Press
Covers PATRIOT Act Petition Drive
Although the PATRIOT Act petition drive has been underway in some
bookstores since late January, the formal launch of the Campaign for Reader Privacy on
Feb. 17 has attracted a lot of attention from newspapers around the country. Newspapers in
Cleveland, Boston, Denver, Seattle, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Lowell, Massachusetts and
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, have run stories that in many cases have included interviews
with local booksellers. The best story so far ran in the Boston Globe on March 9. It looks
at how the campaign is faring across the nation. Click here
to read the article.
The American Booksellers Association has recommended that booksellers who are
circulating the petition consider sending a press release to their local media. It has
posted a sample release
that can be easily adapted by any store.
If you wish to join the hundreds of bookstore and libraries that are participating in
the petition drive, you can download the petition here, or call ABA at
(800) 637-0037, ext. 1292 or 1293.
The Campaign for Reader Privacy is inviting Web sites to link to its online petition
using a button that can be downloaded from the home page by clicking the "Link to
Us" button on www.readerprivacy.org.
ABFFE
Opposes TV Censorship
ABFFE recently joined People for the American Way,
the National Coalition Against Censorship and other First Amendment groups in an
unsuccessful effort to prevent the House of Representatives from dramatically increasing
the fines that could be imposed by the FCC as punishment for broadcasting
"indecency" on television and radio. The groups wrote members of a House
committee that was considering a bill that provides for a fine of up to $500,000 for
incidents like the baring of Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl. Click here for more
information. The bill was overwhelmingly approved by the House yesterday.
The definition of "indecency" is vague, creating
a strong possibility that the increased fines will have a serious chilling effect (The
program "ER" eliminated a brief view of the breast of a breast cancer patient
following the outcry over the Super Bowl incident.) The FCC has been unwilling to clarify
its definition and not long ago refused to tell a radio station that wanted to air James
Joyce's "Ulysses" whether the broadcast would run afoul of its standards.
The bill now moves to the Senate, which is considering a
similar measure. The Senate version calls on the FCC to regulate violent as well as sexual
material.
George
Braziller, GLBA Make ABFFE Donations
Publisher George Braziller has donated $5,000 to
ABFFE. The money represents the profits from the sale of "Cry Out: Poets Protest the
War," which is a collection of the anti-war poems that were read at an event
organized by the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, on February 16, 2003. The
Northshire event was announced after the White House cancelled a poetry reading out of a
fear that poems critical of the war in Iraq might be read. More than 600 people attended
the Northshire reading, which featured well known poets reading both original poems and
works by Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman. When Braziller decided to publish
"Cry Out," he offered to donate the profits to a charity of the bookstore's
choice. ABFFE is grateful to both Braziller and Ed and Barbara Morrow, the Northshire's
owners, for making this donation possible.
ABFFE also thanks the Great Lakes Booksellers Association,
which has donated $2,500 to help develop ABFFE's kidSPEAK!, a Web site that educates
middle school students about the importance of First Amendment rights. kidSPEAK! was launched to tap the tremendous
interest that kids expressed in the attacks on the Harry Potter books. One of the major
Harry Potter fights occurred in Zeeland, Michigan, in 2000. ABFFE worked with GLBA to
persuade the schools superintendent to restore the Harry Potter books to the shelves of
the school library. ABFFE will use the money to hire a grantwriter to seek funding for
overhauling and expanding the Web site. |
