By Jeanne Price
On Saturday, October 6, the ACLU of Nevada, together with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, Nevada Humanities, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the American Institute for Graphic Arts, hosted "Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom." The event marked the celebration of Banned Books Week in Las Vegas and focused on censorship's past, present, and future. The event, held at the Clark County Library, opened with remarks by Jeanne Goodrich, Director of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, and Dane Clausen, Executive Director of ACLU of Nevada.
Discussions were moderated by Steve Sebelius, political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Panelists included Tony Diaz, author and founder of the Librotraficante Movement, Professor Jeanne Price, Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law, Dr. Auggie Romero, Director of Student Equity at the Tucson Unified School District, and Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Much of the discussions centered on recent state and federal legislative initiatives focused on, in the case of state legislation, public school curriculum, and, at the federal level, national security and restrictions on access to information.
On Friday, the panelists spoke on KNPR’s State of Nevada about censorship issues in the news today.
The Banned Books program anticipates the opening of the Vegas Valley Book Festival on November 1, 2012.
