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November 2003

Books (and Web Sites) Are Dangerous

By Lisa Collier Cool

Last year Paul Trummel spent 111 days in a maximum security prison—25 of them in solitary confinement—in a cellblock with accused rapists and Gary Ridgway, the man charged with being the notorious Green River serial killer. Trummel's crime? The 68-year-old retired professor published his articles and drawings on his Web site, www.contracabal.com.

Admittedly, some of Trummel's views are offensive or downright odd. He considered the administrators of the government-subsidized retirement home where he used to live to be "pandering pygmies."Along with writing that he wouldn't be happy until a certain male manager was "singing soprano," he opined that another was a terrorist sympathizer with a "sexual dysfunction," that is, homosexuality. Trummel sprinkled his text with personal information about the staffers, such as their home addresses, and included a picture in which a manager had been made to resemble Osama bin Laden.

Trummel was imprisoned after defying a court order to remove some of this material, which a Seattle, WA, judge deemed harassment. Rejecting the argument that the Internet publisher was exercising constitutionally-protected free speech, the judge ruled that Trummel wasn't a legitimate journalist.

"He isn't employed by anyone but himself," the judge said, in a flagrant attack on the rights of all freelancers, then sneered that "this case is about a mean old man."

After his release, the writer complied with the court order, then ASJA's First Amendment Committee stepped up to help overturn the judge's ruling. The committee, which emphatically opposes Internet censorship, will be filing an amicus curiae brief on his behalf. Its chair, Claire Safran, an ASJA past president, says the case is very typical of the committee's work. "We defend freedom of speech, even if it's speech we hate," she says. "Sometimes we find ourselves on the side of Larry Flynt and other pornographers, or rallying around someone very few people would support."

The First Amendment Committee has a 30-year history of taking strong stands. Sally Wendkos Olds, a founding member of the committee and former ASJA president, says that her proudest moment was when ASJA launched its well-known "I Read Banned Books" campaign in 1981, under the direction of past president Evelyn Kaye. Claire, Sally, Evelyn and other writers held a banned books reading at the New York Public Library—an initiative that sparked an annual national event: Banned Books Week, now in its 22nd year under the sponsorship of ASJA and other groups. And each year, we sell thousands of "I Read Banned Books" buttons to writers and bookstores all over the U.S., available at the online store of our Web site, www.asja.org.

While banned books may sound like an old-fashioned issue, our freedom to read remains under very real assault. Since 1990, the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom has recorded some 7,000 "challenges"—attempts by individuals or groups to get books removed from schools or libraries. Among the top targets of these self-appointed censors: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the Harry Potter series, Judy Blume's novels, Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

And it's not just lone individuals or small groups that are undermining the First Amendment, says Safran. "In September, Attorney General Ashcroft issued an outrageous attack on librarians for not cooperating with his efforts under the so-called Patriot Act to check records of what books people take out of the library. It's a horrendous tactic to label anyone who stands up for freedom to read and speak as lacking in loyalty."

Although the issues the First Amendment Committee tackles continue to evolve, there always will be those who want to stifle writers' rights. As Ray Bradbury wrote in Fahrenheit 451, "Books are dangerous. They make you think ... feel ... wonder ... They make you ask questions."

And that's exactly why defending the freedom to speak, write, and read will remain one of ASJA's most important missions.