Using history to move forward the public dialogue on free speech and social justice.
Free Speech News Round Up 5 | July 7, 2019
I am traveling the west coast this week and had to delay the news round-up from last week. So here is one for two weeks! I'll also be making up for the delay with a lot of content when I return to Virginia next week. In Free Speech News this week, we have a wonderful op-ed by sci-fi writer Cody Doctorow, a scathing report about how tech companies fail women artists, another lawsuit over censorship in prisons, and the censorship of a TV interview with Pakistan's former President.
Terry Sanderson and Mediawatch: Homophobia and Political Correctness in the British Tabloids
With characteristic wit, Terry Sanderson dissected the latest bluster from the tabloids:
At last — Colin got a kiss from his boyfriend in EastEnders. It was of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety, but a kiss nevertheless.
Straight off the mark the following day (26 Jan) was The Sun: “Furious MPs last night demanded a ban on EastEnders after the BBC soap showed two gay men kissing full on the lips. The homosexual love scene between yuppie poofs was screened in the early evening when millions of children were watching.” (And just in case any Sun-reading kiddie missed it, the shocking peck was photographically reproduced for their edification).1
With the fourth news round-up, Langue Verte is approaching one month old! If you have suggestions for articles I should cover, please contact me at ryan.wesdock@gmail.com.
State of the Debate: Who Really Supports Free Speech?
In “State of the Debate” I will cover news articles, statistics, and interesting stories that show the ways we talk about free speech and social justice today. By accurately characterizing how we talk about these issues and what we believe about them, I can expose the inconsistencies, unfounded assertions, fallacies, and lies that dominate the discussion around free speech and social justice. In doing this, I hope to show how the historical examples I cover in this blog can lead us to a new, better, and evidence-based discussion. So, what do Americans today actually think about free speech?
Southwest Virginia Judge Rules that Prison Violated Inmate First Amendment Rights
A judge in Abingdon, Virginia ruled on June 5 that the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail Authority violated the First Amendment Rights of their inmates.1 The Jail Authority had implemented a policy in 2016 that denied prisoners reading material unless it had been pre-approved by the Jail Authority on a case-by-case basis. The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), a prisoner rights group, sued on First Amendment grounds and won the case.2
“june 1963” by Michael_Goff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
On January 13, 1958 the Supreme Court of the United States gave the nascent gay rights movement its first major victory.1 In a brief decision in the case ONE Incorporated v. Olesen, Postmaster of Los Angeles, it declared merely “the petition for writ of certiorari is granted and the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed. Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476.”2 With this sentence, the Court effectively ruled that discussions of homosexuality were not per se obscene and, implicitly, that such discussions might be protected under the First Amendment. Free speech had come out on the side of social justice.
Tech Companies Target Extremist Content Online...But Who Will Enforce Bans and Who Will be Targeted?
In response to the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand in March, tech companies and governments throughout the world have been meeting to discuss how to address extremist content online.1 The thing to note here, as Kaye pointed out in Speech Police, is that government regulation consists of asking tech companies to police the content themselves. From the article: “Already, governments in London, Paris and Berlin are preparing, or have passed, new legislation to force tech companies to better monitor what is posted on their networks.” The implication of this is that calls for tech companies to censor content is leading to governments ceding control of the internet to private industry.
Christopher Finan is an historian and executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). He is also a strong advocate for free speech, and, based on the emphasis of his book, for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Indeed, Palmer Raids is mostly a history of the ACLU’s fight for free speech. It begins with the organization’s founding, proceeds through court cases it litigated throughout the 20th century, and ends with the struggle against censorship provisions in the PATRIOT act. In covering such wide ground, it offers us lots of examples of two important trends we have already seen:
1. Free speech movement and arguments emerged as a strategy to promote numerous social justice struggles
2. Free speech jurisprudence has largely helped social justice causes
Every week, I will gather recent1 news about free speech and its connection to social justice from around the internet. The value of this is that it shows how the history of free speech and social justice remains relevant today. I'll normally publish these on Sunday.
First Amendment Protects Feeding the Homeless
In 2014, an activist group called Food Not Bombs was feeding homeless people in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems, because the city passed an ordinance that year making it illegal to feed the homeless. After years of legal suits, in August of 2018, Food Not Bombs finally got the ordinance overturned on First Amendment grounds.2
History is made up of stories, and the first question one has to ask when writing any story is where to begin. The history of free speech could begin with the birth of human language. It could start with ancient Mesopotamia or China. For the purposes of this blog, though, the history of free speech is a modern history, that is, we want a history that is somewhat familiar to us.
