News & Commentary

Panelists at the annual Banned Books Reading included Hartford Councilman Luis Cotto, author Susan Schoenberger, Dr. Kerry Driscoll of Saint Joseph College, Capital Preparatory Magnet School students Haddiyyah Ali and Aleyah Seabrook, WFSB Anchor Dennis House and Enfield Public Library Director Henry Dutcher. The program at the Hartford Public Library, sponsored by the library and the ACLU of Connecticut, drew about 75 people.Censorship and its targets, from Mark Twain to Michael Moore, sparked a vigorous discussion Monday at the annual Banned Books Reading at the Hartford Public Library.Panelists read excerpts from banned and challenged books and then talked about the issues behind those books with each other and the audience. About 75 people attended the event, moderated by WNPR radio host Colin McEnroe and sponsored by the library and the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.Henry Dutcher, director of the Enfield Public Library, showed excerpts from Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko. Earlier this year Dutcher was told by the Enfield Town Council to cancel a showing of the film at the library. He was later able to reschedule it as part of a compromise that included showing a documentary with an opposing view on national health care.Dutcher told the crowd Monday that when Sicko was finally shown, the audience included John Graham, a 9/11 first responder who was featured in the documentary and who came to support the library's right to show it. The movie describes how Graham’s decision to volunteer his help at Ground Zero left him sick, uninsured and destitute.“I’m sorry but I feel that any public library in the United States should be able to show that to their patrons,” Dutcher said.The panel also featured two sophomores from Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford who read excerpts from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which they have been studying in a cooperative program with the Mark Twain House and Museum. They were accompanied by Kerry Driscoll, a professor at Saint Joseph College who is a faculty member on the Twain project.Asked about their reactions to the racist language in Huckleberry Finn, the students said they had found perspective on it.“It didn’t really offend me in any way because I know that’s our history,” Aleyah Seabrook said.Haddiyyah Ali said she didn’t see it as racism. “I see it as Mark Twain working through his issues on race.” Yet when she read the excerpt, she found herself too uncomfortable to read the most offensive words.Dennis House, a news anchor for WFSB Channel 3, said that when covering controversy over the book, his station also decided not to say the word nigger.Even so, when McEnroe asked the panelists about a newly sanitized version of Huckleberry Finn that expunges the racist words, panelists agreed that they prefer the original version.“I’d rather see the book read in its original form, or not read,” said Susan Schoenberger, author of A Watershed Year. She said that authors will hear from readers about the words they choose, including profanity, “but you have to be true to the message you’re trying to send.”When it comes to teaching books with offensive language to children, the question is “how is this being contextualized,” added Luis Cotto, a panelist and member of the Hartford City Council.Schools and public libraries use different criteria when choosing books, Dutcher said. At the library, it’s up to parents to decide what material their children check out, he said.“The public library is for everyone," he concluded. "It’s not just for that 8-year-old child.”

Every year hundreds of attempts to remove books from classrooms and libraries are reported in the United States, and the American Library Association estimates that four or five times as many attempts go unreported.Challenges are most often based on complaints of sexually explicit material, offensive language, violence, homosexuality and unpopular religious viewpoints. And with libraries expanding their collections into other media, challenges are no longer limited to books.Earlier this year the Enfield Town Council instructed the town's public library to cancel a planned showing of Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko." The screening was rescheduled after a compromise was reached to show a documentary with an opposite viewpoint, as well.Henry Dutcher, director of the Enfield Public Library, will be one of the panelists at a reading of banned and challenged books on Monday, Sept. 26, at the Hartford Public Library. The event, sponsored by the library and the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, will begin with refreshments at 6 p.m., with the program to follow at 6:30.WNPR radio host Colin McEnroe will moderate and the readers will include Hartford Councilman Luis Cotto, author Susan Schoenberger, Channel 3 anchor Dennis House and students from the Capital Preparatory Magnet School. Admission is free and open to the public.The books on the program include Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Ulysses by James Joyce, and The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by George Beard and Harold Hutchins.

The U.S. Constitution turns 224 on Saturday, Sept. 17, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut is marking the occasion with several days of educational programs and presentations.Executive Director Andrew Schneider talked with students and faculty at Manchester Community College on Thursday about the history and mission of the ACLU. He described several past and current cases, and fielded questions on topics ranging from efforts to block the Enfield schools from holding graduations in a church to the decriminalization of marijuana and the application of constitutional rights to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay."The fact is that our Constitution does not just protect citizens but any person on American soil," Schneider explained. "And Guantanamo Bay is American soil."The lecture was one of a series of three on constitutional topics at the college Thursday. Martin Margulies, a professor emeritus at the Quinnipiac College School of Law and a volunteer attorney for the ACLU, spoke about “The Tea Party and the Constitution.” And attorney Richard Voigt addressed “The Big Gamble: Article VI and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”On Thursday afternoon, ACLU-CT legal director Sandy Staub spoke to about 70 students at the University of New Haven about the death penalty, particularly as it has been applied in Connecticut. In a lively discussion that followed, students also asked about a wide range of constitutional issues.On Tuesday, ACLU board member Don Noel kicked off an annual program aimed at educating secondary school students about the Constitution with a presentation at Jumoke Academy in Hartford. On Friday, a group of lawyers, law students and other trained volunteers set out to carry that message to schools throughout the state.

"Secular discussion of religious material is possible and rewarding," prize-winning student Connor Harris wrote, "but it requires teachers to be sensitive to constitutional concerns [and] their students' beliefs."Harris was awarded the $1,000 first prize in the Ethel S. Sorokin First Amendment Essay Contest.He and other winners were recognized at this year's Milton Sorokin Symposium by state Supreme Court Justice Richard N. Palmer.The assigned topic: "Under what circumstances, if any, can the Ten Commandments or other sacred texts be taught or brought up for discussion in the classroom?" About 42 entries were submitted; most, as ACLU-CT hopes in sponsoring the contest, did homework on court decisions and referred to several of those decisions in elaborating their own views.Harris drew on his own experience in a course called Literature of the Ancient World, which included religious texts such as the Old Testament and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. The teacher's approach, he said, "helped us understand the Old Testament's origins and Abrahamic religions without ever pressuring us to adopt a certain religious belief."The winner of the $500 second prize, Jennifer Hilibrand, also of Greenwich High, , took largely the same position as Harris, but argued that "the ‘wall of separation'. . . has severe shortcomings. Religion is deeply rooted within American culture, and may never be truly severed from the public educational system. . . . Instead of absolutism, an appealing criterion for determining the permissibility of religious content in the American educational system is coercive effect."Greenwich High's Will Hallisey, winner of the $250 third prize, wrote that "I struggle with sanctioning religious text in the classroom. . . . [because] even if only reference, [it] introduces the discomfiting situation of a secular authority figure with a personal belief system, which a child can easily misconstrued. . ." He concludes that "while individuals' belief systems cannot be entirely absent. . . they must ultimately subjugate themselves to the Constitution's determination that God and Governance remain unlinked."Runner-up Gabriel Borelli of West Haven High was awarded Honorable Mention and a signed copy of In Defense of Our America by Anthony Romero. Borelli concluded that religious texts may be discussed when relevant to a course such as anthropology, or in a "strictly neutral class such as global studies or world religions," or in a government class analyzing the "limits and boundaries of the First Amendment's freedom of religion in various Supreme Court cases." 

Charlotte Dillon, a student at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, is winner of the $1,000 Ethel S. Sorokin prize in this year's ACLU/CFAR essay contest. Her prize was awarded by state Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer during the annual Milton Sorokin Symposium at the University of Connecticut Law School.Winner of the $500 second prize was Jordana Cepelewicz, a Greenwich High School student. The $250 third prize went to Kendall Witmer, also of Greenwich High.Almost 200 entries were received this year, responding to the 2010 First Amendment Essay Question:The confederate flag is a controversial symbol, which can mean different things to different people. When, if ever, does the First Amendment permit a public school to prevent students from wearing or displaying the confederate flag at school?"Instead of denying students their First Amendment rights," Ms. Dillon said in her winning essay, "schools should focus on monitoring how students react to the presence of the confederate flag. While interracial schools will undoubtedly experience tension over the flag, teachers can use this hostility as an opportunity to facilitate discussions over the feelings that the flag evokes and the reasons why the constitution allows students to display this controversial symbol."The full list of winners includes:Charlotte Dillon, First-Prize EssayJordana Cepelewicz, Second-Prize EssayKendall Witmer, Third-Prize Essay

The Center for First Amendment Rights, Inc. is proud to announce the 2008 essay contest winners:First Place: Aaron Kiersh of Westport's Staples High School for "What the First Amendment means to me..."Second Place: Ryan Baldassario of East Lyme High School for "Abridging the Freedom of Speech"Third Place (tie): Vera Solimon of East Lyme High School for "The Most Inalienable and Sacred of All Human Rights: The Constitutional Freedom of Religion", and Jack Aldrich of Westport's Staples High School for "In Defense of Voltaire".Honorable Mention: Alyssa Thomas of North Branford High School for "How the First Amendment Relates to My Life or World"

The ACLU-CT is kicking off our Abolition Day Campaign to educate Connecticut residents about the realities of the death penalty beginning with an Abolition Day rally at the State Capitol in Hartford on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 2:00 p.m.

On November 12, 2008, Judge Jonathan E. Silbert entered a court order allowing for same-sex marriage in Connecticut. Within minutes, Connecticut towns began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, which was co-counsel in the case along with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, was at the New Haven Superior Court, with plantiffs and other advocates, as Judge Silbert entered the order.Barbara and Robin Levine-Ritterman were the first couple to obtain a marriage license. Later, the ACLU-CT had the opportunity to speak with them about the case and what it means to their family. Here are some images from that historic day.