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It’s Back to School Libraries for A Visit to CubaA U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction July 24 ordering the Miami-Dade County (Fla.) Public Schools to return to media center shelves districtwide a 24-part children’s book series about youngsters’ lives in other countries. The injunction, which extends until the case goes to trial an emergency order issued June 27, will make accessible once again the English- and Spanish-language editions of A Visit to Cuba—the only title in the series that was actually challenged.“The school board’s claim of ‘inaccuracies’ is a guise and pretext for ‘political orthodoxy,’” wrote Judge Alan S. Gold. He cited as an example board member Frank Bolaños’s characterization of a passage in the Cuba title that reads “The people eat, work, and study like you” as a “distortion.” Emphasizing that “nothing written [in this court decision] is intended to cast doubt upon the heartfelt point of view expressed by Mr. Bolaños and his supporters,” Gold explained that “the real issue was that the Cuba books were content-neutral and scrupulously apolitical, and did not reflect, as viewed by the majority of the school board members, the true evil of Castro’s government and the oppression of the Cuban people.” “It is regrettable that taxpayers’ dollars had to be used to prove in court what was so clear from the beginning,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, whose Greater Miami Chapter is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Posted July 28, 2006. |
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