The Bennington Banner reports that at the next Bennington Select Board Meeting, on Monday night, October 14, the board will consider a law prohibiting panhandling.
Violations of the First Amendment are getting to be a habit in Bennington. The public tax supported library bans some political books. Some candidates, depending on Party affiliation, are often not allowed to participate in election forums. And remember what happened at the last select board meeting just 2 weeks ago. The order was given to pull the plug on the TV cameras. Thousands of TV screens went black. The select board did not want the public to see or hear what was happening.
Now this anti free speech law is on the agenda.
If it is acceptable for someone to request directions to the Battle Monument, then it follows that a simple request for money must also be permitted. We either have First Amendment protections, or we don’t. Well, in Vermont we don’t. It is just that simple. Increasingly, speech is being silenced.
In addition to legal issues, this law that is under consideration, shows a mind-numbing lack of humanity. It exposes the hidden hatred toward the less fortunate. Can anyone deny that these are hard times. People are hungry and homeless.
The reason that this is on the agenda is because, to quote the Better Bennington Corporation: “It puts our worse face forward”. The official policy is that that the poor should be hidden and invisible. Where is our compassion?
This erosion of rights will continue as long as we are silent. Is there anyone out there who can be present at the meeting? Citizens better speak up before it is too late…maybe it is already too late.
Ms Jackowski’s allegations of censorship in the Bennington library are completely unfounded.
She’s repeated these allegations over and over again but they simply are not true.
Before anyone feels any outrage over censorship at any public library, learn the facts. Get both sides of the story. Don’t just blindly believe the untruths being spread by one person on the internet.
…believe every library across the nation has been given a ‘government shit-list’ of books ‘unsuitable’ for the public (meaning youth, of course). This helps libraries deal with the budget too.
As far as the panhandling, I want to thank you, Rosie, for pointing out the insidiousness of banning panhandlers. Does this also apply in Bennington to street musicians with their donation hats and buckets?
Yes, we want to hide the poor, hide the desperate economic state our nation is in at the hands of Wall St. and the Very Rich. They should get jobs, these street people. What jobs? They should sell their blood, their organs, their entire beings into slavery. Social Darwinism. Atavism. if they can’t work, produce, and buy stuff, kill ’em. This is what we are becoming through ADVENTURES IN CAPITALISM. Where are the Workhouses of Scrooge’s day. They’re coming. God Bless Us, Everyone.
they banned my books
and then they banned
the books written about me
after they banned me
they don’t want anyone to know
what they are up to
the police have been given
the task of removing the evidence
still there are some of us left
with some of the books
we love and have kept with us
to read again and again while we starve
and maybe if we can pass along
one thought here and there
to those who pause before us
it will be their food for thought
people will say this isn’t happening
it’s just a beautification
appearances are everything now
as the Rich can degree them
I have my copy of The Plague by Camus
and I utter that famous line:
“Proclaim a state of plague. Close the city.”
to everyone before the police come
of course in that book
people helped each other
what would it take now for people
to follow what’s in all those books?
I don’t know because I am too weak now
to come up with an answer
and the police are coming down the street
to clean up the disease before it spreads
all over appearances
yes, we have been banned
all the books are being collected
and soon so will you
“When Fascism came, it was not brought by uniformed troops.
It was not imposed at the point of a gun.
Fascism came because citizens were too distracted to pay attention.
Voters were too misinformed to cast intelligent ballots.
And the mass of people failed to recognize the inherent danger in the censoring of speech and the banning of books.” RMJ
It’s a damn shame and a ‘downer’ to see intelligent people take issue with what Rosemarie is saying about book banning. If you don’t pay attention to how and what kind of books are made available at your libraries, the day may come when libraries themselves will become an ‘unnecessary public expense’ since everything they provide is ‘on-line’ anyway, and the NSA will provide the ‘appropriate’ on-line crap.
We’re talking about BOOKS here, People. And what our children will have available in the future. Fahrenheit 451 should be redone as a movie that shows a world without libraries, without books, where you can only read on E-bay if you pay a fee.
Rosie, we’re choppin’ and no chips are flyin’ here. But keep it up.
Give me the titles and authors of books that you think are ‘banned’ at the Bennington Free Library.
I’ll call up the ciruculation desk and request them. We’ll see what happens.
that there exists honest brokers here. It is my hope, as always that justice will prevail for all concerned most importantly the patrons of the library system.
This is about the First Amendment – not one specific book. Almost all librarians support the freedom to read and do not support the banning of any book. When a library does ban a book there are no winners. The library loses patrons. The library loses volunteers. The community loses. The reading public loses. Maybe the only winner is the banned author. Any banned book becomes a collectors item.
Some people have gone into the library and requested books that have been banned. Here is just one of them. It has been reviewed by one of Vermont’s most respected scholars… a professor with a PhD.
Shires Press, 2010- reviewed by Lea Newman
“Contrary to the old adage “You can’t tell a book from its cover” Rosemarie Jackowski’s new book “Banned in Vermont” boasts a cover that is as straight-forward and clear as the book itself. The four words that appear immediately below the author’s name on its cover succinctly describe its method: “unedited , uncensored, unpretentious, unabashed.”
The peace sign that is stamped just below has the book’s title branded across it, and the international Morse code signal for SOS is repeated below the image. Both announce the book’s content and urgency. The visual impact presages the verbal power of the pages that follow.
In the first part of the book Jackowski tells the story of her arrest as one of the twelve defendants whose protest on March 20, 2003, against the United States’ bombing of children in Iraq, temporarily blocked traffic in Bennington, Vermont. (Full disclosure: I followed the story in the Bennington Banner at the time of the protest and arrest, and I wrote a letter to the editor in her defense, but never followed through on her conviction and sentencing, which is the major thrust of the book.) With plain and simple words she describes being handcuffed and led to a windowless cell… but that was just the beginning of a legal process that took more than four years to be resolved.
The second part of the book is a collection of pieces that Jackowski wrote between 2004 and 2010. Her book’s title has a dual meaning. Not only was she denied the right to express her criticism of her country’s government in a non-violent protest, but after her anti-war views became public, her writings have been rejected in Vermont. The “ban” applied to everything she has written, from serious essays on such subjects as “USA Assassination Plots” to fanciful Christmas fables. The random samplings are representative of Jackowski’s skillful rhetoric, of her dedication to justice, her passion for peace, as well as her wit and humor.
For me, the most engrossing part of the book was the third section: the official court record of the sentencing. It reads like a best-selling legal thriller complete with emotional character witnesses for the defense, the rejection by the judge of a photograph of an Iraqi child with the back of her head blown off by an American bomb because it was deemed “sensational”. The judge appears conflicted by the circumstances of the case but advocates following the strict rule of law.
Will Jackowski be sentenced to more jail time? I hate spoiler reviews and I will not reveal “the end of the story.” Rather I recommend that all should read this book, not only to discover how or whether justice was done, but to learn as much as Rosemarie Jackowski did in living it and writing about it. It should be required reading for anyone who aspires to be a good American.”
Lea Newman, Ph.D. is an author and Professor Emorita at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.