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Some Wisconsin libraries are receiving requests to remove or add ratings to books that some community members say are inappropriate or promote certaingender ideology.

The requests come as the nation has seen a broader book-banning movement that resulted in a record number of demands to censor library books last year, according to the American Library Association.

Earlier this month, a group of anonymous residents in the northern Wisconsin town of Iron River wrote a letter to the community about books they claimpromote certain ideas about gender or include pornographic content. The letter states a few community members approached the library board in July, seeking to hide the books from public view or remove them altogether.

"Please know that many small communities, cities and even entire states have successfully restricted the ability of their public libraries to promote and allow distribution of materials on gender idealogy (sic) and any pornographic resources in their communities," the letter states. "Iron River can do the same."

The letter says the library carries 75 titles related to "transgenderism" and 475 LGBTQ+ titles. The librarys staff and board clarified the 475 titles are located among 30 libraries in northern Wisconsin. Some of the books targeted in the letter include "My Shadow is Pink," "The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish," and "Lets Talk About It: The Teens Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human."

Jacqueline Pooler, director of the Iron River Public Library, said a resident submitted a request to remove the book "Lets Talk About It" by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan. The library has had the book on its shelves since 2021. At its Aug. 15 meeting, the library board voted 7-1 to keep the book. However, they decided to move it from the young adult to adult section. The publisher recommends the book for ages 14 and older.

Pooler said the book is a graphic novel that contains drawings that cover gender, sexuality and other topics for people of all sexual orientations.

"What that means is a lot of (drawings) and some of the (drawings) are very specific about how to do certain sexual acts," Pooler said.

Even so, she said the book also provides a broader overview of the complexity of relationships and sex education.

The Iron River Public Library is not the only one to receive a challenge to that particular book. In April, the Marathon County Public Library received a request to reconsider "Lets Talk About It" from a community member. The resident didnt seek the books removal but instead requested a rating system for books. In July, the Marathon County Library Board voted to retain the book and forgo a rating system.

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Louise Robbins, a censorship expert and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said book banning has been seen at alarming proportions nationwide. She highlighted data from the American Library Association that documented a record 1,269 demands to censor books and resources last year. Thats the highest number of attempted bans since the association began tracking data on censorship more than two decades ago.

Robbins said the requests are coming from people who are sharing lists on social media, adding many often havent read the books.

"They have to do with unpleasant history, things that people don't want to read about such as the Holocaust or slavery or taking over the Native peoples lands that make people 'uncomfortable,'" Robbins said. "Or they have to do with people of color or nonbinary people or immigrants. Or they have something about gender and sexual identity."

The American Library Association found more than 2,500 books were targeted for censorship last year, and 90 percent came from attempts to ban multiple titles. The association said most were either written by or about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.

Robbins said the changing format of books has coincided with more intense challenges, as graphic novels become more popular. She noted people can become more easily offended by content thats communicated through pictures as opposed to the written word. She added politics and extreme polarization also seem to play a role in the censorship requests.

In Wisconsin, a Republican-backed bill would target "obscene" materials in school libraries. A companion proposal would also bar school districts from using library aid to buy items considered obscene. The state obscenity law states that it includes various types of sexual conduct that are "patently offensive" under contemporary community standards. Waukesha Republican State Rep. Scott Allen, the bills author, has said the legislation isnt an attempt to ban books or materials on LGBTQ+ issues.

In Iron River, the anonymous group of residents said in their letter that a meeting will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 6, at 7 p.m. at the community center where people can share views on actions to end "proliferation of these materials." Theyre considering petitions to remove books and seek board resignations. Theyre also examining whether to set up a parental advisory board, halt budget increases for the library, enact a "Town Decency Act," and inform donors of the librarys policies.

Pooler said the library received a letter from an attorney, requesting details about donors to the library. She hadnt confirmed whether its related to the letter.

For now, she said the "Lets Talk About It" will remain on the librarys shelves until theyre forced to remove the book whether thats due to another challenge or any litigation that may result in a court order. However, courts have often dismissed legal challenges seeking to ban books, stating that their removal would violate the First Amendment.

Pooler said the librarys role is to provide information, acknowledging that may upset some residents.

"We try to provide all sides of an issueso that we have a balanced collection providing information on both sides of topics," Pooler said. "That's the biggest thing is we're here to provide information for everybody, not just for a certain segment of the community."

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Amid record demand to ban books nationwide, Wisconsin libraries ... - Wisconsin Public Radio

MESA Free speech activists are reacting after a Mesa art exhibit was unexpectedly put on hold. One piece of art critical of police is at the center of the controversy.

The National Coalition Against Censorship sent a letter to city officials demanding the exhibit open as planned.

Elizabeth Larison, the coalition's director of the arts and culture advocacy program, wrote the letter.

No. We haven't received any official response yet, said Larison.

She, along with the ACLU, sent the three-page letter to Mesa's city and deputy city managers.

The piece of art Mesa pulled is titled "My florist is a d*** with the sub caption, When his day starts, your days end.

The artwork shows a police officer standing with a baton in hand with a flower at the end of it.

"To us, this smacks strongly of censorship that certain ideas cannot be expressed or explored within this museum, and this is why we are alarmed, said Larison.

A spokeswoman for the city of Mesa told ABC15 city leaders have received the letter. She said as a reminder, This is a postponement to allow us to review our processes."

"The artwork expresses the ideas and the positions of the artist. And, that is fair game, said Larison.

Larison expressed confusion about the postponement.

"As I understand it, there is also a placard in the museum which states the works on view do not necessarily represent the position of the city, said Larison.

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ACLU, National Coalition Against Censorship react to postponed Mesa art exhibit - ABC15 Arizona in Phoenix

NEW YORK The City University of New York (CUNY) continues to be embroiled in a controversy related to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian activism. Jewish students and faculty allege that discourse on campus related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict constitutes hatred toward them, while Pro-Palestinian activists say they are being unfairly maligned.

The controversy has been ongoing since last year, the result of several displays of pro-Palestine and anti-Israel activism at the university. The situation erupted after a May commencement address at CUNY's law school that featured scathing critiques of Israel and its policies. Most recently, in late July, a Jewish advocacy group called for a federal investigation into CUNY due to alleged antisemitism at the school.

The issue at CUNY has captured the attention of local politicians and members of Congress and is indicative of the significant tension on US university campuses related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A campus divided

CUNY is New York Citys public university system, the largest such system in the United States. Reflective of the city's large Jewish and Arab populations, CUNY has a large number of students from both groups.

The CUNY community has been divided on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for some time. In 2022, the faculty at its School of Law passed a resolution endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for a variety of boycotts against Israel to protest its treatment of the Palestinians. The resolution accused Israel of participating in apartheid, genocide, and war crimes," according to reports at the time. CUNY chancellor Felix Rodriguez subsequently said in a statement that the university does not support BDS.

The controversy continued into this year. In March, CUNYs Borough of Manhattan Community College hosted a display titled Visual Timeline of Occupied Palestinian Land. The materials read that the violence between Israelis and Palestinians is not a "conflict," but rather "settler colonialism, military occupation, land theft and ethnic cleansing." The display also accused Israel of hurting biodiversity by introducing European invasive (plant) species," according to images published by the The Times of Israel.

Jeffrey Lax, a professor at Kingsborough Community College, which is part of the CUNY system, said there is an overwhelming amount of antisemitism at CUNY, particularly against Zionist and religiously observant Jews.He cited the display at Borough of Manhattan Community College as one such example and said he disapproved of the school hosting it.

I respect the rights students and faculty have to take these positions due to free speech, but this is the administration doing that. Thats a whole different bowl of wax, Lax told Al-Monitor. Ive never seen taxpayer dollars used for something that is in my mind antisemitic.

Lax is also a cofounder of Students and Faculty for Equality at CUNY, or SAFE CUNY. The group advocates against alleged discrimination toward Zionist Jews at the university. He said that the settler colonial allegation is specifically antisemitic because it is a false trope that denies Jews have been present in the area for thousands of years.

The Borough of Manhattan Community College subsequently apologized for the display.

Pro-Palestine activists at CUNY, on the other hand, say their legitimate activism is under attack. CUNY for Palestine, which advocates on campus for Palestinian liberation, told Al-Monitor that there is a repression of student organizing for Palestine at the school. The group referred to the Borough of Manhattan Community College exhibition as uplifting the Palestinian struggle and condemned the censorship and online attacks against it.

The May 12 commencement speech at the CUNY School of Law by one of this year's graduates, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, took the controversy to new heights. Mohammed, originally from Yemen but who grew up in the city borough of Queens, spent much of the address criticizing Israel, referring a few times to Israeli settler colonialism.

...that as Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old and the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses, as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes she said.

Mohamed also equated Israels bombing of the Gaza Strip that month to criminal justice issues in New York City, referencing the citys prison on Rikers Island.

Let us remember that Gaza, just this week [May 12], has been bombed with the world watching. That daily, brown and black men are being murdered by the state at Rikers, she said.

Toward the end of her speech, Mohammed called for action against Zionism, capitalism and other things.

May the rage that fills this auditorium, dance in the hallways of our elementary schools, in our home villages of Sheikh Jarrah, Gaza, and Yemen, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, she said. May it be the fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.

In a statement on May 30, CUNYs board of trustees condemned the address, saying hate speech...should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses."

Jewish groups also denounced Mohammeds remarks. Lax called it the most offensive speech he had ever heard, saying Mohammed came close to incitement to violence against Jews by calling for rage.

Calling for rage, fighting Zionism, capitalism. The word 'rage' has some serious connotations for Jewish people. Its a dog whistle nowadays, he said. Days of rage against Jews in the Middle East usually means calls for violence against Jews. I thought her speech was dangerous.

Palestinian civilians and armed groups sometimes call for a day of rage protest against Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. These often lead to clashes with Israeli forces.

I think there needed to be a serious discussion on if it would incite violence, Lax added about the speech.

Lax clarified that although he is critical of the speech, he is not against Mohammed speaking on campus in general. He also said Palestinians are victims in the conflict.

Anyone who tells you Palestinians are not victims is either a liar or a terrible person, said Lax. I think everyone should stand up for the rights of Palestinians.

Pro-Palestinian activists at CUNY defended Mohammeds speech and condemned criticism of it.

Once again, CUNY has exposed students to violent Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate with no condemnation of the attacks they face, Nerdeen Kiswani, who delivered a similar speech at CUNY School of Law last year, told Al-Monitor.

CUNY for Palestine also dismissed the notion that Mohammeds speech was antisemitic.

There was nothing antisemitic in Fatimas speech so Jewish fears and discomfort about antisemitism are not organically responding to an objective reality, said the group.

Some anti-Zionist Jewish groups are active at CUNY and likewise defended Mohammed. One such group, Not In Our Name, said that Jews feeling uncomfortable with Mohammeds speech is the result of a Zionist propaganda campaign.

Fatimas speech is a truth of its own and doesnt need the validation of Jewish students, the group told Al-Monitor.

Meanwhile, Mohammed told the progressive website Jewish Currents in June that she had no regrets about the speech, saying, I would not change a single word of my speech.

One thing the opposing sides share is a dislike for the CUNY leadership. Lax believes that Rodriguez should be fired. Kiswani said that Rodriguez and the board threw Fatima and the entire CUNY Law community under the bus when they labeled her address hate speech.

Spokespeople for CUNY did not respond to Al-Monitors request for comment.

Congress steps in

Mohammed's remarks were criticized by several members of Congress as well as by New York City Mayor Eric Adams Rep in late May. In June, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) introduced legislation to rescind federal funding for colleges that promote anti-semitism" in response to the speech, according to a statement.

The criticisms prompted CUNY for Palestine to release a video on July 3 in which supporters re-read Mohammeds speech aloud in response to what the group characterized in a press release as a coordinated national smear campaign against her.

The controversy surrounding pro-Palestine activism and alleged antisemitism at CUNY is now ongoing. On July 18, Alums for Fairness, a group that works to counter antisemitism on college campuses, launched a campaign for a federal investigation into CUNY. It specifically asked New York Governor Kathy Hochul and CUNY board chairman Bill Thompson to enlist the US Department of Educations help regarding allegations of antisemitism at the school. The group specifically mentioned Mohammeds speech as well as CUNY law school faculty endorsing BDS, among other things.

Going even further, as the university has proven unable to do so on its own, we are calling on Governor Hochul and Chair Thompson to invite the U.S. Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights to investigate and address the prevailing issue of antisemitic hate on CUNY campuses, said the group in a press release.

Alums for Fairness also called on CUNY to adopt the definition of antisemitism put forward by the Berlin-based International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The group's working definition, adopted in 2016, is supported by a number of Jewish advocacy groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The definition does not equate all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, stating, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. It does, however, include Israel-related examples, among them Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

A gray area

Whether the criticism of Israel espoused by CUNY activists constitutes antisemitism is a matter of debate. Kenneth Stern worked on the IHRA definition when he was the American Jewish Committees antisemitism expert and is now director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate at the eponymous university in New York State.

Stern said the definition was written in 2004 and 2005 in response to an uptick in attacks in Europe in the early 2000s that coincided with the second intifada in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Associated Press reported a wave of violence against Jews in France in 2002, for example.

Antisemitism at heart is a belief that Jews conspire to harm non-Jews, Stern told Al-Monitor, adding that sometimes people cut and paste Israel in place of Jews.

Stern also said, however, that what is happening at CUNY and other US universities is not necessarily antisemitism.

A lot of stuff is in the gray area. The challenge on a campus is that you dont want to suppress ideas, he said. When you go after ideas you may find totally disagreeable and hurtful, the response is not censorship; its to speak out against them.

The IHRA definition was not designed to suppress criticism of Israel, according to Stern.

I dont think any definition should be used to hunt speech, he said, adding that calls to deny funding to CUNY over the issue are dangerous.

Stern criticized Mohammeds portrayal of Israel in the speech at CUNY, but said her remarks do not meet the definition of antisemitism.

It was clearly very anti-Israel. It was not nuanced. It painted with too broad a brush, he said. Not everything we find disturbing about Israel should be used with the term 'antisemitism.'

A repeated line of criticism of Israel at CUNY and elsewhere is the settler colonialism charge. Jews have continuously maintained a presence in modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories, but began arriving in relatively larger numbers in the 19th century with the advent of Zionism. Migration from Europe and the Middle East accelerated into the 20th century due to pogroms and the Holocaust as well as hostility toward Jews in Arab and Muslim-majority countries. Many Jews celebrate the establishment of a Jewish homeland, but Palestinians often refer to the creation of the state of Israel as the "nakba," which is Arabic for "catastrophe."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University, said that "settler colonialism" is an accurate term to describe Israel as a whole not just Israel's settlements and other actions in the West Bank.

The theft and colonization of Palestinian land in the West Bank is of course settler colonialism, but this is true of the entire Zionist enterprise from the very beginning, Khalidi told Al-Monitor.

Khalidi, one of the leading experts on Palestinian history in the United States, pointed to remarks on the matter made by early Zionist leaders, including Zeev Jabotinsky. In the 1923 essay "The Iron Wall," Jabotinsky compared Jews migrating to what was then the British mandate Palestine, to the Europeans that settled North America.

The ADL disputes the settler colonialism allegation. In a 2021 report, the organization said both Jews and Palestinians are native and indigenous to the land.

There is no motherland to which the Jewish population in the land of Israel may otherwise return, read the report. The French in Algeria could return to France, and the British in India could return to the United Kingdom, many Jews in Israel, including the many who fled persecution, have no other country to which they may return.

Khalidi also said that antisemitism is not a major motivating factor among those who actively support the Palestinian cause.

I do not believe that it is a significant factor among most activists, many of whom are Jewish, he said.

Some secular, left-wing Jewish groups, among them Jewish Voice for Peace, frequently criticize Israel. There are also religious Jews who oppose Israel on theological grounds.

Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews," said Khalidi. "Criticism of Israeli policies, of Israel's discriminatory laws, or of Zionism, which is a political philosophy, is not anti-Semitic.

A country-wide issue

CUNY is hardly the only campus with intense divisions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2021, a sexual assault support group at the University of Vermont announced that Zionists were no longer welcome to participate. The incident led to an investigation by the Department of Education, which concluded in April that the university had mishandled the complaints of antisemitism stemming from the case. In June, the department opened an investigation into a similar incident at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

The CUNY saga has led other students to also speak out. In California, Jana Abulaban slammed Israel as an apartheid state at the graduation ceremony in June for El Camino Community College. Abulaban, who emigrated from Jordan to the United States, told The New York Post that she felt inspired by Mohammeds speech at CUNY. Abulaban was likewise accused of antisemitism for the speech.

The divisions in the United States over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extend beyond college campuses. Several state legislatures have enacted laws barring their state governments to varying degrees from doing business with supporters of the BDS movement. Also of note, in 2018, Bahia Amawi, a speech pathologist in Texas, lost her job at a public school for refusing to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel. She later sued the state.

The tensions surrounding the conflict have even led to violence. In late 2021, a Jewish man was attacked in New York City for wearing an Israel Defense Forces sweatshirt. This past May, city resident Suleiman Othman pled guilty to attempted third-degree assault as a hate crime and was slated to receive a 60-day jail sentence for the attack, prosecutors announced at the time.

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What does City University of New York controversy say about antisemitism, censorship? - Al-Monitor

Ethscriptions provide a novel way for anyone to permanently engrave content like text, images, and documents into the Ethereum blockchain. By publishing data as ethscriptions, you can securely log information in Ethereums decentralized ledger forever. While the process involves some technical steps, this guide will walk through how to create censorship-resistant ethscriptions from start to finish.

Youll need an Ethereum account and wallet configured to interact with the network to get started. Leading browser-based options like MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, or MyEtherWallet allow easy access without running a full node. Be sure to fund your wallet with a small amount of ETH to cover the miner fees required to publish transactions.

Youll also want to have the text, images, or other content prepared that you wish to upload. Ethscription platforms can encode small files like text documents, JPGs, and PDFs. Have this data saved locally on your computer for the next step.

Now you must choose a suitable ethscription platform to publish the data to Ethereum. Services like Etherscribe, Ethegra, and Stampd allow creating ethscriptions in just a few clicks. Compare features like file formats accepted, cost structure, and ease of use.

Connect your wallet to the selected platform to sign transactions on your behalf. Double-check that the correct wallet is linked to avoid errors. Most platforms will detect wallets like MetaMask automatically.

Once your wallet is connected to the platform, you can upload your content. Paste in any text you wish to immortalize or drag and drop your selected image or document file. Give the ethscription a short title and description for reference, Then review all the details to ensure the data is correct. Then the platform will encode your content and generate the necessary transaction to add it to Ethereum.

submit the transaction to finalize publishing the ethscription. Your connected wallet will need to sign the transaction before it broadcasts to the network; within a minute or two, the ethscription will be included in a block and immutably saved to Ethereum.

Once sealed within the blockchain, the platform will provide a transaction hash you can use to view the ethscription via blockchain explorers like Etherscan. This link lets anyone access and verify your engraved content.

The beauty of ethscriptions is that once published to Ethereum, your engraved content is permanently sealed into the blockchains immutable ledger. This provided indefinite proof of your documents or medias existence when it was ethscribed. The decentralized nature of Ethereum ensures no single entity can ever censor, restrict access, or delete your ethscription. It will remain uncensorable and public forever.

This makes ethscriptions a powerful tool for immortalizing personally or professionally important information in a way that cannot be altered or suppressed. The far-reaching potential to indelibly preserve memories, records, and data for posterity makes ethscriptions on Ethereum so revolutionary.

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing

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Creating Censorship-Resistant Ethscriptions on the Ethereum ... - The Coin Republic

By Erin Rydgren | on August 12, 2023

Book banning is bad business, as school and city officials are finding out in Alta. The school will need to ban potentially hundreds of books if they refer to sex under a new state law. That means that the Alta Municipal Library, which shares its stacks with the Alta-Aurelia School District, would have to do a massive purge of its 21,000 books (60% of which are the citys). This has prompted the city to think about establishing its own separate library just so a 7th grader doesnt have access to a book like Catcher in the Rye. That is not hyperbole. The book is on a list of 347 proposed for censorship in the Urbandale School District. A different list of banned books, with similar classics tagged, is circulating in the Norwalk School District. Its hard to imagine what Alta-Aurelia might come up with. We could have more than 300 sets of rules depending on the school district and how prudish an influential set of patrons are with the school board. We recall several years ago leading Republican legislators declaring that you could not have local control over livestock confinement because you would have 99 sets of rules, and that would be a mess for the pork industry. Yet the same party thinks it is okay to make school boards into a censorship authority. The Iowa Department of Education, under the guidance of Gov. Reynolds who cooked up this law, refuses to issue regulations for school districts to follow. Everyone is on their own. Thats not leadership, its chaos. And it is wasteful. The city and school district had a nice thing going, sharing facilities and staff. It saved money. It created a program the city probably could not afford on its own. Were pretty sure no innocent eyes were exposed to anything of prurient interest that they could not otherwise find on their cellphone or on TV during primetime. Alta and Aurelia always have been able to establish community standards and did not need the assistance of the governor and legislature. Sen. Lynn Evans, a Republican who supported the book-banning bill, is an Aurelia native and former superintendent of schools. He is confident that the city and school district will work something out. He thinks there is a way to cordon off adult books from sixth graders and the like. The city is not necessarily as optimistic. We certainly appreciate the citys anxiety over trashing much of its collection. Its a shame that the legislature didnt think this through. Its too bad we let partisans or holy rollers write our curriculum standards instead of trained educators. You would think the University of Northern Iowa or Buena Vista were grooming socialists and perverts to run our schools. The Department of Education is derelict to just ignore it. Republicans created a mess for their core constituency: rural Iowa. This is what Alta and Aurelia get a big headache from stupidity and zeal.

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A mess of censorship - Chronicle Times