Court: Miami-Dade schools can yank book on Cuba (political book banning)

[Mika]

Source: Miami Herald

In a 2-1 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the board did not breach the First Amendment, and ordered a Miami federal judge to lift a preliminary injunction that had allowed Vamos a Cuba to be checked out from school libraries.

The majority opinion supported the School Board's authority to set educational standards in Miami-Dade, saying the bilingual book, part of a library series on 24 nations, presented an ''inaccurate'' view of life in Cuba under its former leader, Fidel Castro.

''The record shows that the board did not simply dislike the ideas in the Vamos a Cuba book,'' appeals court Judge Ed Carnes wrote in the majority opinion. 'Instead, everyone, including both sides' experts, agreed that the book contained factual inaccuracies.''
But the three-judge panel's opinion -- not unlike the School Board's initial vote -- was so fraught with political rhetoric such as ''book banning'' that further appeals seem inevitable. Indeed, Carnes attacked the dissenting opinion's use of the phrase.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/education/story/890555.html

---

Interesting to note that school board member Ana Rivas Logan said ''This book was inaccurate, and it was offensive to a whole community''.

Actually, it was a small group of intransigent RW exiles who started the protest over the book in school libraries. Its part of a series "Let's visit ___" of 24 books in the school libraries. The story was being covered here on DU as it was ongoing a couple of years ago.

During the fake outrage and school board distractions and lawsuits it was revealed that the whole series of books contained "inaccuracies" on each country topic. Not mentioning the Chinese authoritarian system and slave labor conditions, not the Tibet occupation, for example. Not mentioning the genocide of the Native Indians nor slavery in the Lets Visit America book, as another example.

The beef about Vamos a Cuba was because it didn't mention the RW exile perspective on just how evil Dr Castro and his evil socialist island are.

The Miami-Dade school board caved and banned the book amid outrage by the school system librarians. And now 11th CCofA has caved also.

More lawsuits to follow over this, I'm sure.

[groundloop]

1. Oh well...

Won't be long before travel restrictions to Cuba are lifted and we can go see for ourselves just how horrible a place Cuba really is (NOT).

[Mika]

3. What makes you think that?

The only travel restrictions Obama wants to ease are the latest sanctions Bush put on.

Obama's stated position is that he only wants to allow unrestricted travel for Cuban-Americans and Cuban expat resident aliens.

The rest of us have to sit in the back of the bus.

[Tempest]

5. Here's why I think that

I don't see Obama's administration prosecuting people who travel to Cuba (like through Canada) the way the Bush administration did.

I'm waiting to hear back from a travel agent in Canada who is part of a group who have contacted the State and Treasury Departments to find out how they plan on handling American citizens who travel to Cuba through their country. If the response is positive (and they think it will be), I'm heading to Cuba this fall with four other friends.

[atreides1]

2. Get rid of all the books

If the book on Cuba can be banned based on its "inaccuracies", then the entire series needs to be removed for the very same reason.

[Mika]

4. That was the argument by the school librarians. All or none.

And that was the opinion of the vast majority in Miami-Dade, including many Cuban expats.

But the intransigent RWers continued pushing and pushing. They had their kids check-out all of the Vamos a Cuba books out of the school libraries and they refused to return them. The school board threatened to git tough and withhold diplomas if they weren't returned - that's when all hell broke loose here.

Anyone who represented anything close to normal in this debate was branded instantly by the rabbid exile media as a "Castro lover" or "Fidelista" (kinda like the Castrophobes on DU do too) which in Miami can be deadly.

[EFerrari]

6. I wonder what the publication date is of their most current encyclopedia

[Judi Lynn]

7. This is unbelievable, even in South Florida!

http://fsulawlibraryblog.typepad.com.nyud.net:8090/photos/uncategorized/vamos__a_cuba_1.jpg
When they can block simple informative children's books from the library we ALL need to take a step back.

AS we've seen in so many, MANY examples, the suppression of all reference in Miami to any political views other than those of the CANF has been overwhelming for DECADES. From one report:

rom AJR, December 1999
Journalists at Risk

The First Amendment provides little comfort for many of the United States' foreign-language journalists, who face the threat of physical violence, sometimes fatal, from their readers.

By William Kleinknecht
William Kleinknecht is a staff writer at Newark's Star-Ledger and author of "The New Ethnic Mobs: The Changing Face of Organized Crime in America," published by The Free Press in 1996.

Human Rights Watch/Americas issued reports in 1992 and 1994 that condemned the perils to free expression in Miami and warned that right-wing radio stations were inciting groups to violence. "Only a narrow range of speech is acceptable, and views that go beyond these boundaries may be dangerous to the speaker," said the 1994 report, the last study the group made of the region.

More:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=766

[Psephos]

8. Banning books. How 1948 of them. n/t

[Mika]

9. They (the RW exiles) claim that Castro bans books in Cuba. So they do it too, in Miami.

See? They kicked Castro's ass. By banning childrens books in US schools. :crazy:

I really don't think that there's a more intransigent and overwrought demographic group in the USA than Miami's hard line exilio community (which is a minority within the Cuban-American community).

[IndianaGreen]

10. American citizens should be allowed to travel to Cuba freely

Seeing Cuba will do more to add to our knowledge than an entire library of books.

RWers love to ban books.