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Tag: Children's entertainment

  • Brazilian dance craze created by young people in Rio’s favelas is declared cultural heritage

    Brazilian dance craze created by young people in Rio’s favelas is declared cultural heritage

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    RIO DE JANEIRO — It all started with nifty leg movements, strong steps backwards and forwards, paced to Brazilian funk music. Then it adopted moves from break dancing, samba, capoeira, frevo — whatever was around.

    The passinho, a dance style created in the 2000s by kids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, was declared in March to be an “intangible cultural heritage” by legislators in the state of Rio, bringing recognition to a cultural expression born in the sprawling working-class neighborhoods.

    The creators of passinho were young kids with plenty of flexibility — and no joint problems. They started trying out new moves at home and then showing them off at funk parties in their communities and, crucially, sharing them on the internet.

    In the early days of social media, youngsters uploaded videos of their latest feats to Orkut and YouTube, and the style started spreading to other favelas. A competitive scene was born, and youths copied and learned from the best dancers, leading them to innovate further and strive to stay on top.

    “Passinho in my life is the basis of everything I have,” dancer and choreographer Walcir de Oliveira, 23, said in an interview. “It’s where I manage to earn my livelihood, and I can show people my joy and blow off steam, you understand? It’s where I feel happy, good.”

    Brazilian producer Julio Ludemir helped capture this spirit and discover talents by organizing “passinho battles” in the early 2010s. At these events, youths took turns showing off their steps before a jury that selected the winners.

    The “Out of Doors” festival at New York’s Lincoln Center staged one such duel in 2014, giving a U.S. audience a taste of the vigorous steps. Passinho breached the borders of favelas and disconnected from funk parties that are often associated with crime. Dancers started appearing on mainstream TV and earned the spotlight during the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

    Ludemir describes the style as an expression of Brazilian “antropofagia,” the modernist concept of cannibalizing elements from other cultures in order to produce something new.

    “Passinho is a dance that absorbs references from all dances. It’s a crossing of the cultural influences absorbed by kids from the periphery as they were connecting with the world through social media in internet cafes,” he said.

    Dancing also became a means for youths to move seamlessly between communities controlled by rival drug gangs. It offered young men from favelas a new way out, besides falling into a life of crime or the all-too-common pipe dream of becoming a soccer star.

    Passinho was declared state heritage by Rio’s legislative assembly through a law proposed by Rio state legislator Veronica Lima. It passed unanimously and was sanctioned March 7. In a statement, Lima said it was important to help “decriminalize funk and artistic expressions of youths” from favelas.

    Ludemir says the heritage recognition is sure to consolidate the first generation of passinho dancers as an inspiration for favelas youths.

    Among them are Pablo Henrique Goncalves, a dancer known as Pablinho Fantástico, who won a passinho battle back in 2014 and later created a boy group called OZCrias, with four dancers born and raised like him in Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela. The group earns money performing in festivals, events, theaters and TV shows, and they welcomed the heritage recognition.

    Another dance group is Passinho Carioca in the Penha complex of favelas on the other side of the city. One of its directors, Nayara Costa, said in an interview that she came from a family where everyone got into drug trafficking. Passinho saved her from that fate, and now she uses it to help youngsters — plus teach anyone else interested in learning.

    “Today I give classes to people who are in their sixties; passinho is for everyone,” said Costa, 23. “Passinho, in the same way that it changed my life, is still going to change the lives of others.”

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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  • Movie Review: Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn find poignant synergy in real-life war tale ‘One Life’

    Movie Review: Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn find poignant synergy in real-life war tale ‘One Life’

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    By the time Nicholas Winton died in 2015 at the ripe age of 106, the former London stockbroker and self-proclaimed “ordinary man” had been widely recognized for his extraordinary deeds — rescuing 669 Jewish children from the Nazis, saving them from certain death.

    But for most of his life, Winton’s rescue of those children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, bringing them to safety in Britain, was unknown to the public. His story was revealed dramatically on the BBC show “That’s Life!” in 1988, which introduced him, in an emotional surprise, to some of the very people he’d saved. Tears were shed and a fuss was made over this unfussy man. He was dubbed the “British Schindler,” and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.

    Even if you didn’t know Anthony Hopkins was starring in “One Life,” the straightforward yet still moving new drama based on Winton’s tale, you’d be forgiven for assuming it the minute you learned Winton was a modest and quiet elderly man, keeping much to himself. Hopkins can play such a character in his sleep.

    What he’s truly great at, though, is that moment when he finally lets the wall around him crumble and shows what he’s been feeling all along. Yes, this happens in “One Life,” and yes, you’ll likely be wiping tears along with him. The emotional payoff takes a while to arrive, but once it does in the last act of this film, you’ll have a hard time forgetting Hopkins’ face.

    Holocaust-themed movies are crucial but notoriously tricky ventures. At Sunday’s Oscars, Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” was honored for a hugely inventive approach, illustrating the banality of Nazi evil in its chilling portrayal of an Auschwitz commandant’s family life right outside the camp wall. “One Life,” directed with efficiency by James Hawes, takes a much more traditional approach, telling its story in flashback with dialogue that sometimes borders on the overly expository, but with a lovely cast and a story that begs to be told.

    Hopkins is the key draw, but Johnny Flynn, the talented actor-musician, has the difficult task of channeling Hopkins as a younger man (the filmmakers chose to shoot the Hopkins scenes first, so that Flynn could then build the connective tissue between the two, something he does admirably.) And it’s a lot more than 50 years that separate the two versions of Winton. It’s the war itself. The events with younger Winton took place in 1939, as the Nazis were marching across Europe but two years before they began implementing their so-called Final Solution, the mass murder of European Jews. The elder Winton knew exactly what became of all those children he couldn’t bring to safety, and you can see it in his eyes here.

    We first meet the elder Winton at home in Maidenhead, a town in southeast England. It’s 1987, and he’s staring at faded photos of children from the war. He spends his days involved in local charity work. He can’t seem to get rid of all the clutter in his study, despite the pleadings of his wife, Grete (Lena Olin), who tells him: “You have to let go, for your own sake.” He’s still trying to figure out what to do with a frayed leather briefcase, which contains a precious scrapbook full of war memories.

    We flash back to 1939 London, when 29-year-old Nicky, as he’s known, who is of Jewish descent but has been raised as a Christian, resolves to leave the comfortable home he lives in with his mother, Babi (Helena Bonham Carter), to travel to Prague. He aims to help with the growing crisis caused by the influx of refugees from the Sudetenland region just annexed by Germany; he and others fear (correctly) that the Nazis will soon invade and send the Jewish refugees to camps.

    In Prague, he finds desperate families and starving children, like a 12-year-old girl caring for an infant who has lost its parents. “We have to move the children,” he tells his colleagues. They say the task is too daunting. He persists, convincing a local rabbi to give him lists of children to begin the process (“I’m putting their lives in your hands,” the rabbi tells him.) Upon his return to London, aided by his spirited mother, he embarks on a furious race against time and government bureaucracy to obtain visas for the children and raise awareness in the media. “The process takes time,” an official says. “We don’t have time,” he replies.

    Somehow, he manages to get the transports going, meeting the trains in London, where children are matched with foster families. (The most moving scenes in the film, until the emotional crescendo at the end, are departure scenes in Prague, with children saying goodbye to parents who must surely sense they’ll never see them again).

    As the film toggles between 1939 and 1987-88, we learn that Winton managed to get eight trains of children out but not a ninth, with 250 children who were turned back once the Nazis invaded, a loss he keeps buried inside. That is, until he he meets a Holocaust researcher who happens to be married to news magnate Robert Maxwell.

    That meeting ultimately leads to the climax in the television studio, faithfully recreated by Hawes, who actually once worked on that very BBC show. The scene is doubly poignant given the knowledge that some of the background actors in the studio that day were actual family members of those Winton saved. “There was not a dry eye on the set floor,” the director has said.

    That’s not difficult to believe.

    “One Life,” a Bleecker Street release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association “for thematic material, smoking and some language.” Running time: 110 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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  • Off to Never Never Land: ‘Peter Pan’ flies again in a new tour after some much needed changes

    Off to Never Never Land: ‘Peter Pan’ flies again in a new tour after some much needed changes

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    NEW YORK — A new, inclusive stage production of “Peter Pan” flies out on a U.S. tour this month, telling the classic tale of a boy who refuses to grow up — but without references that, ironically, have aged poorly.

    Gone are elements harmful to Native people, in are a few new songs and the setting of Victorian England has been scrapped in favor of modern America with a multicultural cast.

    “Part of the why I wanted to do this is that it will be kids’ first experience in the theater, and I want them not only to fall in love with “Peter Pan,” but to fall in love with the theater and to come back,” says director Lonny Price.

    The show is based on the 1954 musical version — originally starring Broadway legend Mary Martin — with a score by Morris Charlap, additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and additional music by Jule Styne.

    Playwright Larissa FastHorse, who made history on Broadway in 2023 with her satirical comedy “The Thanksgiving Play,” was tapped to rework the story. She says she found the character of Peter Pan complex, the pirates funny, the music enchanting but the depictions of Indigenous people and women appalling.

    In the previous version, there were references to “redskins” throughout, a dance number with cringy gibberish for lyrics called “Ugg-A-Wugg” and Tiger Lily was described as fending off randy braves “with a hatchet.”

    “My goal for doing it was to make it not cause harm,” FastHorse says. “Because the music is so beautiful. The story is complicated and beautiful. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it does all those things and has so much magic.”

    The tour kicks off in Maryland this week and travels to North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, California, Missouri, Texas and Georgia.

    “Ugg-A-Wugg” has been cut, replaced by the melody from a tune from the little-known 1961 Comden-Green-Styne musical “Subways Are for Sleeping,” married with new lyrics from Amanda Green, Adolph Green’s Tony Award-nominated daughter.

    Price also found in the original creators’ papers a “haunting, beautiful” song called “I Went Home,” which tells of a time when Peter returned home and found his window barred and another kid sleeping in his bed. Martin had asked for it to be cut before the premiere, fearing it was too sad. Price put it back in, arguing audiences are more mature these days.

    “I think kids can be a little upset now,” he says. “I don’t think it’s upsetting. I think it’s moving. I think it’s just a very moving piece. I don’t think anyone’s heard that song since 1954.” There’s also a reprise of “I Won’t Grow Up” for the second act curtain raiser called “We Hate Those Kinds,” sung by the pirates with lyrics by Green.

    FastHorse widened the concept of Native in the musical’s Neverland to encompass several members of under-pressure Indigenous cultures from all over the globe — Africa, Japan and Eastern Europe, among them — who have retreated to Neverland to preserve their culture until they can find a way back. Price hails it as an “elegant solution,” adding FastHorse “ was just the perfect writer for us.”

    FastHorse is the first ever Indigenous artist to revise the story, and she has done more than correct the perceptions of Native culture. She’s also deepened the women characters: Tiger Lily and Wendy both sing now, they both dance, they both fight and they speak to each other without Peter.

    FastHorse and Price’s version takes place in a modern day, middle class United States not Victorian England. The cast includes children of various races and ethnicities.

    “I want every child in this nation to look out their window of the national tour, to look out the window and believe Peter can fly by their window,” says FastHorse. “Our cast looks like America.”

    Price stresses that despite the changes, the fabric of the show has been maintained, especially the beautiful language lifted from James M. Barrie’s classic tale, like the notion that the birth of fairies comes from a child’s first laugh.

    “Peter Pan” is a hardy vehicle in any case, with five major Broadway revivals, countless tours, NBC’s 2015 “Peter Pan Live” with Allison Williams, the animated series “Jake and the Never Land Pirates,” the Broadway shows “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” and “Peter and the Starcatcher” and 2023’s live-action “Peter Pan & Wendy,” which added girls to the Lost Boys and featured a Black actor as Tinker Bell.

    Price says the appeal of Barrie’s work is intergenerational, grounded in notions of freedom, motherhood, innocence and a very human ambivalence about growing up.

    “Kids are afraid of growing up. Some of them want to grow up really fast. I think all adults have this conflicted relationship with growing up. So I think it’s a meditation on that and mortality as well,” says Price. “If you look at all of the themes of it, they’re very primal to us all.”

    ___

    Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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  • Georgia woman sentenced to 30 years in prison in child care death of 4-month-old

    Georgia woman sentenced to 30 years in prison in child care death of 4-month-old

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    DECATUR, Ga. — A suburban Atlanta woman has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 2021 murder of a 4-month-old who died after she placed him to sleep on his abdomen in the child care center she operated out of her basement.

    A judge sentenced Amanda Hickey, 48, on Friday after families of children she was accused of abusing gave emotional testimony against her.

    ”I know that there is nothing I can say in words to take away their pain, except take responsibility and express extreme sorrow for what I’ve done,” Hickey told DeKalb County Superior Court Chief Judge LaTisha Dear Jackson, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This is my legacy now.”

    Charlie Cronmiller was being cared for in Hickey’s Little Lovey child care center when he died on Feb. 3, 2021. Hickey didn’t check on him for more than two hours before finding him covered in vomit and not breathing. The infant was pronounced dead at a hospital.

    Hickey operated the child care center from the basement of her Dunwoody home. She initially told investigators that she put the baby down on his back, in line with state regulations, but that the child rolled over onto his abdomen. Security video, however, showed Hickey actually placed the infant facedown.

    Video showed her swinging other babies by their feet, slamming them into the ground, pulling their hair, pushing and tripping toddlers, and placing others in unsafe positions for sleep, prosecutors said. The victims ranged in age from 6 to 18 months.

    Hickey was licensed to care for six children, but prosecutors said 10 were inside her home the day Charlie died.

    She pleaded guilty Sept. 22 to seven counts of first-degree child cruelty, seven counts of reckless conduct, one count of second-degree child cruelty and three counts of battery. Hickey entered an Alford plea, which allows a person to maintain her innocence while acknowledging that it is in her best interest to plead guilty to charges of second-degree murder and second-degree child cruelty related to Cronmiller’s death.

    “There is no remorse,” the baby’s mother, Stephanie Cronmiller, told the court Friday. “The only thing she’s sorry about is that she got caught. I focus on forgiving myself because I chose her. How could I not think this was my fault?”

    Hickey was taken into custody immediately after the hearing. Jackson ordered that once Hickey is released from prison, she can’t have contact with the victims or any children younger than 13, and can’t gain financially from the case.

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  • Haitian students play drums and strum guitars to escape hunger and gang violence

    Haitian students play drums and strum guitars to escape hunger and gang violence

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    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Woodberson Seïde held his stepsister’s hand as they walked through Haiti ‘s capital on their way to an afterschool music program.

    They avoided cars, motorcycles, and territory controlled by the gangs whose predation prompted this week’s U.N. Security Council vote for the deployment of a multinational armed force. Once he arrived at the school that hosts the program, 11-year-old Woodberson didn’t think much about how he sometimes eats once a day. His family sleeps on the floor of a church, something they’ve done since losing their home to gangs.

    The boy was neatly dressed and ready to play drums. Across Port-au-Prince, hundreds of children like Woodberson are playing percussion, piano and bass guitar to drown out the violence and hunger around them.

    “When I play drums, I feel proud,” Woodberson said.

    To many, Haiti feels hopeless. Children are mostly kept indoors for safety. Their parents worry about gangs recruiting children as young as 8.

    Woodberson and other young musicians in a U.S.-sponsored music program refuse to let circumstances dictate their future, helping both themselves and their parents.

    “Seeing my son performing makes me very happy,” said Jean Williams Seïde, his father.

    Woodberson took his first lesson two years ago as part of the after-school music program founded in 2014 by U.S. nonprofit Music Heals International. The program started with 60 children and has grown into a group of 400 enrolled in the $160,000-a-year program offered at eight schools. Many play at church and in local concerts, some after founding their own band.

    “It’s very rare … that you can provide a little bit of peace in such craziness, such a hellish landscape,” said Ann Lee, CEO and co-founder of Community Organized Relief Effort, a California nonprofit organization that sponsors the program.

    Haitian musical traditions range from rara to compas to mizik rasin, or roots music. The program’s teachers and students decide together what music they’ll play, picking from genres that include compas, reggae, rock, Latino music and African music.

    Many of them meet twice a week to play for two hours as the rat-tat-tat of gunfire echoes across Port-au-Prince.

    “Music transforms,” said Mickelson Pierre, who learned how to play guitar in the program and now teaches it. “It’s something extraordinary, and it leads to peace of mind.”

    Gangs are estimated to control up to 80% of Port-au-Prince and fight over territory daily, with more than 2,400 people reported killed this year. Rapes and kidnappings also have spiked. Families are reluctant to send their children to school, let alone allow them to play outdoors.

    Gang violence also has left nearly 200,000 people homeless.

    Woodberson and his family once lived in Canaan, a makeshift community established on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince by people who survived the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck in 2010. In April, gangs raided the community and forced many to flee.

    “The bandits took everything from my house and left me with nothing,” said Jean Williams Seïde.

    The family sought shelter inside a small room at a church in Port-au-Prince, where they have been sleeping on the floor for several months.

    Woodberson would like his own drum kit, but his father can barely afford to help feed his four children despite his job as a mailman. His wife, Nelise Chadic Seïde, washes laundry for a living and is anemic, so she often feels weak. They don’t have money for her treatment or three meals a day, but are grateful they aren’t starving.

    “God never lets us go a day without food,” she said.

    On a recent weekday afternoon, Woodberson stood up to play a compas song on the drums. He grabbed the cymbal with his left hand, struck a syncopated beat with his right, stuck out his tongue and rocked to the rhythm while playing.

    He’s part of a band called “Hope,” and that day, he and several other students jammed to “Yo Palem Male,” Haitian Creole for “They Speak Evil About Me.”

    Not to be left behind was PMF, which stands for Plezi Music au Feminin, meaning “Enjoy Feminine Music.” It’s an all-female band that formed after a coed band decided it only wanted boys and kicked out the girls. They played on stage after Woodberson and opened with “Como la Flor,” by slain Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla.

    “When I am playing the piano, I release a vibe that I did not know I have in me,” said Ester Ceus, 17. “It makes me feel relaxed.”

    Students in the program are allowed to choose any instrument. Available are 90 guitars, 62 keyboards, 24 bass guitars, 15 maracas, five ukeleles, two tambourines and a couple of cowbells.

    As a result of the program, the budding musicians perform better in school, and their parents are less worried that they’ll join gangs, music program manager Emmanuel Piervil said.

    There are a limited number of instruments, so teacher Raymond Jules Josue, 24, tells kids to practice by using their hands to thump the beat on their bodies while they take turns playing the drums.

    Woodberson is the first to show up to class and often serves as a substitute when his professor takes a call or arrives late because of roadblocks or gang fights in his area.

    “These schools are often the lifeline for kids to have something else other than lockdown,” said Lee. “To be transported to a place where that is not the first thing that comes to mind when you’re away from your family and home, it’s a gift.”

    ___

    Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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  • Johnny’s becomes Smile-Up. Japanese music company hit with sex abuse scandal takes on a new name

    Johnny’s becomes Smile-Up. Japanese music company hit with sex abuse scandal takes on a new name

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    TOKYO — The Japanese entertainment company that has acknowledged its founder sexually assaulted hundreds of boys over the span of half a century, took a new name on Monday: Smile-Up. It also vowed to focus on compensation for victims of the abuse.

    Tokyo-based Johnny & Associates, founded in 1975, will eventually fold, but its performers can join an independent company that is being set up, said Noriyuki Higashiyama, the company’s new leader and a former star at Johnny’s, as the company is known.

    Higashiyama, tapped last month to head the old Johnny’s, will now be president of both Smile-Up and the new company. The new company’s name will be put to public vote by Johnny’s fans.

    “All things with the Johnny’s name will have to go,” Higashiyama told reporters at a Tokyo hotel. “A wounded heart isn’t easy to heal. Compensation on its own will never be enough.”

    In recent months, dozens of men who were performers and backup dancers as teens and children at Johnny’s have come forward, saying they were sexually assaulted by Johnny Kitagawa.

    Kitagawa, who died in 2019, was never charged.

    So far, 325 people have applied to the company’s compensation program, and that number may grow. Payments will begin next month, Higashiyama said. How the monetary amount will be decided was not yet clear.

    Last month, Kitagawa’s niece Julie Keiko Fujishima resigned as chief executive at Johnny’s and apologized for his past. She still owns 100% of the unlisted company but will not be part of the new unnamed company, whose capital structure is still being worked out.

    Fujishima did not appear at Monday’s news conference and had a letter read aloud. The letter said she was “brainwashed” by her mother Mary, who insisted Kitagawa was innocent, even after the Japanese Supreme Court ruled two decades ago that the sexual allegations against him were accurate.

    “I want to erase all that remains of Johnny from this world,” she wrote. “I do not forgive what Johnny has done.”

    Some victims say they have suffered for decades in silence, unable to confide in family or friends, while experiencing flashbacks.

    Most of the attacks took place at Kitagawa’s luxury apartment, where several youngsters were handpicked to spend the night. The following morning, he would thrust 10,000 yen ($100) bills into their hands, according to various testimony.

    Rumors about Kitagawa were rampant over the years, with several tell-it-all books published. A recent U.N. investigation has said that the number of victims is at least several hundred, and called on the Japanese government to act. When BBC did a special on Kitagawa earlier this year, the scandal jumped into the spotlight.

    Mainstream Japanese media have come under serious scrutiny for having remained mum about Kitagawa, apparently afraid of his influence and ability to deny access to his stars.

    Now, some TV broadcasters and programming have done an about-face to shun Johnny’s stars. Major companies have also recently announced they will stop using them in advertising.

    In a related development, several victims met with lawyers, feminists and Johnny’s fans to work together in pushing for legal changes so civil damages can be pursued after the current limit of 20 years. The criminal statute of limitations is now 15 years.

    Attorney Yoshihito Kawakami said children often don’t understand what happened, and the changes will allow victims to seek damages from Johnny & Associates.

    Japan raised the age of sexual consent from 13 to 16 only this year. Japanese media reports say Kitagawa often purposely picked on 13-year-olds, although his victims have been as young as 8.

    The company has promised it will compensate victims “beyond the scope of the law. ”

    “Some perpetrators are living their lives as though nothing happened. That causes great pain to the victims,” said Junya Hiramoto, who heads a group of Johnny’s victims.

    The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of alleged sexual assault, but Hiramoto and others in the case have chosen to identify themselves in the media.

    “By coming together, we can grow into a bigger force and move toward hope,” he said.

    ___

    Follow Yuri Kageyama on X, formerly Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

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  • Alabama school band director says he was ‘just doing my job’ before police arrested him

    Alabama school band director says he was ‘just doing my job’ before police arrested him

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    BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama high school band director said Wednesday that he was just “doing my job” when police officers arrested him and shocked him with a stun gun after he refused to immediately stop the band as it played in the bleachers following a game.

    Johnny Mims, the band director at Minor High School, told The Associated Press he was confused when officers pulled him from the director’s podium to arrest him following last Thursday’s game between Minor and Jackson-Olin high schools.

    “I was in shock. Just totally confused because I was pretty much doing my job, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. I definitely did not deserve to be Tased,” Mims said by phone. Mims said police shocked him with the stun gun three times.

    Police body camera footage released Monday shows Mims being arrested and repeatedly shocked in a chaotic scene that included students screaming. Police charged him with disorderly conduct, harassment and resisting arrest.

    In the body camera footage, officers are seen approaching Mims as the band plays in the stands. They ask him several times to stop the performance, saying it is time for everyone to leave the stadium since the game was over, and appear incredulous that Mims continues directing the band for another two minutes or so.

    As the music continues, an officer tells Mims he will go to jail and another says she will contact the school. Mims flashes two thumbs up and says, “That’s cool.”

    “Put him in handcuffs,” an officer is later heard saying. The stadium lights are cut off shortly before the band finishes.

    Mims said after the song ended that he was pulled from the conductor’s stand. Officers are seen in the video apparently trying to arrest him, in a scrum of bodies. Students in the 145-member band can be heard screaming as the arrest plays out.

    Mims said he was confused by what was happening. He said Wednesday that the two bands were doing what is sometimes called a fifth quarter show in which bands perform as attendees leave the stadium. He said he wasn’t trying to be defiant, but rather was attempting to wrap up the song.

    “We were at the last half of our song,” he said.

    Police said in a statement Friday that officers decided to take Mims into custody after the confrontation. They said Mims refused to put his hands behind his back and that the arresting officer said he was pushed by the band director, which led to the use of the stun gun. Mims was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and harassment.

    Mims said he didn’t push or hit any of the officers.

    “You will see that my client never struck or never attempted to strike an officer,” state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who is Mims’ attorney, said during a Wednesday news conference.

    Mims and the officers who approached him are Black. Both high schools have majority Black student bodies. “This wouldn’t have happened in Mountain Brook. This wouldn’t have happened in Hoover…And everyone in this room knows that,” Givan said, referring to affluent majority-white cities in the Birmingham area.

    Mims said he is currently on administrative leave from the school system. The Alabama Education Association, which represents teachers and other public school employees, said it was asking the school system to let Mims return to work.

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  • Alabama school band director says he was ‘just doing my job’ before police arrested him

    Alabama school band director says he was ‘just doing my job’ before police arrested him

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    BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama high school band director said Wednesday that he was just “doing my job” when police officers arrested him and shocked him with a stun gun after he refused to immediately stop the band as it played in the bleachers following a game.

    Johnny Mims, the band director at Minor High School, told The Associated Press he was confused when officers pulled him from the director’s podium to arrest him following last Thursday’s game between Minor and Jackson-Olin high schools.

    “I was in shock. Just totally confused because I was pretty much doing my job, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. I definitely did not deserve to be Tased,” Mims said by phone. Mims said police shocked him with the stun gun three times.

    Police body camera footage released Monday shows Mims being arrested and repeatedly shocked in a chaotic scene that included students screaming. Police charged him with disorderly conduct, harassment and resisting arrest.

    In the body camera footage, officers are seen approaching Mims as the band plays in the stands. They ask him several times to stop the performance, saying it is time for everyone to leave the stadium since the game was over, and appear incredulous that Mims continues directing the band for another two minutes or so.

    As the music continues, an officer tells Mims he will go to jail and another says she will contact the school. Mims flashes two thumbs up and says, “That’s cool.”

    “Put him in handcuffs,” an officer is later heard saying. The stadium lights are cut off shortly before the band finishes.

    Mims said after the song ended that he was pulled from the conductor’s stand. Officers are seen in the video apparently trying to arrest him, in a scrum of bodies. Students in the 145-member band can be heard screaming as the arrest plays out.

    Mims said he was confused by what was happening. He said Wednesday that the two bands were doing what is sometimes called a fifth quarter show in which bands perform as attendees leave the stadium. He said he wasn’t trying to be defiant, but rather was attempting to wrap up the song.

    “We were at the last half of our song,” he said.

    Police said in a statement Friday that officers decided to take Mims into custody after the confrontation. They said Mims refused to put his hands behind his back and that the arresting officer said he was pushed by the band director, which led to the use of the stun gun. Mims was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and harassment.

    Mims said he didn’t push or hit any of the officers.

    “You will see that my client never struck or never attempted to strike an officer,” state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who is Mims’ attorney, said during a Wednesday news conference.

    Mims and the officers who approached him are Black. Both high schools have majority Black student bodies. “This wouldn’t have happened in Mountain Brook. This wouldn’t have happened in Hoover…And everyone in this room knows that,” Givan said, referring to affluent majority-white cities in the Birmingham area.

    Mims said he is currently on administrative leave from the school system. The Alabama Education Association, which represents teachers and other public school employees, said it was asking the school system to let Mims return to work.

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  • Biden tells a Broadway theater packed for fundraiser that Trump is determined to destroy the nation

    Biden tells a Broadway theater packed for fundraiser that Trump is determined to destroy the nation

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    NEW YORK — President Joe Biden on Monday told a packed Broadway theater full of big-name stars hosting a fundraiser in his honor that he was running for reelection because Donald Trump was determined to destroy the nation.

    Democracy is at stake, he told the audience at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Hate groups have been emboldened, he said. Books are being banned. Children go to school fearing shootings.

    “Let there be no question, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” he said, referring to the former president’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.” “And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy.”

    Biden also accused Trump and his allies of bowing down to authoritarians: “I will not side with dictators like Putin. Maybe Trump and his MAGA friends can bow down but I won’t.”

    It was the among the president’s strongest rebukes of the Republican front-runner and former president, who is facing criminal charges for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. And it comes as the political pressure is ramping up from Republicans in the House who have opened an impeachment inquiry into Biden in an effort to tie him to his son Hunter’s business dealings and distract from Trump’s legal peril.

    Biden said he wanted to send the “strongest and most powerful message possible, that political violence in America is never never never acceptable.”

    Biden, who is set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, arrived in New York on Sunday evening so he could squeeze in the fundraisers as the end of the quarter for federal election reporting nears.

    A Times Square billboard not far from the concert advertised “Broadway for Biden.” Sara Bareilles, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt were among those appearing on behalf of the president.

    By turning to the New York theater community — overseen and contracted by the Actors’ Equity Association, whose some 51,000 American actors and stage managers remain on the job — Biden avoided Hollywood and the strike by members of the Writers Guild of America and actors from SAG-AFTRA.

    Both Biden and first lady Jill Biden attended the event, with tickets ranging from $250 to $7,500. Biden also took part in a private fundraiser in Manhattan hosted by the Black Economic Alliance.

    Biden walked on stage to the showstopper “All That Jazz,” and spoke about how when his sons were little they’d head up to New York twice a year to catch a show. Once, they brought their boys to see Bette Midler, whose act wasn’t exactly known to be family-friendly, and she singled them out.

    “Who would bring two kids to a show like this?” she asked, according to Biden. It prompted a round of raucous laughter.

    “My boys used that as a badge of courage,” he said. “Bette Midler picked us out of a crowd. … Families all over the world have memories like that to cherish.”

    Biden was introduced by Jeffrey Seller, a theater producer best known for his work on “Rent,” “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.”

    “President Biden, I am here to pledge to you that we in this theater — all 1,500 strong of us — are your warriors, are your troops in ensuring that we maintain, affirm and nurture the soul of our democracy and the soul of our nation,” Seller said, echoing a phrase Biden often invokes when he’s talking about why he’s running for reelection.

    The event was full of performances by Tony-winning stars, but only the remarks by the president and Seller were open to the press.

    Southern California, the home of extraordinary wealth and the engine of the film and television industry, has historically served as an ATM for the Democratic Party.

    Since at least Bill Clinton, Democratic presidents have cultivated intimate ties with powerful figures in the Hollywood entertainment industry. Biden himself raised roughly $1 million during an early 2020 campaign fundraiser at the home of Michael Smith and James Costos, a former HBO executive. That event was attended by former DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, now a Biden campaign co-chair.

    The ongoing actors and writers strike has ground that to a halt, at least for now. Writers have been on strike for 4 1/2 months over issues including pay, job security and regulating the use of artificial intelligence. SAG-AFTRA members went on strike on July 14.

    Biden is the most vocally pro-union president in decades, and is mindful of staying on the right side of labor, a key constituency. As long as the strike goes on, he has been advised by Katzenberg to steer clear, according to three people with direct knowledge of the guidance who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal planning details.

    Biden has kept a tepid fundraising schedule since announcing his reelection campaign in April, worrying some donors who believe the president needs to start stockpiling massive amounts of cash now for the brutal campaign that lies ahead. Still, campaign officials say they are raising plenty of money during big-dollar events –- just not anywhere near Los Angeles.

    “Joe Biden is the most pro-labor president that I can recall in my lifetime. He is true to his word on that,” said Chris Korge, who serves a dual role as finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the Biden Victory Fund, the chief fundraising committee for Biden’s reelection. “The president will decide when is the right time to go, but it’s not impacting our fundraising ability at all.”

    Some Biden allies worry that time is wasting. And they note Biden could still raise money from southern California donors who are not affiliated with the entertainment industry.

    Even that could prove perilous. The potential of a picket line forming outside the gates of a multimillion-dollar home would present made-for-TV fodder that would only serve to underscore the reality that even a pro-labor president must raise cash from wealthy tycoons who have far more in common with Hollywood studio heads than rank-and-file union members.

    Biden and the DNC raised more than $72 million for his reelection in the 10 weeks after he announced his 2024 candidacy, his campaign announced in July. It was a strong but not record performance by an incumbent.

    Trump’s campaign raised more than $35 million for his White House bid during the second fundraising quarter, nearly double what he raised during the first three months of the year. Trump remains the GOP front-runner despite facing indictments in four different jurisdictions.

    Biden will turn his attention to diplomacy on Tuesday and Wednesday at the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. After his Wednesday diplomatic engagements, Biden will squeeze in two more fundraisers in New York before returning to Washington.

    ___

    Slodysko and Long reported from Washington.

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  • Police probe report of dad being told 11-year-old girl could face charges in images sent to man

    Police probe report of dad being told 11-year-old girl could face charges in images sent to man

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    Columbus police say they are investigating a report that a father was told by officers that his 11-year-old daughter could face charges after he called to report that she had been the victim of an “online predator.”

    ByThe Associated Press

    September 18, 2023, 7:00 PM

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Columbus police say they are investigating a report that a father was told by officers that his 11-year-old daughter could face charges after he called to report that she had been the victim of an “online predator.”

    A video posted on social media shows the unidentified man talking to officers who came to his door in answer to his complaint of a man having manipulated his daughter into sending images. The man says he wanted someone to talk to her to get her “to realize what this was” and then suggests “reality is” there isn’t much he can do.

    One officer is heard in the video saying his daughter “could probably get charged with child porn” if she produced the images. Told the girl is only 11, the officer replies “Doesn’t matter. She’s still making porn.” After the man says she is being manipulated by an adult on the internet, the same officer asks whether the girl is taking pictures, and the man then breaks off the conversation and the officers depart, according to the video.

    It’s unclear when the interaction took place, but the social media poster said the police response occurred six hours after the man’s call to police.

    Columbus police said Monday that the city’s Department of the Inspector General, “which investigates complaints of misconduct and/or excessive use of force by sworn personnel, has opened an inquiry into this incident.” The department said it is investigating the video posted on social media “involving two officers responding to a call for service.”

    Police said they regard all sexual misconduct allegations” with the utmost seriousness” and “incidents involving minors are handled with the highest degree of concern.” Detectives with the sexual assault unit were immediately notified and have since initiated an investigation.

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  • Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Jackman separate after 27 years of marriage

    Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Jackman separate after 27 years of marriage

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    Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Jackman have decided to end their marriage after 27 years and two children, the pair told People magazine Friday

    ByThe Associated Press

    September 15, 2023, 2:28 PM

    FILE – Hugh Jackman, right., and Deborra-Lee Furness Jackman attend the premiere of Apple Original Films’ “Ghosted” in New York on April 18, 2023. Jackman and Deborra-lee Jackman have decided to end their marriage after 27 years and two children, the pair told People magazine Friday. In a joint statement provided to People, they said they “have been blessed to share almost 3 decades together as husband and wife in a wonderful, loving marriage.” (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

    The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Jackman have decided to end their marriage after 27 years and two children.

    “We have been blessed to share almost 3 decades together as husband and wife in a wonderful, loving marriage. Our journey now is shifting and we have decided to separate to pursue our individual growth,” they said in the joint statement. Their separation was first reported by People magazine.

    They said the statement would be their only one on their breakup. They added that their family is their highest priority and that they’ll undertake “this next chapter with gratitude, love, and kindness.”

    A representative for the couple confirmed the statement to The Associated Press Friday.

    The couple met in 1995 on the set of an Australian television show where both were actors. Deborra-lee Furness at the time was the more established of the two. They married in 1996 and had two children: Oscar, now 23, and Ava, now 18. Jackman also ascended to major stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway.

    The couple have been red carpet mainstays for years, posing together at the Oscars, at Broadway events and at the Met Gala, including the most recent edition in May. They attended Wimbledon together in July.

    In April, Jackman celebrated their 27th anniversary with a tribute on Instagram.

    “I love you so much. Together we have created a beautiful family. And life,” he wrote. “Your laughter, your spirit, generosity, humor, cheekiness, courage and loyalty is an incredible gift to me.”

    Furness, 67, is an advocate for orphans and adoption, especially in her native Australia, and one of the founding members of National Adoption Awareness Week.

    Jackman, 54, who played the superhero Wolverine in several movies, is reprising the role in “Deadpool 3,” which is on hold due to the actors strike.

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  • Prosecutors in all 50 states urge Congress to strengthen tools to fight AI child sexual abuse images

    Prosecutors in all 50 states urge Congress to strengthen tools to fight AI child sexual abuse images

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    COLUMBIA, S.C. — The top prosecutors in all 50 states are urging Congress to study how artificial intelligence can be used to exploit children through pornography, and come up with legislation to further guard against it.

    In a letter sent Tuesday to Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, the attorneys general from across the country call on federal lawmakers to “establish an expert commission to study the means and methods of AI that can be used to exploit children specifically” and expand existing restrictions on child sexual abuse materials specifically to cover AI-generated images.

    “We are engaged in a race against time to protect the children of our country from the dangers of AI,” the prosecutors wrote in the letter, shared ahead of time with The Associated Press. “Indeed, the proverbial walls of the city have already been breached. Now is the time to act.”

    South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson led the effort to add signatories from all 50 states and four U.S. territories to the letter. The Republican, elected last year to his fourth term, told AP last week that he hoped federal lawmakers would translate the group’s bipartisan support for legislation on the issue into action.

    “Everyone’s focused on everything that divides us,” said Wilson, who marshaled the coalition with his counterparts in Mississippi, North Carolina and Oregon. “My hope would be that, no matter how extreme or polar opposites the parties and the people on the spectrum can be, you would think protecting kids from new, innovative and exploitative technologies would be something that even the most diametrically opposite individuals can agree on — and it appears that they have.”

    The Senate this year has held hearings on the possible threats posed by AI-related technologies. In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company makes free chatbot tool ChatGPT, said that government intervention will be critical to mitigating the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems. Altman proposed the formation of a U.S. or global agency that would license the most powerful AI systems and have the authority to “take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards.”

    While there’s no immediate sign Congress will craft sweeping new AI rules, as European lawmakers are doing, the societal concerns have led U.S. agencies to promise to crack down on harmful AI products that break existing civil rights and consumer protection laws.

    In additional to federal action, Wilson said he’s encouraging his fellow attorneys general to scour their own state statutes for possible areas of concern.

    “We started thinking, do the child exploitation laws on the books — have the laws kept up with the novelty of this new technology?”

    According to Wilson, among the dangers AI poses include the creation of “deepfake” scenarios — videos and images that have been digitally created or altered with artificial intelligence or machine learning — of a child that has already been abused, or the alteration of the likeness of a real child from something like a photograph taken from social media, so that it depicts abuse.

    “Your child was never assaulted, your child was never exploited, but their likeness is being used as if they were,” he said. “We have a concern that our laws may not address the virtual nature of that, though, because your child wasn’t actually exploited — although they’re being defamed and certainly their image is being exploited.”

    A third possibility, he pointed out, is the altogether digital creation of a fictitious child’s image for the purpose of creating pornography.

    “The argument would be, ‘well I’m not harming anyone — in fact, it’s not even a real person,’ but you’re creating demand for the industry that exploits children,” Wilson said.

    There have been some moves within the tech industry to combat the issue. In February, Meta, as well as adult sites like OnlyFans and Pornhub, began participating in an online tool, called Take It Down, that allows teens to report explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet. The reporting site works for regular images and AI-generated content.

    “AI is a great technology, but it’s an industry disrupter,” Wilson said. “You have new industries, new technologies that are disrupting everything, and the same is true for the law enforcement community and for protecting kids. The bad guys are always evolving on how they can slip off the hook of justice, and we have to evolve with that.”

    ___

    Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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  • Conservative book ban push fuels library exodus from national association that stands up for books

    Conservative book ban push fuels library exodus from national association that stands up for books

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    CHEYENNE, Wyo. — After parents in a rural and staunchly conservative Wyoming county joined nationwide pressure on librarians to pull books they considered harmful to youngsters, the local library board obliged with new policies making such books a higher priority for removal — and keeping out of collections.

    But that’s not all the library board has done.

    Campbell County also withdrew from the American Library Association, in what’s become a movement against the professional organization that has fought against book bans.

    This summer, the state libraries in Montana, Missouri and Texas and the local library in Midland, Texas, announced they’re leaving the ALA, with possibly more to come. Right-wing lawmakers in at least nine other states — Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — demand similar action.

    Part of the reason is the association’s defense of disputed books, many of which have LGBTQ+ and racial themes. A tweet by ALA President Emily Drabinski last year in which she called herself a “Marxist lesbian” also has drawn criticism and led to the Montana and Texas state library departures.

    “This is the problem with the American Library Association, it has changed from an organization that helped communities and used common sense into one that just promotes a view,” said Dan Kleinman, a blogger and longtime ALA critic.

    Widely disputed books over the past couple years include Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir “Gender Queer,” Juno Dawson’s “This Book Is Gay,” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” the ALA points out.

    In northeastern Wyoming’s Campbell County, a coal-mining area where former President Donald Trump got 87% of the vote in 2020, library board meetings have been packed and often heated for over two years now.

    After a local outcry over a drag queen story hour and an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute library officials over books in the library’s children’s section, a library board with several new members appointed by the County Commission withdrew from the ALA last year.

    “We were the first library in nation to do this. And now it has progressed to something to something I couldn’t even have imagined,” library board member Charles Butler said. “And all we were ever worried about was the sexualization of children.”

    The nonprofit American Library Association denies having a political agenda, saying it has always been nonpartisan.

    “This effort to change what libraries are, or even just take libraries away from communities, I think, is part of a larger effort to diminish the public good, to take away those information resources from individuals and really limit their opportunity to have the kinds of resources that a community hub, like a public library, provides,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.

    The ALA won’t say how many libraries are members of the group but denied any “mass exodus.”

    The troubles come as individual membership in the ALA is down 14% since 2018 to about 49,700, the lowest since 1989, according to figures on the organization’s website. The ALA attributes the decline to suspended library conferences during the pandemic.

    While librarians pride themselves about being open to different perspectives and providing access to different kinds of materials, political leaders telling them to part with the ALA runs against that, said Washington University in St. Louis law professor Gregory Magarian.

    Magarian has been following Missouri’s departure from the ALA amid a debate over who may take part in local library “story hours” and new state rules that seek to limit youth access to certain books deemed inappropriate for their age.

    “When you see state governments kind of replacing that type of control by librarians with greater control by politically motivated, politically ambitious, politically polarized government officials, I think that’s really troubling for the prospects for free access to ideas,” Magarian said.

    In Campbell County, recent library policy changes remove the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,” which states: “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.”

    The new policy says the library system takes seriously keeping “obscene sexually explicit or graphic materials” out of youth sections and can apply that priority in the routine “weeding” of damaged, unused and out-of-date books.

    When library Director Terri Lesley expressed doubts about doing that, the board asked her to resign. After she refused, the board voted 4-1 to fire her.

    “If we just start moving books, it is really putting the library staff in a bad position legally,” Lesley said at a library board meeting just before her firing July 28. “This raises First Amendment concerns with no right to appeal or challenge books that have been weeded.”

    She singled out MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ+ group, and Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal advocacy group, for working together on the library policy changes, a claim supported by a July 19 post on the MassResistance website.

    Lesley won an ALA award last year for “notable contributions to intellectual freedom” and “personal courage in defense of freedom of expression.” She did not return a message seeking comment and Butler and ALA officials declined to comment on her firing.

    “People should be running their own libraries based on common sense, community standards and the law,” said Kleinman, the ALA critic and blogger. “And if library directors don’t want to go along with that? Goodbye.”

    Kleinman last month launched an alternative to the ALA, the World Library Association, which he said will offer new policy guidelines for libraries.

    “We’re going to return things to commonplace, community standards,” Kleinman said.

    Butler and Campbell County Library Board Chairwoman Sage Bear, who did not return phone and email messages seeking comment, have joined as “team members” of the World Library Association. Butler said he hoped the new association will eventually offer librarian continuing education that Campbell County can no longer provide through the ALA.

    So far, state library associations — private, professional organizations that resemble the American Library Association, but on a state level — are sticking with the American Library Association. Wyoming librarians don’t always see eye-to-eye with the ALA but the Wyoming Library Association has no plans to cut ties, President Conrrado Saldivar said.

    Wyoming librarians are being “constantly critiqued” but they — not the ALA — are the ones who control their collections based on community needs, Saldivar added.

    “ALA is not telling our library workers, our collection development librarians, you have to have this book in your library collection,” Saldivar said.

    Republican Gov. Mark Gordon looks to be on the same page, criticizing as a “media stunt” a recent letter from 13 state lawmakers and Wyoming’s secretary of state asking him to pull the Wyoming State Library from the ALA.

    “The letter implies that Wyoming citizens — Wyoming parents — are not capable of deciding how best to govern themselves and need the self-appointed morality police to show them the way,” Gordon said in a statement.

    He called for discussion about the ALA’s “organizational drift” but is keeping the Wyoming State Library in the ALA, at least for now. Whether still more states and communities decide to leave remains to be seen amid what Caldwell-Stone described as a new push to question the group’s very existence.

    “We have to question whose agenda is served by taking away library service from the people and taking away the liberty to make ones own choices about one’s own reading,” she said. “Because that’s what we’re here for.”

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  • Three found dead at remote Rocky Mountain campsite were trying to escape society, stepsister says

    Three found dead at remote Rocky Mountain campsite were trying to escape society, stepsister says

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    DENVER — The stepsister of a Colorado woman who was found dead along with her sister and teenage son at a remote Rocky Mountain campsite says the women fled into the wilderness after struggling to cope with societal changes in recent years, but they were unequipped to survive off the grid.

    Exposed to several feet of snow, chills below zero and with no food found at their camp, Christine Vance, Rebecca Vance and Rebecca’s son likely died of malnutrition and hypothermia, according to the autopsies released this week. Authorities haven’t released the boy’s name.

    Those reports contained another chilling detail that brought stepsister Trevala Jara to tears: The 14-year-old boy’s body was found with Jara’s favorite, blessed rosary that she gave the group before they left.

    “God was with them,” said Jara, who still hasn’t mustered the strength to remove the rosary from the hazard bag. But Jara, who tried to convince them not to go, has questions.

    “Why would you want to do this knowing that you would leave me behind?” she said through tears. “Why didn’t you listen to me and my husband?”

    The camp and the teen’s body were first discovered by a hiker wandering off trail in July. The Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office found the two women’s bodies the following day, when they searched the campsite and unzipped the tent. All three had been dead for some time. Strewn across the ground were empty food containers and survival books. Nearby, a lean-to extended near a firepit.

    The sisters from Colorado Springs, about an hour south of Denver, had been planning to live off the grid since the fall of 2021, Jara said. They felt that the pandemic and politics brought out the worst in humanity.

    They weren’t conspiracy theorists, said Jara, but Rebecca Vance “thought that with everything changing and all, that this world is going to end. … (They) wanted to be away from people and the influences of what people can do to each other.”

    Jara remembers Rebecca Vance as a bit reserved, sharp as a whip, and someone who could read through a 1,000-page book in days. Vance’s son was homeschooled and a math whiz, Jara said.

    Christine Vance was more outgoing, charismatic and wasn’t at first convinced on the idea to escape society, Jara said, “but she just changed her mind because she didn’t want our sister and nephew to be by themselves.”

    Rebecca and Christine Vance told others they were travelling to another state for a family emergency. They told Jara of their plans, but not where they would set up camp. They watched YouTube videos to prepare for their life in the wilderness, but they were woefully underprepared, Jara said.

    Jara said she tried everything short of kidnapping to keep them from leaving, but nothing worked. Now, Jara wants to warn others about the risks of surviving in the wilderness.

    “I do not wish this on anybody at all,” Jara said. “I can’t wait to get to the point where I’m happy and all I can think of is the memories.”

    ___

    Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Georgia made it easier for parents to challenge school library books. Almost no one has done so

    Georgia made it easier for parents to challenge school library books. Almost no one has done so

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    CUMMING, Ga. — When Allison Strickland urged a suburban Atlanta school board in June to remove four books from school libraries, she was following a path cleared by Georgia’s Republican lawmakers.

    But after the bitterly debated Georgia law took effect Jan. 1, The Associated Press found few book challengers are using it.

    One key element restraining complaints: The law only allows parents of current students to challenge books.

    Although not new, book challenges have surged since 2020, part of a backlash to what kids read and discuss in public schools. Conservatives want to stop children from reading books with themes on sexuality, gender, race and religion that they find objectionable. PEN America, a group promoting freedom of expression, counted 4,000 instances of books banned nationwide from July 2021 to December 2022.

    But while fights are ongoing in Forsyth County, where Strickland was protesting, at least 15 other large Georgia districts surveyed by AP said they have received no demands to remove books under the law.

    Georgia conservatives last year aimed to ease book challenges. But lawmakers knew a parents-only restriction would also limit them.

    “We are not going to turn this bill into a weapon for every taxpayer to harass the school system,” said state Rep. James Burchett, a Republican from Waycross, during a 2022 hearing.

    Still, some books are disappearing. Kasey Meehan, PEN America’s Freedom to Read director, said some schools are removing books even before parents ask. That’s happened in Forsyth County, where documents obtained by AP show a librarian “weeded” two books Strickland was protesting from another high school’s library, just before they were challenged there.

    Those who object to books say Georgia’s law is being interpreted too narrowly and removing books should be easier. In most states anyone can challenge a book, not just parents, Meehan said. But some districts elsewhere also limit protests over books to parents.

    The Georgia law may be preventing widespread challenges by a handful of conservative activists. Research has found complaints nationwide are largely driven by just a few people — who sometimes aren’t parents.

    Forsyth County, a fast-growing suburb with 54,000 students, has been a hotbed for conservative agitation over public education.

    A parent of two West Forsyth High School students, Strickland complained in March about sexually explicit books, attaching excerpts from BookLooks. The conservative website highlights passages that its writers consider objectionable. Strickland was working with the Mama Bears, a group recruiting book challengers.

    Strickland targeted four novels: “Dime,” by E.R. Frank, in which a girl is lured into prostitution; “Tilt,” by Ellen Hopkins, in which a 17-year-old girl gets pregnant and a 16-year-old boy falls in love with an HIV-positive boy; “Perfect,” another Hopkins book about teens facing unrealistic expectations; and “Oryx and Crake,” by Margaret Atwood, about a plague that kills most humans.

    The principal examined the books, as legally required. In April, a Forsyth principal sided with a complaint, removing “The Nerdy and the Dirty” by B.T. Gottfred. But the West Forsyth principal concluded the books Strickland targeted should remain on shelves. She appealed to the school board.

    “There is not one educational thing to be had from any of these books,” Strickland told board members, saying the books “run the gamut of child prostitution, forced rape, pedophilia, bestiality, sodomy, drug and alcohol abuse, all of very young minor children, often with adult partners.”

    Others dissented, including T.J. McKinney, a departing teacher at a Forsyth middle school. She said students need to see their struggles reflected in books, and it’s pointless to shield older students from vulgarity or sex.

    “The book is not introducing kids to sex. If you’re in high school, they’re having sex,” McKinney said. “They are not learning this from books.”

    Forsyth Superintendent Jeff Bearden supported the principal’s recommendation to keep the books, as he did twice earlier. But the law requires the board to decide.

    In April, board members backed administrators, retaining “Endlessly Ever After,” a choose-your-own-adventure fairy tale. But in May, the board overruled Bearden and required advance parental consent before students could read Gottfred’s “The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy.”

    Faced with Strickland’s challenges in June, board members also required parental approval for the four books. The compromise left many unhappy.

    “Members of the board, I ask you, are you really going to compromise on child pedophilia?” asked Mama Bears leader Cindy Martin before the vote. “If the answer is yes, then what will you compromise on next?”

    “I see it as a loss,” McKinney said after the meeting. “The students still don’t have a right to choose their own books.”

    Forsyth County was once a rural locale where white mobs terrorized the Black minority into fleeing in 1912. But suburban growth made it well-educated, affluent and diverse. Only 47% of Forsyth students were white and non-Hispanic last year.

    But it’s also heavily Republican, and crowds attacked the system’s diversity, equity and inclusion plan in 2021. Agitation bled over into book protests. Officials pulled eight books from libraries in early 2022. They would later return all except “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” George M. Johnson’s memoir of growing up queer.

    Opponents organized against the bans. High school student Shivi Mehta said she wants libraries to “stay whole.”

    “I don’t want to have some books locked away,” Mehta said. “I don’t want to have books that I can’t read or can’t have access to because a group of politicians said I couldn’t.”

    Critics continued reading explicit book excerpts at board meetings, urging removal. After telling a Mama Bears member to stop, the board banned her from speaking at meetings. The Mama Bears sued, and in November, a federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutionally restricted free speech. The district paid $107,000 in lawyer’s fees.

    Others complained to the U.S. Department of Education that the district was excluding stories about people not white or straight. In a May warning, the department agreed, saying Forsyth schools may have created a hostile environment violating federal laws against race and sex discrimination, “leading to increased fears and possibly harassment” among students.

    The district settled the complaint, agreeing to explain the book removal process, offer “supportive measures” and survey students about the issue.

    But while federal government concerns may restrain administrators, the fight isn’t over.

    “I think the momentum to ban or restrict books is not going away anytime soon,” Mehta said.

    ____

    The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • No death penalty for a Utah mom accused of killing her husband, then writing a kid book about death

    No death penalty for a Utah mom accused of killing her husband, then writing a kid book about death

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    Prosecutors say they will not seek the death penalty against a Utah mother who’s accused of killing her husband, then writing a children’s book about coping with grief

    FILE – Kouri Richins, a Utah mother of three who authorities say fatally poisoned her husband, Eric Richins, then wrote a children’s book about grieving, looks on during a bail hearing, June 12, 2023, in Park City, Utah. After conferring with the victim’s father and two sisters, prosecutors confirmed Friday, Aug. 18, 2023 that they will not seek the death penalty against Kouri Richins. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool, File)

    The Associated Press

    SALT LAKE CITY — Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against a Utah mother who wrote a children’s book about coping with grief after her husband’s death and is now accused of fatally poisoning him.

    Prosecutors say Kouri Richins, 33, poisoned Eric Richins, 39, by slipping five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a Moscow mule cocktail she made for him last year.

    After her husband’s death, the mother of three self-published a children’s book titled “Are You with Me?” about a deceased father wearing angel wings who watched over his sons. She promoted the book on television and radio, describing the book as a way to help children grieve the loss of a loved one.

    Prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty after conferring with the victim’s father and two sisters, according to a court filing Friday.

    Following a June hearing in which Richins’ sister-in-law called her “desperate, greedy and extremely manipulative,” a judge has ordered that Richins remain in jail pending trial.

    Prosecutors say Richins planned at length to kill her husband, making financial arrangements and purchasing drugs found in his system after his March 2022 death.

    Richins’ attorneys point out that no drugs were found at the family home after her husband’s death. They’ve also suggested that a witness, a housekeeper who claims to have sold Richins the drugs, had motivation to lie as she sought leniency in the face of state and federal drug charges.

    Richins made major changes to the family’s estate plans and took out life insurance policies on him with benefits totaling nearly $2 million, prosecutors allege. Her attorneys counter that the prosecution’s case based on financial motives proved she was “bad at math,” not guilty of murder.

    Richins, meanwhile, is facing a lawsuit seeking over $13 million in damages for alleged financial wrongdoing before and after his death.

    The lawsuit filed in state court by Katie Richins, the sister of Eric Richins, accuses Kouri Richins of taking money from her husband’s accounts, diverting money intended to pay his taxes and obtaining a fraudulent loan, among other things, before his death.

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  • Books banned in other states fuel Vermont lieutenant governor’s reading tour

    Books banned in other states fuel Vermont lieutenant governor’s reading tour

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    WATERBURY, Vt. — On a recent Sunday afternoon, Vermont’s lieutenant governor was at a local library, reading a book about two male penguins to a crowd of nearly two dozen. This was not the first stop for Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman nor would it be the last.

    While officials in some other states are banning or restricting certain books in schools and libraries, Zuckerman, in liberal Vermont, has taken a different tack: reading and discussing them at libraries and bookstores around the state.

    ″ These bans often target books that feature LGBTQ+ characters; talk about gender and sexuality; highlight racial disparities; or talk about difficult issues such as substance abuse and cases of police violence,” Zuckerman, a Democrat, said in a statement when he announced the tour in June. “Students, teachers, and curious minds should be able to access materials that spark critical thinking, cover difficult topics, and appeal to diverse interests without fear of government interference.”

    While Vermont hasn’t “fallen victim” to the trends in some other states, Zuckerman said that does not mean that books have not been challenged in this state. He said individuals have run for school board seats with the idea of curriculum management in mind and topics around race, and gender and identity have been elevated at school board meetings in recent years.

    He hopes the book reading tour will highlight what he sees as the value of representation, free speech, open dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

    According to the American Library Association, attempted book bans and restrictions at school and public libraries set a record in 2022. The association compiled more than 1,200 challenges in 2022 — nearly double the previous record total in 2021.

    PEN America also said it found more than 2,500 instances of books being banned — affecting more than 1,600 titles — from July 2021 to June 2022. Texas and Florida were the states with the most bans, according to the organization’s 2022 report.

    During his reading at Bridgeside Books in Waterbury on Sunday, Zuckerman read the book, “And Tango Makes Three,” which is based on the true story of two male penguins who were devoted to each other at the Central Park Zoo in New York. A zookeeper who saw them trying to incubate an egg-shaped rock gave them an egg from a different penguin pair with two eggs. The chick that hatched was cared for by the male penguins and named Tango.

    The book, written by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, is listed among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association.

    Zuckerman was joined by three Vermont authors, who each read segments from other banned books, including “Monster,” by Walter Dean Myers, and the bestselling children’s picture book “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak, which was pulled off some shelves when it first came out in 1963.

    “I think books are a place for kids to explore and to be things that they’re not or see what it’s like to be something else,” said children’s author and illustrator Sarah Dillard. “To take that away from them I think is putting them at a huge disadvantage for being in the real world.”

    Paul Macuga, of Essex Junction, who attended the reading, said what frightens him about the move to restrict or ban books is that it’s coming from organized groups like Moms for Liberty — a conservative “parental rights” group that has gained national attention for its efforts to influence school curriculum and classroom learning, as well as its conservative support and donor funding.

    “It’s not a bunch of disorganized kooks,” he said. “It is a very well put together, with a lot of professional backing of people that know how to do this stuff,” he said.

    Several other attendees, including the local library director, recommended that people keep tabs on what’s happening in their communities, and get on their library commissions and attend board meetings to rebuff any moves to restrict books.

    Tanya Lee Stone, who is the author of a banned book — “A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl,” which she described as a cautionary tale about three very different girls consecutively dating a stereotypically bad guy — said there are organized people on the other side, too.

    “The National Council Against Censorship is a very large organization that’s dedicated to this,” she said.

    Stone said people who ban books often have not read them. And a number of people at the reading, including attendees, authors and Zuckerman, said the bans are based on fear.

    She said her goal in life is to write material that will educate, help and inspire young people. “To basically be accused of hurting young people is sort of the farthest thing from what you want to have happen. And that’s basically what people who are banning books and censoring books are doing,” Stone said.

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  • China proposes to limit children’s smartphone time to a maximum of 2 hours a day

    China proposes to limit children’s smartphone time to a maximum of 2 hours a day

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    China’s internet watchdog has laid out regulations to curb the amount of time children spend on their smartphones, in the latest blow to firms such as Tencent and ByteDance, which run social media platforms and online games

    Children pass by a mascot for Tencent during a promotion event in Beijing, on Nov. 11, 2020. On Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023, China’s internet watchdog has laid out regulations to curb the amount of time minors spend on their smartphones, in the latest blow to firms such as Tencent and ByteDance which run social media platforms and online games. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

    The Associated Press

    BEIJING — China’s internet watchdog has laid out regulations to curb the amount of time children spend on their smartphones, in the latest blow to firms such as Tencent and ByteDance, which run social media platforms and online games.

    The Cyberspace Administration of China on Wednesday published the draft guidelines on its site, stating that minors would not be allowed to use most internet services on mobile devices from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and that children between the ages of 16 and 18 would only be able to use the internet for two hours a day.

    Children between the ages of 8 and 15 would be allowed only an hour a day, while those under 8 would only be allowed 40 minutes.

    Only certain services, such as apps or platforms that are deemed suitable to the physical and mental development of minors, will be exempted. The CAC did not specify which internet services would be allowed exemptions.

    The restrictions are Beijing’s latest efforts to attempt to limit internet addiction, a problem it views as widespread among its youth. In 2019, Beijing limited children’s daily online game time to 90 minutes a day and tightened those restrictions in 2021, allowing children only an hour a day of online game play on Fridays, weekends and public holidays.

    Short-video and online video platforms like Douyin, Bilibili and Kuaishou have offered youth modes that restrict the type of content shown to minors and the length of time they can use the service. Children are also pushed educational content, such as science experiments.

    The latest restrictions would impact firms like Tencent, China’s largest online game company, and ByteDance, which runs popular short-video platform Douyin. Firms in China are often responsible for enforcing regulations.

    “To effectively strengthen the online protection of minors, the CAC has in recent years pushed for the establishment of a youth mode on internet platforms, expanding its coverage, optimizing its functions and enriching it with age-appropriate content,” the CAC said.

    “Since the mode was launched, there has been a positive impact in reducing youth internet addiction and the impact of undesirable information,” it added.

    The CAC said draft guidelines were open to public feedback until Sep. 2. It did not say when the new rules would be into effect.

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  • Pee-wee Herman actor Paul Reubens dies from cancer at 70

    Pee-wee Herman actor Paul Reubens dies from cancer at 70

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    LOS ANGELES — Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian whose character Pee-wee Herman became a cultural phenomenon through films and TV shows, has died. He was 70.

    Reubens died Sunday night after a six-year struggle with cancer that he did not make public, his publicist said in a statement.

    “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” Reubens said in a statement released Monday with the announcement of his death. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

    The character with his too-tight gray suit, white chunky loafers and red bow tie was best known for the film “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and the television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

    The Pee-wee character would become a cultural constant for much of the 1980s, though an indecent exposure arrest in 1991 would send him into entertainment exile for years.

    Reubens created Pee-wee when he was part of the Los Angeles improv group The Groundlings in the late 1970s. The live “Pee-wee Herman Show” debuted at a Los Angeles theater in 1981 and was a success with both kids during matinees and adults at a midnight show.

    The show closely resembled the format the Saturday morning TV “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” would follow years later, with Herman living in a wild and wacky home with a series of stock-character visitors, including one, Captain Karl, played by the late “Saturday Night Live” star Phil Hartman. In the plot, Pee-wee secretly wishes to fly.

    HBO would air the show as a special.

    “Pee Wee got his wish to fly,” Steve Martin tweeted after his death. “Thanks Paul Reubens for the brilliant off the wall comedy.”

    Reubens took Pee-wee to the big screen in 1985’s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” The film, in which Pee-wee’s cherished bike is stolen, was said to be loosely based on Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neo-realist classic, “The Bicycle Thief.” The film, directed by Tim Burton and co-written by Phil Hartman of “Saturday Night Live,” sent Pee-wee on a nationwide escapade. The movie was a success, grossing $40 million, and continued to spawn a cult following for its oddball whimsy.

    A sequel followed three years later in the less well-received “Big Top Pee-wee,” in which Pee-wee seeks to join a circus. Reubens’ character wouldn’t get another movie starring role until 2016’s Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” for Netflix. Judd Apatow produced Pee-wee’s big-screen revival.

    His television series, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” ran for five seasons, earned 22 Emmys and attracted not only children but adults to Saturday-morning TV.

    Both silly and subversive and championing nonconformity, the Pee-wee universe was a trippy place, populated by things like a talking armchair and a friendly pterodactyl. The host, who is fond of secret words and loves fruit salad so much he once married it, is prone to lines like, “I know you are, but what am I?” and “Why don’t you take a picture; it’ll last longer?” The act was a hit because it worked on multiple levels, even though Reubens insists that wasn’t the plan.

    “It’s for kids,” Reubens told The Associated Press in 2010. “People have tried to get me for years to go, ‘It wasn’t really for kids, right?’ Even the original show was for kids. I always censored myself to have it be kid-friendly.

    “The whole thing has been just a gut feeling from the beginning,” Reubens told the AP. “That’s all it ever is and I think always ever be. Much as people want me to dissect it and explain it, I can’t. One, I don’t know, and two, I don’t want to know, and three, I feel like I’ll hex myself if I know.”

    Jimmy Kimmel posted on Instagram that “Paul Reubens was like no one else — a brilliant and original comedian who made kids and their parents laugh at the same time. He never forgot a birthday and shared his genuine delight for silliness with everyone he met.”

    Reubens’ career was derailed when he was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida, where he grew up. He was handed a small fine but the damage to the character was incalculable.

    He became the frequent butt of late-night talk show jokes and the perception of Reubens immediately changed.

    “The moment that I realized my name was going to be said in the same sentence as children and sex, that’s really intense,” Reubens told NBC in 2004. “That’s something I knew from that very moment, whatever happens past that point, something’s out there in the air that is really bad.”

    Reubens said he got plenty of offers to work, but told the AP that most of them wanted to take “advantage of the luridness of my situation”,” and he didn’t want to do them.

    “It just changed,” he said. “Everything changed.”

    In 2001, Reubens was arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession of child pornography after police seized images from his computer and photography collection, but the allegation was reduced to an obscenity charge and he was given three years probation.

    Born Paul Rubenfield in Peekskill, New York, Reubens, the eldest of three children, grew up primarily in Sarasota before going to Boston University and the California Institute of the Arts.

    Reubens would also act as non-Pee-wee characters including in Burton’s 1992 movie “Batman Returns,” the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” film and a guest-star run on the TV series “Murphy Brown.”

    ___

    Associated Press Writer Alicia Rancilio and Film Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.

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  • To wrap, or not to wrap? Hungarian bookstores face fines over closed packaging for LGBTQ+ books

    To wrap, or not to wrap? Hungarian bookstores face fines over closed packaging for LGBTQ+ books

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    BUDAPEST, Hungary — In a snug, wood-paneled Jewish bookstore in Hungary’s capital, Eva Redai carefully climbed the rungs of a ladder to arrange titles on the shelves. Among the books were volumes bound in plastic wrapping — titles containing LGBTQ+ content that the country’s right-wing government has deemed unsuitable for minors under 18.

    The 76-year-old has run the Láng Téka bookstore in central Budapest for nearly 35 years, since just before Hungary’s democratic transition from state socialism. But never, until now, has she needed to segregate the books she sells to avoid violating a government ban.

    “I consider this such a level of discrimination. This law is an act of force that can hardly be made sense of,” Redai said. “As someone who’s been in this business for such a long time, even I cannot decide which books fall under the ban.”

    Hungary’s government under populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has in recent years taken a hard line on LGBTQ+ issues, passing legislation that rights groups and European politicians have decried as repressive against sexual minorities.

    A “child protection” law, passed in 2021, bans the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors, including in television, films, advertisements and literature. It also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programs, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”

    Hungary’s government insists that the law, part of a broader statute that also increases criminal penalties for pedophilia and creates a searchable database of sex offenders, is necessary to protect children. But it is seen by Orban’s critics as an attempt to stigmatize lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and conflate homosexuality with pedophilia.

    Earlier this month, a government office levied a hefty fine against Hungary’s second-largest bookstore chain for violating the contentious law. Líra Könyv was ordered to pay 12 million forints (around $35,000) for placing a popular LGBTQ+ graphic novel in its youth literature section, and for failing to place it in closed packaging.

    The fine, the second issued by the government in a single month, sent booksellers rushing to determine whether selling certain titles without closed packaging could result in financial penalties for their own stores. Along with outlawing LGBTQ+ content for minors, the law also prohibits depicting “sexuality for its own sake” to audiences under 18 — a rule that could potentially apply to countless works of literature.

    Krisztian Nyary, an author and the creative director for Líra Könyv, said that the language of the law contains many ambiguities, which places a burden on booksellers to determine which of the thousands of titles they offer may contain proscribed content.

    “The practical problem is that the sellers are supposed to decide what the law applies to and what it does not,” Nyary said, adding that the Bible, too, depicts homosexuality. “In a small bookstore of four to five thousand titles, or a large one with sixty to seventy thousand titles, a bookseller does not know in much detail what the books contain.”

    Nyary said Líra Könyv plans to challenge the fine in court, and does not intend to begin placing books in closed packaging. The requirement to do so is “anti-culture,” he said, and could carry adverse financial effects as well.

    “The ability to sell a packaged book is one-tenth of what it is when it’s unpackaged. It’s like putting a painting in a dark basement: Everyone knows it’s there, but you can’t look at it,” he said.

    The Láng Téka bookstore, a much smaller business, has opted to comply with the law. On Wednesday, an employee packaged titles that depict homosexuality in household cellophane wrap, and slid them onto the packed shelves. Eva Redai, the shop owner, posted a sign on the front window reading, “In this bookshop, we also sell books with ‘non-traditional content’.”

    “This is completely against my own principles and thoughts,” Redai said. “But obviously, I’m a law-abiding person, and I also don’t want to pay a fine of several million forints for my non-existent crime. So we, too, are trying to obey the laws which they have recently forced on us.”

    Mark Mezei, a novelist in Budapest, has published a book which contains a lesbian relationship — making his work subject to the restrictions. But he believes Hungary’s legislation, which he described as “bad for democracy,” will not have a chilling effect on authors.

    “Whoever wants to write is going to write … it doesn’t matter what legislators think,” he said. “That we live in times when such a thing can happen is not up to me. But as a writer, this doesn’t influence me at all.”

    Others, too, are resisting the legislation. A group of university activists this week have given away over 100 free copies of what they call “banned books” — those subject to the closed packaging provision — in front of one of Budapest’s largest bookstores.

    One activist, 22-year-old Vince Sajosi, said on Wednesday that Hungary’s law reduces the accessibility of important works and “restricts a process of social development.”

    “We want these books to appear in Hungarian literary public life and in everyday conversations, which is why we want to give them to people for free,” he said.

    Redai, the bookstore owner, said that in Hungary today, people that identify as non-heterosexual “are being stigmatized and ostracized, and they are not considered equal members of society, which I simply find outrageous.”

    “This feeds into an idea that, unfortunately, already happened in the 20th century, where people were judged and persecuted based on their appearance, skin color, religion or other affiliation, and many, many people fell victim to this idea,” she said. “Quite simply, this could be the beginning of something terrible that so many of us have tried to forget.”

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