New PEN America Report: Journalists Face New Challenges in Grappling with the Blurring Line Between Extremism and Politics
"Journalists and newsrooms are an essential bulwark against the erosion of democracy, and today, U.S. democracy is threatened in part by the increasing prevalence of extremist views in our… More
The PEN Pod: Challenging and Critiquing White Feminism with Koa Beck
“A broader initiative that needs to be taken. . . is teaching marginalized genders. . . We have cis women, trans women, nonbinary people, trans men, gender-variant people, two-spirit,… More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Danielle Evans
“Characterization and narrative tension come from the tension between a character’s inner life and their exterior life, and I’m acutely aware—because being a Black woman compels me to pay… More
Your Mestizaje is a Superpower
“Multiculturalism is not a threat to civilization. The only thing it threatens is extremism.” More
The PEN Pod: On White Supremacy and Immigration with Jean Guerrero
“How does the descendant of Jewish refugees, how does that person end up crafting Trump’s harshest rhetoric and policies targeting people fleeing violence and persecution?” More
DARE: Facebook Said to Be in Talks With Publishers on News Effort
Facebook is in talks with publishers on news effort to license articles on the platform. In an opinion piece in the Atlantic, NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro... More
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PEN America On 
Another bit of sound legal judgement this week, from TX, where a judge found that conservative library board members had likely exercised unconstitutional content-based restrictions when banning books from the Llano public library. The books ordered back.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/31/texas-llano-library-books/
Talking to @AliVelshi, historian @TimothyDSnyder likens book bans in #Florida to Communism: “All this stuff is supposed to be anti-communist but as a historian of communism, that reminds me of some of the basic things that were wrong about communism.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yale-professor-ron-desantis-book-bans_n_642696c7e4b02a8d518df5a9
Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted today of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights. Mackey sent fraudulent messages encouraging supporters of Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media which was legally invalid. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer-douglass-mackey-convicted-election-interference-2016