quite appalling

[winterbadger]

Anti-war poetry is apparently sedition as well.

Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics.

The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.

The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal.

After firing Nevins and terminating the teaching and reading of poetry in the school, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own as they raised the flag outside the school. When the principal had the flag at full staff, he applauded the action he'd taken in concert with the military liaison.

Notice that apparently Iran is now an official "enemy nation"

Writers and editors who have spent years translating essays, films, poems, scientific articles and books by Iranian, North Korean and Sudanese authors have been warned not to do so by the U.S. Treasury Department under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Publishers and film producers are not allowed to edit works authored by writers in those nations. The Bush administration contends doing so has the effect of trading with the enemy, despite a 1988 law that exempts published materials from sanction under trade rules.

Robert Bovenschulte, president of the [publications division] American Chemical Society, is challenging the rule interpretation by violating it to edit into English several scientific papers from Iran.

[Edit] In fact, the Treasury Department has since clarified that editing and translating falls into the category of dealing with "informational materials" which are specifically exempt from these sanctions.

The importation from any country and the exportation to any country of information and informational materials as defined in Sec. 560.315, whether commercial or otherwise, regardless of format or medium of transmission, are exempt from the prohibitions and regulations of this part. (Code of Federal Regulations 31, Chapter V, Part 560, Section 210)

informational materials are "Publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds." (Code of Federal Regulations 31, Chapter V, Part 560, Section315)

Comments

Re: Hold up!

[winterbadger]

Interesting. There's a lot of weasel-wording in that reply, though, that makes me suspicious.

I did my best to confirm the story at the time I posted it, just because it seemed so inflammatory, and all I could find were news reports from independent/alternative media confirming most of the details of the story as written, plus one small article in a local paper stating that Nevins had been fired and stating that he was suing the schools system--just the sort of article that would be printed by a paper that wanted to report the basic facts but did not want to get embroiled in the controversy of personal accusations, etc.

http://www.splc.org/newsflash_archives.asp?id=670&year=2003
http://aaf.virtualactivism.net/nevins.htm
http://www.agrnews.org/issues/245/nationbriefs.html

http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=4565&cat=SEARCH

There's also this article that is clearly framed from Nevins' POV, but confirms some of the facts previously stated and shows up some of the weasel wording in the school district's response.
http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news03/091103_news_nevins.shtml

Nevins was supported by the NM branch of PEN.
http://www.pennm.org/events.html

This piece has a few more details about the "military liaison" person and his invovlement.
http://www.star-dot-star.co.uk/books/nevins.html

Other reports, naming specific people, places, and times, allege that several teachers and staff members in the Albuquerque Public School system have been suspended for refusing to remove antiwar materials. (Rio Rancho is adjacent to Albuquerque and RR schools were part of the APSS until about ten years ago.) Several of them also mention the Nevins case.
http://aaf.virtualactivism.net/suspension_facts.htm
http://nm.indymedia.org/feature/display_printable/1952/index.php
http://www.notinourname.net/restrictions/nm_academic_freedom_20may03.htm

There are several court cases in the works against the Rio Rancho Public School that involve an extremely zealous enforcement of "zero tolerance" polices. In one, a student was haled before the vice principal because she had been out of class the day before at a time when someone had been smoking marijuana in the girls' bathroom. She and her belongings were then searched and a pocketknife was found. The student was then suspended for the remainder of the school year (two months) for "possession of a weapon." http://www.ztnightmares.com/html/complaint.htm

In anpother case, a student was suspended because he drove his brother's car to school, it was searched, and weapons and a hash pipe belonging to his brother were found. http://www.kscourts.org/ca10/cases/2002/05/01-2177.htm

All together, these suggest to me that, while some of the details of the editorial may have been overstated, the basic thrust is probably on target, and that I'm glad I don't have kids going to public school in Albuquerque or Rio Rancho.