and Council:
After reading, and discussing with many people in some detail, Council Member Thomas’s memo of 8-24, these are key points I feel deserve a response:
(1) My description of Eric Mitchell as a “self-styled field Negro” is a direct reference to then-Council Member Mitchell’s own description, on live television and with myself and some among you as in-person witnesses, of his opponent Willie Lewis as a “house nigger” on Election Night in May 1997. I feel it ironic, at least, that my sensitivity, and not Mitchell’s, is now being questioned. The other passages referenced in Council Member Thomas’s memo are, in my opinion, wholly without racial overtones and deserve no further explanation. (I trust that you all know who Joe Torre is, and that the comparison between the New York Yankees’ manager and the city manager was intended as a high compliment.)
(2) I am saddened by the fact that a disagreement that, in my opinion, is between Council Member Thomas and The Austin Chronicle has been turned into a political issue affecting the Austin Public Library. … I strongly dispute the implication in the council member’s memo that my opinion on local political matters, expressed in my professional capacity, has a bearing on the quality or extent of my service I can offer to the city of Austin and the Austin Public Library as an appointed member of the Library Commission.
(3) Perhaps a restatement of the preceding point, but I am disheartened by the notion that freedom of the press is held by Council Member Thomas to be conditional. I have been asked whether it is appropriate for me, as a journalist, to serve on a city board. Let it be said that I understand the potential risks involved in a journalist’s pursuing direct civic involvements and feel I have acted responsibly, and I would surmise that those who I have worked with, either as a journalist or as a civic volunteer, would agree. But I have not been asked what I think is a more important question — whether it is appropriate for Council Member Thomas to use my service on a city board as a pretext for challenging my First Amendment right, and that of The Austin Chronicle, to express opinions he finds disagreeable.
Ultimately, the decision as to whether I continue to serve on the Austin Public Library Commission is one best made by Council Member Slusher, who nominated me to that post. … Likewise, while the Chronicle has the right to ask me to step down from the Commission as a condition of my continued employment in my current capacity, I have not had any indication that the newspaper is anything but supportive of this or other of my civic involvements.
Unless those facts change, I have no intention of stepping down from the Library Commission and consider the matter closed. I ask of you, Mayor Watson and members of the City Council, that you not let this matter distract you from the task of addressing the needs of the Austin Public Library as it seeks to best serve our growing and changing city.
If any of you would like to discuss this matter further, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Mike Clark-Madison
City Editor
The Austin Chronicle
This article appears in August 31 • 2001.