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The Community Blackboard
The Boston Globe has a column by Ellen Goodman about a community blackboard, a monument put up not for a dead president or war hero but to free expression. Read more about the project.
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It's good to see our little monument here on Slashdot. Here's the story behind this uniquely Charlottesvillian creation.
Sometime around 1995 or 1996, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Speech had the idea that we should have a monument to free speech. They created a board, and asked for submissions from the public sometime in '98ish, IIRC. They got a lot of submissions, some quite creative, but the best one (and thus the winner) was the idea of having a chalkboard. Well, the board selected that one, though surely they knew full well that they were opening a can of worms.
City Council, as you can imagine, was not thrilled with this. The location of this monument was to be directly in front of city hall. It hadn't occurred to them that they were setting themselves up for a 60' wall; they were thinking maybe a small sculpture or something. So the topic was debated before council, and the general consensus was "what if somebody says something bad?"
Council finally voted on it a few weeks ago, and it, fortunately, passed. It very nearly didn't. The tricky thing about a proposal like this is that there's no turning it down. Once the genie is out of the bottle (to use the GPL comparison), anybody voting against it can be derided as being anti-free speech. Perhaps not fairly; one could be opposed to it for asthetic reasons, as Councilman Toscano was. (I think he actually voted against it for those very reasons.)
My mother (a commentator for NPR) had a reading at the TJ Center just last week, coincidentally. I spoke with the director of the center about this very topic, as it's a hot one in town. We talked about some of the practical problems.
What if somebody erases somebody else's writing?
Tough. We can't very well pass a long against erasing other people's ideas. In fact, that would accomplish the very opposite of what is intended by this monument. (BTW, I call it a "memorial," because of Charlottesville's serious First Amendment violations, like the youth curfew. So everybody has to accept that whatever they write could be erased immediately afterwards.
What if it's used for commercial purposes?
That's speech, too. Let it happen. It would be great if it were so popular and oft-visited (people don't tend to congregate by City Hall, save for during Fridays After Five) that, say, Trax started writing their weekly line-up on that wall. That would be OK.
What if people write hate-speech? What if the KKK writes nasty things?
They get to do that. Other people also get to erase it.
People will inevitably spray-paint it. Won't it be ruined quickly?
Perhaps, but there's an easy solution. This chalkboard will have a surface that is spray-painted on. If it gets defaced, it's easy to cover over the defaced area so that people can keep writing.
Will it ever be fully erased? By whom?
It hasn't been fully decided how often to erase it, whose job that will be, etc. Mostly because nobody knows how popular it will be. Could be daily, could be weekly, could be monthly.
What if somebody says something defamatory?
What if somebody puts up posters that are defamatory? There are laws in place to handle this. No problem.
The timeline for this is that it should be in by the end of 2002. The City is in the process of changing the whole layout of that area of downtown, so I think that they want to roll this work into that. Waiting until 2002 gives the TJ Center time to raise money, too, which is important. If anybody is interested in donating to this project, you can find contact info on their site. BTW, this is all recreated from memory, so I apologize for factual errors and such.
-Waldo
It has been replaced by:
"Make random acts of beauty and senseless violence."
Kind of a "make Love AND War".
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
You're right, of course. I must admit that I don't know the origins of Beta Bridge, but I've enjoyed the ever-changing messages on there in the past decade or so that I've been paying attention. I think that the only thing that makes the City chalkboard different is that it's intended for less-intensive messages. That is, it takes a lot less work, for better or for worse, to write something on a chalkboard.
Anyhow, yes, UVa definitely gets the prize for doing this far, far ahead of C'ville. I feel foolish for not thinking of that.
-Waldo
I was constantly tempted to paint over frat party advertisements with "THIS IS NOT A BILLBOARD" in huge letters. But I thought there was a pretty good amount of legitimate artistic expression overall.
(Pomona class of '98)
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
This is a forum in which most if not all messages will be anonymous. It seems to be very hard to keep signal above noise in this kind of forum.
Of course, there's plenty of censorship built in, in that unpopular / socially unacceptable statements will be more likely to be erased.
I wonder if they've considered the fact that 'good' people will use the chalk and 'bad' people will use paint...
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
So what happens when someone writes the source to DeCSS or "slanders" a Scientoligist...
Quite a fascinating thing to watch. The cube quickly became a popular meeting place though, so many messages were along the lines of "I'm 10 minutes late" or "Meet me at the other place instead".
Wild.
I was just discussing the idea of a public writing slate over on irc.indymedia.org today. Specifically, I've been mulling over locating a large piece of white paper and pasting it up along one of the construction barriers in downtown Toronto, with some markers and an invitation to express oneself. I figure with the loads of ads for CDs, movies, dance parties, restaurants and future fucked dot.coms, why not give the people who walk by them a chance to say something of their own?
NOW magazine once tried a similar concept for an ad campaign (third item down). Large blank ads with the slogan "Speak your mind" and pens were put up in subway stations throughout Toronto, the idea being people could express themselves. The transit authority ordered the ads removed, but it was worth a shot.
We need more community forums in the community, not just on a server in some far-off state where only those "in-the-know" are aware of them.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Not sure about DeCSS, but scientology will have a way to "protect" themselves against free expression on this place: they'll just assign a "handler" to it, who watches the board day and night, and videotapes/harasses anybody who sets out to write anything anti-clam on it.
The quote is,
?Those who would trade their liberties for a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.?
Another good one:
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Monument:
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Aren't monuments erected to celebrate things that have passed? Shouldn't a culture that embraces free expression and the curious study of new ideas be enough of a "monument"?
Oh, wait...
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Isn't that what this is?
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
At my school (Pomona College) There is a long wall, approx, 5x150 ft called Walker Wall (it's outside Walker Dorm, and borders the Walke Beach) where people are supposedly allowed to paint whatever they want on it.
/. post, most of what is going to get put up on such billboards is inane crap.
This has, of course, garnered some controversy. E.G when someone painted a quote from some Adam Sandler stand up skit mentioning lesbians or something. Most of the things painted on it are pretty inane, and mostly stupid. Sometimes taggers get creative and put up some interesting tags. It's used as kind of an advertisement a lot.
Sometimes there are protests/real causes that get featured. Most people ignored the wall. A lot of the painting involved frat related party advertisements.
I liked that it was supposed to represent freedom of speech, but at least in our closed, college community, it was a big billboard for advertisements most of the time. Also it was pretty stagnant. Sometimes at night some group would whitewash it and paint the whole thing with some slogan, which would be noticed by everyone the next day.
Guess this post isn't saying much, but as you can tell if you don't filter the responses to a
--
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
Actually, according to Bartleby, the quote is "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Mark Duell
... and the goatsex guy will have that board covered. After a few days, the people in that town will be so right-wing they'll want to abolish talking in public.
Someone you trust is one of us.
This is a FREE SPEECH monument, not an ANONYMOUS SPEECH monument.
If someone wants to spend the day filling this board with 'goatse.cx' grafitti, that's fine. But they gotta show up and spend the time right there in front of onlookers to do it. And the onlookers can smile at them while erasing the junk.
Not to say ANONYMOUS SPEECH has its values, but I like this just the way it is.
[
that they were able to get this past the city government. As the article states, it is a brave move approving this. The mere fact that people are afraid of what will end up on the blackboard makes the monument a living testament to the idea it represents.
BTW, read the article. Well written.
www.aclu.org -- True defenders of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I think you mean "True defenders of part of our Constitution and some of the Bill of Rights."
If I were to join the ACLU, I'd have to join the NRA, too, just to avoid being seen as an anti-Second Amendment advocate. (And I'm not about to do that, because the NRA's leadership is preoccupied with the notion that the industry I work in is devoted to corrupting America's youth.)
Here's some homework for those of you who belong to the ACLU: ask your leaders why they don't have the balls to post a link to http://www.aclu.org/library/aaguns.html on the otherwise-exhaustive "Issues" list on their front page.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Too low tech!
Better idea is huge LCD screen with from
somewhere on the net, through which anybody
can post comments.
This is a pretty good idea. Sure, some people will probably write things on the board that others will find offensive, but that's part of free speech. Besides, in my city, people *graffiti* offensive speech all over the place.
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The speech will be there. Might as well let people use chalk and a board, and encourage it!
I found the quote interesting as well. "After all, if the first amendment were up for a vote today, it might not pass". Scary, but true.
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A simple policy for public surfaces, be they chalkboards or bulletin boards: just clear them on a fixed schedule. Divide them in half. Mark one half with something like "Cleared during the first week of each month". Mark the other half "Cleared during the third week of each month". This is a big win for bulletin boards, especially on college campuses. Removes all controversy about content-based censorship, gives everybody a known minimum amount of visible time, and makes it easy on the maintenance staff.
Check it out! You could do it too, and on the cheap!
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Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Here is what happens when people decide to get controversial with it.
OK, enough of this. Just do what I did. Use Google.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I don't see why people would be offended at the sight of Sendmail rewrite rules.
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You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
I heard the report on this a few weeks back on NPR. At first blush, it sounds like a great idea. But I remember thinking this at the time, and now I see the word "chiseled" in their report.
I worry about NOTHING people write with chalk, or erase, etc.
I worry about what they PAINT, and what they CHISEL.
That makes the statement that we Americans just can't handle free speech anymore, and perhaps we just plain don't deserve it, either. Sad day when the first permanent mark goes up on the monument.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Point a webcam at it, and have it take a picture every 5 minutes....then it would be free speech to the entire world...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
So they can write "FP! BEYOTCH"
I think this will just be the largest toilet stall in North America. Soon the blackboard will just be full of:
@#( &#%& #$(*(& jews! @#(&%@# &%* nigga sh#@( &#*^
And it will gradually fill up with spray paint and permanent marker and pretty soon sane people will just walk by without responding in any way. Eventually, it will be declared an eyesore cesspit of racial slurs and four-letter words and will be torn down.
Let's face it: we all have free speech, but when do Americans ever speak publicly? Usually only when they're upset about something. Moving free speech to the street like this will just give people on the street who aren't in a hurry (i.e. those that basically live there) a place to vent all of their anger at institutional capitalism and perceived systemic wrongs.
Not that I'm against free speech. I just don't think this'll last, because people don't like to help ugly free speech along if they can avoid it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So, are we allowed to Transcribe the source code for DeCSS on the chalkboard?
For those who want other places to put DeCSS, check out the popular 42 ways to distribute DeCSS.
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Some kids parents say "Little kids will be harmed by this!"
I go with Ben franklyn on this one: "Those that exchange comfort for saftey deserve neither"
The Lottery:
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
When will the Community Chalkboard be built? If the project is approved by City Council, it is estimated that it will take two years to raise the funds for the monument's construction
In the meantime, feel free to draw little penguins on the sidewalk in indelible ink. Barring that, note that large concrete structures passable as a venue for artistic expression is currently available at every office building in the downtown area. Do not think yourself limited to only concrete, metropolitan glass and flora are right at your fingertips.
Dancin Santa
Ahhhhhh, that is an interesting idea, and one I'd be interested to see. BUT, consider this -- will a webcam restrict peoples' freedom just as surveilance cameras on the streets do? Wouldn't someone be afraid to express themselves with a camera watching?
To a certain extent I believe them. On the other hand, maybe it won't be so bad, at least at first. When some kid finds out that he can write "my teacher is a weenie" and nobody will punish him for it, he'll have learned what "free speech" is all about.
And some mornings, there will be 4-letter words written accross the wall in 6 foot tall letters. And maybe somebody will stop by on their way to work and erase them and write a poem up in their place.
All in all, it'll be a fascinating experiment. And even if it "fails", due to vandalism, it still will have encouraged people to think about freedom of speech in everyday terms, which has to be a good thing overall.
A student from my school posted a website (the website is up, but the contiversial message board is gone. if you are interested, the site is here) that was in no way sponsered by the school, but created a forum that allowed students to post problems with the school, and discuss them on a message board. For some reason the faculty hated it, and students caught accessing it in class got in more trouble then if they were, say, accessing e-mail. There were, of course, many questions brought up regarding the "freedom of speech" in this page. The message board was not moderated, and there were some things posted about teachers that were not true, and somewhat degrading. However, I was a heavy advocate to keep the page going, because I thought that it was a good way for the students to say (anonymously) what they wanted to about the school. I would like to hear some input on this.
Ways for corporations/big bad government/microsoft to defeat blackboard:
1) hire lackees to scribble all over blackboard, rendering the writings of others unintelligible.
2) hire "janitors" to "clean" the blackboard (from site: "regardless of what is on it, the slate will be cleaned by maintenance staff on a regularly scheduled basis. Thus, everything placed on the monument is temporary.")
3) do nothing. why the hell would i want to walk all the way to a towns square to scribble something in chalk when I can post something on the internet?