This week is Banned Books Week, an annual affirmation of Americans’ right to read, founded by librarians and concerned booksellers in 1982 to combat efforts to ban books in US schools and libraries. In the first half of the program Mickey and his guests look at some recent efforts to restrict students’ choice of books in Ohio and Texas and discuss why the work of the Banned Books Week Coalition is so vital in an era rife with various forms of censorship. This past week was also the tenth anniversary of the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement that gave us the 99% vs. the 1% meme to address class inequality. Author/journalist Michael Levitin joins the program to look at Occupy’s origins and its widespread and ongoing influences as they discuss his new book, Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy.
Notes:
Full disclosure- Project Censored is a member of NCAC and the BBWC. Nora Pelizzari is Director of Communications at the National Coalition Against Censorship (www.ncac.org).Jackie Farmer is Senior Program Officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education . Michael Levitin is a widely-published journalist who in 2011 co-founded the Occupied Wall Street Journal. His new book is Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy.
Other web sites mentioned on this program:
www.bannedbooksweek.org
www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/oif
Photo credit to San José Public Library