Lucy Loomis

The following email was sent to Sturgis Library director Lucy Loomis in 2015.  No response was ever received.  And yet her “Sturgis Acceptable Behavior Policy,” adopted one year after she permanently banned me w/o warning and w/o due process, clearly stipulates that “Patrons whose privileges have been revoked may have the decision reviewed by the Board of Library Trustees.”  In the absence of accountability, people in power positions like Loomis can do and say whatever they want, including adopting policies and not abiding by the policies adopted.  Hypocrites at the helm likely constitute the majority of people in power positions today in America's ever declining democracy...

From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: sturgislibrary@comcast.net

CC: sturgisreference@comcast.net; khorn@clamsnet.org; fblowrie@gmail.com; sangus@kinlingrover.com; ppronovost@capecodonline.com; editor@barnstablepatriot.com; pen-newengland@mit.edu; mgiangregorio@aclum.org

Subject: Cartoonists assassinated, free speech massacred, a plea for justice in Barnstable, MA

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2015 18:29:48 -0400

To Director Lucy Loomis, Sturgis Library:

It has been almost three years now since you permanently banned me from my neighborhood library, the one my tax dollars help support.  No due process was offered, as you know, despite my request.  How odd to me that this could and in fact did happen in America!  My civil rights are being denied today because, as you know, I am not permitted to attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library.  And yet I have never been charged with a crime, let alone misdemeanor.  

In any event, I am requesting that you consider rescinding your order because the sole reason you provided for it, that I represented a potential physical danger (“for the safety of staff and public”) is clearly an invalid one.  After all, not one person on Sturgis Library’s staff or in the United States of America in general has been harmed, let alone threatened, by me.  

As you know, my only real “crime” was NOT one of potential violence, but rather the written criticism I’d disseminated with your regard, in particular, the library statement that “libraries should provide materials and information that present all points of view.”  My point of view and the points of view of all those people published in The American Dissident, as you know, are currently banned at Sturgis Library, thus proving that statement to be hypocritical.  

Freedom of speech was massacred in Paris several months ago by Islamist haters of freedom of speech.  Do you really wish to continue siding with those free-speech hating murderers of cartoonists?  Please be reminded that freedom of speech, vigorous debate, and due process are in fact democracy’s very cornerstones, while banning speech because you do not like it or somehow think it is violent is definitely not, nor is obligatory deference to those in power, be they presidents or library directors.  

Finally, you will note that when I was visiting Sturgis almost on a daily basis, never was I informed that I might have been breaking a library regulation.  In fact, is freedom of speech not permitted at Sturgis?  If so, I should have at least been warned and directed to that regulation.  

Thank you for your attention and hopeful reconsideration.  

Dante Ramos

Paul Pronovost and Noah Hoffenberg

Celebrate World Press Freedom Day… by Decrying Local Press Hypocrites

For reason, the US has sunken to #49 on the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders.  The lack of a truly free press in America and is the result of a Faustian deal made by far too many journalists.  That deal mandates placing career above bold truth telling.  Far too many journalists are in cahoots with the chambers of commerce and advertizers and pillars of the community and political hacks, both local and national. 

The local press hypocrites I decry are editors Paul Pronovost of the Cape Cod Times and Noah Hoffenberg of the Barnstable Patriot because issues of freedom of expression are not as important to them as shielding community pillars like Lucy Loomis who permanently banned me, my ideas, and the ideas of those whom I publish from my very neighborhood library without possibility of due process.  Both Pronovost and Hoffenberg refuse to publish anything regarding that egregious curtailment of freedom of expression.  

Dave Granlund

 

 

Noah Hoffenberg

 

Anne Speyer

The only thing an unconnected citizen can do to get his opinion into the arena of debate is the Internet.  Long live the Internet!  One day, however, the censors (i.e., the civility gatekeepers) will sadly gain full control over it.  Now here's a great quote by UCLA Professor Michael Meranze that I just came across.  It's perfect for librarian gatekeepers like Ann Speyer and Lucy Loomis, as well as for journalist gatekeepers like Paul Pronovost (Cape Cod Times) and Noah Hoffenberg (Barnstable Patriot)...

"The demand for civility effectively outlaws a range of intellectual, literary, and political forms: satire is not civil, caricature is not civil, hyperbole and aesthetic mockery are not civil nor is polemic. Ultimately the call for civility is a demand that you not express anger; and if it was enforced it would suggest that there is nothing to be angry about in the world.  The call for civility in discourse confuses the enforcement of administrative time, place, and manner restrictions with the genuine need to defend people from personal threat.  The result is that the administrative desire trumps all else." 

Hillard W. Welch

Cleon Turner

Kathleen Mahoney

..........................................................................................................................
Below is the email I wrote to Mahoney and others yesterday.  Nobody of course will respond.  In fact, it is highly likely that none of those concerned can even understand it.  Yet the logic is crystal clear in it.  The PC mindset, however, filters out  all intrusively uncomfortable logic.
.........................................................................................................................
From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: kmahoney@clamsnet.org
CC: editor@barnstablepatriot.com; ppronovost@capecodonline.com; sturgislibrary@comcast.net; editor.camelsaloon@gmail.com
Subject: Suppression of Freedom of Expression on Cape Cod
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 09:41:08 -0500

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To Kathleen Mahoney, director, Mashpee Public Library:
Well, here's a complaint on censorship and banning by the Clams Library System of Cape Cod, in particular, Mashpee Public Library.  Hopefully, though doubtfully, you will send it on to Chris Peterson, Research Assistant, Center for Civic Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who asked you via FOIA to divulge any such complaints.   

After I’d put you to the challenge last December, as you recall, you’d responded surprisingly positively that you would subscribe to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence, and become the first and only library in the Clams Library System to be willing to do so.  Thus, you wasted my time, making me fill out that tax form and mailing out the copy to you.   What were you expecting—PC-bliss in the form of a magazine?  The American Dissident exists to fight those like you who serve as gatekeepers to suppress freedom of expression in America.  That is its prime purpose.  That is what I’d told you in our correspondence!  And so a month later, you sent the copy back and wrote you would not be subscribing, refusing to even include a single reason for your about face.  Why didn’t you use your library stationary?

As you well know, not one library in the entire Clams Library System of Cape Cod will subscribe (only $20).  That was the challenge I’d put before you.  Now, thanks to your rejection, it is still flamingly valid.  In fact, Sturgis Library, my very neighborhood library, as I’d informed you, rejected a free subscription offer and later permanently banned me because of my written criticism.  No warning or possibility of due process was even accorded.  Is that how democracy on Cape Cod operates?  Why don’t you care about that gross insult to the First Amendment committed by one of your close library-director colleagues, Lucy Loomis?   Yarmouth Port Library also refused to accept a free subscription offer!  What are you and your librarian colleagues trying to keep from the eyes of public-library patrons here on Cape Cod?  Why are you and those colleagues acting as gate-keeping censors?  WHY? 

An ugly wave of fascism is rotting away the innards of America today... and you are evidently part of it.  Librarians like you should be ashamed of your gross hypocrisy regarding your very own policy statements, including:  “Libraries should challenge censorship […]” and “provide materials and information presenting all points of view”.   What is it that you and those colleagues do not understand about that statement?  Why have you chosen to counter it, by refusing to provide such materials?  Why do you dislike freedom of expression so much?  Did you learn to scorn it in college?  Have you become so self-satisfied in a cocoon of kudos that you cannot even perceive the hypocrisy?  Give me TRUTH, not happy face!  For you and the Loomis’, it’s the opposite. 

Thanks to you and your ilk, not one citizen on Cape Cod will have the opportunity in his or her local library to examine the caustic criticism, regarding local librarians like you, included in each issue of The American Dissident.  Not one citizen of Cape Cod will likely have the opportunity to read this very letter, which will appear in the next issue of The American Dissident, but not on one library shelf in all of Cape Cod.  The local newspapers won’t even publish it!  Shame on the Cape Cod Times and Barnstable Patriot!  Finally, your rejection, as an incident, is of course quite minor.  BUT the principle involved is really quite major. Whether or not you thought The American Dissident “appropriate,” whatever that might imply in your mindset, is immaterial.  (Evidently, somehow you think Jackass 1, 2, and 3 movies are appropriate)  You should have subscribed to it and thus subscribed to the FIRST AMENDMENT and of course your very own policy statement, which was developed by the American Library Association as the “Library Bill of Rights.”  Hot air?  You bet!  In fact, the ALA’s very own Office of Intellectual Freedom doesn’t give a damn about these concerns either!  Look in the mirror, Kathleen!  What do you see, if not Stalin or Hitler in drag… and with a smile of course? 

Sincerely,

G. Tod Slone, PhD (universite de Nantes, FR),

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

Ed Maroney

 

It is an odd, likely wide-spread, reaction that if one is critical of a newspaper editor, for example, the latter will ignore and otherwise help ostracize the critic into oblivion.  The same of course goes for academics, librarians, poets, politicos, and probably most other “professionals.”   Democracy is in serious trouble when adults cannot bear to be criticized.