Rebecca Lawrence

NB:  Surprise!  Not one person at the cultural council responded to the following grant request. 

To Rebecca Lawrence, Chair, Mid-Cape Cultural Council, and Council Members:
Please share the following with the members of the Mid-Cape Cultural Council. Thank you.
Dr. G. Tod Slone

Freedom of Speech: Democracy, Dissidence, and Art
(A Grant-Request Project by a Citizen Non Grata of Barnstable, MA)

Upon reflection, I decided to send this proposal in this format, knowing quite well it would have been outright rejected even if in the standard form and in full accord with Mid-Cape Cultural Council guidelines. For me to submit an application and 11 requisite copies would thus be a waste of paper and postage.
Sadly, the type of project described below would likely be the type of project your group would NEVER consider funding. Perhaps, though highly unlikely, it might instigate thought regarding your cultural council’s likely failure to extract itself from the influence of the local chamber of commerce, political hacks, and other castrating cronies of the Cape Cod art machine. Such an extraction would be necessary for you to truly open the Council to hard criticism and possibilities other than the typical PG-13 “family-friendly” (i.e., democracy-unfriendly) safe “art” you likely exclusively fund.
From my experience dealing with the Concord Cultural Council, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and National Endowment for the Arts, not to mention Lucy Loomis, former Mid-Cape Cultural Council director, who behaves as an autocrat of the worst possible sort. Loomis permanently trespassed me from Sturgis Library without due process or warning because of written criticism that contained no threats, no four-letter words, and no sex (see below).
Do any of you care about that? The response to that question is a likely NO. Prove me wrong by writing Loomis a letter of protest not on my behalf but rather on behalf of democracy. Far too many citizens do not give a damn about censorship and freedom of speech. Thus is the problem confronting our democracy today.
My project consists of several free lectures/open discussions on democracy, dissidence, and art along with an exhibit of art work and poetry illustrating the theme to be delivered gratis at Cape Cod Community College and perhaps Barnstable High School. Part of that project would consist of distributing free copies of The American Dissident, published since 1998 and now right here in Barnstable. The journal, by the way, has essentially been banned by the library directors of the Clams Library System. Do you care? Again, the likely response to that question is NO.
The art, culture, and literary machine on Cape Cod needs to open up to criticism as a form of art and literature, which must not be confined to mere commercially and family-friendly themes. Democracy demands it! In fact, education has been failing to instill in the citizenry the importance of democracy’s cornerstones, free speech and vigorous debate. Instead, it has been instilling speech codes and mind-numbing politically-correct thought. Citizens are encouraged to be easily offended, as opposed to building backbone. Here in Barnstable I personally witnessed citizen indifference to free speech issues when protesting in front of Sturgis Library on three different days and also downtown during the Fourth of July with the following sign: CELEBRATE THE FIRST FUCKING AMENDMENT, NOT COMMERCE! Oh, the scorns I received that day! Of course, those scorns indicated a blatant ignorance of the First Amendment. Library trustee Dan Santos serves as an example of that ignorance, for he dismissed my sign as “intellectual masturbation.” Well, rather that than the intellectual fascism that apparently plagues not only his mind, but also that of Eleanor Claus, Betsy Newell, and Lucy Loomis. Over the centuries, art and literature have proven to be potent weapons against authoritarian regimes, as well as local corruption and hypocrisy.
Grant funds ($350) would enable me to distribute free copies of The American Dissident to students, professors, and the general public during the free lectures/open discussions and/or class presentations around the theme of“Freedom of Speech: Democracy, Dissidence, and Art.” The importance of freedom of speech and threats to it in the form of campus speech codes, proposed hate speech and blasphemy laws would be discussed. Cause celebres including Theo Van Gogh, Molly Norris, Geert Wilders, Kurt Westergaard, Lars Viks, Robert Redeker, and Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff would also be discussed, as well as the now infamous anti-Muhammad video that served as an egregiously fraudulent diversion from the gross incompetence of the Obama administration.
Qualifications
As an artist, poet, writer, publisher, and long-time college instructor with a PhD from a French university, I have been, over several decades, actively trying to open up the art and literary machine to democracy’s cornerstones. Dr. Dan Sklar has been inviting me to his English classes for about four years each semester at Endicott College (Beverly, MA) to speak to his students on literature, democracy, and dissidence. You may view ALL student comments (http://www.theamericandissident.org/students.html).
My career as college professor has suffered because of my refusal to engage in self-censorship, turning a blind eye, etc. Because of my written criticism , as difficult as it might be to believe, I was as mentioned permanently banned without due process or warning from my neighborhood library, Sturgis Library in Barnstable. My critique simply underscored the library’s very own policy that “Libraries should challenge censorship […], ” “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view […],” and “Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval […]”
Such egregious hypocrisy must be questioned and challenged. Students must learn to do this for democracy’s sake. Moreover, I have been kept from getting cultural council grants because of the subject of my projects. Why would grant-according chairpersons like yourself be so adverse to projects highlighting democracy? In fact, because of me, the Concord Cultural Council had actually adopted a regulation prohibiting funding to projects it arbitrarily deemed “political in nature.” The Barnstable Patriot interviewed me last year with regards my fight against Sturgis Library hypocrisy (see http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24417&Itemid=53). And The Concord Journal interviewed me several years prior to that (see http://www.wickedlocal.com/concord/news/x936270296/Conflict-is-his-muse#axzz28SCmTHeU).
Public Benefit
Public benefit would be in the form of enhanced knowledge regarding the importance of free speech, criticism, and satire.

Promotion
The project would be promoted via the student newspaper and flyers.
Amount Requested
$350.
Accompanying Materials
Attached is the type of class materials I’d distribute.
Thank you for your attention. Please do surprise me with a non-standard response. Please do stand up for freedom. Please do declare yourself not to be a typical cultural-council apparatchik like those described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Oak and the Calf.
G. Tod Slone, PhD and Founding Editor (1998)
The American Dissident, a 501c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence
www.theamericandissident.org
wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com
todslone@hotmail.com
217 Commerce Rd.
Barnstable, MA 02630

Brian Mannal, Ann Canedy, Cleon Turner

 

Jeanmarie Fraser and Tim Gerolami

For a full written account of "An Incident at Wilkens Library" with oddball though real dialogue, check out http://www.globalfreepress.org/editorials/topics/free-speech.  Somehow I managed to get the Cape Cod Community College student newspaper, The Main Sheet, to actually publish a letter to the editor on the incident.  Its editor should be congratulated. There is hope!  The published letter is the following: 

To the Editor, The Main Sheet, Cape Cod Community College, Barnstable, MA:
Perhaps the prime concern of humanities professors (English, journalism, etc.) ought to be rousing student interest in democracy and, in particular, the First Amendment and vigorous debate, especially regarding controversial thoughts and ideas.  Yet that concern seems all but inexistent, buried by the overwhelming focus today on multiculturalism and diversity.  
Calling the police on a man quietly holding a sign in the library is one sure way to discourage students and others from exercising their First Amendment rights.  That’s what happened to me a few weeks ago at Wilkens Library.  “Celebrate the Anniversary of the Bill of Rights, Not Banned Books Week” was my sign.   Read the full account of what happened: www.globalfreepress.org/editorials/topics/free-speech.  Perhaps CCCC writing and journalism instructors ought to expose students to the account and emphasize in their classes that, for writers, Freedom of Speech is of prime importance.  Without it, jail cells, torture chambers, firing squads, and/or exile await them.  In fact, I’d be happy to speak to students on this very topic and have even prepared a detailed syllabus with its regard.  Might there be an interested professor?  If so, contact me.  I don’t bite or make threats.  Hell, I live and publish here in your very community and even possess a doctoral degree. 
Sadly, only about one in 30 CCCC students expressed interest in my sign.   But not even one of the English or journalism professors I’d contacted cared what happened at Wilkens.  Not one of them cared about the refusal of both the Cape Cod Times and Barnstable Patriot to report on my being permanently trespassed without warning or due process from Sturgis Library in Barnstable.  Not one library director of the Clams Library System of Cape Cod, which includes Wilkens, would even respond to my demand for due process.  Not one CCCC professor cared that The American Dissident, a 501 c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence, had essentially been banned by those library directors from the System.  Why do Dean Jeanmarie Fraser and Tim Gerolami, and professors Sarah Polito, Bruce Riley, Kathleen Soderstrom, Michael Olendzenski, Patricia McGraw, James Kershner, Dianne Gregory, John French, Christine Esperson, Bill Berry, Patricia Allen, and Dean Debower not care?  And why don’t the local politicians (Tom Lynch, Brian Mannal, Cleon Turner, Ann Canedy, etc.) care?  Is commerce all that concerns them?  And what about the ACLUM and PEN New England?
Sadly, CCCC police officers are not educated regarding citizen rights.  The police supervisor, who confronted me, explicitly and angrily ordered me to stop recording him.  Well, I obeyed, but then only later discovered citizens have “a specific First Amendment right to record police officers,” according to two major court decisions (U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit and the 7th Circuit Court). 
It is mind-boggling the police were called in the first place because both Dean Fraser and Mr. Gerolami somehow determined that holding a sign silently was a “confrontational” activity and that because students were “looking” at the activity, it somehow “disrupted the flow of the education system.”  Wow.  CCCC deans and faculty need to be educated as to the First Amendment.  They clearly are not.  Court cases have sided over and again with Justice William O. Douglas’ view that “The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea.”  Yet the deans and faculty do not seem to care about this.   Does President John L. Cox care?  Perhaps not.
Moreover, “disrupting the flow of the education system” is far too vague a term to overrule the right to exercise free speech at a public institution.  Such a term needs to be carefully defined and narrowly limited or it will accord administrators the power of unchecked censors.    Holding a sign for a mere 10 minutes, not getting in anyone’s face, not threatening anyone, and not provoking people to violence is a legal activity in America.  So, why is it a questionable one at CCCC? 
Finally, student newspapers ought to devote a page or even a small corner of a page to uncomfortable criticism of the particular college or university housing it.  Students need to be encouraged to question and challenge all things, especially those that seem to enjoy protected status. 
Students ought to be encouraged to ask themselves what they think they shouldn’t write or speak about, even make a list of such taboos and why they seem to be taboos.  If such taboos serve to avoid offending others and hide uncomfortable truths or opinions, then they need to be broken.  Citizens need to build spine and not be so easily offended.  Democracy depends on that.  Anonymous authorship ought to be fully discouraged. 
Now, the probability this letter will change absolutely nothing is very high.  So, why bother writing it?  Ego?   Well, surely, those criticized in it would a-men to that.  But I’d argue that visceral passion for the freedom to speak, opine, and write is the principle reason.  If being egocentric means having such a passion, then fine.  I’d much rather be that than a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil careerist.   The former Soviet Union was loaded with those… and today so is the USA.  The right to freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Do not seek to diminish that right with your own spinelessness, biases and inane excuses, as in “disrupts the flow of the educational system.”
G. Tod Slone, Ed., The American Dissident
Barnstable, MA

Mark Doty