Book News Roundup: Are hate groups protected speech in libraries?

At the top of the hierarchy is Amazon. And at the bottom are record numbers of homeless people. The rise of Seattle’s socialist movement can be explained in part by its ability to link the city’s inequality to a wider critique of capitalism. Amazon may have succeeded in crushing the business tax earlier this year. But Socialist Alternative’s Sawant, as well as all the activists working alongside her, helped ensure that the tax was on the city’s agenda to begin with.

[The Intellectual Freedom Committee] strengthened the 1991 “Meeting Rooms: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights” by adding legal citations; expanding the text on the purpose of meetings rooms; and clarifying the description of admission fees. The interpretation cites specific examples of groups that may choose to use meeting rooms.

“If a library allows charities, non-profits, and sports organizations to discuss their activities in library meeting rooms,” states the interpretation, “then the library cannot exclude religious, social, civic, partisan political, or hate groups from discussing their activities in the same facilities.”

  • Uh, sorry, no. Hate groups are not protected speech. Hate groups are shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Hate groups are calling for the murder of people not like them. We need as a nation to come together and realize that white supremacists and their like aren't a political group. They're terrorist organizations. This isn't a slippery slope. This is about an existential threat to civlization and a real physical threat to our neighbors. Stop it.

  • Evening Magazine interviewed Seattle cartoonist Ellen Forney about her self-help comic Rock Steady: