Great week for high school theatre!

RENT and the Laramie project are two of the most challenged plays in high schools around the country, but both shows will go on thanks to the Green Valley High School administration and Clark County’s District Court in Henderson, NV despite parents who objected to the plays’ “mature content”.

In an attempt to stop the plays from being performed, parents filed a suit for a preliminary injunction. However, the court sided with the Clark County School District, who claimed the parents’ lawyer failed to prove that it would cause ‘irreparable harm‘ to the plaintiffs.

It’s a shame many parents fail to recognize the intellectual capacities of students, by labeling RENT and The Laramie Project too “mature”.  According to Sarah Balogh, a 17-year performing in this school’s production of RENT, these plays are “all about compassion and tolerance” and the victory is a start towards upholding those principles.

We applaud the school for standing up to the parents’ threats.  School boards and libraries have often given into the pressure of a few, allowing those viewpoints to impose on another’s right to perform or read material they choose.  Just as Justice Jackson observed half a century ago that the attempt to “eliminate everything that is objectionable…will leave public education in shreds,” the current case should make it clear that “students are better served by exposure to ‘controversial’ material than by misguided – and unrealistic – attempts to shield them from it.”

After being dis-invited upon pressure from Governor Deval Patrick and then re-invited by a faculty group, Ray Luc Levasseur is now stopped from speaking at The University of Massachusetts – Amherst because his parole board refused to let him leave Maine.

The parole board has not given any reasons for this decision, but two facts make us suspect it was related to the controversy about his appearance:

One, Levasseur has spoken at out of state university campuses before, without any trouble from the parole board. And, two, Arnie Larson, president of the Massachusetts State Fraternal Order of Police told the media that local police forces put pressure on Levasseur’s parole officer and the commission to prevent his appearance. He was quoted as saying: ‘‘We reached out to people in the Justice Department and educated them about our passion here and why this individual should be held to the rules of his probation and not be allowed to leave the State of Maine, and they followed through on it.’’

Is the parole board helping police groups silence speech they don’t like on campus? What do you think?

The attempted cancellation of Ray Luc Levasseur’s talk at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, under pressure from Governor Patrick’s office, raises serious concerns not only about the state of academic freedom at the University but also about the Governor’s respect for the First Amendment.

UMass, in an effort to educate students about the social unrest that occurred during the 1960s and 70s, invited the former leader of the United Freedom Front (a group responsible for a number of bombings in the 1970s and 80s) to share his perspective on a 1989 landmark sedition trial in which he was acquitted.

Facing pressure from the National Association of Police and the Boston Police Patrolman’s Association, Governor Deval Patrick strongly advised the University to prevent Levasseur from speaking.

Although UMass complied with the governor’s wishes and dis-invited Levasseur, it refused to interfere when a faculty group re-invited the speaker, explaining that “As a university, we defend the principles of free speech and of academic freedom.”

UMass is taking a stand for free expression.   As we’ve said before, a university does not endorse the views of visiting speakers anymore than it endorses the ideas in every book in its library.  Censoring speech and the expression of controversial ideas does nothing to right the wrongs suffered by the victims of the United Freedom Front’s actions.  Instead, by prohibiting Levasseur to speak about a tumultuous time in history, the state is denying students at its flagship public university the opportunity to gain a full and nuanced perspective on historical events. How else can students become critical thinkers capable of countering the ideas of those with whom they disagree and even morally deplore?

In the U.S. we condemn Levasseur’s violent actions, but our constitution gives us the right to listen to his story. A message that has apparently yet to reach the Massachusetts  State Senate, where members passed a resolution condemning Levasseur’s invitation.

Click here for an update.

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!

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.

[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:

* If you use porn, talk about it with your partner.
* Thank the clerk in your local convenience store for carrying porn magazines or videos.
* Write a letter to the editor of your local paper explaining that most people who use porn have no problem with it.
* Invite your partner to share her/his concerns about porn with you.
* Instead of a White Ribbon, wear a Plaid Ribbon. When people ask, say it’s for Porn Awareness Week and your gratitude for the First Amendment.
* Start a conversation with someone: “Did you know that the Bill of Rights says
nothing about an exception for porn, obscenity, or indecency?
* Send a few bucks to the ACLU, National Coalition Against Censorship or Woodhull Freedom Foundation. They protect your right to read, watch, and jack off to whatever adult material you like.
* Write your mayor or governor reminding them that you vote, and you have no problem with porn.
* Memorize these facts: in the real world, porn is NOT connected with violence against women, child molestation, or divorce. In fact, according to the FBI, these have all declined since the country was flooded with internet porn in 2000.
* Use some.

Bonus: What to say to people who claim that pornography causes most of America’s problems:

* “Of course some rapists and wife-beaters use pornography. So do 50,000,000 other Americans, and it doesn’t make them rape or beat anyone.”
* “Of course some people watch way too much porn. Other people watch way too much football, reality TV, or the Weather Channel. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with any of them.”
* “Porn doesn’t make men withdraw from their wives and girlfriends. Men withdraw for a variety of reasons. No pictures or stories can compete with a satisfying sexual & emotional relationship with a live person.”

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.

It is not hard, however, to ascertain that the Yes Men’s prime goal was to provoke a vibrant public debate about the Chamber’s political positions by looking at the history of similar hoaxes organized by the group that have drawn public attention to pressing political issues. Here are some highlights:

• In 2007 the Yes Men made an announcement that Exxon Mobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum. (Broadview Networks, the Yes Men’s upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men’s spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men’s email service. They also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org before they’d restore the group’s email service.)

• In 2002 the Yes Men created a parody site resembling that of Dow Chemical launching a critique of the corporation for placing profits above reparations for the 1984 lethal gas leak in Bhopal, India. (After receiving legal threats from the Dow Chemical, the Internet access provider NTT/Verio declared it would terminate its contract with the Thing.net which hosted the Yes Men)

• In 1999 the group co-constructed GWBush.com, a website that at first glance appeared to be that of Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush. The first version incurred Bush’s wrath, and his lawyers sent a threatening letter. By the time the second version of GWBush.com was published, with much more content, the Bush campaign had complained to the Federal Elections Commission. These attacks resulted Bush’s televised response to a reporter’s question about the site: “There ought to be limits to freedom,” (For more on Bush’s response, visit the Thomas Jefferson Center Muzzle Archive.)

The Yes Men call what they do “identity correction” – by impersonating corporate leaders and spokesmen they draw attention to the ethics of large corporations and their role in the world at large. This work falls well within the tradition of social parody and satire and succeeds, to a large extent, thanks to the efforts made by corporations to silence their critics.

The suit filed by the Chamber of Commerce may be a good thing – while previously Yes Men websites have been censored by private internet service providers preempting any First Amendment discussion, the current case should make it clear that political commentary is protected no matter whether it appears as a screed in a newspaper or takes the form of a satirical art prank. Neither corporations nor public officials should be immune from public scrutiny and ridicule – on the contrary, the health of democracy depends on a lively culture of critical inquiry into political and corporate practices.

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!

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.

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.

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?

The first two examples mentioned above are of PETA videos that have the purpose of exposing cruelty to animals. Certain that the serious value of such images is indisputable, animal rights activists are staunch supporters of the law. But what if these images are shown in an exhibition hall without the context of the PETA website which makes clear their purpose – similarly to the video clips of animals killed by a sledgehammer which form part of an art installation by French-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed? Can we trust prosecutors to recognize the serious value of such images then?

The ambiguity of intent rears its head here as it frequently does in censorship prosecutions. Even PETA videos can be found to revel a little too much in their representation of animal cruelty and a jury may decide that they have crossed the line. And what of artwork that does not wear its intent on its sleeve – how would its value be determined? A lot of the work of the historical avant-gardes was not even recognized as art when it was first created. Can we trust a jury to impose criminal charges on images whose intent is ambiguous and whose artistic value is contested? And would a gallery ever take the risk of showing such work, when it would face potential criminal charges?

The specific heard in the Supreme Court this week concerns a 68-year old pit bull enthusiast convicted of selling videos of pit bull dogfights. He had neither organized the dogfights nor produced the footage he was distributing. The videos were made in Japan where dogfights are legal. Nevertheless, Robert Stevens, who had no previous criminal record, was sentenced to thirty-seven months of imprisonment. In 2008 an appeals court overturned the conviction and invalidated the ban on the sale and possession of such films on First Amendment grounds.

The depictions of animal cruelty law opens a wide door for prosecuting art and documentary material while doing little to reduce the demand for crush videos. For all the strong feelings such images provoke, we need to remember, it is stomach-churning images that make us even aware of worldwide practices of animal cruelty – removing images from view will not make such practices go away. Nor will it deal with the hypocrisy of condemning images while contentedly chewing on chicken that has never spread its wings as we listen to the latest explanation as to how water boarding is not torture… Though, of course, there is no law against the depiction of cruelty to humans.

A full transcript of the argument can be found here.

Visit here, here and here for NCAC’s response to the case.

For more information, visit:

SCOTUS blog “Analysis: Animal cruelty law in trouble”
The First Amendment Center “Court seems hostile to law against animal-cruelty depictions”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press “Justices hostile to ban on animal cruelty images”
NPR “High Court Weighs Arguments In Dogfighting Case”
The Washington Post “Court Wary of Ban On Cruelty Videos”
SignOn San Diego “Visual media await ruling on animal cruelty”
USA Today “High court tackles animal-abuse tapes as free speech test”
The New York Times “Court Hears Free-Speech Case on Dogfight Videos”
Pittsburgh Tribune Review “Free speech at heart of Supreme Court dogfighting video case”