Mediaboss Marketing

The kooky, macabre musical The Addams Family was named the most-produced tuner on U.S. high school stages for the 2022-23 school year. But there will be at least one less mysterious and spooky production for next years tally since a Pennsylvania school board voted to cancel a 2024 production, citing the shows dark themes.

Since 1938, the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) has polled theatre educators to identify the most-produced musicals and plays, but its latest survey also measured the impact of a troubling resurgence of censorship. A whopping 67 percent of educators told EdTA they are weighing potential controversies when they make show selectionsand with good reason.

In recent years, a so-called parents rights movement has staked a claim in controlling the K-12 curriculum, leading to a surge of banned books and restrictions on performances. Floridas House Bill 1069, which restricts media with sexual content, has even put Shakespeares oeuvre under scrutiny. Many lessons now only excerpt the Bards plays rather than teach them in full. As part of a counter-movement, the New York Public Library recently launched the Books for All initiative, making censored playscripts and musical libretti available online to teenagers nationwide.

The polarized political climate has only added to the backstage drama at high school theatre auditoriums, the latest arena for the culture wars. Parents and school board members are challenging show choices, requesting script changes, and outright canceling student productions with social or political themes, especially LGBTQ+ content. Last year, a Florida school gained traction on social media after canceling a production of Indecent, which centers on a queer Jewish romance. And last fall an Illinois school board canceled a production of The Prom, a musical about a group of Broadway actors who travel to a conservative town to help a lesbian student banned from bringing her girlfriend to the promthough in response to uproar over the decision, the show will in fact go on this spring.

In Indiana, students took matters into their own hands, independently staging the gender-bending play Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood after a school canceled the production for its LGBTQ+ themes. An Ohio school requested 23 revisions before staging The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, removing explicit language and the mention of gay characters. A Texas school board canceled a school field trip in response to a social media post accusing a production of James and the Giant Peach that featured actors playing both male and female roles as being a form of drag.

This disheartening trend of censoring playscripts and productions coincides with an uptick in conservative legislation aiming to limit queer representation in the classroom. The ACLU is currently tracking a staggering 233 schools and education bills that directly target LGBTQ+ rights and expression.

This threat of censorship not only robs theatre kids of time in the limelight; it also deprives young students in the audience of the opportunity to witness different human experiences. It targets educators and their beliefs and impacts howand whatthey teach. These attacks also affect dramatists and composers, whose works are being amended and pulled from libraries and stages.

Censorship was a major theme of the 2023 EdTA conference in St. Pete Beach, Fla., where middle and high school theatre educators gathered last September. The programming included The Courage to Produce, two sessions curated by Jordan Stovall, the director of Outreach and Institutional Partnerships at the Dramatists Guild of America (DG), about navigating controversies and best practices for educators. The sessions were inspired by the Dramatists Legal Defense Funds Dramatic Changes: A Toolkit for Producing Stage Works on College Campuses in Turbulent Times. The following excerpt from a conversation between Jessica Lit, the DGs director of business affairs, and Nadine Smith, co-founder and executive director of Equality Florida, has been edited for length and clarity.

JESSICA LIT: Welcome to The Courage to Produce. If youre not familiar with the DG, we are a national trade association for playwrights, librettists, lyricists, and composers, and our mission is to aid dramatists in protecting the artistic and economic integrity of our work. Our sister organization, the DLDF, was created in 2011 to advocate and educate and provide resources in defense of the First Amendment. Since its inception, its been an active voice in supporting institutions which have been the targets of attacks on free speech, including the recent cancellation of Indecent at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Fla. The DLDF also recently partnered with the EdTA to establish standards for protecting free expression when theatrical works are taught in educational institutions.

Today I am joined by the co-founder and executive director of Equality Florida, Nadine Smith. Equality Florida is Floridas statewide civil rights organization dedicated to securing full equality for Floridas lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. Would you like to talk a little bit about Equality Florida and introduce yourself?

NADINE SMITH: Good morning. I live in St. Pete, and we founded Equality Florida when we realized that we were doing lots of local work, but this place called Tallahassee, out in the middle of nowhere, was where big decisions were being made that impacted our lives. Actually, weve been around for 27 yearsformally in January of 97, but we existed before then.

For decades, we held at bay all of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Florida. But 20 years of increasingly extreme Republican control of every level of government has sort of metastasized with Trump and DeSantis. And so we saw in these last two years what began first and foremost as an attack on the transgender community, trans kids in particular, and we also saw a whitewashing of historyno more racist dog whistles; it is a foghorn. Weve seen bodily autonomy attacked in every way, from abortion bans to banning access to medical care for the trans community, and a stripping away of rights.

One of the ways thats shown up most visibly has been the banning of books and theatre. I think its important for people to understand that this isnt some movement that has grown organically from concerns raised by parents. The Florida legislature wrote the law in such a way that any resident of the county, they dont even have to be a parent, can get any book pulled off the shelf in Florida. Its a de facto ban even when its not a technical bani.e., schools fear they are vulnerable to lawsuits if they dont remove books preemptively.

We were talking earlier about, how often do you think of eras in American history, where we see these book bans, a clamping down on art? And what else usually arrives with that? We have to raise the alarm at how perilous this moment is, at how normalized things that should be not just abnormal but hideous to us have become. You know, when they banned The Life of Rosa Parks, we were like, This is outrageous. And now its like, yeah, there were just another 10,000 titles pulled off shelves.

Im a Shakespearean actor, paid for it as well. In schools in Florida, they will not do Shakespeare because of how many gender-reversed roles there are in Shakespeare plays. So they will do excerpts.

JESSICA: Thank you, Nadine. Im going to introduce myself. Im the director of business affairs for the DG, and I do a lot of advocacy work. I also help in creating resources for educators, and for our members, to help advocate for their rights in the industry.

Were all here because we love theatre and its ability to bring people together to tell stories that may not have been told, to be a vehicle for change. We understand that censorship and cancellations arent new. Theyve been around for as long as stage plays have been around. But as Nadine has just talked about, there are new trends, and its not just angry voices. Its legislation coming down from our local, our state, our federal governments that we need to start thinking about as we enter this new era.

Today there is proposed, pending, and passed legislation in many states. Nadine, you talked a little bit about the book banning thats happening in Florida, but is there other legislation that theatre educators should be aware of as they move through this new time?

NADINE: Yeah, bans on drag queens or drag performances. The insinuation is that any time somebody is performing in drag, it is inappropriate for children to be present. So if you bring your child to a play like Twelfth Night, have you brought them to a drag show? Have you exposed them to a dangerous ideology that will play tug of war with their gender identity?

In Florida there was a program at a theatre in Orlando, similar to a drag Christmas. They ended up putting on tickets for the first time that no one under 18 was allowed. The governor insisted that law enforcement be present. They left the theatre and said nothing untoward occurred, nothing inappropriate. The governor went after their beverage license anyway, claiming that the language on the ticket was printed too small to be of value, and that even though there was nothing sexually inappropriate, the fact that there were people performing opposite of their gender was sufficient to pull their license. They only just settled with three businesses; one of them was Hamburger Marys. People are touting it as a win, but the chilling effect is very real.

The chilling effect is intentionally vague so that it casts a big shadow. The impulse is to go, I dont want any problems. I will do the least dangerous thing. I will do the thing that is so far from the line that I cant get caught up even in their overzealous prosecution. And slowly, the impact of that, not the actual letter of the law, begins to create the worst kind of censorship, which is self-censorship, where we dont even permit ourselves to think things or pursue things because of a fear of what that vagueness might ensnare.

In the same way they say sunlight is the best disinfectant, ensure that anything which is vague is made concrete. Say to them: Would you put in writing why this play is impermissible by law? Six months from now, that could be the most important document in a lawsuit. Make them be explicit about why. And if youre in a place where these restrictions arent being put and youre not constrained by them, I would say, make sure that youre building this into all of your performances.

Its a time for courage. You might be that person in your school district, in your institution, along the chain whos going to disrupt people sinking to the path of these resistances.

JESSICA: I think what you highlighted specifically is that schools are where kids are being introduced to ideas and cultures for the first time, and we shouldnt shy away from introducing them to these cultures and different opinions and different viewpoints and different lifestyles because were afraid that they cant handle it. If anyone can handle it, its young minds who havent been exposed to the discrimination, the hate, and all those things yet. This is actually a great segue to our next question for you.

Can you speak about the importance of addressing topics of queer identity, relationships, self-actualization in the classroom? We know that high school and middle school theatre is an entry point for many kids who identify with the LGBTQ+ community.

NADINE: You know, I am 58. I know, I look good. [Laughter.] I remember being young, being fearful, and being homophobic to try to put people off the trail, especially playing basketball and softball. I had to throw out a lot of diversionary tactics, though not very effectively. So I understand how internalized homophobia shows up as bigotry in the world. And all of that is by way of saying that, I felt an extraordinary amount of isolation. And there are a lot of young people who do not survive that level of isolation. The suicide rate among LGBTQ+ young people is often talked about, but theres also the homeless rate, the dropout rate, the self-medicating rate, when you have no place you can turn and the only places that you spend the majority of your time, which are school and home, are hostile environmentsthe world gets very small very fast.

Representation and visibility are literally life-saving. I want to ring the alarm bell so loudly. The dangerous normalization of these hideous laws has created a world in which young people are watching their favorite teachers who created safety for them leave the profession. Theyre seeing empty spaces on bookshelves. All of the books are being taken out of classrooms because they havent gone through the approval process. Even donating books that reflect different experiences is no longer permitted.

For people who live in other states, start organizing. In Illinois, they passed a ban on book bans. Its important that there be a countervailing message, and in places where youre not having to fend off these attacks, go on the offensive and make a big deal. Vilify whats happening in Florida and other states. We have to take it that seriously and not just wait until the wolf is at the door.

JESSICA: Thank you. Im actually going to take a question out to those in the room. How many of you have faced challenges when youre teaching or presenting works? Or had students come to you asking questions about the current legislative landscape that were living in?

A show of hands indicates there are educators present that have experienced this. One educator in a Catholic school speaks on the particular challenges they faced with administration when attempting to cast a transgender child in a production, and navigating bringing works by different artists into the classroom.

NADINE: The only purpose of this is to create moral panic. Its a playbook, and it plays out again and again. Because we havent gone through the conciliation process required of our history, we have all of these unexamined and unresolved ways of dealing with difference in America that show up episodically as this massive backlash.

Theres a professor at Boston University named Stephen Prothero and hes written several books. One of them is about this phenomenon. He says the backlash is a lagging indicator of how much progress weve made. The only reason theyre going after us is because young LGBTQ+ people are visible, do feel like they have a place in the world, are showing up as their full selves in school, are finding a support network among their teachers. And so, basically, he says, by the time the backlash arrives, the cultural tipping point has already come.

I think of it as a slingshot, where they are grabbing that slingshot and theyre walking us backwards. But what they dont realize is theyre creating this dynamic tension that will leave their grip. We wont just go back to where we were when they attacked. Were going to propel forward into a world that looks much more like one that includes all of us.

Another educator speaks about the experience of dealing with community-wide controversy and issues with their administration over a production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

NADINE: I think we have to come out of the closet and tell these stories, share much more of how these things are happening. Every time we make them shut things down or we make them explain, we also are kind of showing this universe of people how to fight back.

One university in Florida was told they had to take down the universitys equity and inclusion policy. And what they did was they said, Heres our former diversity, equity, and inclusion policy. We have been ordered by the state to remove it. So we want you to know that this is no longer our diversity, equity, and inclusion policy. Of course, then everybody read their diversity, equity, and inclusion policy.

Im saying weve got to be creative. I love that you keep taking it back to the students and saying, How do we tell this lesson that teaches them how to navigate? Coming up with these ideas and strategies that dont put students in the position of, Hey, Im going to defend you, Im going to risk it all to defend you, which is one instinct, but rather, Youre not powerless in the face of this. They cant stop your voice. They cant stop your TikTok. They cant stop your message online. Heres the phone call to PEN America, you may go to the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund, or here are the articles that have been written that can contextualize this. Heres the background on these organizations that are systematically going after art. By showing them these things, I think theyre going to emerge into society as people who dont quietly capitulate. They want you to be fearful.

NADINE: Even though young people are experiencing these really ugly, fascistic impulses that are curtailing their rights, how you guide them in those moments may produce more of what we need in this world.

Another educator speaks on their experiences with censorship, community backlash, and having books and plays removed from their schools library system after attempting to add them to the curriculum.

NADINE: We started a group called Parenting with Pride precisely because [of issues like these]. One of the things I encourage is to be proactive and work with the PTA, work with the parents groups, work with the parents of the students in whatever youre creating. And say, Listen, I dont know if youre even watching these timelines, but this atmosphere has developed where one parent will complain on opening night, try and shut down all of the hard work of your kid, and we really need to be in this together. Which is a thing you probably never would have had to do or think about, but in this atmosphere, we have to go on the offense and we have to engage parents so that its not a mom consciously defending the virtues of children from sinister forces.

JESSICA: I want to speak a little bit about the First Amendment. It is different in high schools and middle schools than it is on college campuses, because your students are minors. But the Supreme Court has said that students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. That is from Tinker v. Des Moines. Its a well-established freedom in our country.

I want to encourage all of you to use your voices to speak up, because while there is limited academic freedom, school boards and school administrations have a wider discretion in determining what kinds of materials can be taught. Discretion does not mean that they can censor something because theyre hostile to the ideas that are presented. There has to be a legitimate educational purpose for why they are removing or moving something.

Ill take the example of evolution. They may say, you know what, maybe fifth graders arent prepared to understand this concept so were going to move it to the eighth grade curriculum. Thats okay, but to say were not going to teach evolution because we dont believe in evolution, we dont understand evolutionthats unacceptable.

Also, speaking about personal freedom as it relates to you as teachers: Nadine talked about organizing in your community, using your voice outside of schools. They can only really go after you if what you are doing outside of school is substantially and materially disrupting whats happening in schools. So if you are going on your social media, you are organizing in your communities and creating protests outside of the school grounds or encouraging your students to do the same, you have that right under the First Amendment. I really want to make sure that youre aware of that. Even though you are in a different situation with schools, it doesnt mean that youre now completely eradicated of your First Amendment rights. Its something to really think about as you move forward.

And creating allies, not just with your parents and the kids, but within your community. One of the things that DLDF has done is rally people to attend school board meetings. Not just parents, but members of the community or people who care. Recently there was a cancellation of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in Ohio. We put out a statement, and many people attended a virtual school board meeting. The show went back on. It wasnt parents that were even local to Ohio. It was people who care about theatre, people who care about seeing different points of views.

When these things happen, dont think that you are isolated. Dont think youre alone. Think about the educators who are sitting here today. Think about the work that Equality Florida is doing. Come talk to us at the DG. We will do everything we can to help. We put out many statements, but we also have tried to help students find different venues to put a show on. There are resources available for you. Take advantage of them.

Its a scary time, but the louder we can be, the better.

To find out more about the Dramatists Guild, including the rights theatre writers have against censorship and cancellation of their work, visit http://www.dramatistsguild.com.

To find out more about the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, find out how to support this work, or to reach out regarding additional resources including Dramatic Changes: A Toolkit for Producing Stage Works on College Campuses in Turbulent Times, visit http://www.thedldf.org.

To learn more about Equality Florida, find out how to support this work, or to reach out regarding additional resources, visit http://www.egfl.org.

Support American Theatre: a just and thriving theatre ecology begins with information for all. Please join us in this mission by making a donation to our publisher, Theatre Communications Group. When you support American Theatre magazine and TCG, you support a long legacy of quality nonprofit arts journalism. Clickhereto make your fully tax-deductible donation today!

See the original post:
The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship - American Theatre

Tags:

In the city of Haifa, in northwest Israel, the sounds of Arabic, Hebrew and Russian chatter fill the streets.In the Arab-Christian neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas lies Beit Hagefen, an Arab-Jewish cultural centre set in gleaming white stone. For 60 years, its aim has been to promote tolerance between Jews and Arabs until last month, when one of their events was postponed and then cancelled following a recommendation from the citys legal advisor, Yamit Klein.

The event in question was a book launch for the Hebrew translation of Apeirogon, a novel by Irish author Colum McCann that tells the story of two grieving fathers, one Israeli, the other Palestinian, who are united by the death of their daughters. The event was supported by the Parents Circle-Families Forum, a joint Palestinian-Israeli group of families who have lost relatives in the conflict.

But the launch would never take place. The official reasons for its cancellation were concerns about its commercial aspects on municipal premises and the potential distress it could cause to those affected by past violence with references made to objections from families of terror attack victims. However, the move has also been interpreted as an attack on democratic principles and freedom of speech. In the eyes of many liberal Israelis, it is part of a broader, two-decade-long campaign led by Benjamin Netanyahu to suppress collaborative efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.

Such tactics arent confined to Netanyahu, however. The Israeli government has a long history of censorship: in 1970, for instance, the national unity government threatened to withdraw funding from the Cameri Theatre over Hanoch Levins play The Queen of the Bathtub. Often regarded as the most contentious theatrical work in Israel, Levin employed musical satire to critique what he saw as the nations militaristic tendencies, self-righteousness and racial prejudices following the triumph in the 1967 conflict. The play was stopped in 1970 after merely 19 shows, following a bomb threat at the Cameri Theatre, actors being pelted with stones in Jerusalem, and accusations branding Levin as a traitor to Israel.

But since then, Netanyahu has turned cultural censorship into an art form, encouraging journalists, politicians and charity workers to actively attack, censor and suppress any Left-wing efforts to cultivate a shared Jewish-Palestinian culture. This includes any initiatives that criticise or acknowledge the oppression or unequal treatment of Palestinians, or which hint at contentious events surrounding the nations birth.

Netanyahu has turned cultural censorship into an art form.

His efforts have paid off. This strategic reshaping of Israels cultural landscape has weakened the Israeli Left by silencing any talk of the occupation, Palestinian self-determination or Israels Zionist ethos. And it hasnt been difficult: in Israel, much of the cultural sector including theatre, music, and art is funded by taxes and therefore subject to oversight by the Knesset and the government. In 2023, for instance, Netanyahus culture minister, Miki Zohar, took issue with H2: Control Laboratory, a documentary about Israeli settlers occupation of Hebron. He ordered a retrospective examination of the films budget, arguing that works that harm the state will not be funded. That same year, Zohar also threatened to withdraw the budget from the film Two Kids a Day, about the arrest of Palestinian minors, while a performance by a 13-year-old was cancelled for fear of offending the ultra-Orthodox.

And thats not all. In 2015, the Ministry of Education disqualified a book for school study because it describes a romance between a Jewish woman and an Arab; in 2017, the Acre Fringe Theater Festival barred a play about Palestinian prisoners, leading to a boycott by eight theatre groups; in 2022, a police officer went on stage during a performance by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar and ordered him to stop singing songs against the police that incite against Israel.

This is the core of the Netanyahu doctrine: any work of art that reflects on the shared grief of Israelis and Palestinians, or that challenges the official government narrative in any way, cannot be allowed to stand. The greatest champion of this effort is Miri Regev, who, as the Minister of Culture and Sport from 2015 to 2020, was notorious for her aggressive approach towards what she deemed as the cultural elite of Israel, referring to them as a cultural junta. (She once boasted: I am proud of having never read Chekhov.) And while her stated aim was to correct a historic cultural imbalance that has marginalised Mizrahi and other non-European Jewish traditions in favour of Ashkenazi norms, in reality, her tenure was marked by a number of campaigns against Leftists, Palestinians and secularists. In 2019, for instance, she allocated 8 million shekels (1.7 million) for films promoting settler life.

Arguably, Regev has done more than anyone else to stifle free speech in the Israeli arts. In 2018, she championed the Loyalty in Culture law, which allows the Ministry of Culture to reduce or refuse funding to cultural institutions that are perceived to deny the Jewish and democratic nature of the State of Israel; incite racism, violence, or terrorism; commemorate Israels Independence Day as a day of mourning; or desecrate the states flag or national symbols. With this law, Right-wing politicians can strangle pretty much any cultural movement they deem ideologically treacherous.

And for those they dont tackle, there are plenty of other Israeli groups lining up to enforce Bibis doctrine. One of these is Im Tirtzu, founded by Right-wing activist Erez Tadmor, who has a criminal record for stealing military equipment. In 2016, Im Tirtzu launched its Shtulim (moles) campaign, which implicated well-known human rights advocates, artists and writers in terrorist activities, effectively branding them as traitors to Israel. Tadmor went on to serve as an advisor for the Likud Party under Netanyahu in 2019. Another organisation is Betzalmo, founded by ultranationalist Shamai Glick. Despite presenting himself as a human rights advocate, Glick uses legal intimidation and political pressure to cancel or disrupt Left-wing events run by the enemy.

Unsurprisingly, since October 7, many of these organisations have increased their crackdowns on artists and writers demonstrating against the war, especially those from the Arab community. Elsewhere, liberal academics have been suspended and social media influencers persecuted. There is a growing sense among Israels cultural figures that any anti-war expression will be punished.

Israel thus risks facing a fate worse than state censorship and thats a culture of self-censorship, which will render a shared Israeli-Palestinian narrative not just improbable, but unattainable. Terrified of losing out on public funding, or provoking a public backlash, Left-wing cultural figures are already tiptoeing around certain political subjects. Yet pandering to the government can create other problems, as Left-wing groups such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) will boycott any cultural institution associated with Netanyahu. As a result, even artists who critique his policies, but rely on government support, may be vulnerable to boycotts themselves.

Faced with this hostile climate, the path of least resistance is usually to stay silent. Already in 2019, a study by Professor Dana Arieli revealed that self-censorship among Israeli artists and curators had significantly increased: in 2005, fewer than 10% reported experiencing censorship, but by 2019, their number had risen to more than 50%. Even before October 7, then, an ominous hush was descending upon Israels theatres. Over the past six months, it has only grown more pronounced: a deafening silence of acquiescence, as poets and thespians lay down their scripts and pens in despair.

Continue reading here:
Netanyahu's regime is built on censorship Israeli culture is being smothered by silence - UnHerd

Tags:

Opinion | Lets say it plainly: Fact-checking is not censorship  Editor And Publisher Magazine

Read the original post:
Opinion | Lets say it plainly: Fact-checking is not censorship - Editor And Publisher Magazine

Tags:

On the night of March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military deposed the legitimate president, the leftist Joo Goulart, in a bloodless coup. A dictatorship began that would last more than two decades. In the midst of the Cold War, the elites were furiously anti-communist and Goulart promised agrarian reform and public policies for the working class. Four years later, the generals closed Congress and toughened repression through Institutional Act number 5. Brazil would not return to democracy until 1985.

For the many supporters of the coup, it was a revolution so that Brazil did not fall into the clutches of communism, in an interpretation of the constitutional breakdown backed by far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. During his presidency, the 1964 coup was officially celebrated in the military. The current president, the leftist Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, wants the events of 60 years ago to be marked with a low-key anniversary so as not to ruffle any feathers in the Armed Forces. The president is treading carefully, as Bolsonaro and several military officials have been accused of plotting a coup in the most serious attack on democracy since the end of the dictatorship. Their alleged actions indirectly resulted in the assault on the headquarters of the three branches of government in Braslia in January 2023.

This is a review of some of the key moments from the military regime and the transition to democracy.

The Truth Commission published the official account of the dictatorship in 2014 after listening to victims and witnesses and holding public hearings. The report holds the regime responsible for 434 deaths and missing persons, in addition to documenting the systematic practice of arbitrary detentions, torture, executions, and forced disappearances. And it also left for posterity the names of 377 instigators and participants in the repression. The amnesty law that exempted them from sitting on the bench freed thousands of political prisoners. One of the most infamous torture centers in So Paulo was converted into the Memorial da Resistncia center.

The 1,300 pages of the final report include shocking passages such as the testimony of Isabel Fvero: On the third or fourth day of being imprisoned I began to feel like I was having a miscarriage I was two months pregnant. I was bleeding a lot, I had no way to clean myself. I used toilet paper, and I already smelled bad. I was dirty, so I think Im almost certain that they didnt rape me because they constantly threatened me. I disgusted them. () Surely it was that. They got angry when they saw me dirty, bleeding, and smelling bad, and that made them even more angry, and they hit me even more.

The Truth Commission did not include Indigenous people in the official number of those murdered by the dictatorship, but it did record that at least 8,350 died due to the acts or omissions of state agents between 1946-1985. They killed them to plunder their lands or to evict them. They died from contracting diseases they had not been vaccinated against and from torture and mistreatment in prison. With thousands of deaths each, the towns of Cinta-Larga and Waimiri-Atroari were the most affected.

The most detailed information about the ruthless persecution of Indigenous people at that time is an official report prepared in 1967 and which was missing for almost half a century. The Figueiredo Report concluded that withholding assistance is the most effective way to commit murder. Hunger, plague, and mistreatment are decimating brave and strong people.

After traveling nearly 10,000 miles, prosecutor Jader de Figueiredo prepared a chilling document of more than 5,000 pages that took his name. The Indian Protection Service has degenerated to such an extent that it persecutes them to the point of extermination, he wrote. The militarys policy to clear the Amazon included machine-gunning from the air, launching explosives, smallpox inoculation, and donations of sugar mixed with strychnine. In 2013, a researcher, Marcelo Zelic, rescued the report from oblivion in the government archives and disclosed its brutal content.

Dilma Rousseff went down in history as the first female president of Brazil in 2011, but what is not usually mentioned is that she was the first head of state that was also a survivor of state-sponsored torture during the dictatorship. It was she who created the Truth Commission in 2012, a decision for which the military did not forgive her.

A far-left militant, she never fired a single shot, but that did not save her from going to prison for three years in her early twenties (between 1965 and 1968). She suffered torture sessions that marked her forever, both physically and psychologically. They beat her so severely that her jaw was dislocated and several of her teeth were knocked out. The torture marks are part of me. They are me, she testified in 2001 before a commission that managed compensation for those who were retaliated against. The worst thing about torture was the waiting. Waiting to be beaten, she revealed.

At the worst moment of her political career, when Congress was voting on her impeachment, then-deputy Jair Bolsonaro, a historical revisionist and retired military man himself, voted in favor of impeachment in honor of Rousseffs torturer, Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.

The biography Lula, by Fernando Morais, recalls that the current president did not think badly of the military when they came to power in 1964 to restore order. But he was not spared from going to jail either. When he stood for election for the first time in 1989 while the country was in its transition to democracy the Air Force intelligence service developed a glossary, published recently by the newspaper Estado. In it, authorities had gathered statements from Lula, so that those in the barracks knew who this unionist was who had fought against the dictatorship. The confidential report concludes that the charismatic union leader has acquired a political personality in the [Workers Party] and, leading a fierce and noisy party, has drawn up more daring plans. Lula lost three presidential elections before winning in 2002.

In 1972, censors arrived at the Estado editorial office. They reviewed the news and editorial content that would go into the next days print edition. They erased anything that bothered the regime. As usual in dictatorships, what was striking was the newspapers reaction. Its staff refused to change the design and resorted to ingenuity. Every time a news item or an opinion column was censored and, therefore, left a gap in the printed paper, they would fill it with verses from Os Lusadas, by the celebrated Portuguese poet Lus de Cames. The idea was put forward by Antnio Carvalho Mendes, the journalist in charge of the papers film and obituaries sections.

The first verse replaced a news story about the episcopal conference and Pedro Casaldliga, the so-called bishop of the forgotten and preacher of liberation theology. They published verses from the great epic of Cames 655 times.

When Jair Bolsonaro won the elections in 2018, Caetano Veloso released a list of songs on Spotify that included Proibido Proibir (Forbidden to Forbid), composed half a century earlier in the wake of the May 1968 protests and in the leaden years of the Brazilian dictatorship. Brazilian popular music and the guitar rock that came from the United States fought a tough duel when Caetano sang it at a concert in So Paulo that ended with loud boos. The composer and singer burst out with a you dont understand anything! followed by a speech against the conservatism of the public.

At the end of that year, President-General Artur Costa e Silva passed Institutional Act Number 5, known in Brazil as AI5, which shuttered Congress and consolidated the dictatorship. Days later, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were arrested, banished to Bahia months later, and then sent into exile that took them to London.

In 2013, the newspaper O Globo part of Grupo Globo, Brazils largest media group published an editorial titled Editorial support for the 1964 coup was a mistake. It recalled the text that O Globo agreed with the intervention of the military along with other large newspapers, such as O Estado de So Paulo (known as Estado) and Folha de S.Paulo, among others. A large part of the population did the same, with express support in demonstrations. The editorialist concludes that in light of history, there is no reason not to recognize explicitly today that the support was a mistake (). Democracy is an absolute value. () Only [democracy] can save herself.

The newspaper claimed that this conclusion was the result of years of internal discussions, but the definitive decision to publish it, specifically in August 2013, was the massive demonstrations against everyday politics and a chorus that shouted: The truth is hard, Globo supported the dictatorship.

On July 29, 1985, at eight in the evening, some 700 artists and intellectuals gathered at the Casa Grande Theater in Rio de Janeiro to hold a funeral for censorship. The new civil government had been in office for three months. The Minister of Justice had called them to make it official that the persecution of culture that displeased the military was at an end. The fearsome censor Solange Hernandes, who silenced 2,500 songs, would have to focus her ire on something else because the minister declared censorship extinct and announced that from then on a council in defense of freedom of expression would study books, records, plays, and soap operas to classify them by the age of their intended audience.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAS USA Edition

View post:
Brazils dictatorship: Repression, torture, slaughter of Indigenous people and censorship - EL PAS USA

Tags:

After several years of litigation across the federal appellate courts, the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion has finally crafted a test that lower courts can use to determine whether a government official engaged in state action such that censoring individuals on the officials social media pageeven if also used for personal purposeswould violate the First Amendment.

The case, Lindke v. Freed, came out of the Sixth Circuit and involves a city manager, while a companion case called O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier came out of the Ninth Circuit and involves public school board members.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring individuals speech in public forums based on the viewpoints that individuals express. In the age of social media, where people in government positions use public-facing social media for both personal, campaign, and official government purposes, it can be unclear whether the interactive parts (e.g., comments section) of a social media page operated by someone who works in government amount to a government-controlled public forum subject to the First Amendments prohibition on viewpoint discrimination. Another way of stating the issue is whether a government official who uses a social media account for personal purposes is engaging in state action when they also use the account to speak about government business.

As the Supreme Court states in the Lindke opinion, Sometimes the line between private conduct and state action is difficult to draw, and the question is especially difficult in a case involving a state or local official who routinely interacts with the public.

The Supreme Court announced a fact-intensive test to determine if a government officials speech on social media counts as state action under the First Amendment. The test includes two required elements:

Although the courts opinion isnt as generous to internet users as we had asked for in our amicus brief, it does provide guidance to individuals seeking to vindicate their free speech rights against government officials who delete their comments or block them outright.

This issue has been percolating in the courts since at least 2016. Perhaps most famously, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and others sued then-president Donald Trump for blocking many of the plaintiffs on Twitter. In that case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a district courts holding that President Trumps practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account violated the First Amendment. EFF has also represented PETA in two cases against Texas A&M University.

There is some ambiguity as to what specific authority the Supreme Court believes the government official must have. The opinion is unclear whether the authority is simply the general authority to speak officially on behalf of the public entity, or instead the specific authority to speak officially on social media. On the latter framing, the opinion, for example, discusses the authority to post city updates and register citizen concerns, and the authority to speak for the [government] that includes the authority to do so on social media. The broader authority to generally speak on behalf of the government would be easier to prove for plaintiffs and should always include any authority to speak on social media.

We will urge the lower courts to interpret the first element broadly. As we emphasized in our amicus brief, social media is so widely used by government agencies and officials at all levels that a government officials authority generally to speak on behalf of the public entity they work for must include the right to use social media to do so. Any other result does not reflect the reality we live in.

Moreover, plaintiffs who are being censored on social media are not typically commenting on the social media pages of low-level government employees, say, the clerk at the county tax assessors office, whose authority to speak publicly on behalf of their agency may be questionable. Plaintiffs are instead commenting on the social media pages of people in leadership positions, who are often agency heads or in elected positions and who surely should have the general authority to speak for the government.

At the same time, the Supreme Court cautions, courts must not rely on excessively broad job descriptions to conclude that a government employee is authorized to speak on behalf of the government. But under what circumstances would a court conclude that a government official in a leadership position does not have such authority? We hope these circumstances are few and far between for the sake of plaintiffs seeking to vindicate their First Amendment rights.

If, on the other hand, the lower courts interpret the first element narrowly and require plaintiffs to provide evidence that the government official who censored them had authority to speak on behalf of the agency on social media specifically, this will be more difficult to prove.

One helpful aspect of the courts opinion is that the government officials authority to speak (however thats defined) need not be written explicitly in their job description. This is in contrast to what the Sixth Circuit had, essentially, held. The authority to speak on behalf of the government, instead, may be based on persistent, permanent, and well settled custom or usage.

We remain concerned, however, that if there is a narrower requirement that the authority must be to speak on behalf of the government via a particular communications technologyin this case, social mediathen at what point does the use of a new technology become so well settled for government officials that it is fair to conclude that it is within their public duties?

Fortunately, the case law on which the Supreme Court relies does not require an extended period of time for a government practice to be deemed a legally sufficient custom or usage. It would not make sense to require an ages-old custom and usage of social media when the widespread use of social media within the general populace is only a decade and a half old. Ultimately, we will urge lower courts to avoid this problem and broadly interpret element one.

Another problematic aspect of the Supreme Courts opinion within element one is the additional requirement that [t]he alleged censorship must be connected to speech on a matter within [the government officials] bailiwick.

The court explains:

For example, imagine that [the city manager] posted a list of local restaurants with health-code violations and deleted snarky comments made by other users. If public health is not within the portfolio of the city manager, then neither the post nor the deletions would be traceable to [his] state authoritybecause he had none.

But the average constituent may not make such a distinctionnor should they. They would simply see a government official talking about an issue generally within the governments area of responsibility. Yet under this interpretation, the city manager would be within his right to delete the comments, as the constituent could not prove that the issue was within that particular government officials purview, and they would thus fail to meet element one.

In our brief, we argued for a functional test, where state action would be found if a government official were using their social media account in furtherance of their public duties, even if they also used that account for personal purposes. This was essentially the standard that the Ninth Circuit adopted, which included looking at, in the words of the Supreme Court, whether the accounts appearance and content look official. The Supreme Courts two-element test is more cumbersome for plaintiffs. But the upside is that the court agrees that a social media accounts appearance and function is relevant, even if only with respect to element two.

Another problematic aspect of the Supreme Courts discussion of element two is that a government officials social media page would amount to state action if the page is the only place where content related to government business is located. The court provides an example: a mayor would engage in state action if he hosted a city council meeting online by streaming it only on his personal Facebook page and it wasnt also available on the citys official website. The court further discusses a new city ordinance that is not available elsewhere, except on the officials personal social media page. By contrast, if the mayor merely repeats or shares otherwise available information it is far less likely that he is purporting to exercise the power of his office.

This limitation is divorced from reality and will hamstring plaintiffs seeking to vindicate their First Amendment rights. As we showed extensively in our brief (see Section I.B.), government officials regularly use both official office accounts and personal accounts for the same official purposes, by posting the same content and soliciting constituent feedbackand constituents often do not understand the difference.

Constituent confusion is particularly salient when government officials continue to use personal campaign accounts after they enter office. The courts conclusion that a government official might post job-related information for any number of personal reasons, from a desire to raise public awareness to promoting his prospects for reelection is thus highly problematic. The court is correct that government officials have their own First Amendment right to speak as private citizens online. However, their constituents should not be subject to censorship when a campaign account functions the same as a clearly official government account.

One very good aspect of the Supreme Courts opinion is that if the censorship amounted to the blocking of a plaintiff from engaging with the government officials social media page as a whole, then the plaintiff must merely show that the government official had engaged in state action with respect to any post on which [the plaintiff] wished to comment.

The court further explains:

The bluntness of Facebooks blocking tool highlights the cost of a mixed use social-media account: If page-wide blocking is the only option, a public official might be unable to prevent someone from commenting on his personal posts without risking liability for also preventing comments on his official posts. A public official who fails to keep personal posts in a clearly designated personal account therefore exposes himself to greater potential liability.

We are pleased with this language and hope it discourages government officials from engaging in the most egregious of censorship practices.

The Supreme Court also makes the point that if the censorship was the deletion of a plaintiffs individual comments under a government officials posts, then those posts must each be analyzed under the courts new test to determine whether a particular post was official action and whether the interactive spaces that accompany it are government forums. As the court states, it is crucial for the plaintiff to show that the official is purporting to exercise state authority in specific posts. This is in contrast to the Sixth Circuit, which held, When analyzing social-media activity, we look to a page or account as a whole, not each individual post.

The Supreme Courts new test for state action unfortunately puts a thumb on the scale in favor of government officials who wish to censor constituents who engage with them on social media. However, the test does chart a path forward on this issue and should be workable if lower courts apply the test with an eye toward maximizing constituents First Amendment rights online.

Read more:
U.S. Supreme Court Does Not Go Far Enough in Determining When Government Officials Are Barred from Censoring ... - EFF

Tags: