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Several libraries in the Tri-County area are pushing back against censorship as more books face challenges and bans in school and public libraries around the country.

The annual Peoria Reads program is rebranded "Central Illinois Reads" this year as a nod to the multi-institutional effort.

Jennifer Davis is the public relations manager at the Peoria Public Library.

"We felt it was incredibly important to highlight the fact that the freedom to read is is so essential to our democracy," she said. "No one should be able to tell you what you have access to what you can read. And we are encouraging people to during this period while we're highlighting this to hopefully read a banned or challenged book. Read outside your comfort zone; judge for yourself."

The American Library Association maintains a list of frequently challenged books. They include classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Color Purple, as well as contemporary titles like The Hate U Give and Gender Queer.

The Peoria Public Library is partnering with the Fondulac District Library in East Peoria, Pekin Public Library, Chillicothe Public Library, Morton Public Library, Dunlap Public Library, and the Illinois Prairie District Public Library that serves Metamora, Germantown Hills, and other Woodford County communities.

Bradley University, Methodist College, and the Neighborhood House are also participating.

A bill now moving through the Illinois General Assembly will require public libraries to have a written policy against book banning to maintain eligibility for state grants. A book can still be challenged by a patron through an administrative process, Davis said.

The first Central Illinois Reads event is happening this Thursday, April 13 at the Peoria Public Library Main Branch at 6 p.m. Dr. Emily Knox, a University of Illinois associate professor and author of Book Banning in 21st CenturyandFoundations of Intellectual Freedom will speak on book bans and censorship.

Find out more on the Peoria Public Library's website.

Excerpt from:
Central Illinois libraries are making a stand against book bans and ... - Peoria Public Radio

Now that the mogul has swung Twitter to the right, conservatives no longer believe that social-media policies violate the First Amendment.

April 12, 2023, 10:42 AM ET

When the right-wing billionaire Elon Musk wanted a journalist to spread the word about supposed left-wing censorship under Twitters previous ownership, he went to Matt Taibbi. But last week, Twitter began to throttle traffic to the newsletter platform Substack, where Taibbi does most of his writing, and apparently began hiding Taibbis tweets in Twitter's search results. Musks chosen conduit for exposing what he described as past Twitters censorship was now being censored by Musks Twitter.

Although Musk has insisted the temporary throttling of Substack was a mistake, Taibbi claimed that it was in response to a dispute over the companys new Twitter-like service.

Blocking access to a competitor may seem, well, at odds with the free-speech absolutism that Musk has proclaimed and that admirers like Taibbi have praised. As the reporter Mike Masnick writes, the above behavior clearly falls into what Musk fans described as censorship under Twitters previous ownership. But its consistent with what more perceptive observers noted about Musk as he was considering buying the network: The moguls treatment of union organizers and whistleblowers suggested that free-speech absolutism was mostly code for a high tolerance for bigotry toward particular groups, a smoke screen that obscured an obvious hostility toward any speech that threatened his ability to make money.

Read: Elon Musk is spiraling

Not since Donald Trump has liberal judgment about the focus of a right-wing cult of personality been so swiftly vindicated. During his tenure at Twitter, Musk has suspended reporters and left-wing accounts that drew his ire, retaliated against media organizations perceived as liberal, ordered engineers to boost his tweets after he was humiliated when a tweet from President Joe Biden about the Super Bowl did better than his own, secretly promoted a list of accounts of his choice, and turned the companys verification process into a subscription service that promises increased visibility to Musk sycophants and users desperate enough to pay for engagement. At the request of the right-wing government in India, the social network has blocked particular tweets and accounts belonging to that governments critics, a more straightforward example of traditional state censorship. But despite all of that, he has yet to face state legislation alleging that what he does with the website he owns is unconstitutional.

Thats notable because, until Musk bought Twitter late last year, conservatives were arguing that the companys moderation decisions violated the First Amendment, even though Twitter is a private company and not part of the government. Now that Musk is using his editorial discretion as owner of the company to promote people and ideas he supportsprimarily right-wing influencersand diminish the reach of those he does not, the constitutional emergency has subsided. At least until his allies and defenders on Substack found themselves unable to promote their work on Twitter, free speech had been restored, because free speech here simply means that right-wing ideas and arguments are favored. This outcomethat Twitter under Musk would favor right-wing contentwas predictable, and Im saying that because I wrote last April that thats what would happen.

The episode reveals something important about the way that many conservative jurists and legal scholars now approach the principle of free speech. Florida and Texas passed laws prohibiting social-media companies from moderating user-generated content, in retaliation for what they characterized as liberal censorship. A federal judge appointed by Trump, Andrew Oldham, then upheld the Texas law with a ruling that scoffed at the idea that editorial discretion constituted a freestanding category of First-Amendment-protected expression and insisted that the platforms moderation decisions did not qualify for that protection. Whether editorial discretion is a freestanding category of protected speech is irrelevant; engaging in protected speech is impossible absent the freedom to decide what to say, or for that matter what ideas are worthy of publication. Conservatives agree, as long as those platforms are conservative; right-wing platforms such as Parler and Truth Social have strict moderation policies that conservatives are not challenging as unconstitutional.

Like the newfound opposition to vaccine mandates, this blinkered view of free speech was met by conservative judges eager to validate right-wing cultural shifts, no matter how bizarre or contradictory, through their strained method of constitutional interpretation. The ghosts of the Framers may be summoned through the necromancy of undead constitutionalism, through which the authors of our founding document can be confirmed to have had the same concerns and priorities as extremely online conservatives. Now that Musk is utilizing his editorial discretion to move the social network in a right-wing direction, however, no one is insisting that his exercise of editorial discretion violates the Constitutionnot even his liberal critics.

Adam Serwer: Why conservatives invented a right to post

Conservatives built an entire body of jurisprudence around the First Amendments protection of corporate speech when large corporations were reliably funding Republican causes and campaignsthe late Justice Antonin Scalia declared in the Citizens United decision that to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. But once some corporate actors decided it was in their financial interests to make decisions that the GOP disliked, conservative lawyers then turned around and argued that speech was no longer protected if it was used for purposes they opposed. If your freedom of speech is only protected when it aligns with the ruling party, then you do not have a right to freedom of speech.

Faced with right-wing outrage over the moderation decisions of social-media platforms, conservative judges turned the First Amendment upside down by upholdingor signaling their sympathy withstate laws designed to punish social-media platforms for being insufficiently conservative. They invented a conservative right to post in which the First Amendment restricted private platforms the way it does the government, but only if those platforms were perceived as liberal. Perhaps nowhere is this inversion of the First Amendment more clear than on the issue of abortion rights; the same lawmakers insisting that the content-moderation policies of private firms violate the First Amendment are feverishly attempting to criminalize online speech related to abortion.

The platforms targeted by anti-moderation laws were never liberal; they imposed moderation policies because it is difficult to maintain advertising revenue when your platform is overrun by teenage Nazis with anime avatars and aspiring far-right intellectuals desperate to impress them. Musks changes were far more ideologically driven and have reportedly, by his own evaluation, halved the value of his company.

Conservatives rapidly reversed their stance on corporate free-speech rights when they were angry at Twitter for being too left-wing, then changed their mind again once Musk bought Twitter and began amplifying right-wing voices at the expense of others. Musk owns the platform, and he can use it to magnify or ignore whatever ideas and sources he chooses. But its not a right that most of these conservative, self-styled defenders of free speech think you should have. For them, free speech is when they can say what they want, and when you can say what they want.

More:
Elon Musk's Free-Speech Charade Is Over - The Atlantic

One day in 2018 I found myself in a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City waiting for abortion pills and, as an artist, visualisations preoccupied my mind. I kept wondering: how could the stories of the individuals in this waiting room be heard and translated through sculpture?

Three years later, while isolated during the pandemic and with time to reflect on my own past medical interventionsincluding the abortionas a catalyst, I began acting on my vision for an art series titled As I Sit Waiting by scouring social media for individuals willing to share their stories. I talked with people on Zoom, listening to their personal experiences with abortion access. To date I have produced 18 short documentaries and created sculptures to reflect each persons story. The series covers experiences across 12 states and is ongoing.

Amid the onslaught of censorship in US schools, As I Sit Waiting unexpectedly made national headlines last month. Just two days before the opening of the exhibition Unconditional Care: Listening to Peoples Health Needs at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho, I was informed that four pieces from my series would be removed.

My work has been exhibited in museums and galleries like the Brooklyn Museum, Lyman Allyn Museum, Latchkey Gallery and Lump Gallery, and been supported by residencies like Pink Noise Projects and Field Projects. It is currently financially supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts.

The college claimed my art violated Idahos No Public Funds for Abortion Act (NPFAA), which prohibits the use of public funds for abortion, including speech that may promote or counsel in favour of abortion. The college also pulled works created by Katrina Majkut and Michelle Hartney for referencing abortion. But our work is not promoting or counseling in favour of abortion. It is simply reflecting the stories of those who have accessed abortion in this country.

Unconditional Care was guest-curated by Majkut at the colleges Center for Arts and History and takes an unbiased, educational approach to important health issues such as chronic illness, disability, pregnancy, gun deaths and sexual assault. For months, Majkut and I had been working together to select which documentaries from my series would be included in the show.

Installation view of Unconditional Care: Listening to People's Health Needs at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts and History Courtesy Katrina Majkut

The documentaries we chose for the show included one about Cat, who was forced by state law in Michigan to keep her pregnancy at only 17 years old in 2007. In the midst of severe postpartum depression and hallucinations, she brought her baby to the hospital for adoption.

Another subject was Blair, who was so happy to be pregnant with twins. When she found out one of the fetuses wasnt viable, she was devastated. Through a needle inserted into her abdomen, the doctor terminated one of the fetuses, so that the life of the other could come into existence. Blair watched the scar from the needle expand, as the other fetus grew. For Blairs sculpture, I found a high chair whose protruding tray reminded me of a pregnant belly. I cut the tray in half and stretched the high chair with fabricspleather, jersey, velvet. The pleather was cinched into the cutout, creating depth in honour of Blairs scar.

A third woman, DeZah, 25, was a single mother of two kids when she realised she was pregnant. The ultrasound revealed it was twins and she second-guessed her decision. The financial reality of her family expanding from two to four children was not realistic. The sculpture in honour of DeZah has two carved-out half domes, which both represent the twin fetuses and celebrate her two children. If DeZah became pregnant now, Georgias six-week ban would prevent her from obtaining an abortion. In Idaho, she would have had no option other than to raise four children below the poverty line.

Believing Lewis-Clark State College had violated my First Amendment rights, I sought help from organisations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Together, these groups wrote a letter to the colleges leaders urging them to reverse their decision. They did not. Additional advocacy came from PEN America and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The colleges leadership never responded.

Art censorship has a long history, with prominent artists like Dread Scott, Betty Tompkins, Adrian Piper and Aliza Shvarts all having their works removed. This type of censorship not only deprives individuals of their fundamental right to free expression, but also hinders creative and intellectual exploration. Currently, US lawmakers are considering a national ban on TikTok, marking a potential new era of internet censorship. My own art content on TikTok has been viewed by over 9.8 million people.

As I Sit Waiting shows that abortion access is not a monolithic story. It is unique to every person. As an artist, I strive to represent these stories with integrity, transparency and respect for diverse experiences. I demand the same of the galleries and museums that show my work. I thought that Lewis-Clark State College stood for education, learning and inquisitive conversation, but I was wrong. The censorship of my work by the college represents an overreaching and broad interpretation of the NPFAA.

The censorship has only fueled my passion to use art to uplift individuals abortion stories and amplify barriers to abortion access. I am more motivated than ever to continue honoring abortion stories through sculpture and film.

Read more:
An Idaho college removed my abortion-related art, strengthening my ... - Art Newspaper

Paul F. deLespinasse| The Daily Telegram

When people can't find a good argument for something, their only alternatives are to use a bad argument or claim there is no need for one.

During the summers of 1960 and 1961, I interned in the Oregon State Public Welfare Commission's headquarters.

In 1960, the headquarters were in Portland. But Gov. Mark Hatfield proposed moving it to Salem, the state capital, 60 miles south. This upset headquarters employees. Salem was too far to commute, and they hated the idea of moving.

My supervisor had me survey our employees to see what they would do if the commission got moved. Many said they would resign.

We reported details to Gov. Hatfield. He responded that he was pleased that the employees who really counted were willing to move!

Portland's newspapers complained that it was crazy to move the commission, since most Oregon wefare recipients lived in or near Portland Oregon's largest metropolitan area.

This was a plausible argument, but it was a bad one. The commission headquarters had no contact with welfare recipients. Offices in each Oregon country had all actual contact with welfare recipients. Our headquarters just provided centralized administrative services for the county offices.

There weren't any good arguments against the move, except inconvenience for the welfare bureaucrats. The governor had argued, not unreasonably, that having the commision in the capital would make it easier to supervise and coordinate with other state agencies.

Hatfield moved us to Salem in 1961. Many of the workers changed their minds and continued working for the commission.

The Supreme Court supplies mysecond exampleof an inability to find a good argument. The court has generally been happy to support its decisions with bad arguments when it can't find good ones. But it refused to give any arguments at all in upholding the World War I military draft against claims that it was "involuntary servitude," which it clearly was if those words have any meaning:

"Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement."

It couldn't even find a bad argument!

A recent example of a bad argument was contributed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Objecting to DirecTV's decision (later reversed) to discontinue carrying a particular station, Cruz called it "corporate censorship."

Of course censorship is bad, and the First Amendment wisely prohibits it: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

But the First Amendment does not restrict the right ofprivatepersons or corporations to refuse to publish or broadcast particular material.

As a Harvard Law School graduate, Cruz must understand that the First Amendment's "freedom of the press" actuallyprotectsthe right of private organizations to refuse to publish or broadcast certain material. That is essentially an editorial decision not carrying the weight of governmental censorship.

If a newspaper refuses to publish something that I have written, I can submit it to other newspapers and other editors remain free to publish it. The TV station discontinued by the satellite company was still carried by cable companies and was also available over the Internet.

Governmental censorship like that in today's Russia, on the other hand, threatensanybodywho publishes the forbiden material with sanctions.

Sen. Cruz's complaint about "corporate censorship" is a good example of using a bad argument when you can't find a good one. But he must have known better.

Paul F. deLespinasse is a retired professor of political science and computer science at Adrian College. He can be reached at pdeles@proaxis.com.

Here is the original post:
Paul deLespinasse: Bad arguments attractive when good ones ... - The Daily Telegram

French President Emmanuel Macrons office forced Politico to remove some of Macrons comments on Taiwan from an interview published on Sundayafter the outlet agreed to let his team review comments before publication. As is common in France and many other European countries, the French Presidents office, known as the Elyse Palace, insisted on checking and proofreading all the presidents quotes to be published in this article as a condition of granting the interview. This violates POLITICOs editorial standards and policy, but we agreed to the terms in order to speak directly with the French president, a note at the bottom of the article said. It said some of Macrons views on Taiwan and Europes strategic autonomy were nixed. The story, published Sunday following Macrons visit to China, discussed Frances reluctance to intercede in brewing tensions over Taiwan. Politico had no further comment to The Daily Beast beyond the note affixed to the story.

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Macron's Office Censors Taiwan Comments in Politico Interview - The Daily Beast