Mediaboss Marketing

OAKLAND - An East Bay writer of children's books got the offer of a lifetime a chance for her book to be distributed by publishing giant Scholastic. But it came with a price that she said was too much to pay.

The book is titled "Love In The Library," the story of how Maggie Tokuda-Hall's grandparents met and fell in love while incarcerated along with 13,000 other people of Japanese descent at the Minidoka Relocation Camp in Idaho during World War II.

"And so, I wrote about it for kids," said Tokuda-Hall. "I wanted to provide them with this example of hope and of beauty and the possibility of change, but one that also didn't shy away from the truth of what happened to them."

Click https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfra... for a CBS News video report.

CBS Local Digital Media personalizes the global reach of CBS-owned and operated television and radio stations with a local perspective.

See more here:
East Bay Children's Author Stands Strong In Censorship Battle - Patch

America is experiencing two disturbing simultaneous trends: the rise of mob censorship to shut down speaking events on college campuses, and an attempt to justify it as merely the exercise of more speech.

At SUNY Albany this month, protesters stormed an event, formed an improvised conga line and prevented a lecture ironically, titled Free Speech on Campus from beginning.

In a now notorious incident at Stanford Law School last month, protesters shouted down a federal appellate judges speech.

And in November, hecklers drowned out conservative commentator Ann Coulter at Cornell, playing loud music, chanting, shouting at her and repeatedly preventing her from speaking. We dont want you here, your words are violence, screamed one heckler.

I have defended free speech on college campuses for over a decade. Weve seen waves of shout-downs before. But few defended the disruptions. In fact, they were usually met with near-universal condemnation.

People are also reading

Not so anymore. Some now argue that drowning out and shutting down speakers is an exercise of more speech, not an attempt to carry out a hecklers veto on the speaker. Depressingly, 62% of college students say that shouting down a speaker is acceptable to some degree.

Its called protest, one Stanford student remarked to Judge Kyle Duncan while the judge objected to being shouted down. Its under the 1st Amendment. I thought you knew about the 1st Amendment. Later, after the Stanford administration condemned the incident, a group of protesters papered Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinezs classroom with fliers reading, We have free speech rights too, and, Counter-speech is free speech.

Apparently, Americas future lawyers and future judges fundamentally misunderstand free speech rights. Shouting down speakers is just like any other form of censorship: Its the few deciding for the many what they can hear. Protesters have every right to engage in peaceful, nondisruptive protest. But they do not have the right to take over someone elses event and make it their own.

This is a basic point, and we understand it in almost every other context. Nobody argues that you have a free speech right to stand up during a Broadway musical and sing along with the actors or to scream at a public library book reading.

Just because the public is invited to attend an event and sometimes to speak during a Q&A period does not make it the publics event to disrupt or transform as it pleases. Your distaste for a speaker doesnt grant you a right to prevent a willing audience from listening to that speaker.

There must be places in a free and pluralistic society where groups can freely associate and share ideas without first seeking approval from a crowd of hecklers. Colleges are such spaces. Its the very reason they exist.

One increasingly common semantic game is to argue that hecklers veto is a legal term and that it applies only when the government steps in to shut down speech in anticipation of a disruptive response. But as a practical matter, the government or on college campuses, those in the administration can end up supporting a hecklers veto through its action or inaction. Besides, hecklers veto has long had a nonlegal, colloquial definition that tracks the plain meaning of the words: hecklers vetoing speech.

In either case, both the hecklers and those in authority who enable them will regret normalizing this sort of response to speech.

In December 1860, Frederick Douglass and a group of abolitionists assembled at a public meeting hall in Boston to discuss how to abolish slavery. No sooner had the meeting begun than it was overtaken by a pro-slavery mob. The police did nothing to prevent the heckling and disruption, and the meeting was eventually shut down. A few days later, Douglass gave an impassioned defense of free speech: To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

The heckling is free speech crowd may argue that the pro-slavery mobs action was wrong because of its message, whereas those engaged in todays disruptions are morally right. But we cant hinge the validity of a hecklers veto on whether the hecklers feel justified in their actions. They always do. Thats why justifications for censorship shouldnt be allowed to outweigh principles of free speech.

While students may succeed today in shouting down speakers they oppose, they should realize that those same tactics could be used tomorrow against speakers they support.

Perrino is executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast":www.thefire.organd@NicoPerrino.

Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

See the rest here:
Nico Perrino: Shouting down speakers is censorship that will backfire - Lincoln Journal Star

NEWCASTLE The Lincoln County Democratic Committee will hold its next meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 27 as a hybrid meeting. The n-person meeting will be at the Newcastle Fire Station, 86 River Road or people can attend via Zoom.

The agenda includes a discussion of the recent increase in book challenges and censorship efforts in Maine and across the country. School boards across the state including in Lincoln County have faced an increasing number of book challenges over the past year, which have largely centered around books written by and about LGBTQ+ people and people of color. More than 2,500 book titles were targeted for censorship in the US last year, a 38% increase over the year before, according to the American Library Association.

Now, a bill before the Legislature would escalate these book bans statewide by expanding Maines obscenity law to include schools. Under the current version of the bill, librarians and educators could be charged with a Class C felony if they violate the law.

Wynter Giddings and Savannah Sessions from the Maine Library Association and Karen Silverman from the Maine Association of School Libraries will talk about these censorship efforts and how to address them locally and statewide.

This is the third in LCDCs series on legislative advocacy, and all Lincoln County Democrats and unenrolled progressives are welcome to attend.

Efforts to censor books and other materials in our schools is cause for great concern in any situation, but especially when these efforts seem to be so clearly targeted at books about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals, said Kelli Whitlock Burton, LCDC chair. We look forward to learning what we can do to support librarians, educators, students and our communities.

Giddings, current president of the Maine Library Association and also serving her first term on the Maine Library Commission, is the manager of technology and training at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick and has worked in public libraries for 11 years.

Sessions, in her second term as the chair of the Maine Library Association Legislative Advocacy Committee, also serves on the board of the Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library in Lovell. She has been a school librarian for nine years, in education for 11 years, and works at a public school in western Maine.

Silverman is chair of the Maine Association of School Libraries Intellectual Freedom Committee and is a member of the MASL board and the Maine Student Book Award board. She has been a librarian for years, the last 10 as a school librarian.

LCDC committee business will include an update on the special election for Maine House District 45, with comments from Democratic candidate Wendy Pieh of Bremen. LCDC members will also elect people for state and county offices, hear updates from Democratic town committees and conduct other business.

Voting members of the LCDC will automatically receive the log on information and reminders by email. Those interested in becoming a voting member must be a registered Democrat in Lincoln County and may make their interest known by indicating such on the meeting registration form, https://lincolncountydemocrats.com/meet, or by emailing info@lincolncountydemocrats.com.

Pre-registration is required for non-voting members to receive Zoom log on and/or phone-in details. Register at https://lincolncountydemocrats.com/meet before Noon the day of the meeting to ensure access. They will also do their best to accommodate last-minute registrations.

Information about the committee, its meetings and other activities may be found at https://lincolncountydemocrats.com or https://www.facebook.com/lincolncountydems/.

The Lincoln County Democratic Committee promotes the ideals, principles, and philosophy we share as Democrats. The nomination and election of candidates who advocate these ideals and principles ensure an effective, democratic government of and for all the people.

More articles from the BDN

View post:
The Lincoln County Democratic Committee to meet with Maine ... - Bangor Daily News

As regular visitors to the Westborough Library, we were appalled to witness the actions of one resident, at the town meeting where she voted against funding the library, due to her opinions about book content and demands to have it removed from the childrens section.

Defund the library because we dont like a book?

After the meeting with the Library Trustees, it became apparent this was never about relocating to another section. This was an attempt at censorship and its dangerous.

We need to Talk About Vaginas written for children 10-14, is meant to educate about anatomy and experiences during puberty. This is not a book written for teenagers.

As parents, its our responsibility to determine what our children can and cannot read, not another adults. If we dont want our children to read a certain book we can simply have them pick something else. You dont remove that choice from another parent.

For women, the relocation/removal of this particular book is deeply concerning. The underlying message is that girls should be ashamed of their bodies. Girls are taught to cover up their bodies because its distracting to boys. As a society we continue to perpetuate these messages through impactful transgressions such as removing a book from the library because it made some people uncomfortable.

If we begin relocating books for discomfort, the next step will be banning them. The argument now is no one wants to ban books, thats not what this is however its unclear where to draw that line. This is the beginning of censorship if allowed.

Consider the voices that arent as loud as the ones complaining and dont have the social capital to advocate. More importantly, think of the children that desperately need this book and the library to be a place for safe learning. These voices matter.

Staff of WPL, thank you. We have tremendous respect for how you handle the challenges you are placed in due to the harmful ideologies of a few residents. Those few do NOT represent the majority of this town.

Respectfully,

Sara McCabeBrandin TumeinskiWestborough

See the original post:
'This was an attempt at censorship and it's dangerous' - Community Advocate

Artists and other cultural workers are deeply concerned about the politicisation of boards and leadership in their sector and its impact on their ability to do their work and the sectors ability to grow.

A report released this week by the Campaign for Free Expression (CFE), The State of Free Expression in the South African Cultural Sector: An Investigation, has highlighted how the Cultural Institutions Act of 1998 has given the minister of sports, arts and culture overarching power in selecting board members and chairpersons of arts funding agencies.

This is of great concern to cultural workers because the minister himself as well as the ministers who have preceded him have had little knowledge of the arts.

Culture workers said an environment has been created where many board members and chairpersons are appointed not because of merit, skill or knowledge, but through their proximity to and agreeability towards the minister. This has affected the sector as the needs of cultural workers have been neglected for the sake of power and money.

This has set the stage for decision-making over funding to be influenced by bias rather than through the lens of maintaining and encouraging growth and sustainability in the sector.

In 2020, the government introduced the Presidential Economic Stimulus Programme (PESP) fund through the National Arts Council (NAC). It was established during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak to encourage economic growth in the arts and culture sector.

But what was meant to create financial security for many cultural workers and arts organisations during a tumultuous time became a maladministration saga embroiled in power dynamics and bad-faith practices. There were cries of outrage from cultural workers as the NAC was exposed for maladministration of the more than R300-million in PESP funds.

Read more in Daily Maverick: The National Arts Council of South Africa has become a secretive little shop of horrors

There were a significant number of successful applications to the PESP fund that benefited existing NAC board members (which created a conflict of interest), successful applications from the same individuals under multiple organisation names, as well as successful applications from deregistered organisations or organisations in the process of deregistering.

In March 2021, cultural workers conducted a two-month sit-in to protest against mismanagement and maladministration in the NAC. This resulted in an independent investigation in which senior officials were found to have mismanaged funds.

The sit-in and news of the NACs mishandlings raised further questions regarding the politicisation of boards in arts funding agencies and the subsequent impact it has had on the state of free expression in the cultural sector.

In the CFE report, cultural workers lament that the politicisation of boards and the lack of strategic leadership have created an atmosphere that breeds censorship. Respondents in the CFE research said there were genuine fears of intimidation, threats of violence, silencing and withdrawal of funds if they chose to speak out against the lack of transparency and mismanagement of arts funding agencies and other publicly funded organisations.

According to cultural workers, censorship is not limited to issues of arts funding agencies but also affects artists work. Cultural workers who create provocative work that challenges the political or social status quo also face censure and discrimination by conservative leadership which often leads to self-censorship where workers fear a backlash if they produce politically disruptive art.

In the CFE report, the matter of self-censorship arose regarding the impact it has on artists, their work and the sector.

Respondents said the sector loses out on important opportunities of social and political commentary that might inspire or disrupt the stagnant social and political structures in the country by silencing themselves and by minimising the impact of their work.

Read more in Daily Maverick: While millionaires and politicians fiddle, South African art and culture burns

The practice and exercise of free expression is crucial for cultural workers and our greater society. Cultural workers in this country have historically disrupted the political status quo and should continue to do so, to challenge the issues of politicisation, maladministration and censorship in the arts and culture sector.

In challenging the wrongdoings of arts funding agencies and the Arts and Culture Department as well as continuing to create safe, expressive spaces where they can share knowledge, strategies, lessons opportunities and experiences, cultural workers can work towards a future where there is a large shift in the sustainability and growth of the sector.

Go to http://www.freeexpression.org to read more on the state of free expression in the South African cultural sector. DM

Thokozani Mbwana is a researcher-writer and poet working in human rights. Their interests lie in LGBTIQ+ rights, free expression, transitional justice and ethical research practices. They serve as Project Manager at the Campaign for Free Expression, a non-profit advocacy organisation that defends and expands the right of all to express themselves.

Follow this link:
Suppressing the arts: censorship in the cultural sector - Daily Maverick