Four Score and…

[Since it is July 4th and some people feel patriotic, I thought I would re-publish this. It was first done a few years ago when many publisher-members of the old PMA list were forced off of Pat Gundry's Publish-L list for speaking out for First Amendment rights. I thought it was appropriate to publish on Independence Day.-]

I dreamt last night that I was giving a speech to a large assemblage of
publishers at the PMA-U luncheon on the issue of the new PMA list banning
publishers that the list owner does not like. Here is what I had to say.
Please picture in your mind’s eye the crowd quieting down as I come to the
podium:

—
Mr. President Weir-Williams, Madame Director Nathan, and fellow PMA members,
thank you for allowing me to speak to you this afternoon.

My name is Alan Canton and I’m a publisher. And like all of you, I see our
endeavor as a noble one, indeed, I believe that we are one of the key
“keepers of the culture.” It is through our eyes, ears, and efforts that so
much of the world’s population receives the information and content that
they use to make decisions that they base their business, social, and
 ”moral” lives on. We have a responsibility to ourselves and we answer to a
higher “authority” than say a computer chip manufacturer or auto dealer.

We publishers MUST understand the difference between right and wrong. If we
don’t understand it, how can we communicate it to a world that looks to us
to provide information for guidance and leadership?

What has happened this week has been a great travesty of justice; de jure
discrimination, as well as de facto discrimination always is. For one
community of publishers to ban and censor another group of publishers
because of petty personality differences is the travesty I speak to you
about.

There has been an outpouring of sentiment supporting the banning of several
publishers from the new PMA list. Those who support it claim that the
freedom to discriminate is the same as freedom of choice. They have extolled
the virtues of private ownership and property rights. Yet they fail to
understand that the so-called freedom they have gained has been at the
expense of the freedom of someone else.

But we’ve heard all our lives that “life is not fair.” Well, I submit to you
that accepting “life being not fair” . IS not fair. WHEN we have the
individual and collective means to MAKE it fair.

When I read about the truly great injustices that have happened during the
lifetime of anyone now living, I always wonder “who are the people that are
responsible? Do I know any of them?”

Who were the people who turned their heads during the Holocaust? Who were
the people who ran the railroads to the camps, who swept the sidewalks after
Kristallnacht, who bought and sold the houses of those the Gestapo took
away?

Who were those people who allowed racism and discrimination to exist in
their towns and communities for so long? Who were the people who knew about
the lynching and did nothing? Who were the people who witnessed the hate
crimes and kept silent? Who took care of Bull Connor’s dogs?

Are they as responsible as those who made the laws, enforced the laws, and
committed the acts?

The answer will come from your own soul.

Now we are engaged in a moral debate in our own community over whether or
not we should support an organization and community that is openly
committing a travesty to the First Amendment. While so many have posted
eloquently about the travesty being done to those who were banned from the
new PMA list, we still don’t see anyone taking action. We don’t see anyone
standing up and saying, “I can’t be responsible for this, I’m leaving.” We
don’t see anyone even suggesting that the new PMA list be abandoned. Indeed,
the prevailing attitude on the new PMA list is “I’m so sorry this happened,
but can you tell me how I can  get an ISBN?”

I’ve been counseled that there might be several legal remedies that those of
us who were banned from the new PMA list can pursue. And indeed, this week
we will be talking to various public-interest legal experts to see if a
class action suit against PMA as well as Suitcase Books might have merit. We
have the means and we have the will.

Yet even if PMA/Suitcase is actionable and even if we prevail, it still does
nothing to address the question of responsibility.

Those who remain on the new PMA list have to answer the question of “who is
responsible?” Yes, it is the list owner who has stripped several publishers
of their First Amendment rights. But it goes beyond that. The responsibility
is also with all of those who maintain a presence on the list (and perhaps
PMA as well.)

You are presented with perhaps a once in a lifetime chance to take a stand.
You have a chance to make a difference. You have a chance to turn to the
tyrants and say “NO, this is wrong. I will not be a part of it.” You have a
chance to do the right thing, to say that discrimination is wrong, and to
bring about the end of a list conceived in hate, anger, and intolerance to
those it disagrees with.

Even if you are a new publisher and don’t know what an ISBN is, you DO know
right from wrong. Even if you say you only lurk and you don’t contribute,
you DO know the difference between right and wrong. No matter what kind of
publisher you are, or how long you have been in the industry, I believe that
the actions you take in the next few days will leave a lasting mark on you
for the rest of your career.

I think that every self-respecting publisher on the list should demand that
the new PMA list grant amnesty to all those who were banned from it. If the
list owner refuses, than those same publishers should quit.

Fellow publishers and colleagues, this is a simple issue. There are no
shades of gray here. I do not believe in my heart of hearts that a
publishing house with integrity CAN be part of a community that exercises
prior restraint, that refuses to grant even a modicum of free speech, and
that refuses any appeal of the moderator’s rulings.

Why? Because we are publishers! We are different. We are special. We are
supposed to be “above” the common and petty. We are not Amway salesmen or
used car dealers. We are not get-rich-quick scamsters, or faith healers. We
are publishers. Let me say it again; we are PUBLISHERS! And we answer to a
higher authority. We are the ones who are to help “make life fair.” If we
don’t stand for that, if we don’t stand for the freedoms that nurture us,
than what DO we stand for? What is the measure of our soul? Why are we here?
Indeed, what is the meaning of a publisher’s life?

No, it is not money. No, it is not fame. No, it is not art. No, it is not
power.

It is integrity. It is honor. It is freedom. It is justice. That is what WE
are about. And if WE are not, then WHO is left that is?

Fifteen years ago a group of enlightened publishers brought forth to this
industry an organization dedicated to the notion that by working together
and learning from each other that we would have a decent chance of success.

We were conceived in the liberty of the First Amendment freedoms granted to
us by our Constitution. Now we are engaged in a great controversy; that of
censorship, testing whether that organization or any group of publishers so
conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met during this
controversy on the battlefield of censorship, that one group of publishers
can discriminate and ban via prior restraint, another group from public
participation. We need to decide if we should dedicate ourselves to answer
the call by abandoning that venue, so that all who desire such freedoms will
be able to live and prosper in the future. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.

The publishing world will little note nor long remember what we say here,
but I believe it will never forget what we do here. It is for all
publishers, rather, to be dedicated here to the work which they who fight
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from those who were
banned, we take increased devotion of the First Amendment and  to that cause
for which they fight for–that we here highly resolve that these publishers
shall not have been exiled in vain, that all publishers shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that an organization  of the members, by the members,
for the members shall one day exist for all.

Thank you.

Alan N. Canton
Vice President
Adams-Blake Publishing

The author releases this work to the public domain and hopes that it will be
reprinted wherever publishers might see it.