Announcing the 2009 YFEN film contest semi-finalists!

This year we received triple the amount of submissions than usual, and were very impressed!  We usually choose 10 semi-finalists, but this time we simply had to make room for 13.  We congratulate the semi-finalists and all our applicants for their hard work and excellent ideas!

Jordan Allen
Nathaniel Dueber
Aaron Dunbar
Taylor Dunlap and Caroline Dunaway
Jovan Landry
Lauren Leak
Noemie Long
Jack McClintock
Ashley Mills
Amy Obarski
Stephen Small and Tom Piasny
Katelyn Whitehead
Emily May Wingren

The top three winners be flown to New York City for the Youth Voices Uncensored event in the spring!  They will also be awarded cash prizes of $1000, $500, $250, and the first place winner will receive a $5000 partial scholarship to the New York Film Academy or a one week digital filmmaking workshop.

Films are judged on content, artistic and technical merit, and creativity. Our renowned panel of judges include:

Kahlil Almustafa (spoken word artist, writer, educator)
Kathy Brew (award-winning independent filmmaker)
Shelbi Kepler (2008 YFEN 2nd place winner)
Shelby Knox (filmmaker and speaker)
Emily Kunstler (co-founder Off-Center Media)
Sarah Kunstler (co-founder Off-Center Media)
Mark Heyman (co-producer and director of development for Protozoa Pictures)
Julia Morgan (associate producer Louverture Films)
and the New York Film Academy

Stay tuned for more information about our Youth Voices Uncensored event in the spring, where we will award our winners and announce next year’s contest!

Visit YFEN’s website to learn more about our film contest.

Plaid ribbons for pornography awareness

[Dr. Marty Klein - a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Certified Sex Therapist, and sociologist with a special interest in public policy and sexuality - is our guest blogger today! We post from his great blog, Sexual Intelligence, from October 25.]

This week is WRAP Week: White Ribbons Against Pornography.

Sponsored by groups including Concerned Women for America (CWA) and Morality in Media (MIM), the goal of the week is “to educate the public about the extent of the pornography problem and what can constitutionally be done about it.” The groups involved suggest activities for observing the week, such as urging the Attorney General to enforce obscenity laws.

I totally agree with the idea behind WRAP. I support increasing everyone’s awareness of pornography use in this country—how many people watch it, who these people typically are, how it affects them and their relationships, what are rights are regarding pornography, etc. Of course, I have a different, more scientific take on the “problem,” so I propose a different set of activities to observe the Week.

To counter the obscene lies our media and legislators will be hearing this week, perhaps you could do one (or more!) of the following:

The Chamber of Commerce is not and should not be immune to political satire

On Monday, October 19th, the Yes Men, a group of artist/political activists, set up a mock website that looked like the Chamber of Commerce’s, and held a mock press conference where they announced that the Chamber was shifting its opposition to serious efforts to address global warming. Major news sources were fooled into reporting the story.

In response, the Chamber tried to have the mock site taken down by sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice to the site’s upstream provider, Hurricane Electric. The notice claimed that the site constituted copyright infringement and demanded that it be shut down immediately and that the creator’s service be canceled. Hurricane Electric, who was hosting The Yes Men through May First / People Link, a 400-member-strong organization with a strong commitment to protecting free speech, immediately pulled the plug. May First / People Link immediately “mirrored” the site, and then negotiated with Hurricane Electric to restore service to their other members.

The Chamber of Commerce is now suing the Yes Men for trademark infringement, charging that their action was “nothing less than commercial identity theft masquerading as social activism.” The Chamber is charging the Yes Men with  “misappropriation of our valuable intellectual property” and claims that this was done to promote the new Yes Men movie, The Yes Men Fix The World.

YFEN film contest deadline today!

Today is the deadline for our contest Free Speech in Schools: Does it Exist? Students 19 and younger are encouraged to film their response in 4min or less for the chance to win up to $1000 and a scholarship to the  New York Film Academy.  See more details at Youth Free Expression Network or even apply online now!

According to the Knight Foundation, “Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted and more than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” The YFEN film contest offers young people an opportunity to think critically and creatively about these issues.

Winning films are made available on our website and are used in workshops as part of a larger effort to foster youth voices and to educate the public about young peoples’ rights. They will also be shown at our spring Youth Voices Uncensored event!

We look forward to viewing your films!

Celebrate 35 years with NCAC at City Winery, tonight!

Today, Monday, October 19th the National Coalition Against Censorship is celebrating its 35th Anniversary! Since 1974, NCAC has fought hundreds of attempts to regulate speech including criticizing the results of Meese Report in 1986, opposing the censorship of films like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and The Tin Drum, and taking a firm stand in ongoing controversies over public funding and museum exhibitions. NCAC also files legal briefs in support of significant court cases, organizes panels, and publishes online and print materials on the effects of censorship.

What better way to celebrate our 35th than to throw a party to honor the much-celebrated, and much-censored author, Judy Blume? Blume began to encounter challenges to her books in the early 1980s.  In 1983, she came to NCAC for assistance and, as she has frequently said, “NCAC changed my life.”  Just as it did then, NCAC continues to offer support and assistance to authors, artists, students, and anyone else involved in a censorship controversy.

As UK’s Guardian says,

Blume is an author worth honouring, and the fight against censorship one worth fighting – particularly with the latest piece of you-cannot-be-serious news that even Bibles aren’t safe in some parts of America. (Worse or better than this story? You decide.)

For those on the cheap, show only tickets available for $50 at City Winery’s site.  Arrive at 7:45, cocktail dress.

“Christian Taliban” to Host Halloween Book and Music Burning

The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina will be spending this Halloween burning books and music its deemed Satan’s work – including all non-King James versions of the Bible. Attendees will enjoy barbeque chicken and all the sides while they burn works written by the Pope and Mother Teresa among others. Pastor Marc Grizzard says there is a spiritual basis for book burnings.

Book burnings are, at least in this writer’s opinion, truly emblematic of oppression. The church’s call to purge materials brings up to mind some pretty disturbing moments in history, including recollections of Nazi burning and, more recently, the destruction of the Sarajevo National Library. If you ask me, there are a million and one better ways to spend Halloween – including celebrating the right to read by checking out spooky stories from the local library.

It is not clear where the church acquired the books it intends to burn.

Good intentions – dire consequences: US v. Stevens

Which of these images would also be illegal if a 1999 law, heard on October 6, 2009 by the US Supreme Court, were to be upheld? Remember – we are talking about images, not the acts themselves.

video from circus companies showing workers hooking elephants and striking tigers;

footage from factory farms where farmers are beating sick turkeys to death and cutting off baby pigs’ ears and tails;

video clips of domestic animals killed by a blow from a sledgehammer;

images of bullfighting in Spain;

a video of a stiletto heel crushing a bug.

The law criminalizes the creation; sale and possession of depictions of animal cruelty where the acts depicted are illegal, no matter where and when the images were taken: for instance, the law would criminalize video documentation of a mongoose and a cobra fight in India, if sold in the U.S. where acts of animal cruelty are illegal.

When originally enacted, the law targeted so-called “crush videos,” in which women in high heels step on little animals to satisfy a rare sexual fetish. However, it would potentially criminalize most of the above depictions, which are drawn from animal rights activist videos, art installations, and documentaries. Ironically, the only one that would be entirely safe from criminal prosecution is the last one, a classic crush video, but one that involves an invertebrate unprotected by the animal cruelty laws. No matter how well intentioned the ban on depictions of animal cruelty may be, it is much more likely to chill artistic expression and documentary images than reduce demand for crush videos.

Supporters of the law point out that it contains an exception for material that has “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic” value. But what is serious value and who is to judge?

Celebrating 35 years of defending free speech

It’s our 35th Anniversary! The typical gift for 35 years of marriage is jade or coral – well, we won’t hand out earrings or take you deep sea diving, but we DO have an exciting evening planned to benefit NCAC and honor renowned and much-censored author Judy Blume!

Join us on Monday, October 19, 2009 for A Night of Comedy with Judy Blume & Friends. This is not your run-of-the-mill party. It’s guaranteed to be full of unadulterated, uncensored fun. Fearless writers, artists, actors, comedians, musicians and filmmakers who have fought back against censorship will riff on growing up, puberty, or how they found the answers to the questions they were afraid to ask.

Judy Blume has a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans. Can you imagine going through childhood without ever reading her books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Blubber; Deenie; and Forever? But did you know that Judy Blume is one of the most censored writers in the U.S.?

We are honoring Judy and paying tribute to her longstanding defense of free speech and her courageous battles against all kinds of censorship. Please come! But hurry, you only have 15 days left to purchase tickets or become a table sponsor.

Nothing is off limits.  Nothing.  Now that’s a party!

Check out Event Chair Dan Glickman’s Five Questions in the LA Times, and look for Judy Blume’s Bold Question in Oct 1st’s Time Out New York!

Kids’ Right to Read Project Opposes Censorship in Ohio Schools

On September 29th, Wyoming City Schools’ School Board voted to back Superintendent, Gail Kist-Kline’s plan to re-evaluate every non-textbook teachers recommend to students. Staff members will now be asked to rate books based on a new 4-point criteria, which inclues the extent to which a book “could create controversy among students, parents and community groups. However, removing books from reading lists because of the potential for controversy actually harms students. Schools districts puts their students at a distinct disadvantage if they fail to expose them to the wide range of ideas that they will encounter in college and life.

Click here to find out the full story

In response the Kids’s Right to Read Project sent this letter.

Author John Coy and First Amendment Victory in Alabama

Later this month the Kids’ Right to Read Project will interview John Coy, author of YA novels Box Out and Crackback, and would like your help designing the interview. Crackback was challenged in September at a school in Helena, Alabama. Coy worked with KRRP and the local Library Media Specialist in support of the right to read and so we are pleased to report a First Amendment victory. This week the school’s review committee met and decided to take no removal action. Crackback will remain where it is on the library shelves!

As many of you may be aware, challenges which cite gay-themes as their grounds appear to be on the rise. In a School Library Journal interview, Mr. Coy shared his experience with this type of censorship after an appearance at a suburban Minneapolis bookstore last fall.

“I later found out that middle school librarians were saying they couldn’t carry the book because there was one lesbian character in it—and she wasn’t the main focus of the book”

says Coy, who was stunned because, if anything, he had anticipated objections to the novel’s questioning of school prayer. Coy is no longer stunned. Challenges on these grounds are frequent and their impact can be devastating. The right to read and access materials belongs to everyone – regardless of our backgrounds!

In an online chat with KRRP, Lee Wind lends his perspective to the frequent challenges to LGBTQ kids’ and YA literature across the country.  We talk about how these books are essential for building a new cultural “myth,” the conflation of homosexuality and sex, and the pros and cons of having a separate genre for LGBTQ. Visit Banned Books Week and KRRP’s LGBTQ Resource for more information.

KRRP wants to know what you, our readers, think about this and what questions you have for John Coy. What are your experiences with John Coy as a writer?  How do you feel knowing his books have been censored?  What would you like to know about him or his experience?  If you have any questions for John, please comment below and we will select a few to ask during the interview and post the responses to our blog, so stay tuned!