Daily Archives: October 11, 2022

In a Supreme Court brief it filed this week, The Onion claims it was founded in 1756 and has a daily readership of 4.3 trillion. The brief describes The Onion as the single most powerful and influential organization in human history, with interests in shipping, strip mining, deforestation and animal testing as well as journalism.

The case that prompted The Onions brief is no less ridiculous than the satirical websites patently preposterous puffery. Last April, a federal appeals court said a man could not sue police officers who had arrested him for making fun of them because they could have reasonably thought their petty vendetta was consistent with the First Amendment.

The spoof of the Parma, Ohio, police departments Facebook page that Anthony Novak created in 2016 was not subtle. It included a job notice that said the department is strongly encouraging minorities to not apply, a post advertising a police abortion van for teenagers, a warning that Parma had made giving homeless people food a crime so they would leave our city due to starvation and an announcement of our official stay inside and catch up with the family day, during which anyone venturing outside between noon and 9 p.m. would be arrested.

People are also reading

Novaks parody, which was online for just 12 hours, prompted 11 calls to the police departments nonemergency line. Based on that reaction, Novak was arrested and prosecuted for violating a broadly worded state law against using a computer to disrupt, interrupt, or impair police services a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

A jury promptly acquitted Novak, perhaps recognizing that the logic underlying the charge against him would justify prosecuting anyone whose online criticism provoked phone calls or protests that incommoded the police in any way. But after Novak sued seven police officers for violating his First Amendment rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that the defendants were protected by qualified immunity, which shields cops from liability unless their alleged misconduct violated clearly established law.

The 6th Circuit cited two reasons why police might have reasonably believed that Novaks spoof did not qualify as constitutionally protected speech. Novak had deleted comments describing the page as fake, which he thought ruined the joke, and he had reposted a police department warning about the ersatz account, which he thought made the joke funnier.

When the case against Novak was presented to a grand jury, Detective Thomas Connor claimed the people who called about the parody honest to God believed it was the departments official Facebook page. But after Novak sued Connor, the detective admitted that was not true.

Even if a few especially credulous or inattentive people were fooled, the Institute for Justice notes in its petition asking the Supreme Court to review the 6th Circuits decision, that would not matter under the First Amendment. As the appeals court itself noted at an earlier stage of the case, the law requires a reasonable reader standard, not a most gullible person on Facebook standard.

The court initially recognized that the First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke. The Onion amplifies that point in its brief supporting Novaks petition, saying, a reasonable reader does not need a disclaimer to know that parody is parody.

That approach, The Onion explains, would rob parody of its rhetorical power. The technique relies on first tricking people into thinking its real, then revealing the joke by piling absurdity on absurdity.

Because parody mimics the real thing, the brief notes, it has the unique capacity to critique the real thing. Hence it should be obvious that parodists cannot be prosecuted for telling a joke with a straight face.

Whats obvious to most (but not all) Onion readers is not obvious enough under the 6th Circuits understanding of qualified immunity. That would be funny if the implications for freedom of speech were not so serious.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Syndicated by Creators.com.

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Jacob Sullum: Mocking the police is not a crime: A first amendment case prompts The Onion to explain how parody works - Times-News

University of Florida (UF) has a particularly troubling history of sexism and racial exclusion. In 1905, the Florida legislature adopted the Buckman Act to ensure that UF shall admit no person other than white male studentslong after other state flagships were admitting women. In 1949, UFs law school refused to admit Virgil Hawkins, a Black man, despite several U.S. Supreme Court decisions by this time paving the way for the desegregation of graduate and professional education. Even after the Supreme Court overturned separate but equal education in Brown v. Board of Education, Florida continued to insist Hawkins attend a separate law school.Dr. Frank Fernandez

Over nine-years, Hawkins took his case before the Florida Supreme Court five times and the U.S. Supreme Court four times. UF and Florida courts ignored, then flat-out violated, Supreme Court rulings ordering the campus to admit Hawkins. During 1956, the states Governor vowed that Florida was just as determined as any Southern state to maintain segregation. It was 1958 before UF admitted a Black law student (not Hawkins). The first Black graduate of UF came from the law school in 1962, and the first Black UF student to earn a baccalaureate degree graduated in 1965.

Fast forward to today. Florida uses a financial aid scheme that disproportionately directs money to white students. Around 21% of the school-aged population is Black, but only about 6% of students who receive Bright Futures scholarships are Black. The legacies of exclusion persist, and progress cannot be made without acknowledging the troubled history of the institution. To ignore the sins of the pastand prevent current activismFlorida lawmakers have sought to outlaw Floridas students and professors from talking about how legacies of racism and sexism continue to impact society.

Last week, the governing board for Floridas public colleges and universities, defended the states Stop WOKE Act, which bans critical race theory and similar perspectives from classrooms. The board contended that Floridas faculty do not have First Amendment rights to speak and that Floridas students do not have First Amendment rights to learn. The board rejected the idea that a public university should be a marketplace of ideas. Instead, it argued that curriculum in public universities should be set in accordance with the strictures and guidance of the States elected officials. That any classroom instruction is government speech.

The board, looked to turn First Amendment precedent on its head when it comes to student and faculty speech in higher education. The board argued that Florida can exclude ideas from the classroom simply because it offends elected officials like the Florida governor. Perhaps most disturbingly, the board relied on several Supreme Court rulings focused on how K-12 administrators can control student speech. In essence, the board argued that states should control higher education, just as they control K-12 schools. After years of financial investment, hiring world-class faculty, and recruiting talented students, so UF would be ranked as one of the top public universities in the country, UFs board believes the next step is to run the university like an elementary school. The state has already limited learning about racism and sexism in primary and secondary schools. Banning critical perspectives from higher education will ensure that Floridas children can move from preschool to graduate degrees without ever learning anything that contradicts a state-sanctioned version of historyDr. Neal Hutchens.

The boards argument violates professors First Amendment rights, as well as UFs institutional policy on Academic Affairs; Academic Freedom and Responsibility. The board, made up of political donors to the current Governor, argued that university curriculum should be set by the state and its elected officials, in direct contrast to the policy delivered to faculty. UF policy acknowledges professors must have freedom in the classroom in discussing academic subjects [and] selecting instructional materials. Further, the faculty and student body must be free to cultivate a spirit of inquiry and scholarly criticism and to examine ideas in an atmosphere of freedom.

Historically, UF policy has recognized that both instructors and students requireand benefit fromacademic freedom: The university student must likewise have the opportunity to study a full spectrum of ideas, opinions, and beliefs, so that the student may acquire maturity for analysis and judgment. We argue that the governing boards recent position that the state and its elected officials should control the curriculum limits students First Amendment rights to learn and discuss. By treating students as children in primary schools, rather than adults enrolled in a university, UF students will pay the high cost of a college education and not learn as much as their peers in states like California, Illinois, and New York. How can UF students receive a world-class education when the curriculum is so parochial?

UF does not stand alone. We, along with Dr. Vanessa Miller, recently completed a study that showed that legislators in a majority of states around the country have introduced legislation to ban CRT and similarly divisive concepts from being taught in higher education. At present, 8 states have adopted anti-CRT legislation. In two more states, elected officials sought to limit CRT without going through their respective legislatures.

Politicians have historically used claims of 'state rights to repress individual rights. When courts consider citizen challenges to state efforts to control speech and curricula, they should consider the long, troubled histories underpinning arguments for state rights. The desire of a few men to control a curriculum cannot outweigh the First Amendment rights of students to learn and discuss in public universities.

Dr. Frank Fernandez is an assistant professor of higher education at University of Florida

Dr. Neal Hutchens is a professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies & Evaluation at University of Kentucky.

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Florida: State Rights Over Individual Rights - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

New legislation has been introduced that would expand access to school libraries and codify student First Amendment Rights. The Right to Read Act (S. 5064 andH.R. 9056), introduced by Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed and Arizona Representative Ral Grijalva, would put a certified school librarian in every public school library across the country.

Among the Right to Read Act provisions:

The final piece is a direct response to the increase in book challenges and bans across the United States. These bans specifically target books by and about queer people and people of color, and it aims to help protect professionals experiencing these assaults on student First Amendment Rights, their own professional knowledge, and local legislation threatening outrageous fines and jail time for providing such materials.

Literacy is the cornerstone of a high-quality education in every society, yet today we are seeing our nations children subjected to politically led efforts to block access to books. Censoring our education system based on bias is national travesty.said Rep. Grijalva in the press release for the Right to Read Act.We must ensure that our school libraries are equipped to empower and engage students from every background which is why I am proud to introduce the Right to Read Act with Senator Reed. This legislation will support the development of effective school libraries, including recruitment and retention of librarians, and provide federal funding for literacy resources in high need communities. This bill will also help protect the right to access diverse, inclusive school library collections. Together, we will build and develop effective school libraries with diverse and robust resources to deliver positive and formative opportunities for students.

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Introduced October 6, the bill has been praised by groups like the American Library Association and the American Association of School Librarians. The Right to Read Act addresses the inequities to information and information professionals across the country. A reported 2.5 million students are currently in public schools without a certified school librarian, while 30% of all public school students do not have access to a full-time school librarian. According to the press release for the Right to Read Act, access to a school librarian results in 73% higher literacy rates for students, and the impact is even greater for low income, minority, and disabled students.

Quality teaching and effective school libraries go hand-in-hand with securing the right to read for our students. We know that literacy is key to unlocking opportunity and success,said Senator Reed in the Right to Read Act press release.The Right to Read Act is about making sure that low-income, minority, children with disabilities, and English language learners have equal access to that opportunity through high quality, appropriately staffed school libraries and diverse and inclusive reading materials both at school and at home.

Although the bill is a positive step in the right direction for building more equitable access to public education and a positive step toward curtailing our current book banning climate, the reality is the bill will likely see no action through the end of the year. The midterm elections and a lame duck Congress mean it will likely wait until 2023 to see any action on the floor.

That said, the Right to Read Act should be impetus for electing pro-education, pro-library, anti-censorship advocates into positions of federal, state, and local positions in this upcoming vote. This bill would be a boon for public education and First Amendment Right protections.

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New Right to Read Bill Expands School Library Access, Students Rights to Read - Book Riot

Im always amused when the Arguments Against Passage section makes a better argument for a ballot question than the actual argument for the ballot question.

Question 1 seeks to amend the Nevada Constitution to guarantee equal rights regardless of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin. Most of these guarantees are already in place in some form or another elsewhere, either at the federal level or in state statute somewhere. For example, NRS 613.330 was amended in 2011 to prohibit discriminatory employment practices based upon the gender identity or expression of a person.

According to the Arguments Against Passage section on Question 1, however, if there are new constitutional protections to classifications such as sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, it will be impossible to protect the religious liberties of individuals who hold traditional views on marriage and gender and want to live according to those values. This is a curious argument, as many Nevadans have religious beliefs which oppose the consumption of alcohol or cannabis and yet, despite Nevadas famously convenient access to both, many religious Nevadans simply dont buy those products, thus exercising their religious freedom without restricting the freedom of others to do otherwise. Why cant these same people simply marry each other and live according to their traditional gender roles while those who choose to live otherwise live in peace and legal equality?

Being religious does not or, at least, should not grant one the right to use the power of the state (or any of its cities, counties, or other political subdivisions) to treat others unequally according to whatever precepts are shared amongst your brethren. You can personally treat others unequally if thats your wish doing so is rude but you always have the right to be a jerk. If youre doing so while working for or serving as an agent of the government, however, the government exists to serve everyone, not just those youre personally comfortable working with. If you have a problem with that, go work for someone else preferably somewhere else.

Im going to vote in favor of Question 1 for three reasons.

On a technical basis, rights are properly protected in constitutions because they are considerably more difficult to amend than statutes. Article 1 of our state constitution enumerates the inalienable rights all Nevadans enjoy by virtue of living within our states borders. These rights even include rights which are also protected under the U.S. Constitution Sections 4, 9 and 10, for example, protect freedom of religion, speech and assembly, which are also protected under the First Amendment. Leaving the equal protection of Nevadans under the law scattered around various federal and state statutes is both inefficient and prone to error federal and state statutes, after all, get amended, which means the legal equality of Nevadans could be amended out from underneath them.

On a historical basis, the reason Question 1 inventories classes such as race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin is because Nevada (and our nation more generally) has, in fact, denied equality of the law to each of those groups in the past. Upon statehood, for example, Nevada explicitly only granted white men the ability to vote (the word white wasnt removed from Article 2, Section 1 until 1880; womens suffrage didnt come to Nevada until 1914). Its wise to put into writing that our state will stop doing that.

Finally, its a little disingenuous for Nevada, which has a historically libertine reputation, to legally treat those who dont hold traditional views on gender or marriage differently from those who do. Nearly a century ago, Reno served as a sanctuary from those who needed to escape the confines of the traditional view that a marriage is only divisible by death and made a pretty penny doing so. Nevada is frankly at its best when it serves as a sanctuary for those who dont fit into traditional society as a place where people are people regardless of how they look, how they dress, or who they love.

David Colborne ran for office twice and served on the executive committees for his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is now an IT manager, a registered nonpartisan voter, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [emailprotected].

Excerpt from:
Question 1: These rights weren't guaranteed in the first place? The Nevada Independent - The Nevada Independent

LSU football, Brian Kelly press conference before Tennessee game

Recapping LSU football, Brian Kelly's opening week press conference ahead of Saturday's matchup against Tennessee.

Koki Riley, Lafayette Daily Advertiser

To say that the Louisiana Constitution is fluid is an understatement. Since it was ratified in 1974, voters have approved 203 amendments.

And they'll have to decide whether to approve or reject eight more changes to the state Constitution in the Nov. 8 election.

The proposed list of amendments addresses everything from taxes to a clarification on slavery and "involuntary servitude."

Following is an abridged and edited explanation of the amendments from the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, which provides a guide without taking a position. For PAR's full guide to the proposed amendments with detailed explanations go to http://parlouisiana.org/:

A vote for would: Let the state increase to 65% the maximum amount of money in seven different trust funds that can be invested in equities on the stock market.

A vote against would: Keep tighter limits in place on the percentage of the trust funds money that can be invested in the stock market, with some unable to be invested in equities at all.

Argument for: Increasing the trust funds investments in the stock market could generate more earnings over the long term to benefit health, education, wildlife and other programs that receive the money.

Argument against: The stock market is volatile and exposes the trust funds to greater risk and loss possibilities in the short term.

A vote for would: Increase the property tax exemption available to veterans with service-related disabilities and to their surviving spouses after the veterans death to up to $150,000.

A vote against would: Maintain the current level of property tax exemption available to veterans with service-related disabilities and to their surviving spouses.

Argument for: Louisiana veterans and their spouses may have a difficult time supporting their households after losing a substantial portion of their annual income and the veterans ability to maintain a job.

Argument against: Special property tax breaks that have been granted over the years erode the tax revenue available to local government agencies that provide services.

A vote for would: Allow most of Louisianas civil service employees to support certain campaign activities of a candidate for public office when that candidate is an immediate family member.

A vote against would: Continue the current prohibition on Louisianas civil service employees participating in campaign activities or supporting candidates for public office.

Argument for: People, no matter their jobs, should be able to support family members if they are running for political office. Limits on First Amendment rights to freedom of speech should be as narrowly tailored as possible.

Argument against: The prohibitions on political activity for civil service workers were enacted to protect taxpayersfinancing the salaries of the employees, to curb inappropriate acts by employees who are supposed to do their work in a nonpartisan fashion and to protect the workers from political retaliation and undue influence.

A vote for would: Let local water districts, municipalities or other political subdivisions reduce customer bills for water use if the charges stem from water lost due to damage outside a customers control.

A vote against would: Keep local water districts, municipalities and other political subdivisions from lowering bills or waiving customer charges for water use in almost all circumstances.

Argument for: Water system administrators should have flexibility to help customers if bills were improperly increased by damage out of the control of a customer, such as infrastructure problems caused during an ice storm, flood or other disaster.

Argument against: Allowing widespread waivers of customer charges undermines system sustainability, taking awaymuch-needed money from systems already struggling with outdated infrastructure. Changing theprohibition makes system administrators more vulnerable to outside political pressure.

A vote for would: Give local taxing bodies more time to decide if they want to roll forward millages that increase property taxes paid by businesses and homeowners.

A vote against would: Keep the rules governing millage roll forwards the same, giving local taxing bodies until the next property reappraisals to make the decision.

Argument for: Many taxing districts automatically choose to roll forward their millage rates to the maximum allowable because they fear losing the decision-making ability in the future after another property reassessment. The use-it-or-lose-it aspect of a millage rate means homeowners and businesses pay higher property taxes in the short-term than they might otherwise pay if the taxing bodies had more time to make those financial decisions. Taxing authorities should have more time to decide if theyll need the increased tax revenue.

Argument against: Taxing districts have enough time under the current system to make budgetary decisions about whether they need the full millage rate authorized for them. They shouldnt be allowed to roll forward millage rates for years on end, a situation that would increase property tax payment uncertainty for homeowners and businesses.

A vote for would: Limit increases in the property tax liability of homes subject to homestead exemption in Orleans Parish, capping the reassessment increase to 10% of the residential propertys assessed value in the previous year.

A vote against would: Continue the current system, which requires a four-year phase-in of tax liability for homes subject to the homestead exemption when a reappraisal increases assessments by more than 50%.

Argument for: The annual 10% cap on reassessed value gives homeowners the time to adjust to higher payments and eases the sticker shock of large reassessments as property value skyrockets in Orleans.

Argument against: Special property tax breaks that have been granted over the years erode the tax revenue availableto local government agencies that provide services. This could lower revenue collections in Orleans Parish, which already is struggling to maintain services.

Editor's note: Amendment No. 7 was rewritten after the bill was introduced. The rewritten language has been interpreted in different ways, with varying implications. Those conflicting interpretations have raised concerns from the bill sponsor, who said his intent was to restrict the use of involuntary servitude, not broaden it, and who said he intends to oppose the amendment.

A vote for would: Rework the state constitutional ban on slavery and involuntary servitude, allowing their use only for the lawful administration of criminal justice.

A vote against would: Keep the states current constitutional language banning slavery and involuntary servitude, but allowing involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime.

Argument for: The current provision is antiquated and tied to Louisianas history of slavery, segregation and convictleasing. The new language creates a set of circumstances when involuntary servitude is allowed. Many other states dont have the language in their constitutions at all and have found ways to allow prison labor.

Argument against: The new language is ambiguous and doesnt change anything about prison conditions and allowance of prison labor. The revisions could be interpreted to broaden the allowed uses of slavery and involuntary servitude in the criminal justice system. The rewrite is unnecessary because the U.S. Constitution already outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude except for those convicted of crimes.

A vote for would: Remove the requirement that certain property owners with disabilities annually certify their income to receive a property tax rate freeze.

A vote against would: Continue the annual income certification required for certain property owners with disabilities to receive a property tax rate freeze.

Argument for: People with permanent and total disabilities deserve the same treatment as those who are 65 andolder for the property tax rate freeze.

Argument against: Requiring people who receive special assessment levels to recertify their income serves as an important check and balance to ensure they continue to meet the criteria.

GregHilburncovers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1.

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Explaining eight amendments to Louisiana Constitution for voters - Daily Advertiser

A podcast series on shocking abuse at Utahs homes for troubled teens produced by a multiple-media team of journalists, and the Minnesota Star Tribunes revelations of court-aided exploitation of accident victims, have taken top honors in the 16th Annual Barlett and Steele Awards for the Best in Investigative Business Journalism.

The inaugural award for Outstanding Young Journalist was claimed by Neil Bedi of ProPublica for an investigation into faulty mechanical heart pumps.

In addition to the first-ever Young Journalist award, this year marks the first time the Barlett and Steele Awards have recognized publications across two categories, Global/National and Regional/Local, to honor more of the outstanding business journalism being produced throughout the U.S. Each category features a Gold, Silver, and Bronze award. These awards come with cash prizes of US$3,000, US$2,000, and US$1,000 respectively. The Young Journalist award features a cash prize of US$3,000.

The Gold award in the Global/National category was won by a collaboration among American Public Media, Salt Lake Tribune, and KUER public radio, for their tenacious investigative work into the Utah governments lackluster oversight of facilities housing troubled teenagers, resulting in widespread abuse. Their work resulted in a seven-part podcast series titled Sent Away.

Rounding out the Global/National category, the Silver award went to The Wall Street Journal for its investigation into federal judges hidden conflicts of interest. The Bronze was awarded to a team of reporters from Bloomberg for their revelations about questionable practices at a telemedicine startup.

In the Regional/Local category, the StarTribune won the Gold award for documenting how accident victims in several states were convinced to transfer their court-ordered compensation to other parties for a fraction of its value. In one case, StarTribune said, a mentally impaired car accident victim sold more than half a million dollars in future payments for $12,001.

The Silver award in the Regional/Local category went to a duo from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a series on dangerous dwellings, while a team of reporters from The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica won the Bronze award for documenting harmful pollution by the sugar industry.

The Barlett & Steele Awards are administered by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State Universitys Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The awards are named for the illustrious investigative business journalist team of Don Barlett & Jim Steele, who have worked together for more than four decades, receiving two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Magazine awards, and a long list of other journalism awards.

This years winners are in the finest tradition of what these awards have come to represent great reporting, fine writing and expert data analysis, Steele said. The winners are a testament to the value of in-depth reporting and how it benefits the public.

Reynolds Center Director Dr. Jeffrey Timmermans said: This addition of more awards this year has allowed us to recognize more ground-breaking investigative business journalism in the U.S. While the industry continues to face many challenges, the fact that there is so much outstanding work being done at news organizations throughout the country from Utah to Florida is cause for optimism.

About the winners

Gold Global/National Category

In their seven-part podcast series Sent Away, reporters from American Public Media, Salt Lake Tribune, and KUER public radio teamed up to expose the limitations of government oversight within the troubled-teen treatment industry. In the last six years, 20,000 kids from all over the country have been sent to more than 100 privately run treatment programs in Utah. This investigation found that the state took a hands-off approach to regulating these facilities, which enabled rampant abuse.

During the investigation, reporters hit a wall: Utah asked for thousands of dollars in fees to turn over inspection and investigation reports. Journalists turned to crowd-funding to cover the cost. The state eventually turned over 10,000 pages of records that showed reports of alleged sexual abuse, exploitation, and other atrocities. Even the death of a resident didnt spur the government to step in or implement more rigid regulations, reporters found.

As a direct result of their reporting, the Utah government has taken a stronger approach to enforcing regulations, including revoking the license of one program named in the podcast. Additionally, the state is creating an online database to allow free public access to inspection reports the same documents the reporters had to pay for.

As noted by the judges, this is an extraordinary piece of investigative reporting that demonstrates the power of podcast journalism at its best.

Silver Global/National Category

The Wall Street Journal investigation Hidden Interests examines how more than 130 federal judges broke a 1974 law. The law requires federal judges to recuse or excuse themselves from a case involving parties in which they or their family members have legal or equitable interest. WSJ examined 700 judges who held stocks with large companies and tens of thousands of cases from 2010 to 2018 and found 129 federal district judges and two other federal plaintiff judges to be in violation of the law.

Their investigation found that oftentimes, the judges were ruling in favor of their financial and familial ties. Sixty-one of the total judges accused were found to be trading the stocks while they were on the affiliated case.

There arent any laws or rules that ban judges from owning stocks, they just must recuse the cases when they are presented with them. These violations are not often seen by the public and judges financial information is only available upon request.

This WSJ investigation dives into the specific cases judges accepted and how their intentions may or may not have been financially motivated.

Bronze Global/National Category

Questionable Practices brings the first important revelations about the largest medical mental-health startup, Cerebral, and its effort to bring telemedicine techniques to mental healthcare. With the demand for mental health services increasing, companies are finding ways to provide patients with quick solutions to their problems. Cerebral was one of the companies to start prescribing controlled substances online during relaxed rules that came out of the pandemic.

Bloomberg reporters found a lack of delicate consideration assessment from the million-dollar business when prescribing medication to their patients. Their piece dives into how Cerebral continued to use strong marketing techniques to bring in patients, despite the number of clients who have been negatively impacted by their practices.

Gold Regional/Local Category

Star Tribune reporters Jeff Meitrodt and Nicole Norfleet exposed the inhumane practices performed on car accident victims in their series Unsettled: Cashing in on Accident Victims. The investigation found that companies pay to take peoples future settlement checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for immediate and much smaller payments.

The reporting duo searched through thousands of pages of court documents to examine deals implemented from 2000 to 2020. They found a trend in places such as Minnesota that show how much money victims receive versus what the agreement was and the types of victims that suffer from yet another catastrophe. This investigative piece highlights not only the insurance companies involvement but also the effects on mental health.

The Unsettled series is an exemplary work of reporting and does a superb job in shedding a light into the little-known settlements purchasing industry, said the judges. The findings are astonishing and the thoroughness of the reporting examining from the lens of all those involved from the victims, to the judges and the companies is impressive.

Silver Regional/Local Category

Dangerous Dwellings, a year-long Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation, examines the squalid living conditions in some of the citys worst apartments. The reporters found that the housing shortage and government inaction enabled absentee landlords to squeeze the properties for higher profits while putting tenants safety in peril.

Through a three-part series with character-driven stories, extensive data analysis, damning photos, and investigating more than 1,000 apartment complexes across five counties, the AJCs story found that much of the regions affordable housing is nearly uninhabitable. In many cases, landlords didnt provide the bare minimum: functional plumbing, security cameras, gates that properly lock and close. Not only are those properties barely habitable but the public is footing the bill for landlords tax breaks while their tenants perish.

Dangerous Dwellings underscores how these dangerous conditions are part and parcel of a lucrative business model, smartly juxtaposing the living conditions of tenants and owners, said the judges. Its spherical reporting that doesnt simply describe a problem but goes deeper into finding out whos to blame and why.

In response to the AJCs investigation, Georgia district attorneys announced they intended to start cracking down on negligent apartment complex landlords.

Bronze Regional/Local Category

The joint investigation between The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica follows Thelma Freedman and her two grandsons who were hospitalized in 2019 for upper respiratory infections. They live in the Glades, an area in Florida that is home to growing half of the countrys cane sugar. Each year, growers will burn their fields as a harvesting technique that covers the town in ash which the locals have named Black Snow.

State officials have found the sugar industry in violation of the Clean Air Act of 1970. But the investigation found that residents were exposed to pollutants in ways that monitoring systems had missed. Spending a year speaking with various community members, the reporters were able to see how the smoke was affecting them.

Additionally, the reporters used a unique investigative tool, automated text messages, to communicate with the community and gather information in real-time. They found that the community was staying indoors to avoid the harmful effects of the smoke and that it was only affecting communities of color and those in poverty.

This in-depth investigation is driven by human stories backed with actual data that shows how the sugar industry and state organizations have not properly addressed the pollution residents in lower-income areas of Florida are experiencing.

Outstanding Young Journalist

In his reporting, Neil Bedi of ProPublica went beyond identifying the harm caused by malfunctioning HeartWare devices. Through investigative analysis, Bedi identified the countless missteps taken by the FDA that showed that the government long knew of the problems that patients were never informed of.

This investigation revealed how easily companies can slip through major systemic gaps in the government systems that are intended to protect the most vulnerable. Bedi rigourously worked to connect with people who were harmed by the devices to continue telling their stories even after the initial story was published. Bedis reporting prompted Congress to investigate the FDAs regulation of the HeartWare device and pushed the manufacturer, Medtronic, to expand financial assistance to consumers.

Neil Bedis investigative analysis of the missteps in the FDAs work with HeartWare are nicely juxtaposed with real testimonials, said the judges. You can tell Bedi went to great lengths to research and report this story.

The Reynolds Center will spotlight the recipients of the top prizes at an event on Nov. 9 at 6 p.m. Arizona time in the First Amendment Forum at the Cronkite School in Downtown Phoenix. Tune in to the Reynolds Center event page for updates on the live event.

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Winners of the 16th Annual Barlett & Steele Awards announced - Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Seventy-five years ago this month, the ultra-right House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) opened its infamous hearings in Washington D.C. into Communist influence in the film industry.

The hearings led to the indictmenton charges of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the committeeand the ultimate jailing of the members of the so-called Hollywood Ten, a group of left-wing writers, directors and producers. In the aftermath of the October 1947 hearings, the Hollywood studios initiated a blacklist, first of the Ten themselves (or those of them that were then employed), and ultimately, anyone labeled a subversive by HUAC and various anti-communist watchdogs.

Estimates vary, and there was never an official list (the studios, for legal reasons, always denied that any blacklist existed), but approximately 325 screenwriters, actors and directors were banned. The total number of those blacklisted or graylisted, partially blocked from working, may have been as high as 500. Among them were some of the most talented and sensitive figures in the film world.

Immense pressure was exerted on individuals under conditions of the Cold War anti-communist hysteria to name names. The witch-hunters were implacable. Artists with left-wing histories had the choice of informing on and destroying former friends and comrades or seeing their own lives and careers ruined. This was Scoundrel Time in Lillian Hellmans memorable phrase. Arthur Millers The Crucible, which uses the Salem witch trials as a metaphor, captures some of the terror and brutality of the era.

Directly or indirectly, the pressures drove numerous individuals to an early death, by heart attacks, strokes or suicide. Moreover, if one examines the lives and careers of Hollywood performers with an eye to this history, a distinct pattern emerges in sundry cases. X suddenly traveled to England or Europe to appear in or direct films. Y underwent a nervous breakdown in the early 1950s and never recovered his or her equilibrium. Alcoholism overcame Z. Others simply had the artistic or moral stuffing knocked out of them and never did anything challenging again. Many were intimidated into betraying their own best artistic and social instincts. Self-censorship, holding ones tongue in the interests of self-preservation, became the order of the day.

The full consequences extend far beyond the thousands of personal tragedies. The aim of the HUAC campaign, backed by the FBI and the US state apparatus as a whole, endorsed by the trade unions and official American liberalism, was to purge left-wing ideas and, furthermore, to the greatest extent possible criminalize such ideas, to enshrine anti-communism. A variety of individual ills could be addressed by the movies, but there was to be no suggestion of something fundamentally wrong with American society. The film industry in the US has never recovered to this day.

Sympathy for the blacklist victims should not blind anyone to the disastrous, reactionary character of the policies pursued by the Stalinist Communist Party, which themselves had far-reaching consequences. We have noted before that the CP and its membership had been profoundly and irretrievably compromised by the crimes of Stalinism. The Moscow Trials, the GPU murders of left-wing elements in Spain, the Stalin-Hitler Pact and other events left them politically vulnerable. In a broader intellectual sense, the CP membership had been largely indifferent to theoretical questions and tended to accept Stalinism as a brand of left-wing American radicalism, we wrote.

The Stalinists Popular Front policies, which subordinated the working class to the Democratic Party and the Roosevelt administration, rendered the Hollywood left thoroughly unprepared once Washingtons wartime alliance with the Soviet Union ended, the mask came off and the grisly visage of American imperialism, now the dominant capitalist power, appeared. The CP had promised a rebirth of democracy, a New Deal on an even grander and more social democratic scale. The partys members and periphery, won on the basis that Communism was 20th-Century Americanism, found it very difficult, if not impossible, to stand up to the immense pressures once the tide turned and the Cold War began.

Larry Ceplair has a lengthy history of writing about the blacklist and related matters. He is the co-author, along with Steven Englund, of The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 193060, first published in 1979, one of the most valuable works on the subject. In addition, he is the author of Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical and The Marxist and the Movies: A Biography of Paul Jarrico. Ceplair is professor emeritus of history at Santa Monica College in California.

In the preface to his new book, The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later, Ceplair explains that this year marks the forty-seventh anniversary of my first foray into the archives to write about [the blacklist]. Since then, I have coauthored The Inquisition in Hollywood, two biographies of blacklisted screenwriters, dozens of articles and book and film reviews on the subject, conducted many oral histories, and curated an exhibit at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In addition to the lead essay, Looking Back, which considers the pendulum swing of historiography in relation to the blacklist, the new book includes pieces on Jewish Anti-Communism in the US and Hollywood and the ongoing debate over the Politics and Morality of Cooperative and Uncooperative Witnesses who testified before HUAC, 19471953. There are also studies of writers Dashiell Hammett, Ring Lardner Jr. (neither of whom capitulated to the witch-hunt) and Isobel Lennart (who did).

In Looking Back, Ceplair notes that the right-wing mythologizers, the defenders of the Hollywood purges, who have come to the fore since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in particular, are not interested in facts and definitions; they abhor complexity and nuance. The attitudes or motives of Communists are unwelcome intruders in the simplistic and reductionist world of anti-Communism, in which anyone who dared to oppose the policies and acts of the domestic Cold War was to be demonized.

Continuing, Ceplair asserts that it is, rather, the anti-Communists who should apologize for J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Dies, Richard Nixon, and Joseph McCarthy. And if assignment of blame is indeed possible, it is the anti-Communists who must be assigned responsibility for the perpetuation of investigations and proscriptions and the ruined lives of the thousands of people caught up in the jaws of the Cold War juggernaut they assembled and operated. This behemoth emboldened a rogues gallery of demagogues to inflate, often for their own agendas, the threat posed to national security by domestic Communists.

Later, he asks, What had the motion picture blacklist accomplished, aside from barring approximately three hundred people from their chosen vocation, hastening the exit of hundreds of people from the Hollywood Communist Party, altering the content of movies, and creating an informer subculture in Hollywood?

Larry Ceplair spoke to the WSWS recently on a video call.

***

David Walsh: As far as you know, is there going to be any official Hollywood, film industry or Academy recognition of the 75th anniversary of the blacklist?

Larry Ceplair: To the best of my knowledge, no. The industry made a big deal out of it in 2002. There were effusive apologies from the guilds. I dont think theyre going to do anything more. Film historian Ed Rampell organized various other blacklist anniversaries,. But I havent heard anything that hes doing this time. So I assume its just going to pass quietly.

DW: Apart from your own book, The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later, is there any kind of outpouring of new commentary on the events?

LC: I havent seen any. One of the reasons is that, as far as I know, Norma Barzman is probably the only blacklist victim still alive. Marsha Hunt died three weeks ago or so. The victims were the force behind the anti-Elia Kazan protest in 1999 and similar events. Theyre gone now, and their surviving children dont seem that interested.

DW: Do you have any sense of how many people in the film industry, and more broadly, are even aware of what took place 75 years ago?

LC: Very few, I think. There are of course historians and history students, but in the general population, including the film population, its a very small number who know about this history. And those who do are divided between those who have been supporters of the unfriendly witnesses and those who dont like them. Were an aging group, you know. In 10 more years there might not be anybody around to carry on this debate.

DW: How did you come upon this subject and why did it affect you? Why did you begin writing about this?

LC: Well, it was somewhat roundabout. I was living in New York at the time and New York has a lot of repertory movie theaters. I was going to a lot of movies from the 30s and 40s. It just struck me that they were so much better than the movies I was seeing, the current movies.

The auteur theory was very big in New York at that time, Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice and so on. I started reading books about directors, but I quickly realized that directors dont really know what theyre doing. They do it in some subliminal, instinctive level. They cant really explain what theyre doing.

I started looking at the writers as a group, and I realized they were the largest group of blacklistees. Thats how I started studying the events themselves. I thought most of the books I read were really superficial and condescending. I was enough of a historian to know that people dont get prosecuted and proscribed that way unless they had some substance to them.

My co-author Steven Englunds stepfather had been a member of the Screenwriters Guild for many years. I said, I think we have an interesting story here about the writers and their politicization. Thats how that started, in the mid-1970s.

DW: In the first essay in the new book you discuss the historiography on the blacklist. You point to the leftward shift in the 1960s and 1970s, which expressed hostility to the anti-communist purges, and then the change that took place, the right-wing backlash in the 1990s, especially following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

LC: One of the major events was the opening of the former Soviet archives, and the release of all those records, which revealed the correspondence between the Communist Parties and the Russians. So these right-wingers said, you see, we were right all along. The Communists were agents of a foreign power and they were out to destroy us. The Cold War was important and correct.

DW: We are the most vehement opponents of Stalinism, but to identify the Communist Party as nothing more than a GPU conspiracy was McCarthyite rubbish. Thousands of people joined the Party, not to support Stalin and the gulags, but to fight racism, anti-Semitism, fascism, capitalism. They were wrong in the party they joined, and their defense of Stalinism discredited and often destroyed them. But some of the most talented people found themselves in that organization.

LC: I agree. The notion that somehow or other, if people hadnt joined the Communist Party, something would have happened differently in the Soviet Union is just illogical nonsense.

DW: As we noted years ago in writing about Elia Kazan, informers like Kazan never bothered to explain how ceding the struggle against totalitarianism to McCarthy, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, the CIA, the FBI and the US military would advance the cause of human liberation.

LC: That is because they cannot. Their post-facto explanations are flimsy rationalizations of their primal reason for informing: keeping their jobs. The explanations of the unfriendly witnesses are more substantive. I first learned of them, and got some of my inspiration, as a number of us did, from watching Hollywood on Trial [1976], which I still think is by far the best documentary on the subject. Around the same time that Steven and I started working, Nancy Schwartz started preparing her book on The Hollywood Writers Wars. Victor Navasky had also done something on the Hollywood Ten in articles in the New York Times, as a sort of prelude to his book, Naming Names.

We were not the first, but I think we were among the first cohort to start working seriously on this. No one had gone back to the 30s and 40s. Thats what the new group did.

DW: Could you explain a little about the Dies Committee, later the House Un-American Activities Committee, and how it was set up?

LC: Originally, the committee was the brainchild of a congressman from New York. Samuel Dickstein was Jewish and he wanted to investigate the proliferation of fascist groups in the United States in the mid-30s. Dickstein wanted to investigate these as agents of a foreign power, etc. The committee was originally called the Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Dickstein wasnt named chairman, that went to John W. McCormack, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

McCormack began to shift the committee from looking at fascism, to looking at all subversive groups. Martin Dies, a right-wing Democrat from Texas, became chairman in 1938, and then it became purely an anti-communist committee. Dies did not seek re-election in 1944. At that point, John Rankin, the Democrat from Mississippi, became the main influence over the committee. When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1946, John Parnell Thomas from New Jersey became chairman.

So Dies was around for about six or seven years and didnt really make a dent. He tried twice to come out to Hollywood during the late 1930s and early 1940s to conduct investigations, but he found no support at that time. On these occasions the studio owners didnt support him. There was no Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, established in 1944, to support him.

DW: Presumably during the war years these failures had something to do with the alliance with the Soviet Union and the policy of the Roosevelt administration.

LC: That obviously dampened anti-Soviet talk, but it never went away. It always remained a subtext. And groups like the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, big businessmen, Southern Democrats, they were just waiting for the war to end so they could launch, or relaunch, the Red Scare.

DW: John Rankin was one of the filthiest of the HUAC figures, an out-and-out fascist, a defender of the Ku Klux Klan.

LC: Rankin was a virulent anti-Semite and racist, anti-communist, a man simply without any moral scruple whatsoever. He was important because he was the one who pushed for HUAC to be made permanent and for it to take up the Hollywood investigations again. So a significant but horrible figure politically.

J. Edgar Hoover, of course, is one of the most important figures of the Cold War. Hes a spider at the center of this vast web that grew so significantly and became so powerful.

HUAC had its own investigators. They had two investigators who came out to Hollywood on a pretty regular basis and made contact with the anti-communists there. But they kept pushing Hoover for more and he kept saying, no, no, because he just despised the HUAC people. Hoover thought they were latecomers to the game and not very serious. He thought the committee was detracting from the effort, like Joe McCarthy, who he thought was making the anti-communism issue ridiculous, bringing it into disrepute. Finally, in September 1947, Hoover agreed to give them names without, however, handing over the full files.

DW: We have written about the fact that there was a significant change in the situation in the US in 194748: The American political and media establishments anticommunist campaign had shifted into full gear.

In addition to the HUAC hearings into Communist influence in Hollywood in the autumn of 1947 and the eventual conviction and sentencing of the Hollywood Ten, throughout 1948 the Communist Party leadership in New York City faced prosecution under the Smith Act, which outlawed conspiring to advocate forcible overthrow of the government; in August 1948 congressional hearings (presided over by Richard Nixon) began into accusations that former State Department official Alger Hiss had spied for the Soviet Union; the following summer, indicating the general climate, a right-wing mob broke up a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York.

LC: You can see the sprouts beginning to come up in 1946, but the major turning point came in March 1947, with the announcement of the Truman Doctrine. And the institution of loyalty investigations of all federal employees.

DW: Could you explain what happened in May 1947 when HUAC came to Hollywood and held closed-door hearings?

LC: A HUAC subcommittee came out with Parnell Thomas. They held closed-door hearings at the Biltmore Hotel and most of the witnesses were of the friendly variety. Studio head Jack Warner was one of them. Most of the rest were members of the Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

So almost all the information they were getting could be used to issue subpoenas. They also used the trip, I think, to try to intimidate the Motion Picture Association of America, the studio heads, to get them to cooperate. They were saying, you guys really have a problem here. And if you dont do something about it, we will.

Eric Johnson, president of the association, and the producers took the same position they had 10 years earlier, which was, We have the situation under control. We dont need this sort of thing. But this time around, HUAC wasnt buying it. And so they go back to Washington with a lot of names.

DW: In September 1947, 43 friendly and unfriendlyi.e., left-wingwitnesses were issued subpoenas to appear in October in Washington before HUAC. There were originally 19 unfriendly witnesses, including German playwright Bertolt Brecht, and that was whittled down to 11 or 10, if you exclude Brecht (who left the country). Why were those 10 (or 11) actually called, do you think?

LC: You know, no one really knows. I asked that question to many people, including Albert Maltz, Lester Cole, two of the Ten. And there doesnt seem to be any single rhyme or reason to it. All were male, mostly writers, a significant number were Jewish, almost no one had a war record, which I think is important. The committee didnt want to be seen persecuting war heroes. Three of them werent Communists at all. Howard Koch, Lewis Milestone, Irving Pichel, none of whom was called. Although Koch ended up being blacklisted anyway.

DW: Like Marsha Hunt, whom we wrote about a few weeks ago. She seems to have just been a principled liberal, never close to the Communist Party. What about the Committee for the First Amendment, the group of prominent Hollywood liberals, who opposed HUAC?

LC: That committee was started by director William Wyler and screenwriter Phillip Dunne, both solid liberals. The Hollywood liberals very much disliked what HUAC was trying to do. But they didnt want to defend the 19 directly; their goal was to bring HUAC into disrepute.

For one thing, they knew that most of the 19 were Communists. They knew that the 19 were probably going to take a position in the hearings that was different from what they wanted to do. The 19 werent going to be forthright First Amendment defenders. So Wyler, Dunne and company tried to draw a line. They would defend the principle, but not the person, which I think is an impossible line to draw.

Most of them were sincere, naive liberals. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are good examples of that. I give them credit for what they initially tried to do.

The Committee for the First Amendment made two national radio broadcasts. They had this well-publicized trip to Washington D.C. They were ineffective. For example, Richard Nixon, when he heard they were coming, immediately flew back to California so he wouldnt have to confront them or deal with them.

DW: Did they do anything in Washington aside from attending the hearings in October 1947?

LC: No. They tried to meet with HUAC and present them with petitions, but they didnt have any success. And, of course, as soon as they got back to Hollywood, the studio bosses called them in and said, stop this. And they did. Humphrey Bogart wrote his famous column for Photoplay in 1948, Im No Communist, which was horrible.

DW: Yes, whether he wrote it or his agent wrote it, somebody wrote it anyway. But it was a horrible article.

LC: It shows the atmosphere of fear there was at that time. I think a few scenes in The Way We Were [Sidney Pollack, 1973] capture that well.

DW: This is something we have written about a number of timeshow prepared do you think the Hollywood left was for what hit it?

LC: After May 1947, they began to think that something big was coming and they began to have a series of meetings, preparing the ground of what might be coming. So I dont think they were entirely unprepared, but I think when they received the subpoenas, they were shocked. That was a step beyond what they thought was going to happen.

They were not organized in any real sense. They were in the Communist Party. They were in groups like the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. But it was only after they got the subpoenas that they put together a defense committee.

DW: What was the role of the liberals, the ACLU, organizations like that?

LC: Nonexistent. They didnt do anything of import. The ACLU has a very dicey record during these years in terms of defending communists. There were a large number of liberal anti-communists, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., for example, who made no effort to try and get due process for the Communists.

DW: What role did the unions play?

LC: The biggest union in Hollywood was the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees [IATSE], and it was anti-communist through and through. Roy Brewer, their international representative in Hollywood, was probably the most zealous anti-communist Ive ever heard about or met. He went to his grave [in 2006] believing there was still a Communist conspiracy in the United States.

The only union that might have been supportive was the Conference of Studio Unions. But they were caught up in a huge jurisdictional strike confrontation with IATSE and the producers that basically broke their backs. So they really were no help. The [writers, directors and actors] guilds kind of stood back, taking the position that we dont have a Communist problem, but not supporting the 19.

DW: Obviously, the purging of Hollywood of left-wing forces and the purging of the unions are associated processes. What do you think were some of the broader social and cultural consequences of the blacklist?

LC: I think the biggest one was censorship and self-censorship, not officially, but unofficially. The studios, which always were wary about doing films with a strong social content, became utterly opposed to them. Those who kept their jobs didnt want to do anything to call attention to themselves.

So I think they began to seriously censor themselves. There was a trend of social commentary movies after World War II for a number of reasons. People were hyped by the successful fight against fascism. Many of them had made documentaries during the war. They wanted to come back and do that sort of thing in America.

As a result of that and other processes, there were more social problem films made between 1945 and 1947 than ever before. They were a significant portion of the output. They almost disappear after that. Insofar as you think film is important in creating a dialog, a way of thinking about things, it became a much narrower media form.

The blacklisted writers published a few novels with small publishers, and they published a few periodicals, so they werent completely silenced. But they couldnt write movie scripts under their own names. I think it had a significant dampening effect on 50s culture.

DW: Left-wing thought was essentially criminalized. The most interesting artists in Hollywood were not necessarily CP members, although there was a group of writers and also directors such as Abe Polonsky and Joseph Losey. But I agree, the movies made between 1945 and 1951 are the most interesting movies made in Hollywoods history.

Not all of them explicitly political, often they couldnt be, but theres a strong element of opposition, of criticism, along with great texture and depth. From Orson Welles and John Huston, for example, left figures but not associated with the Communist Party.

There were Max Ophuls Caught and The Reckless Moment, Edgar Ulmers Ruthless, Hustons Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Welles The Stranger and The Lady From Shanghai, Michael Curtizs Mildred Pierce, Flamingo Road and The Breaking Point, Abe Polonskys Force of Evil, Raoul Walshs White Heat, Robert Siodmaks The Killers and Criss Cross, Anthony Manns Raw Deal and a hundred lesser-known films. This kind of filmmaking was essentially made impossible. It became almost impossible to make films about contemporary American life. So you went and made Westerns and so on.

LC: Whereas in the 50s, you had almost 50 explicitly anti-communist movies. They didnt do very well, but there they were. I can count on the fingers of one hand the movies that really spoke to opposition. Perhaps Bad Day at Black Rock with Spencer Tracy, and Storm Center with Bette Davis, as a librarian who gets fired for having the wrong books, and Broken Arrow. Not many more.

It became too dangerous to express any criticism of the United States. Sixteenth-century Dutch artists painted landscapes because it was politically dangerous to do anything else.

DW: What is your purpose in continuing to write about these issues?

LC: Because I think the First Amendment is in a very precarious condition. Its been under attack in the United States almost from the very beginning and its under attack especially today. I think its incredibly important for people to understand that.

We have a Bill of Rights, but it doesnt mean much unless people are vigilant and defend it. Otherwise, its just a piece of paper, I think. Vigilance, critical thinking are just crucial. I dont think we have enough of that right now.

DW: Do you plan to continue this work?

LC: I think this is my last hurrah in regard to the blacklist. I dont think I have anything else to say.

DW: How would you define your own politics?

LC: I would say Im a democratic socialist. I think I think we need a socialist form of government. But I believe strongly that we have to reach it through some sort of democratic process. You mentioned that you were a Trotskyist. Leon Trotsky is one of my great, great heroes.

DW: So youve read some of his works.

LC: Ive read everything thats in translation. Permanent Revolution and Literature and Revolution are great books. I think the way Trotsky acted in 1917, during the revolution, was genius. I dont think there could have been a Bolshevik revolution without Trotsky. And his commentaries on fascism, during the 1930s, were brilliant.

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An interview with Larry Ceplair, author of The Hollywood Motion Picture BlacklistSeventy-Five Years Later: The biggest consequence 'was censorship and...

(RNS) Queer students like Veronica Bonifacio Penales, who have been protesting religious university policies they call discriminatory and homophopic, often find themselves confronting the same question: Why would you go to a Christian school if you are LGBTQ?

For many of these students, this fight at religiously affiliated universities is part of a larger push happening from within Christianity toward more inclusive beliefs to, as activists at Seattle Pacific University put it, deconstruct harmful theologies on sexuality, gender and queerness.

And, as theyve reminded their thousands of social media followers: You can be queer and Christian.

We shouldnt have to compromise where we go because they dont want to accept who we are, said Penales, a student at Baylor University, a Baptist school in Waco, Texas. Baylor has taught me what I dont want my religion to be.

RELATED: Are the culture wars changing how Christian students choose colleges?

Within the last two years, students at religious schools across the country have made headlines pushing back against university policies regarding LGBTQ students or staff.

Theyve staged a monthlong sit-in at Seattle Pacific University, a private school associated with the Free Methodist Church, against a policy that forbids the hiring of LGBTQ people. Theyve called on Baylor University, that affirms marriage between a man and a woman as the biblical norm, to officially recognize an LGBTQ student advocacy group. Theyve protested at Brigham Young University after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which operates the school, saidsame-sex romantic behavior was not compatible with university rules, despite the removal of the homosexual behavior section from its Honor Code, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Veronica Bonifacio Penales. Photo courtesy of Penales

Penales, along with students at more than 100 campuses, are now planning to walk out of school on Tuesday (Oct. 11) to, among other things, protest religious exemptions to Title IX that they say allow for the discrimination and erasure of LGBTQ students. Theyre urging for Title IXenforcement so all faculty, staff and students, including those who are LGBTQ and from minority communities, have the ability to exist completely as themselves.

Organized by the nonprofit Religious Exemptions Accountability Project and the Black Menaces a group at BYU, which has expanded to numerous college campuses and has gone viral for their TikTok videos interviewing their largely white peers about issues concerning race the walkout will be happening at religious, public and secular campuses, including high schools. The nationwide student protest, dubbed Strike Out Queer-Phobia, coincides with National Coming Out Day.

Students from Azusa Pacific University, an interdenominational Christian school in Southern California, will be walking out as they demand gender and sexuality training for staff and faculty. They also want staff and faculty to be allowed to include their pronouns in email signatures. LGBTQ singer and songwriter Grace Baldridge and other local artists will be performing nearby after the walkout.

At Denver University, students will be walking out in solidarity with queer students at BYU. And at Western Illinois University, Casa Latina Cultural Center will be participating as a way to urge institutions to implement Title IX to these religious universities who are exempt.

We are privileged here at WIU, especially since students are protected by Title IX, they wrote.

Were all fighting for each other, said Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, a junior at Brigham Young University, and one of the leading organizers of the walkout. Stewart-Johnson, who was raised Mormon, is one of the founders of The Black Menaces.

I cant fight for POC (people of color), or Black people without fighting for queer people, he said.

The Black Menaces in late August urged mandatory anti-racism training and sessions for staff, faculty and students after a Duke volleyball player, who is Black, alleged she was repeatedly called a racial slur by someone sitting in BYUs student section.

Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, right, interviews people during the Salt Lake City Pride Parade on June 5, 2022. Photo by Rabbecca Torres Moak, courtesy of Stewart-Johnson

After Black Menaces chapters became active on other campuses this summer, Stewart-Johnson said hes noticed that students in religious campuses answer their questions differently. Theyre emboldened by religion, he said, to push out their ideas, regardless if those are homophobic or racist, because they feel like God is empowering them.

To Max Perry Mueller, a historian of race and culture, the work to address racism within Mormonism falls to people not in the center but on the periphery of Mormonism, he wrote in an essay in Slate. He noted in his essay that restrictions that banned Black people from full membership in the LDS church remained in place until 1978.

Mueller said its crucial for university faculty, staff and nearby residents to listen to student activists.

Theyre going to be future alumni who care about the institution Theyre coming into adulthood here so they have a vested interest, Mueller told RNS. With any institution you have a better sight line when youre on the margins.

According to Paul Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, universities like BYU have a system of discrimination that is on the brink of collapse.

Last spring REAP filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of dozens of LGBTQ students at federally funded Christian colleges and universities.

RELATED: Are LGBTQ students at Christian schools discriminated against? A lawsuit, scholarly studies say yes.

The younger generation, Southwick notes, went to schools where they were taught critical race theory and to question the white values that they were taught in their white churches.

They are done being told that in order to be a good Christian, that means you must be a white, straight Christian, or embrace white, straight Christian values, Southwick said. This is a crisis because the (university) boards are so out of sync with their youth that it will essentially be an inescapable crisis for them.

A number of these schools are part of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, a global association of more than 180 Christian higher education institutions. Campus attorneys, public relations professionals and outside counsel gathered at a CCCU conference in late September to talk about Title IX and accreditation concerns. The conference was set to feature a public relations crisis simulation and discussions about how to ensure mission fidelity legally and through good policy.

Social media post for the Strike Out Queer-Phobia protest. Screen grab

Amanda Staggenborg, chief communications officer for the CCCU, said the council encourages free thought and ideas as protected in the First Amendment.

We also support our member institutions and their commitment to Biblical standards in their mission work. We ask for peaceful debate, not campus disruption, as cultural issues are discussed and challenged in academia, Staggenborg told RNS through email.

Tensions over LGBTQ-related policies have particularly intensified this year at SPU, where students will also be walking out.

Students and faculty have sued leaders of the schools board of trustees for refusing to end the hiring policy. Additionally, the Washington state attorney general is also investigating SPU for potential illegal discrimination against LGBTQ people due to the schools hiring practices.

Our story is not unique, said Chloe Guillot, a graduate student at SPU who is listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the board of trustees. You can just see theres this pattern and movement happening of students and employees at these Christian universities finally saying, enough is enough.

While students and faculty claim the trustees position threatens SPUs reputation, school leaders see the blowback as a violation of the universitys right to religious freedom. SPU leaders have sued the state of Washington to protect its freedom to choose employees on the basis of religion, free from government interference or intimidation.

But the way Guillot sees it, its not about us persecuting you for your religion, because we share your religion.

At Baylor, Penalessaid she has found her voice in advocating for this work.

The university earlier this year granted itsfirst charter in history to a new LGBTQ-focused student group, but its statement on human sexuality that upholds purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman still stands, the Texas Monthly reported. The LGBTQ advocacy group that Penales is involved with remains unchartered.

Penales, who is also a plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit filed by REAP, is a main organizer of the walkout. She loves Baylor so much, she said, that she is willing tocontinue this work to make a change. But, she added: I love me more to also do that work.

Link:
Students across the country to walk out in protest of discrimination by religious schools - Religion News Service

In the weeks after he assumed office, former President Donald Trump put reporters in the crosshairs when he labeled them the enemy of the American people.

He was following the authoritarian playbook, long consulted by the likes of Stalin and Hitler, but it was shocking to see such strongman rhetoric coming from an American leader, who swore an oath to a constitution that takes press freedoms pretty seriously.

The open animus toward journalists that Trump exemplified is increasingly a standard trait of leaders at all levels of American government, particularly, but not only, among Republicans. Hostility to the press coincides with the growing reliance by politicians on digital platforms such as social media to bypass journalists and communicate directly with constituents.

Their access to free and easy forms of mass communication allows them to indulge their animosity for reporters who might challenge them on misjudgments, misinformation and misdeeds, with the result being an electorate that is misled, misinformed and mistreated.

What was true in 1789 is true in 2022: A strong press is essential to a strong America.

Despite the First Amendment and the countrys venerable journalistic traditions, the U.S. has descended to a mediocre place among nations of the world in terms of press freedoms. The2022 World Press Freedom Index, which measures the ability of journalists to disseminate news independently and without political or other interference, ranks the U.S. at 42, just behind Burkina Faso, whichas of several days agois ruled by a 34-year-old army captain who led a coup.

Republicans have taken press blocking to new levels in the run-up to the November elections.

In this cycle, Ive started to see more Republican candidates avoiding the press, blocking the press from events, and taking advantage of the fact that there is conservative media that will ask different questions and has a different audience, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel toldNPR.

Far-right candidates, such as Pennsylvania governor hopeful Doug Mastriano and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, treat legacy media with near-total disdain. The editor of The Plain Dealer in Ohio last monthran a blank spacewhere a photo was supposed to appear ofa rally for DeSantis and U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance as a protest after those Republicans imposed restrictions that amounted to barring the press from covering the event.

In a sign of how siloed our information sources have become,CNNcorrespondent Kyung Lah wrote, midterm campaigns, many of them Republican, are widely shutting out local papers, local TV stations and national reporters.

So many Republican leaders are preoccupied with so-called cancel culture and what they perceive ascensorshipof their views. Its an astounding feat of hypocrisy for them to also bar journalists from events, which is a form of censorship in that it preempts news readers access to impartial speech about people who hold public office.

And this highlights the larger problem when candidates and holders of public office reject the role of journalists in an open democratic society if it were merely newsrooms that suffered due to the trend, Americans might not have reason to care much, but its democracy itself thats damaged.

A democracy functions only when constituents have access to reliable information about their government and the officials who lead public institutions, especially information thats unflattering to those officials. Its no surprise that candidates and office holders would prefer to communicate directly with constituents. That way they can inflate the good stuff and omit the bad stuff.

But thats exactly why Americans should reject the practice. And the more a politician maligns truth tellers in the press, the more constituents should be skeptical. They will find that the enemy of the American people is in fact a trusted friend.

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Fear of reporters is fear of the truth - Ohio Capital Journal