ABFFE UPDATE

October 25, 2007 Previously in ABFFE Update Volume 9, Number 8

Banned Books Week Highlights

Bookstores and libraries across the country joined in celebrating the 26th annual Banned Books Week during the week of Sept. 29.

The celebration kicked off with a very successful Banned Books Week Read-Out in Chicago.  Hosted by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (ALA), the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, and the Newberry Library, the event featured banned and challenged authors including Chris Crutcher, Carolyn Mackler, and Robie Harris, who read from their favorite banned and challenged books.

Booksellers and librarians mounted shelf and window displays of banned titles and sponsored readings of Poems from Guantanamo and other controversial works.  King's Books in Tacoma, Washington offered a "Banned Film" screening, a "Banned Book Social," and raised $3,700 in an auction of "banned" books with proceeds benefiting the new book fund of the local public schools.

ABFFE President Chris Finan spent Banned Books Week on the road visiting bookstores and libraries in Montana, Washington, and the Midwest and participated in a variety of events.  To read details, visit his blog, www.chrisfinan.vox.com.

To read more highlights of Banned Books Week 2007, click here.

National Security Letter Reform Act Introduced

In late September, the Campaign for Reader Privacy welcomed the introduction of a bill by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) that will restore the safeguards for the privacy of bookstore and library records that were eliminated by the USA Patriot Act.  The National Security Letter (NSL) Reform Act of 2007 (S. 2088) limits the government’s power to use the Patriot Act to secretly search a person’s records unless it can show that the person is a suspected spy or terrorist or someone in contact with such a person.  ABFFE has officially endorsed the legislation, which is co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Barack Obama (D-IL), Ken Salazar (D-CO), John Sununu (R-NH), and Jon Tester (D-MT).

“In 2006, the campaign to restore the safeguards for reader privacy achieved its first success when Congress gave booksellers and librarians the right to challenge Section 215 orders,” ABFFE President Chris Finan said.  “However, the government still has the right to search the records of anyone in a terrorism investigation, including people who are not suspected of criminal acts.  Passage of the NSL Reform Act would close that enormous loophole.”

The Campaign for Reader Privacy, which represents the book and library community, is strongly supporting S. 2088.  To read its press release about the bill, click here.

ABFFE Responds to Book Challenges

With the start of the school year, ABFFE is once again busy responding to book censorship incidents in schools and libraries.  In the past month, ABFFE joined with the National Coalition Against Censorship in opposing challenges to Sandpiper by Ellen Wittlinger, challenged in Brookwood, AL; Tripping Over the Lunch Lady: And Other School Stories, edited by Nancy E. Mercado, challenged in York County, VA; Beach Music and The Prince of Tides both by Pat Conroy, challenged in Kanawha County, WV; The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, challenged in Chicago, IL; and It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris and Michael Emberley, challenged in Lewiston, ME.  We are currently working on a response to challenges to The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman in Winchester, KY.  In many cases, these challenges are brought to our attention by booksellers, who are frequently involved in the controversy.

ABFFE Book of the Month is “Books on Trial”

The ABFFE Book of the Month for November is a book about a police raid on a Communist Party bookstore in Oklahoma City in 1940.  In Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland (University of Oklahoma Press, 978-0806138688), Shirley A. Wiegand and Wayne A. Wiegand tell the story of a raid on the Progressive Bookstore.

"This is a shocking story about the imprisonment of booksellers and bookstore customers because they were Communists.  The authorities also locked up and threatened to burn books like Grapes of Wrath,” Finan said.  “The prosecution created a national controversy as booksellers, publishers and writers throughout the country rallied in defense of free speech.” 

Shirley Wiegand is a law professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Her husband, Wayne, teaches library and information studies at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

To read an interview with the authors, click here.

To read about recent ABFFE Book of the Month selections, click here.

Show Your Support for Freadom!

ABFFE's popular, newly-redesigned “freadom” t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers are available during Banned Books Week and all year round.  To order online, visit the ABFFE store.