Syria's foreign minister insisted he should be permitted to speak as long as he needed at a peace conference for his country, brushing aside UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's calls for him to conclude.
But all the team members speak as much as they need to.
As Cohen and Todd Gitlin wrote recently in the Washington Post, "Plainly, the idea that American Jews speak as a monolithic bloc needs very early retirement.
But the next day, the National Council of Negro Women called a meeting, and we discussed our goals and the need going forward to point out that women needed to speak as women, to voice the double discrimination of racism and sexism that we felt.
Erika Clegg co-founder of strategic communications agency Spring says: "You need to speak as an adviser on your own area of expertise and offer advice, and avoid treating it as a twenty minute sales pitch.
Kouchner had other interesting things to say: "We need to speak as Europe to the Americans" on Afghanistan, he said, and end the differences in policy and military rules on the ground… "We have to be together and improve the command structure," he said.
"We need to speak as Europe to the Americans" on Afghanistan, he said, and end the differences in policy and military rules on the ground, where the Germans fight only if fired upon and each member of NATO has different rules of engagement.
"Do we need permission to speak, as well?" he asked.
Activists often speak as though the solutions we need have not yet been launched or invented, as though we are starting from scratch, when often the real goal is to amplify the power and reach of existing options.
But Ryan insisted on the resolution, offering a floor speech about the need to speak "as an institution" in the immigration case, lest Obama gets away with running roughshod over the immigration laws and the separation of powers.
