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Thursday, May 24, 2012

A disturbing pattern continues to emerge across the country involving breast-cancer support bracelets worn by public school students. Students wear them, administrators overreact and censor them, and some students file lawsuits in federal court asserting their First Amendment rights.

The bracelets, sponsored by the Keep A Breast Foundation, are designed to increase awareness of breast cancer. Some public school students wear them to honor a family member or friend who has battled the disease.

The Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette reports on the latest of these controversies. An unidentified high school sophomore in Fort Wayne sued after her principal forbade her from wearing the bracelet. It had been given to her by her mother, Julie Andrzejewski, a breast-cancer survivor.

One federal court decision in Pennsylvania already has established that two middle school students had a First Amendment right to wear the bracelets. In H. v. Easton Area School District, a federal district judge ruled in April 2011 in the students favor. The judge found that the bracelets caused no substantial disruption of school activities and were not vulgar or lewd.

These bracelets are protected speech. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) that public school students had the right to wear black peace armbands to public school even though the Vietnam War was the most controversial of topics.

The I Love Boobies bracelets should be treated the same way as the black peace armbands in Tinker as protected speech. The First Amendment requires as much.

Tags: censorship, public school, student expression, student speech

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Censorship of ‘boobies bracelets’ continues

Agence France-Presse

Supporters of Lady Gaga display banner mounted on a three-wheeled pedicab in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia, Sunday, May 20, 2012. US singer Lady Gaga might have to cancel her sold-out show in Indonesia because police worry her sexy clothes and dance moves undermine Islamic values and will corrupt the country's youth. Writing on the banner reads "Welcome, Lady Gaga". AP

JAKARTALady Gaga broke her silence about a jeopardized concert in Jakarta, saying on Twitter Tuesday that she was facing censorship from Indonesian authorities and threats of violence from Islamic hardliners.

Indonesian police have said they would not issue a permit for the June 3 show after objections from Islamic groups, but the promoters say they are still fighting for a way to stage the event.

The Jakarta situation is 2-fold: Indonesian authorities demand I censor the show & religious extremist separately, are threatening violence, Lady Gaga tweeted on her official @ladygaga account.

If the show does go on as scheduled, I will perform the BTWBall alone, she said, referring to her Born This Way Ball show for which more than 50,000 tickets have been sold.

It was not clear what the US pop diva meant by saying she would perform solo.

Indonesian police said last week they would not issue a permit for the concert after receiving objections to the provocative performers risque shows from Islamic groups, including the countrys top Islamic body the National Ulema Council (MUI).

Lawyers representing production company Big Daddy said they met with Jakarta police Tuesday to discuss conditions necessary for the show to go ahead.

The deadline they gave was seven days before the show. We are working hard to fulfil all the requirements, which are mostly administrative. We have covered almost all the conditions, lawyer Minola Sebayang told AFP.

More here:
Lady Gaga tweets about Indonesian concert censorship

Anonymous has gone after and taken down Indian government websites over the country's Internet censorship plan, which has resulted in the blocking of websites like The Pirate Bay and Vimeo.

"Namaste #India, your time has come to trash the current government and install a new one. Good luck," the @Anon_Central Twitter feed tweeted earlier today.

Hackers have since targeted the websites of the Indian Supreme Court, the All India Congress Committee, Copyrightlabs.in, the country's Department of Telecommunications, the Ministry of Information Technology, and the Jammu & Kashmir Police, according to @Anon_Central.

Anonymous is tagging its Twitter posts with calls to end censorship and save The Pirate Bay.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in February, "India has been known to censor online content, typically under the guise of national security or obscenity." That same month, Google and Facebook were required to remove from their websites content the Indian government had deemed offensive. They were among 21 companies forced to take down photographs, videos, text, and other items officials consider anti-religious or anti-social.

The Anonymous attacks started amidst reports that Internet crackdowns were blocking sites like The Pirate Bay, Vimeo, Daily Motion, and Pastebin in India.

Leading the charge is @opindia_revenge, under the #OpIndia tag on Twitter. The feed encouraged Web users to "use tor or VPNs to access torrent sites. #DEFY #government. Tell them they cannot stop you."

The @opindia_revenge feed promised continued attacks. "#India its a DDOS attack. We do not assure for how long we can keep down sites. But we are firing at them. They will face lags," it said earlier in the day.

The move comes after The Pirate Bay was hit with a DDoS. It has not been revealed who carried out the attack, but The Pirate Bay said it was not Anonymous.

Wikileaks.org has also been under attack for several days.

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Anonymous Targets Indian Govt Websites Over Censorship

The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake.

The National Coalition Against Censorship has entered the fray surrounding the Annville-Cleona School Board's banning of the award-winning children's book "The Dirty Cowboy."

The NCAC on Tuesday sent a letter to the members of the board, expressing the coalition's concern over the decision to remove the book and urging the board to return the book to the district's libraries.

View the letter here.

The school board will meet at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

The letter was signed by NCAC executive director Joan Bertin and Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

The letter notes that the objection upon which the ban was based was to "nudity" in the book, although sensitive areas of the body are not depicted. Regardless, the letter points out, simple nudity is fully protected by the First Amendment.

"There is no salacious or sexually suggestive content in the book - it is merely an amusing story of a cowboy taking his annual bath, getting even dirtier in the process," the letter states. "As the Supreme Court has observed on numerous occasions, " 'nudity alone' does not place otherwise protected material outside the mantle of the First Amendment."

The letter also states that school officials are bound by constitutional considerations, including a duty not to give in to pressure to suppress language or images deemed controversial or offensive by some.

According to the letter, the Supreme Court has cautioned that school officials "may not remove books from library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'"

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Anti-censorship group weighs in on 'The Dirty Cowboy' ban

Two anti-censorship groups want Sumner County schools to lift a ban on the teen novel Looking for Alaska.

The National Coalition against Censorship and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression sent Sumner Director of Schools Del Phillips a letter Monday.

It urges the district to honor its constitutional obligation and allow the White House High School English class to finish reading the student-selected novel.

It is particularly disturbing that the complaint of one parent triggered a county-wide ban within the span of a single week, without following established procedure and without so much as a review of the literary and educational merits of the book, the letter states. The district has imposed one viewpoint on the entire student body, without regard to the educational consequences for students.

The groups claim Sumner County violated its own district policy, which says if a parent complains, that student can be given an alternative book to read.

Sumner County school officials said last week a parent complained to the district, which led officials to review a two-page oral sex scene in the book and pull the book from assigned reading districtwide.

The book is still available in school libraries for individual students to check out, said district spokesman Jeremy Johnson.

Our policy was broken to start with. The teacher didnt run it through that process, he said. We do not see a reason to revisit the issue and think its been properly addressed.

Under the districts controversial materials policy, he said, teachers are required to submit all titles of required reading for parents to review, but the White House teacher didnt.

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Anti-censorship groups want Sumner schools to lift book ban