Tag: CBLDF

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To Kill a MockingBird Banned Again in Community

After a convoluted series of events spanning at least a decade, the school board in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana last week removed Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird from classrooms throughout the district. After some parents of high school students recently complained that the book contained “offensive language” and “themes…[that] may not be suitable for children,” district officials conveniently remembered that it had already been banned there in 2000. Only newer teachers, who were unaware of the ban, had been using it in class, but their students didn’t get a chance to finish reading the book before it was pulled.

This is quite interesting and confusing at the same time.  To read the rest of this article by Maren Williams click on the provided link: http://cbldf.org/2013/10/to-kill-a-mockingbird-re-banned-in-louisiana-school-district/

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House Minority Leader Pelosi Defends Video Games

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was a guest on the Chris Wallace’s FOX show were he stated “that more research on video games is not needed because the link to violent behavior is obvious, Pelosi pushed back: “the evidence… says that in Japan, for example,… they have the most violent games than the rest and the lowest mortality from guns.”

Pelosi may be referring to an oft-cited study by Max Fisher of the Washington Post which compared per capita video game spending to gun murders in 10 different countries. Japan did indeed have a very low rate of gun deaths, but the really striking examples were South Korea and the Netherlands, where video game spending far outpaced the other countries yet gun murders remained well under 0.5 per 100,000 people. By comparison, U.S. video game spending was below the average, but our gun murders were over 3 per 100,000, statistical light years from any other country in the study.

It is nice to see someone look at all the evidence before just blasting media without looking into everything.

http://cbldf.org/2013/02/pelosi-rejects-link-between-video-games-and-violence/

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Still Outcry on Video Games

More are getting on the band wagon against video games, this time its Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA).  This happened with the comic book medium in the 1950’s.  Excerpts from the article by Betsy Gomez follows:

The Hill reported on Grassley’s comments, during which Grassley mentioned Call of Duty: Modern Warfare specifically because Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway mass shooter, cited the game as a training tool. During his statement, Grassley asked, “Where is the artistic value in shooting innocent civilians?” He further stated that he shared Vice President Biden’s disbelief in manufacturer claims that video games do not have an impact on real world violence.

Scientific evidence does not support Grassley’s (or Vice President Biden’s) conclusion. The Washington Post‘s Max Fisher recently looked at the statistics related to gun violence in the countries with the highest rate of violent video game usage and found that the United States was a statistical outlier in a trend that actually shows a slight decrease in gun violence as per capita video game usage increases. Further, Kotaku examined 25 years of video game research, looking at both sides of the argument in an article that ultimately supports the idea that there is a lack of scientific evidence supporting a link between violent video games and gun violence.

http://cbldf.org/2013/02/another-senator-blames-video-games-for-violence/

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Gaming Ban in NJ Library

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has signed a letter from the National Coalition Against Censorship to the Paterson Free Public Library in Paterson, New Jersey.  The letter was sent in response to the library banning the play of first-person shooters on library computers.

The letter takes library officials to task for subscribing to the same unsupported views that led to video game bans in Massachusetts, a presidential recommendation and proposed bill mandating research on video games and violence, and the fallacious claim by one senator that video games are a “bigger problem” than guns. NCAC writes in their letter:

The library has not offered any sound justification for removing access to specific games. Instead, according to published reports, librarians are taking this action to “prevent our kids from learning these behaviors.’’ This assumes that viewers will simply imitate behaviors represented in fictional settings without any independent mental intermediation, a proposition that is palpably false and that the library implicitly rejects by offering access to all sorts of internet sites and maintaining a varied collection of books, magazines, videos and other materials.

The letter further points out that the library is not allowed to selectively ban access to printed materials that are protected by the Constitution, so they cannot do so with video games. Further, library officials are not allowed to remove protected materials simply because they do not like them.

Further, the ban applies to patrons of all ages, including adults, thus violating their First Amendment rights.

Follow the link below to the full article and letter that was sent by the National Coalition Against Censorship:

http://cbldf.org/2013/02/cbldf-signs-letter-protesting-video-game-ban-in-nj-library/

 

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Suspended Student Poet Allowed Back in School

The high school student/poet, suspended over a poem she wrote that mentioned her feelings about the Newton school shootings, has been allowed back in school at the Life Learning Academy.  It’s nice to see that the school realized that children emotions shouldn’t be repressed or demonized, but worked with and through.  This last bit if from the Comic Book Legal Defense Funds website that contained quotes from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. that I’ll leave off with.

In his 1929 autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi wrote: “I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”

And in his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King warned:

If…repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: ‘Get rid of your discontent.’ Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.

http://cbldf.org/2013/01/suspended-student-poet-allowed-back-to-school/

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Student Suspended for Poem

A 17 year old senior of the Life Learning Academy charter school, in San Francisco, expresses herself through poetry.  A teacher found her private notebook of poems and read some entries.  One caught the teachers attention and promoted the teacher to turn it in to the administration.  The poem showed empathy for the shooter in Connecticut shooting.  Because of this poem the student has been suspended from her school.  Here is the excerpt of the poem that caused this suspension:

They wanna hold me back
I run but still they attack
My innocence, I won’t get back
I used to smile
They took my kindness for weakness
The silence the world will never get
I understand the killing in Connecticut
I know why he pulled the trigger
The government is a shame
Society never wants to take the blame
Society puts these thoughts in our head
Misery loves company
If I can’t be loved no one can.

This case falls under the freedom of speech and that people can express themselves, even though the content might be sensitive.  This can also send a message to kids that if they go to officials and share their feelings on their high school experiences they will be scarred that they will be suspended rather than helped.  Is this the message we want to send?  The article on CBLDF’s site ends appropriately:

As psychiatrist Ronald Pies pointed out in a blog post at PsychCentral, “[w]e would be fortunate, as a society, if more lonely and alienated young people expressed their feelings in poetry, and fewer, through acts of violence.”

You can click on the link below for the full article on Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s website:

http://cbldf.org/2013/01/california-student-suspended-for-newtown-poem/

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Southington SOS Will Not be Destroying Games Now

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is reporting that Southington, Connecticut, will not be holding their gathering were they asked people to bring video games, DVD’s, and other formats of entertainment to be trashed and possibly destroy by inceneration.

In a press conference covered by gaming site Polygon, group members did not say whether those logistical details included the multitudes of gamers across the nation who were hatching plans to turn in bargain bin or unwanted games in exchange for $25 entertainment vouchers, which were to be donated by a member of the local Chamber of Commerce. Spokesman Dick Fortunato said that the actual destruction of games was rendered unnecessary because SouthingtonSOS had already accomplished its main goal:

We succeeded in our program. Our mission was to create strong awareness in Southington for parents and families and citizens and children. And we accomplished that. Our other objective was to promote discussion of violent video games and media with children and with the families at the home. And we’ve accomplished that in spades.

Whatever the reasons why I’m just glad it was cancelled.  Whenever I hear about a burning of anything it stirs ill feelings in me personally and harkens back to eras that I don’t want to see revisited.

http://cbldf.org/2013/01/nevermind-ct-community-cancels-plan-to-destroy-violent-media/

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A Dangerous Slope for Librarian

This story has been floating around for a while now and we reported about it when it first happened.  The story centers around Alan Moore’s Neonomicon which contains scenes of violence, rape, and racism.  The title was challenged at the Greenville County public library system.  The title went to a review committee for the library system and the committee recommended that the graphic novel remain on the shelf.  The library director of the library decided to overrule the committee recommendation and removed the title anyway.  This removal was based on her on opinion that the title was disgusting so it was de-selected.  This is a dangerous position that she has placed herself in, the librarian is there to make sure the collection represents the community in its diversity, not her own opinion.  The article on CBDLF’s site does this more justice, excerpt follows:

Director James, however, took a different view:

‘It was disgusting,’ she said, declining to label it obscene or pornographic.

She acknowledged the library has many books that deal in such detail with the very same subject matter — racism, rape, murder, sex — but for her, the pictures gave her pause.

Her decision to pull the book was the first time she had overruled her staff’s recommendation and the fifth time she had removed material from the library after a complaint.

‘I call it de-selection,’ she said.

James is welcome to call it whatever she likes, but what most librarians call de-selection — informally known as “weeding” — is the removal of materials that are outdated, worn, or damaged or that have not circulated much. This is obviously necessary to free up space for new items and to keep collections relevant, but the American Library Association’s interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights specifically states that “[t]his procedure is not to be used as a convenient means to remove materials that might be viewed as controversial or objectionable.”

James’ decision also appears to contradict her own library’s collection development policy, which says:

[P]arents and legal guardians have the responsibility for their children’s use of library materials and are encouraged to define what material or information is consistent with their personal and family beliefs; only they can apply those values for themselves and their children.

By removing the book, James has instead allowed one parent to dictate what all adult patrons of the Greenville County Library System may access. Additionally, a graphic novel has once again been damned by its format alone, as James admits that the illustrations were the deciding factor.

http://cbldf.org/2013/01/library-director-who-banned-neonomicon-defends-decision/

 

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Burnings Call Back to Past

Maren Williams has posted an article on Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s website about a community in Connecticut that will be burning material deemed to be violent in content.  This is being done in Southington Community by a public organization, Southington SOS, within the community and is not sponsored by the local government.  It is a buy back program where the group will give out gift vouchers to area businesses for Video Games, CD’s and DVD’s that people hand over.  The collected items will then be snapped, discarded and possibly incinerated.  The article goes on and explains that:

For many others, however, the impending destruction recalls the past incineration of all kinds of creative works, from Beatles records to — of course — comic books, that some adults thought had a negative influence on youth. In reality, there is no proven link between gun violence and video games, but that has not stopped lawmakers and media commentators from trying to blame them for virtually every mass shooting by a young male since the Columbine massacre in 1999. Of course, this requires ignoring the fact that millions of people around the world, of all sexes and ages, play and enjoy a wide spectrum of video games that some would consider violent without embarking on real-world killing sprees.

Follow the link below for the complete article.

http://cbldf.org/2013/01/video-games-to-be-destroyed-in-connecticut-town/

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Hmmm Over Reaction or Not?

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund reports that on December 18 a sixteen year old New Jersey boy was arrested for some drawings he had in his notebook.  The school authorities thought they were drawings for weapons, but his mother says it was over a drawing of a flaming glove.  The police also went to his house and found electronic parts and unspecified chemicals and labeled them as “explosive device”.  To this his mother says her son just enjoys taking old equipment apart seeing how it works and putting it back together.  The article also states that the school superintendent and police chief did not expect any violent behavior from the boy.  Yet he was still arrested and placed into juvenile hall.  With the recent school shooting tragedy one can see why school officials are sensitive at this time and we don’t know everything about the case.  The point of discussion with this case is should the school officials and police investigate fully, before they arrested a minor based on notebook drawings.  Hopefully they did.  You can follow the link below to the full article:

http://cbldf.org/2012/12/doodles-lead-to-new-jersey-students-arrest/