A few weeks ago, I wrote a diary about how the Occupy Boston community fell apart in the wake of a very sensitive proposal process in our General Assemblies. In it, I wrote about how people were upset over the presence of Paul Shannon, who successfully blocked the proposal. I wrote:
The final, successful block came from Paul Shannon who has never participated in Occupy Boston before this proposal came forward and who did not identify himself as a leading voice for an organization called Reform Sex Offender Laws and a documented supporter of NAMBLA.
I wrote that he supported NAMBLA based on what I was told by someone whom I trusted. But, after being questioned about it, I tried to look for further evidence and did not find any. So, in good conscience, I can't support that claim. And, I have to take responsibility for my own lack of judgement and confirmation before publishing that statement.
To make matters worse, I thought I had added a block text with and "Author's Note", retracting that claim, into the diary itself. Apparently, I missed a step in the process and the edit didn't get published. Meanwhile, I reported to folks that I had put the retraction in. In fact, I wrote Mr. Shannon himself to apologize directly and to let him know that I had inserted the retraction.
How embarrassing for me then, when a comrade writes to ask for the link. I go to check and see that the Author's Note is not there. (Is there a cutoff date for editing older diaries? Or did I just not get all the way through the multistep publishing process?)
Now, on top of the unsupportable claim in the original document, I have mistakenly claimed to have corrected it when I hadn't managed to. What must Mr. Shannon be thinking?
So, here I am, eating humble pie and letting everyone know that I made a mistake. Well, two mistakes. I mean I really screwed that up! Yikes.
I hope you all can forgive me. I certainly did not intend harm or to be misleading.
8:22 PM PT: Okay. I'm not as crazy as I thought I was. I just went to add the retraction into the original diary, so that if anyone read it in the future, it would be there.
I have two witnesses to what I've found. Alex Ingram and Gregory Murphy can both confirm that when I clicked on the "edit" button, the retraction text shows up in the diary! I don't know why. But, there it is. I'm not sure what's going on. But, I did try to get that redaction in there as soon as I knew it was needed. This has been very gut wrenching for me.