As often as I can I ride my bicycle to get around town. The bike sports several stickers, one which says, "Fuck Clear Channel." Clear Channel is the largest radio station monopoly in the US, owning over 1,200 radio stations that play a very narrow spectrum of music and features talk show hosts like Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh. Their CEO has been a big supporter of the Bush administration and after September 11,2001 decided to censor certain musicians who were critical of the US War on Terrorism, particularly the US war in Iraq. This is exactly why I have a "Fuck Clear Channel" sticker on my bike, because Clear Channel really pisses me off. Somehow a sticker that says "Clear Channel is bad" or "Clear Channel limits free speech" just doesn't convey the emotion that "Fuck Clear Channel" does.

However, we do live in a society where people are easily offended by the F-word. I used to lock my bike to an indoor bike rack when I worked on the Westside. One day there was a complaint from a library patron that my bike was offensive and my former boss told me to park it somewhere else. I said it was a matter of free speech, to which he said, "that it is not a battle worth fighting for." Some of us involved in anti-war organizing have had a similar reaction when people displayed signs that read "Fuck War." Some people, even in anti-war circles, thought that the poster was offensive and violent. Look, if you can't use the word fuck to express feelings about cluster bombs ripping a child's body apart, the use of torture, shooting innocent civilians, breaking into people's homes in the middle of the night, putting bags over their heads and taking them to a detention center - then when can you use the work fuck? For some it conveys a very raw sense of outrage about the very nature of war and I never want to tell people how they should express their feelings about it. To limit the way in which people feel about war would be nothing short of censorship.

Censorship itself can be manifest in a variety of ways. The government can pass legislation that limits speech, like they did during World War I, when it was illegal to speak out against the war. During the McCarthy years of anti-Communism many actors and film directors were targeted and accused of being connected to the Communist Party (CP). Even though many in Hollywood had no affiliation with the CP some gave the government names of others in the industry in order to clear their own names. Another form of censorship that has been an ongoing part of US history is the banning of books. Some books have been banned because of sexual content while others because of their politics. Even The Grapes of Wrath, considered by many to be a classic, suffered censorship from both the government and publishing circles. In 1940 the magazine Collier's condemned its portrait of the mistreatment of migrant workers as "propaganda for the idea that we ought to change our system for the Russian system." Because of the position that this magazine took, many municipal libraries would not carry the book. An excellent resource that documents this type of censorship in the 20th century is the book From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America.

These forms of censorship just cited still continue today. The newest volume in the Harry Potter series is due out this month and you can bet that there will be protests from the religious right to have it banned from community bookstores. This type of censorship will most likely get media attention, but there are other forms of censorship that happen under the radar screen. As I write this article DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure because he has written several books that critique the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. However, Finkelstein is not the only professor to be targeted in recent years. Native American scholar and professor Ward Churchill has also come under fire in Colorado because of his stance on 9/11. In fact, there is an organized effort to censor teachers in this country by a group called Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, which includes the like of Lynne Cheney and William Bennett. They have been targeting college professors who don't wave the flag. This group has also been joined by Campus Watch, a right-wing group headed by Daniel Pipes that engages in modern-day witch hunts against professors who are critical of US policy in the Middle East.

The news media itself engages in a variety of forms of censorship. First, by not covering stories such as the case of Professor Finkelstein mentioned earlier. How many of you saw news coverage of the demonstration in Washington, DC in early June on the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Palestine? Another form of news censorship is their limited use of sources in reporting. Who's voices do we hear and not hear when it comes to important issues like global warming, the war in Iraq, the economy and electoral politics? We see this all the time in our monitoring of the local news. Lastly, news agencies engage in censorship because many of the reporters will not pursue certain stories. This is called self-censorship and happens in every newsroom across the country.

There is also censorship of artistic expression. A few months ago there was a big battle in Wilton, Connecticut because the high school tried to ban a play that students had developed called "Voices in Conflict." The play dramatized the realities of war through first person accounts. The school administration felt it was not appropriate and banned the play. Not to be discouraged the students took the play on the road and performed to sell out crowds on the east coast. Closer to home there is the recent threats made against the Super Happy Funtime Burlesque Show. Apparently, bogus flyers were put up near the police department with the intent of discrediting the group. GRPD vice officers descended on one of their shows only to find that the accusations were false. When a special performance was scheduled for the Wealthy Theatre the GRPD threatened to make it hard for the theater to get a liquor license if they allowed the show. Fortunately the show still happened but just the threat of repercussions against such groups means that sometimes they will chose to censor themselves or the venues that host such shows may chose to not allow such performances in the future for "financial" reasons...which is just another form of censorship.

I share these stories because I think that it is critical, especially now in this country, that we do not tolerate censorship. People need to be free to take critical positions, to dissent, and to speak their minds. We all have to have courage to not back down because we need to "protect our job" or because we "don't want to alienate people." At the same time the idea of freedom of speech should not be taken lightly nor squandered. Current technology allows many of us to communicate in a variety of forms that can reach thousands, even millions of people. So when you do speak, speak boldly, communicate with passion and conviction. We must not let other others silence us and we should never silence ourselves. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, "Silence is the voice of complicity."