Objections to setting censorship standards

While not opposed to a discussion of “etiquette” at the next collective meeting, I adamantly object to making any decisions on etiquette and censorship without an extensive, rigorous conversation and debate over a significant period of time and with broad participation on the matter. Because I am going to exceed the space limit in these comments, I am posting them as a Word attachment below (see bottom of this page).

Despite my frequent abrasiveness, let me start out by saying that I have the highest respect for Angela who is an extremely hard working and dedicated activist-scholar who is only just beginning to make what promises to be a huge mark on the world.

That said, I would be very concerned to see a brief conversation about etiquette take place and then have us “decide” what the “etiquette” for this site will be. Censorship--be it “justifiable” censorship or blatant authoritarian censorship--is censorship none-the-less. There is currently a major global debate and fight over censorship in which censorship and restrictions on free speech in the name of “etiquette” are a central element.

We as programmers already operate in an environment in which we are restrained by the seven words that the U.S. federal government has ruled off limits. Discussion of these FCC “obscenity” guidelines has provoked impassioned discussion among programmers as well as staff of KYRS. Everyone knows Janet Jackson’s nipple when they see it, but obscenity? (I was going to use the “t” word but--self-censoring to protect the innocent and the etiquette-conscious—chose to use “nipple” instead).

Our country is in a time of government espionage against citizens while private companies maintain massive data bases and record our web searches and web correspondence. People are afraid to speak up or stand out. A member of this station told me a couple years ago that she was afraid to participate in a protest march because she was concerned that she might find herself face down in an unknown place on a cold concrete floor subject to torture. What we need to be encouraging is more participation, more open speech, more controversial speech, and more provocative speech.

I must object to any attempt to quickly and easily reach a “decision” on standards to be applied to our Collective Wiki. While I believe that it is perhaps a good and important discussion to have on an ongoing basis, I believe that should be one of the last decisions we would take.

My opposition is based on my experiences as some one who was assaulted holding a sign at Mission and Hamilton protesting the war on 5/4/04, as some one who has had his character impugned for voting for Ralph Nader twice and having a homemade Nader 2008 sticker on my car since the day after the 2004 election, as someone who was verbally assaulted by war protesters at the last Iraq rally for carrying a sign which said “Support the Troops, No Way—Uniform Code of Military Justice, Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions”, as someone who while handing out leaflets in front of the brass plaque with the Bill of Rights in front of the Federal Building and across the street from the Spokesman-Review was handed by the Federal Property Manager a reference to the Code of Federal Regulations and told that I had to fill out a petition to hand out information in front of the Federal Building. When I spoke at an EWU rally against the war in Iraq last summer it was suggested I impugned the character of the students and faculty of EWU by repeatedly stating in my speech, “It is a quiet, very quiet day in Cheney, Washington”, implying that we have the carefree leisure to go about our business peacefully day after day while war, famine, destruction, and repression take place all around the rest of the world.

If someone comes to this site and attempts to participate in the conversations on the Wiki stating that people have a right to go into a supermarket and carve racist statements on mangos in the hopes that a person of non-white descent buys them, I think we would all have questions about whether or not that type of comment was relevant, necessary or useful. If a person comes here flinging seemingly gratuitous expletives with no evident purpose and if that person can explain the purpose, I think we would engage them in trying to understand what they meant, felt and why prior to even considering banning, censorship, etc. For one thing, I have yet to meet the puritan among KYRS staffers and programmers.

Having been banned from various blogs and web groups, I again protest the idea of lightly setting etiquette/censorship standards. One of the sites I was banned from was the Spokesman Review’s “News is a Conversation: Readers Discuss Our News Coverage”

( http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/conversation/ ) where I “refused to stay on topic” as ordered by S-R staffers who police the site. That site is now virtually dead as pointed out by long-time S-R blogger Phil Bergen in his 3/8/07 post there entitled “News is NOT a Conversation”. One of my sins there was to refer to the state law regarding oversized political signs on yards in the midst of an exchange among bloggers about covenants restricting hanging laundry in yards. Bad, off-topic blogger. BANNED. Actually I think my banning had more to do with my critiques of the paper itself and my harsh criticism of the Spokane Police Department.

It is like the situation at the three ACLU sponsored events on Police Accountability earlier this year. Both the moderator and the police chief attempted to control the event by defining as off limits questions on open cases, questions preceded by comments, comments without questions, and anything they felt strayed from what they considered “the point”. On the third of the three nights I finally openly challenged the moderator, at which point a more “democratic”, free speech loving member of the League of Women’s Voters took over the moderation and allowed a freer participation by the audience. I am sure the first moderator was just acting out of her sense of etiquette, decorum, and the appropriate limits of speech in a nominally public forum.

Yes, they call it democracy, but it ain’t. Will the KYRS Collective Wiki go the same way? I say no. But then all the examples listed above would suggest I am wrong.

I would like to make a further point about language and censorship. We live in the second whitest city in the U.S. per capita for all cities its size or larger. KYRS, unfortunately and despite its best (best? really?) efforts, largely still reflects that reality. The audience for the Spokane Symphony, a KYRS programmers meeting, they essentially all look the same. If we are going to censure, who are the censors going to be? What biases will they bring to their censorship? Whose standard of “Etiquette” will be applied? Which side of town will it reflect? Who, really, among us wants to or should censure another?

I would like to conclude with a pet issue of mine. Anger. Where is the anger and outrage at what is going on in the world? Answer: it is all over the world except here. People are fighting and dying all over the world. People are engaging in marches and rallies fueled by righteous indignation accompanied by raised voices and raised fists all over the world, except here. Anger is a motivating force for action, be it the action provoking anger of Martin Luther King Jr, the action provoking anger of Jesus in the temple, the action provoking anger of the FMLN, FSLN, FARC, Viet Cong, Black Panthers, NOW, etc, or the action provoking anger of Daniel Ellsberg, Angela Davis, Bill Moyer, you continue the list. However, we—the people of the U.S—have been largely neutralized as a force capable of frightening, much less challenging the powers-that-be in this country. Why? In part because we have been emotionally decapitated.

Anger has become defined as a dangerous emotion, a vulgar emotion, a violent emotion, a criminal emotion, an irrational emotion, an emotion to be isolated, censored, quarantined, denigrated, shunned, feared, compartmentalized and excluded. Yet without our anger we are incapable of understanding the world. If we repress and compartmentalize our anger, we have to shut our eyes to what causes that anger. If we shut our eyes to what causes that anger, we can not give voice to those whose voice has been stolen by death, torture, imprisonment, media blackout, and dehumanization. Expressions of anger, almost by their very nature will be impolite and violate standards of etiquette. I implore us not to engage in mutual emotional decapitation and instead to allow impassioned speech and writing.

I hope I have raised enough issues and questions to make my point that even if we chose to address and discuss etiquette and censorship that we do not under any circumstances make quick, unexamined decisions.

I would also object to any decisions being made by a very small group of programmers even if they are the ones at the meeting or the only ones regularly participating in the meetings. (Just by way of example, only 6 programmers out of several dozens have participated in any way on this KYRS Collective Wiki and we are already discussing censorship). This last concern relates to my strongly held opinions about whether or not quantity of participation in something gives one more voice and vote than someone who—for whatever reasons—has a lesser quantity of participation in the same thing. The investment of time is a significant contribution (just as money is in election campaigns) but should it buy greater voice, vote and influence in a democratic organization or process?

(As a closing thought, I am also a moderator of the KYRS Programmers Collective Wiki. I do not believe that means I am any more than an equal of every other member of the Wiki and would not presume to censure anyone on my own judgment or even applying on my own a standard arrived at by the collective, if at all.)