Category / Censorship

by Edward Champion

How TikTok is Censoring the Left

Despite its bountiful stature as the most addictive social media app ever invented, TikTok is going out of its way to muzzle progressive voices who contribute to the public agora. Much like George Orwell’s animals, TikTok’s moderators are very much in the business of conveniently reinterpreting the “community guidelines” to silence the people who we very much need to listen to. This is a calumny against free speech and it needs to stop.

This morning, I logged onto my main TikTok account, @finnegansache, only to learn that I had received a permanent ban. I had just come off a seven day ban from posting videos, leaving comments, and even sending direct messages to the many friends I have made across the world. I tend to get one of these seven day bans at least once every month.

It goes down like this: Right-wingers target my account, which presently has 26,410 followers, by falsely mass reporting videos that have managed to get through to a sizable audience (quite a few of my TikToks have had viewership in the six figures) and in which I speak out against Republican tyranny (as well as smug Democratic inaction). But because I have racked up enough community guidelines violations — largely factitious — TikTok hits me with a seven day ban, even when I appeal every single one of these falsely flagged videos and win the vast majority of my petitions.

TikTok’s ongoing censorship of marginalized voices is nothing new, but it has yet to be rectified. And the company’s war on free speech is incredibly dangerous during a time in which we need to hear from those who are denied and restricted from other platforms. In March 2000, The Intercept intercepted internal documents at TikTok that revealed a company edict that ordered the moderators to suppress posts made by the poor, the ugly, and the disabled. Not long after this article dropped, Time reported on Black creators also being suppressed by the shady China-based tech giant. The BBC reported that transgender users were censored. The upshot is that, if you aren’t a wildly attractive, white cis hetero type who never talks politics and who looks good while twerking, TikTok and its moderators will go out of their way to silence you — even when the users enjoy your content.

On my TikTok account, I have spoken out against racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, income inequality, climate change deniers, disinformation, fawning Trump acolytes, anti-choicers, sinister misogynists, white supremacists, political corruption, corporate greed, capitalistic ills, the ongoing war on the homeless, conspiracy theorists, and the lachrymose yahoos who attempted insurrection on January 6th. None of these topics are verboten under TikTok’s community guidelines. I have always been a man of the left. A godless heathen who stands for empathy and dignity and human understanding and who isn’t afraid to tell the truth. And because I can’t be bought and because I have always done everything on my own terms (and have won audiences and awards this way), the media ecosystem has gone well out of its way to ignore me or, if they can’t do that, they invent false stories about me. I’ve been kicking around for more than twenty years at this creative game and they’ve never been able to get me on my work. Fragile and talentless egos — which would include the TikTok moderators — tend to be terrified of anyone who pulls a faster gun.

TikTok, on the other hand, has been a welcoming place for an eccentric outlier like me. On TikTok — at least when it works — I’ve been tremendously humbled and honored to listen to other people’s stories and I do my best to live up to my quite accidental and newfound duties of sticking up for the people. With great power comes great responsibility.

Whenever I synthesize recent news into thoughtful and entertaining 60 second videos — all edited in camera with Sam Raimi-style angles to get people to care about increasingly dystopian developments — my TikTok videos have proven to be enormously popular. Perhaps because there is no other voice out there who is speaking out against injustice quite like me and because I have a theatrical panache. I honestly don’t know. I didn’t go onto TikTok to win an audience. It just happened.

Still, I’m cognizant enough to recognize that TikTok — far more than Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — is the public agora. And if I want to persuade people to give a damn about vital issues, even if it’s only a few dozen, then I have to be on there. And honestly I have enjoyed it.

There are now 1 billion active users on TikTok. If I can get through to at least a small sliver of that vast audience and get them worked up enough to care about social ills or to change things, then, as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing the bare minimum at preventing (or perhaps postponing) the United State of America from sliding into vile despotism. I feel that it is my moral responsibility to raise hell and to call out bullshit in these troubled times and to do so within the framework of the community guidelines. Will I post a thirst trap or dance ridiculously or pick up my guitar and sing and improvise a silly song in order to give people an additional incentive to stand up for abortion rights? You bet your ass I will.

TikTok has also been a healthy outlet for me to perform creative ablutions (roughly six to nine TikToks each day, most of them recorded in one take) just before I roll up my sleeves every weekday morning and get on with the often difficult but always enjoyable business of writing. And, unlike Twitter, I have found that the good people on TikTok are quite capable of behaving like adults, engaging in civil disagreement, and hashing out ideas without getting involved in some jealousy-fueled character assassination campaign predicated upon lies, libel, and unfounded rumors. On TikTok, the Establishment is on an equal footing with the vox populi. Several celebrities have tried to join TikTok and they have been hilariously and mercilessly shot down by an audience that is increasingly less willing to tolerate their clueless and privileged vapidity. The punchy Gen Zers and the fierce millennials on TikTok have restored my faith in the generations who will follow me long after I drop dead. On TikTok, you can’t coast on your fame or your blue checkmark. You actually have to create interesting content that is of the moment. You have to listen to other people. And by simply listening to other people, which I have always done, even a middle-aged punk like me has managed to get through to younger people.

But on TikTok, there’s an altogether different Establishment — a shadow Establishment that is using a wide variety of facile tactics to muzzle anyone who stands against tyranny. The “community guidelines” — much like the constantly revised rules in George Orwell’s Animal Farm — are subject to the whims of some miserable bastard toiling in a 996 perdition.

I can’t win every appeal. Because the TikTok moderators — some of which are reputed to be based in red states and who take out their trauma on those who play by the rules and who work for slave wages — are complicit in silencing my voice. If you mention the Holocaust — even when you are citing specific historical examples — you will be flagged for hate speech — even when you are speaking against hate. If you speak out against bullies, you will be accused of bullying. The TikTok moderators are quite happy to gaslight you. They have deliberately failed to address at least twelve of my videos that were falsely given the ol’ CGV treatment, letting these videos rot in appeal purgatory and accumulate artificial “community guidelines violations” when I have, in fact, not violated any community guidelines in these videos.

While it’s certainly true that my personality defaults quite naturally to anti-authoritarian rebel and that I have a low bullshit threshold, I still abide by community guidelines. And since I tend to be a creative prankster, I decided to prepare 100 TikToks over the course of a week to upload at one time: at the very moment that my latest seven day ban was lifted. This was a ban that was artificially consummated by conservative snowflakes and their willing executioners over at TikTok. (As I said, I won every goddamned appeal against me. But the ban remained enforced.) By the time I had uploaded 45 of these videos, my account was hit with a permanent ban. I had pulled such a stunt before without retribution.

And even though there is no official TikTok policy limiting how many videos one can upload at one time, I was still targeted by the moderators.

Let me be clear that I have had videos falsely targeted for “nudity and sexual activity” when I have merely rubbed my belly while wearing a shirt. I have been targeted for “bullying and harassment” when criticizing the likes of Ron DeSantis and Lauren Boebert for their stupidity and cruelty using objective facts. Meanwhile, sixteen-year-old girls are allowed to dance in skimpy thongs without rebuke and white supremacists and misogynists and pedophiles have been allowed to spread their bilious hatred without being silenced.

About twenty minutes after I received the “permanent ban,” I learned that my account had been restored, although I was hit with another seven day ban. And it is abundantly clear that the TikTok moderators have gone well out of their way to attenuate my voice. Because when you cannot regularly upload videos, your views, followers, comments, and likes take a significant hit. In my case, I have seen up to an 80% drop in engagement every time I am hit with one of these sham timeouts. (You can see from the accompanying image just how much of a hit I took in the last seven days.)

And I’m one of the lucky leftists. A wonderful and well-loved user by the name of @mdg650hawk has been forced to create nine separate accounts, six of which have been permanently banned. He now shuffles between his three remaining accounts. He is a voice of progressive sanity. I’ve never seen the man do anything untoward. But the TikTok moderators have it in for him. A user named @levantinewitch has also been banned for leftist sentiments. Or how about Savannah Edwards? Banned for being a progressive and smart-as-hell Black woman. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of vital progressives who are either banned or who are, like me, on the cusp of being banned. None of them violated any community guidelines. Or, if they did, it was certainly not frequent enough to merit an outright gag on their vital work. Their only crime was to speak truth to power and get through to a lot of people. This is a noble and peaceful practice as old as politics. But TikTok seems to act as if a principled stand — one that is only “offensive” to the chickenheads too intoxicated by the rapturous voices of a fictitious deity and an orange-tinted megalomaniac — is on the level of some creepy guy in a trenchcoat flaunting his junk at a playground.

The optimist in me still believes that TikTok has the potential to be the greatest place that the Internet has ever created. But when such a repugnant autocratic streak pours like some white stripe of paint turning an innocent cat into a skunk for Pepe le Pew to woo, one wonders if there’s any hope for democracy. The pungent smell of a corrupt company with corrupt moderators is simply too malodorous for TikTok’s otherwise promising clime. If TikTok cannot fix this problem — and it seems very much that they can’t and they won’t — then it’s time for some tech entrepreneur to roll the VC dice and beat TikTok at its own game. The panoply is too important for us to settle for anything less.

by Edward Champion

In Defense of Banned Books Week: A Call to Expand the Debate

Blinkered Pollyanna types like Ruth Graham believe that banned books are no longer a concern, but she has ignored many vital truths that demand that we rethink the way we relate to the written word.

Ruth Graham, the oafish opiner who unsuccessfully tried to nuke the YA genre from orbit last year with splashes of sophism and dollops of dilletantism, has returned to Slate‘s realm of callow clickbait with an equally preposterous proposition that “there is no such thing as a ‘banned book’ in the United States in 2015” and that, as such, Banned Books Week is a well-intended wash. Aside from ignoring the obvious fallout of the “likable character” debate from 2013 or the way in which Scarlett Thomas’s ambitious and risk-taking novel The Seed Collectors has been summarily repressed by nervous publishers that lack the stones to put it out on this side of the Atlantic, Graham’s remarkable failure to consider the recent Charlie Hedbo/PEN controversy, much less the way in which seemingly liberal minds continue to “ban” viewpoints that they despise belies her woeful ignorance of current reactionary developments in United States culture.

Graham cites a recent uproar over Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in Knoxville, Tennessee, whereby a mother objected to “pornographic” descriptions of infidelity and a lump on Lacks’s cervix being taught in a public school. Graham is right to observe that it was more or less a slam dunk to find the right side on this particular debate, but where she goes astray, undoubtedly aided and abetted by the usual gang of reductionist editorial idiots, is her insane suggestion that Banned Books Week somehow used the occasion to reveal itself as a sinister venue specializing in fearmongering. But Graham doesn’t cite a single word that the Banned Books Week group actually wrote. Blogger Maggie Jacoby compared the mother’s recriminations to “a modern day kind of book burning,” but how is this fearmongering? What Jacoby was rightfully suggesting is that the old forms of suppressing books — fearsome censorship laws, burning books, removing them from school reading lists — have been replaced by an equally diabolical practice whereby one imperious individual or group now decides, irrespective of scholarly or literary merit, that a book or a viewpoint should be expunged from the community.

Censorship battles aren’t limited to blinkered crusaders in Tennessee. “Prudish moms” can be found in such sanctimonious types as Francine Prose and Peter Carey, who cannot seem to comprehend a universe in which offensive and disagreeable ideas are meant to be argued against rather than silenced. The literary world has increasingly failed to understand that an awful idea — and Charlie Hedbo’s juvenile and despicably racist caricatures were indeed meretricious, to say the least — needs to be articulated rather than silenced and that accolades such as the James G. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award are vital reminders of our duty to ensure that anyone has the right to say something offensive or provocative, especially if it runs counter to our perspective, without fear of death or censorship.

Books may not have not faced as many overt censorship challenges in recent years, but the need to squelch undesirable or offensive viewpoints is now being practiced in covert and personal ways that are just as unconscionable. The courageous author Alissa Nutting not only faced a relentless wave of indignant emails and threats after her novel, Tampa, was published, but was also subjected to a histrionic op-ed piece in which a mother believed Nutting’s book was so dangerous that she kept it locked away from her daughter. If the morally scolding can’t get reading material banned from classrooms, then they have proven quite effective in removing “offensive” material from the stores, such as the three men’s magazines ejected by Walmart in 2003 because of efforts made by querulous Christians or, most recently, Rhonda Rousey’s memoir pulled because it was “too violent.”

The public square, whether we like it or not, has been replaced by the venal clamor of a marketplace selling comforting reads and the rising din of outrage culture publicly shaming an author like Erica Jong for ignorant remarks. And while some critics have smartly observed that one can critique an author without excluding her from the conversation, perhaps working to change her mind through a dialogue, others valiantly celebrate an author’s shortcomings as “far more important than any one author’s resistance to a changing zeitgeist.”

In her insistence that “books win” in this new age of condemnation, it’s telling that Graham practices the naive first year law school student’s overused argument of clinging to taut definitions of “banned or challenged” even as she overlooks some very obvious developments which demand that these terms be expanded outside of their presently rigid definitions. A fear of “bad language, violence; and, over and over, sexual content” very much applies in the cases I’ve cited above, just as it does when college students increasingly dole out the manipulative dog-ate-my-homework “trigger warning” charge for classic literature because they don’t want to contend with human realities. These plaints are no different in scope from the mother who tried to pull Skloot’s book from a public school and demand that we expand what a “banned book” really means in 2015.

Nobody wins when some easily offended reader expends a great deal of time and energy to guarantee that a book is withdrawn from a vital forum rather than assembling a provocative and possibly unpopular argument against it, especially when the same ninny fails to provide any evidence of having read the book in question. But American culture is increasingly drifting towards an impulsive immaturity where we cannot fathom that a person is more than the sum of a few foolhardy tweets or inopportune soundbytes and we lack the fortitude to speak with our enemies, let alone maintain cordial relationships with friends we disagree with. It is, however, instinctive enough to find other primordial methods to ban books, whether through trigger warnings or thoughtless censorship campaigns, rather than fostering opportunities for spirited and informed debate. Salman Rushdie should not have to suffer “lasting damage” to his friendships because of a disagreement, but American culture is too wrapped up in blocking or banning anything it finds remotely offensive to have adult conversations. And we are cursed with Pollyanna types like Ruth Graham, serving as myopic propagandists, who are just as implicitly prescriptive as the “prudish moms” who avoid uncomfortable truths that require a drastic change in the ways we relate to the written word and other readers.

by Edward Champion

Chris Abani Censored by Florida School District

Why is a Florida school district removing Chris Abani’s Graceland from its libraries?

On Friday afternoon, JAX-4 TV reported that Chris Abani’s Graceland — a book that had been placed on a 10th grade summer reading list — was pulled because of a parent objecting to its content. The mother, who contacted JAX-4 anonymously by email, objected to the following passage:

Then, whistling softly under his breath, he began rubbing a cool white paste all over Elvis’s body. It felt good, soothing almost. Jerome smiled as he noted the expression. Still smiling, he took Elvis’s penis in one hand and gently smoothed the paste over it, working it up and down. Elvis felt himself swell. Jerome laughed and massaged Elvis’s penis faster and faster. It was not long before Elvis shuddered and shot semen all over his torturer’s hand.

Of course, if you think that Abani’s passage is hot stuff, consider how tame it is in comparison to the language found within Deuteronomy 23 — which comes from a book that I understand is quite widely available in Jacksonville, Florida:

He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.

So castration and violent warnings are okay for kids. But the consensus from this Florida handful is that the Abanai passage isn’t. It remains unclear how many parents objected. But it’s worth pointing out that the book is being banned at the high school sophomore level, not the elementary school level.

JAX-4 reported that the Mandarin High principal agreed with the complaint and proceeded to pull the book from the reading list.

What’s extremely curious is that another Mandarin High summer reading list for this year includes Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus for tenth-grade students. And if Jacksonville parents are truly frightened by the prospect of high school students reading about sexuality, Adichie’s novel features the following passage:

“Obiora says you must be having sex, or something close to sex, with Father Amadi. We have never seen Father Amadi look so bright-eyed.” Amaka was laughing.

I did not know whether or not she was serious. I did not want to dwell on how strange it felt discussing whether or not I had had sex with Father Amadi.

So it seems quite hypocritical to remove one book for sexual description while keeping another openly available. Yet this is precisely the tactic that Duval County Public Schools has taken, fitting in with its prohibitive history.

The Chris Abani ban is hardly the first time that DCPS has removed or attempted to remove books from school libraries. In 1992, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was removed from DCPS libraries for “lurid passages about sex.” Additionally, in 1992, Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic was restricted to students who had parental permission to read the book. The cause? Because the book featured a caricature of a bare-bottomed individual stung by a bee. And according to the book Banned in the USA, in 1997, the Reverend Dale Shaw, president of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance, attempted to remove Richard Wright’s Black Boy from libraries, complaining of profanity at a Duval County School Board meeting. “It has historical value,” said Shaw at the time, “but that doesn’t make it right for high school students.”

But what’s the basis for Duval County’s protective approach? How precisely does Abani’s passage offend? Whatever the reason, the authorities in question appear to be just as anonymous as the mother who complained to JAX-4 News. As of Monday afternoon, representatives from DCPS and Mandarin High did not return my telephone calls for comment.

by Edward Champion

Brittany Murphy: Thoughts on the Saturday Night Live, December 5, 2009 Sketch

In response to Brittany Murphy’s recent death, NBC has pulled a clip from Hulu depicting Brittany Murphy (as played by Abby Elliott), appearing on the Weekend Update section of the December 5, 2009 broadcast of Saturday Night Live. What follows is the sketch presented in a manner that transforms it from its original medium (video) and therefore permits this to fall under the fair use principle. I have appended commentary near the end of this post to ensure that it will not be confused as a replica of the original material and I invite readers to cut and paste this transformative representation to any and all blogs and news organizations, so that people can be informed of what NBC is attempting to hide from the public. This representation is presented for noncommercial and educational purposes.

snlmurphy1TITLE CARD: BRITTANY MURPHY

SETH MEYERS: It was reported this week that actress Brittany Murphy was fired from her upcoming film, The Collar, from being a detriment to production and…oh no.

BRITTANY MURPHY: Seeeeeeeeeth.

SETH MEYERS: Brittany Murphy.

snlmurphy2BRITTANY MURPHY: Seth, I’m really honored to be here, hosting Saturday Night Live.

[It is worth observing that Abby Elliott’s performance of Murphy involves keeping her lower jaw down and moving her head left to right, as if Brittany Murphy is mentally handicapped. Her two palms remain flat against the newsdesk.]

SETH MEYERS: No, no, Brittany, you’re not hosting.

BRITTANY MURPHY: [idiotic laugh] Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

SETH MEYERS: I thought you were shooting a movie right now.

BRITTANY MURPHY: Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. They fired me. [idiotic laugh] Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

snlmurphy3[More head bobbing left and right from Slate. This is, as one would expect, your typically stupid one-note SNL sketch.]

SETH MEYERS: Brittany, that’s really too bad.

BRITTANY MURPHY: It’s not bad, Seth. I got a plan. When the movie comes out, I’m going to go to the theater and say, “Booooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!” (small idiotic laugh) And then the audience will join in and say, “Booooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!” And the director will say, “Awwwwwwwwww dag!” And then I’ll be all, “Told you!” Best plan ever. (idiotic laugh) Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

SETH MEYERS: I wouldn’t call that the best plan ever.

BRITTANY MURPHY: (shouting) Ladies and gentlemen, Blink 182.

SETH MEYERS: (slamming his desk) You are not the host, Brittany Murphy.

BRITTANY MURPHY: Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

SETH MEYERS: (sarcastically) Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

BRITTANY MURPHY: I’ll never tell.

snlmurphy4[Elliott then slides on her chair stage right and off camera.]

SETH MEYERS: Brittany Murphy everybody! (raises eyebrow in dubious belief)

* * *

COMMENTARY: Aside from the sketch’s bad timing, there are numerous problems with the concept. Beyond the sketch’s failure to establish a legitimate reason as to why Brittany Murphy should be the target of satire (presumably the sketch writer simply believed Murphy to be idiotic), and beyond the sophomoric reliance upon “Yeaaaaaaaaahhh!” and the news that she gets kicked off of film sets, it is simply not funny. If the audience is presented with a character and the character exists solely to be offered for an audience’s scorn, then we are not dealing with a character, but a flat and one-dimensional archetype. We certainly need more than junior high school verbal tics in order to either (a) relate to the character or (b) have some reason to scorn the character. We must understand the character’s motivations. And those motivations need to be presented without judgment. (In this case, Meyers exists to confirm the audience response, leaving no room for thought on the part of the audience member.) These qualities are what makes memorable comedy. What are the motivations here? Confusion and apparent stupidity. Nothing more. Not even stupidity combined with arrogance, which makes for a ripe satirical target. What made Tina Fey’s performance as Sarah Palin so memorable was that she presented us with merely a replica of the genuine article. This may say more about the failure of SNL writers to come up with original material or it may demonstrate the maxim that truth is stranger than fiction.

Aside from these conceptual logistics, the sketch is poorly executed. Abby Elliott’s performance of Murphy is exceptionally poor. Bobbing your head left and right and keeping your palms flat upon the table is the stuff of forgettable community theater. It is not the stuff of major television comedy. Granted, Elliott has been given some pretty terrible material to work from. But this does not excuse her staggering incompetence as a performer in relation to this sketch.

Finally, NBC needs to be taken to task for failing to preserve this sketch on Hulu, which will surely increase interest in the base material. The idea that NBC is above making a mistake (uh, Jay Leno?), and the failure of NBC to issue a public apology while presenting the sketch or the episode in its original form, demonstrates that it is not interested in preserving history, much less letting the people determine whether the sketch is funny. NBC’s instant and avaricious decision, together with its draconian attempt to prevent the clip from surfacing upon YouTube, shares distressing similarities to Stalinist revisionism and should be roundly rejected by anybody who values civil liberties and the freedom of expression.

by Edward Champion

Liu Xiaobo Indicted

Some important news. PEN America has informed me that dissident writer Liu Xiaobo has been formally indicted by the Chinese government. Here’s the press release:

Liu Xiaobo Formally Indicted
PEN American Center Denounces Move, Pledges Solidarity

New York City, December 11, 2009— PEN American Center denounced the formal indictment today in Beijing of renowned literary critic and PEN member Liu Xiaobo, calling the move “extremely troubling” and urging supporters and governments around the world to step up the pressure on Beijing to free him immediately.

Liu Xiaobo, a leading intellectual who played a critical role in the 1989 Tiananmen protests and who was one of the main architects of the Charter 08 petition last year, was formally indicted by the Beijing Municipal Procuratorate today, just three days after his case was handed over by investigators and more than a year after he was detained. Liu is charged with “inciting subversion of state power,” a provision regularly used to silence writers in China. If convicted, Liu Xiaobo could face up to 15 years in prison. The case will be heard by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court, reportedly within the next four to six weeks.

“We are deeply disappointed at this new development in Liu Xiaobo’s case,” said Kwame Anthony Appiah, President of PEN American Center. “We are extremely troubled that the indictment seems to follow the assertion of the Beijing Public Security Bureau that Liu committed a ‘major crime’ in drafting Charter 08 with others, and that he should be convicted of ‘inciting subversion.’ Words are not a crime, and the right to freedom of expression is guaranteed by international law and China’s own constitution. We stand in solidarity with Liu Xiaobo, and call on the Procuratorate to drop all charges and release him immediately and unconditionally.”

A past president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, Liu Xiaobo was detained on December 8, 2008, on the eve of the release of Charter 08, a groundbreaking manifesto and petition calling for greater human rights and democracy and an end to one-party rule in China. It has been signed by more than 10,000 Chinese citizens across the country, many of whom have been questioned, harassed, or briefly detained by authorities.

Yesterday, at great personal risk, many of those who joined Liu Xiaobo in signing and promoting Charter 08 released an open letter supporting him. The letter, entitled “We Are Willing to Share Responsibility with Liu Xiaobo,” challenges authorities to release Liu or punish them all equally. As of this morning, 318 people had signed, 240 of whom live in China.

PEN American Center is the largest of the 145 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. The Freedom to Write Program of PEN American Center, which works to protect the freedom of the written word wherever it is imperiled, has been working to end China’s imprisonment, harassment, and surveillance of writers and journalists and curtail Internet censorship and other restrictions on the freedom to write in that country. For more information, please visit www.pen.org/china.