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Photo by Meg Strobel.

The controversy over the planned destruction of a literary art installation at the downtown Wisconsin Center, first reported by Urban Milwaukee, continues to generate news. A story by the Green Bay Press-Gazette today has a headline declaring that Indigenous writers decry apparent planned destruction of literary exhibit and offers criticism of the decision by Dr. Kimberly Blaeser, a former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and a citizen of the White Earth Nation Ojibwe in Minnesota, who has work featured in the exhibit installed in 1998.

The installation was a public project, overseen by the Milwaukee Arts Board and public officials, featuring texts from the works of 48 Wisconsin writers through four centuries, including many prominent Indigenous artists and people of color. The texts are wide-ranging in their voices and concerns, but as Blaeser noted, some of the works by Indigenous writers remind visitors of the colonial history of Wisconsin and how Indigenous people and the atrocities committed against them had been forgotten.

I dont understand why our leaders would be afraid of history, she said. Its such a tragedy that there would be this erasure.

Opponents of the removal argue the ongoing, $456 million expansion of the convention center does not require the removal of the exhibit. A group of Wisconsin writers issued a press release blasting the decision and questioning whether the removal is part of an effort to prepare for hosting the Republican National Convention next year and part of a rising national trend of censorship by conservative activists.

Censorship of school curriculum. Banned books. It would be hard not to see this action in Wisconsin as a part of those larger efforts, said Blaeser, in a statement. The literature on the walls of the Wisconsin Center includes Indigenous voices, the writing of early ecologists, working-class voices, African-American voices, Latino voices, Asian voices, etc. We worked hard to make it representative of all Wisconsinites. All Wisconsinites should be outraged by the plans to demolish this literary archive.

Besides Blaeser, the writers featured in the exhibit include Folami Abiade, Antler, Martha Bergland, Black Sparrow Hawk, Mountain Wolf Woman, the Ojibwe tribe, the Potowatomi tribe, Frances Brock Starms, B. J. Buhrow, Daisy Cubias, Susan Engberg, Edna Ferber, Zona Gale, Horace Gregory, James Hazard, Peggy Hong, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ellen Kort, Margery Latimer, Aldo Leopold, Joel Lipman, Ben Logan, Charles McClain, Juliette Magill Kinzie, Anja Malesa, Tom Montag, Lorrie Moore, Kyoko Mori, John Muir, Lorine Niedecker, Louise Phelps Kellogg, Carl Rakosi, R. M. Ryan, Carl Sandburg, Guadalupe Solis, Denise Sweet, Bruce Taylor, Larry Watson, Glenway Wescott, J. D. Whitney, and Karl Young.

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This is a one-of-a-kind piece and likely the worlds largest poetry and text-based public artwork, to my knowledge, said Jen Benka, a national literary leader who served for a decade as president and executive director of the American Academy of Poets. The notion that these diverse voices will be thoughtlessly erased and that this significant artwork will be thrown in a dumpster for no reason is unconscionable.

Because the work was permanently installed, it cannot be removed in any way that will preserve it. The work will be destroyed in the process of removing it.

Wisconsin Center media presentative Sarah Maio told Urban Milwaukee the process of taking down the literary artworks would begin on April 10, which was yesterday. She also confirmed that the decision to remove the work was made by Wisconsin Center District CEO Marty Brooks and that he never consulted the centers17-member board of directors, most of them elected officials, including three Milwaukee Common Council members (Bob Bauman, Milele Coggs and council president Jos G. Prez), two legislators from Milwaukee (Sen LaTonya Johnson and Rep. Kalan Haywood), the city and county comptrollers (Aycha Sawa and Scott Manske) Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieuand Wauwatosa Mayor Dennis McBride. The private board members include Greg Marcus, whose father Steve Marcus created the Sculpture Milwaukee exhibition and whose company, the Marcus Corp., runs St. Kate The Arts Hotel.

The decision to remove the work wasnt reported to the board or debated or voted on, as Milwaukee Alderman Bob Bauman, who serves on the board, told Urban Milwaukee. Bauman sent an email to Brooks asking that he delay taking down the work and give board members a chance to consider the matter, and received no response.

Brooks has steadfastly avoided media question: he did not respond to request for comments from Urban Milwaukee or the Press-Gazette.

Opponents of his decision have charged that a tax-supported government entity overseen by publicly elected officials should have had a public process for removing a publicly-funded work of literary art.

The Wisconsin Center District Board would seem to have an obligation to due process, such as a public hearing, Blaeser wrote in a letter the Wisconsin Centers board members. The citizens who supported the creation of this one-of-a-kind nationally recognized installation deserve a chance to express their concern about its future. I ask that you show leadership and raise your voice to stop the wanton destruction. Wisconsin and the larger arts community will be watching what happens in Milwaukee.

Martha Bergland, whose four published books include co-authoring a biography of Increase Lapham, noted the history behind the installations creation: Nearly 30 years ago, many artists, poets, and writers began working to put on the walls of Milwaukees new convention center words written in and about their state. Words written over the past 400 years. Words from towns and farms and cities, forests and fields of the state. No one in any other state has done this. Hundreds of the people of this place worked together in the making of this audacious work Thousands of people have stood silent and stepped back, looked up and read the writing on the wall. People have been surprised by, moved by, informed by the words of their ancestors, their neighbors, in a graceful weave of interconnection.

Now one man prefers silence and whiteness to the richness of these words. One man has enlisted demolition crews to take hammer and chisel to these words, to our treasures.

Supporters of the exhibit have organized an online petition to stop the demolition.

More:
Back in the News: Wisconsin Center Accused of Censorship - Urban Milwaukee

The amendments to Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, notified by the government last week, will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and media freedom.

The notification provides for identification of fake or false or misleading online content related to the government by a fact-checking unit appointed by it. Social media companies or net service providers will have to take down such content on notification by the government or lose their safe harbour protections.

Read |TV news channels creating divisions in society: SC

The protections allow them to avoid liabilities for what third parties post on their websites. The governments move is wrong and goes against accepted principles of natural justice, existing rules and past judgements of courts, and violates constitutional rights. The amendments are a violation of the procedure prescribed in the IT Act, 2000, and the guidelines prescribed by the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, 2015, on the takedown of online content.

With the notification the government has arrogated to itself the power to decide what is right and wrong and assumed the role of a super editor. It will be the judge, jury and executioner on issues that concern it without allowing the right of appeal for the aggrieved party at any forum, including the courts. This is unfair and unjust and amounts toassumption of absolute powers in an area involving fundamental rights. The government has said that online intermediaries have the responsibility to exercise due diligence. While this is true, the government has no right to exercise undue diligence over the media. There is no clear definition of fake news, false news or misleading news. Without this, and without a laid down procedure to arrive at decisions and without the right to appeal, the governments decisions will tend to be arbitrary and lack transparency. The power is bound to be misused.

The Editors Guild of India has said that the governments move is akin to censorship and cited that there was no consultation on the matter. The government had a few weeks ago put out a set of amendments which had given similar sweeping powers to the Press Information Bureau (PIB). While the PIB does not figure in the present scheme, the effect is the same. Media organisations use social media platforms for dissemination of news and so the curbs on online content of these platforms will hit the media as well. It will be censorship done by other means, without calling it by that name. There are a number of recent judgements from courts underlining the importance of media freedom, but the notification disregards them. The governments assurance that its powers will not be misused cannot be trusted. The notification should be withdrawn.

See more here:
Censorship by other means - Deccan Herald

According to the American Library Association, 2022 saw the highest number of demands for censoring library books since the group began tracking such things, more than two decades ago. That will come as no surprise to anyone watching the faux hysteria unfold in district after district when a certain faction launches an attack.

Among recent examples is a 2018 graphic novel adaptation of Anne Franks diary that has been pulled from a HIGH SCHOOL library in Vero Beach, Fla.

Most readers will recall their own exposure to Anne Franks The Diary of a Young Girl, and the degree to which it helped humanize the horrors of the Holocaust. We learned through the experience of a girl younger than many of us were when we first read the book.

But a vicious group calling itself Moms for Liberty is bent on making sure young people dont receive that lesson in a format designed to appeal to modern readers. The group is employing a trick used by many who seek to keep our children from learning about the full range of human history and experience. It is pretending it is concerned the graphic novel minimized the Holocaust. There is also concern about a panel in which Anne walks past nude female statues. (Again, this is a high school library.)

Remember, these people disguise a hateful and racist piece of legislation by calling it anti-racism, and pretend they are protecting our kids when they intend to do them intellectual and emotional harm.

These are the same kinds of people who have asked libraries not to put biographies of Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson and Jim Thorpe on the shelves. Theyve asked a school district to stop showing a film about Ruby Bridges.

Understand the pattern yet?

Anne Franks diary was published in 1947. Millions upon millions of people learned something about the Holocaust and humanity by reading it. Graphic novels have become a more popular way for young people to read some of the classics with which many of us grew up. An important lesson in that format might reach more young minds, and for the Moms for Liberty especially in Florida, it seems that just wont do.

Rational and responsible parents, teachers and elected officials must speak up and put a stop to this insanity. Its agenda is clear, and cannot be allowed to succeed.

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Read more from the original source:
Censorship | News, Sports, Jobs - The Inter-Mountain

(Andy Barron | Reno Gazette-Journal via AP) A man holds up a sign against critical race theory during a protest outside a Washoe County School District board meeting on May 25, 2021, in Reno, Nev.

By Clayton Parr | Special to The Tribune

| April 13, 2023, 3:00 p.m.

A highlight of todays phase of U.S. history arises from highly publicized exclusionary actions taken by various state legislatures and others in the public sphere regarding race and sexual subject matter.

Some of these actions focus on the elimination of certain information from primary and secondary education courses and reference materials.

One topic is what is called critical race theory. Neither I, nor most of those who consider it to be a threat, really know what it means. Technically, it has been described as an academic and legal framework denoting that systemic racism is part of American society.

Why academic focus on the subject leads to dire consequences is even more unclear. Adding to the murky foundation for the attack is that courses addressing the subject exist rarely and almost exclusively at the college level.

Then there is the movement, exemplified in Florida, to sanitize the education of the countrys youth by forbidding any classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity. Any discussion of such topics is left up to parents who in reality may do so ineptly or not at all.

These legislative actions are accompanied by concerted efforts by individuals, guided by advocacy groups, to ban books in school libraries that discuss sexual identity conflicts, sexual conduct and practices and accounts of racial suppression, including indigenous people.

A troubling aspect of these movements to establish rigid classroom subject-matter boundaries is that they disregard the expertise and judgment of teachers and supervising school boards in determining how best to meet the education needs of students in their charge.

These censorship actions are rationalized as being necessary to protect school children from objectionable subject matter that may have negative psychological or behavioral impacts. The result can be cast as indoctrination, akin to development of group think, the kind of thing we condemn China for.

Another area relates to gender-based health care. Legislation enacted in many states focuses on the small number of transgender individuals in their communities. Those in Utah have been affected by a law enacted in 2022 after override of a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox barring transgender athletes from participating in girls sports. It was followed in 2023 with a law banning gender-affirming health care for individuals under 18 years of age.

What is especially disturbing is the commonality of these actions. They all seem to stem from nationwide agendas related to campaigns against what is called wokeism. The term has been defined as the behavior and attitudes of people who are sensitive to social and political injustice, seemingly a humane attitude that should be admired rather than scorned. The term, however, has been weaponized by the right-leaning political constituency as constituting excessive challenges by far-left liberals to community norms.

Evaluations as to whether some of those challenges go too far, even in the minds of socially conscious citizens, are certainly appropriate. But such discomfort falls far short of the vitriol by those who sarcastically fling the term woke at virtually any proposal by those on the other side of the political divide attempting to overcome prejudices that affect particular minority groups.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the referenced laws has been the minimization of sympathy for the Individuals who are adversely affected either directly or by implication by the proscriptions ostensibly imposed for the public good. There is little concern, sometimes outright disdain, for those within those vulnerable groups. They include transgender children and their parents, gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals and their families and African Americans and other racial minorities

Thus, although many of the issues involved are validly debatable, what appears to be behind the described actions are lineups of Republican controlled state legislatures, including Utahs, to adopt laws consistent with agendas promoted by far-right conservative leadership. Part of the motivation is to put in their place the wokes who advocate for improvements in the treatment of particular vulnerable groups.

That the agendas are part of a nationwide movement was illustrated by the vicious excoriation of Gov. Cox by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson after the governors compassion-motivated veto of the transgender athletic exclusion bill.

These attitudes cause the laws and other suppressive actions to be lacking in humanity and loaded with prejudice.

Clayton Parr, Draper, is a retired natural resources attorney who, after growing up in a small Wyoming coal-mining town continues to be deeply disturbed by the swirls of intolerance in the world outside of that of his youth.

Continued here:
Political movement is based on censorship and exclusion. - Salt Lake Tribune

Several libraries in the Tri-County area are pushing back against censorship as more books face challenges and bans in school and public libraries around the country.

The annual Peoria Reads program is rebranded "Central Illinois Reads" this year as a nod to the multi-institutional effort.

Jennifer Davis is the public relations manager at the Peoria Public Library.

"We felt it was incredibly important to highlight the fact that the freedom to read is is so essential to our democracy," she said. "No one should be able to tell you what you have access to what you can read. And we are encouraging people to during this period while we're highlighting this to hopefully read a banned or challenged book. Read outside your comfort zone; judge for yourself."

The American Library Association maintains a list of frequently challenged books. They include classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Color Purple, as well as contemporary titles like The Hate U Give and Gender Queer.

The Peoria Public Library is partnering with the Fondulac District Library in East Peoria, Pekin Public Library, Chillicothe Public Library, Morton Public Library, Dunlap Public Library, and the Illinois Prairie District Public Library that serves Metamora, Germantown Hills, and other Woodford County communities.

Bradley University, Methodist College, and the Neighborhood House are also participating.

A bill now moving through the Illinois General Assembly will require public libraries to have a written policy against book banning to maintain eligibility for state grants. A book can still be challenged by a patron through an administrative process, Davis said.

The first Central Illinois Reads event is happening this Thursday, April 13 at the Peoria Public Library Main Branch at 6 p.m. Dr. Emily Knox, a University of Illinois associate professor and author of Book Banning in 21st CenturyandFoundations of Intellectual Freedom will speak on book bans and censorship.

Find out more on the Peoria Public Library's website.

Excerpt from:
Central Illinois libraries are making a stand against book bans and ... - Peoria Public Radio